Mobile Entertainment_February 2010, Issue 60 by Intent Media (now Newbay Media Europe)

FOR EVERYONE IN MOBILE CONTENT

FEBRUARY 2010 ISSUE 60 WWW.MOBILE-ENT.BIZ

Devices shown top to bottom: BlackBerry® Storm2™ 9520 smartphone and BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphone

MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT

Journey to the centre of the apps universe... App Planet @ Mobile World Congress Barcelona, 15-18 February 2010

Welcome to App Planet For four days from the 16th February 2010, Barcelona will be home to the brightest minds in mobile business during Mobile World Congress 2010. Orbiting the World Mobile Congress will be App Planet, an event-within-an-event dedicated to the evolving world of mobile applications. It’s a unique opportunity to network with experts, developers and architects of mobile applications from all over the - well - planet. The BlackBerry Team will be there throughout the event – so come and see us at stand no 7B26, Hall 7 and we’ll be happy to answer any of your questions.

So whether you’re technically or commercially minded, it’s a must-attend event for anyone remotely interested in the future of mobile apps. And on Tuesday February 16, we’ll be there hosting the BlackBerry Developer Day. For more information, visit www.blackberry.com/developer/appplanet

CONTENTS FEBRUARY 2010 | ISSUE 60

APPS SPECIAL ISSUE

A NEW CHAPTER?

13 THE NIFTY FIFTY There are tens of thousands to choose from, but here we present the half century of apps that changed the (mobile) world

FEATURE

18 TRANSACTION STATIONS

25 SCORES ON THE STORES

Mach (formerly End2End Mobile) shares its vision of one-click operator billing for app stores

The vital statistics of every app store rounded up and published for your viewing pleasure

INSIDE THIS ISSUE 5 OPINIONS

30 SHOWS

Like rectums, we’ve all got them. And in the new revamped ME, there’s space for lots of ranting.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. You don’t want the wife to find out about that HTML5 seminar...

20 APPS TO COME

32 NETWORKS

A snapshot of some of the big trends descending on the app space in 2010.

Operator subscriber numbers collated in what is undoubtedly the most exciting page in the mag...

23 MONETISING MOBILE

34 CHARTS

ME has a new event in May, all about making money from apps. Who wouldn’t want a be part of that?

Go here to find out which Black Eyed Peas song is currently topping the ringtone charts.

28 APPOINTMENTS

42 DISCONTENT

Who’s arriving? And who are they passing on the way out? All the big moves documented here.

Stuff and nonsense at the back of the mag. If you’ve been silly recently, send us a pic.

37 MARKETPLACE YOUR GUIDE TO THE MOBILE CONTENT INDUSTRY

I was lucky enough to go on holiday somewhere hot over Christmas. As a result, I’m now as brown as a limited edition LG Chocolate. Yeah, take that, you coldclimate losers. I managed to get through four books while away, but the fifth I’m still struggling with. Why? Because it’s inside my Nokia X6. Yep, this was my first attempt at reading a mobile book, and the experience was… OK. Now, I’m not rigidly old-school about this. As much as I love a good (paper) book, I’m prepared to embrace the digital future of reading. I just think that the format requires a broader canvas than the X6. Of course, as we go to press, there’s speculation that Apple is working on a Kindle-killer. I wouldn’t bet against Jobs and team to invent something wonderful. It could breathe new life – and revenue – into publishing. Traditionalists will resist, but the cycle is always the same. They’ ll start off rubbishing e-books, then try them once rather than take four paperbacks on holiday, then they’ll get used to it. Long-term they’ll switch over, just as they did with music. But will they just pick and choose their digital reading? Or will e-books wholly ravage paper, as MP3 did CD? I’m leaning to the former. We all like to carry thousands of songs with us, but tend to read one book at a time. Then there’s the whole battery power/screen resolution factor that will hold digital back in the battle against paper. This is less of an issue in music, I think. We’ll be watching the space carefully for selfish reasons, as much as for professional ones. Any new publishing channel gets our attention. And speaking of our own activities, you’ll notice a few changes to ME this month. Now that we have a website posting dozens of stories a day, we’ve shifted the mag’s focus from news to opinion. We’ve also themed this issue around one subject: apps. We’ll do more of this theming in subsequent issues. Let us know what you think. Tim Green Tim.Green@intentmedia.co.uk

ho is a Mon ste ne e d b w k tisin y M ind g M o ob of ile con bile En fe ter ren tai ce nm en t

Wednesday, May 26th â&#x20AC;˘ BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London

How to make mobile apps pay their way

Conference & Dinner from ÂŁ199

An ME Event

For sponsorship information contact: Katy Grant on 01992 535647 or email katy.grant@intentmedia.co.uk For delegate booking information contact: Jodie Holdway on 01992 535647 or email jodie.holdway@intentmedia.co.uk

Symbian

Mobile

74 million

...is the OS that gathers the highest mobile ad clickthrough rates, says Smaato

...phones will overtake PCs for web surfing by 2013, according to Gartner

The total number of US mobile video users by 2015, says study by Coda Research

OPINION

Found out The perfect app for you is out there. But how do you find it? This could be the biggest issue facing the sector. It’s being worked on, says Stuart Dredge… hen you’re faced with a choice of tens or hundreds of thousands of products, discovery and recommendation become hugely important. Yet all the major mobile app stores have faced criticism on this score. What’s becoming clear, though, is that if the app store owners are moving slower than the industry would like in improving things, there is no shortage of startups looking to do the job for them. Examples? Last month saw the launch of Chomp. It’s an iPhone app that exists to let users review other iPhone apps, while getting recommendations back in return. They can also browse a real-time feed of other user reviews, and follow the review feeds of their friends or designated ‘App Celebrities’. It’s all very slick, and although it’s early days, its recommendation engine appears to be solid. It’ll compete with Chorus, a similar idea that launched in November. It too lets people see a live feed of app recommendations from other users, while connecting to their friends and submitting their own recommendations. Meanwhile, an app called Sidebar offers recommendations for Android users – with other smartphone platforms set to follow soon – widening out beyond apps to embrace music, videos, news stories and podcasts. Other launches in Jan included Apptizr and Appolicious, both of which started as websites, but then launched spinoff iPhone apps to offer recommendations too. Clearly there’s genuine momentum in the space. These start-ups are all focused on people looking to discover apps on their handset, but there are already many counterparts on the web. US-based Mplayit has been picking up steam with its Facebook application, offering playable demos of iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps and tracking which ones are most shared by its users. There’s also no shortage of websites finding new ways to rate and recommend smartphone apps – again, plugging the discovery gaps in the various app stores.

“

When consumers are faced with a blizzard of choice, they look to each other, on sites or services that let them do so, and they look to expert ‘curators’. It’s by no means a mobile app phenomenon either: music, TV, books, holidays... every consumer product category benefits from companies to help sort and sift through what’s available. At this stage, it’s hard to tell which of these mobile app discovery services will succeed in the long term. The more users they sign up, the better they’ll be. But their emergence is good news for developers hoping for more visibility for their apps. Especially when that visibility is being provided by enthusiatic consumers recommending apps to each other. Even if in some cases, these users are actually enthusiastic developers pretending to be consumers recommending their own products. App store owners are trying to improve their own discovery processes. Apple has already introduced its Genius for Apps technology, while Nokia’s promises of social location recommendations will hopefully be delivered with the upcoming second-generation Ovi Store. But they should also be supporting the third-party recommendation startups, by making sure they have affiliate referral schemes to help make money, and by opening up their APIs to spark more innovative services. Meanwhile, companies like Chomp, Chorus and Mplayit are also generating valuable data for the industry, based on what their users are recommending. Thanks to Chorus, we know that Eliminate Pro, Shazam and Gowalla were the three most recommended iPhone apps by its users last November, for example. Last month, Mplayit revealed that users of different smartphones tend to like the same apps. Which isn’t that startling, but revealing the apps in question was much more useful – good news for Evernote, Pandora, Facebook, Shazam and Nimbuzz, among others. All app stores have sales charts, but what the recommendation services are providing is a measure of word-of-mouth, which is an increasingly important commodity. Stuart Dredge is ME’s online editor

When consumers are faced with a blizzard of choice, they look to each other, on sites or services that let them do so, and they look to expert ‘curators’. It’s not just a mobile phenomenon either...

www.mobile-ent.biz

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IN BRIEF Indie music for Indian mobile subscribers Content giant Hungama Digital Media is targeting independent artists with ArtistAloud.com, a service that lets the public sample, share and buy unreleased music. The content will be promoted by Hungama's operator partners, iTunes and Amazon, Tata Sky, IPTV, memory card bundles and preloads on handsets. The site also offers ringtones, wallpapers and full tracks. Hungama has signed on 30 indie artists including Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Shibani Kashyap, Hema Sardesai, Suneeta Rao, Jatin Pandit and Himani Kapoor. The deal bolsters Hungama's strong position in the music space. In December, it signed a coownership agreement with Indian content and distribution giants BIG Music and T-Series

Guardian app hits 70k iPhone downloads UK newspaper The Guardian sold 68,979 copies of its £2.39 iPhone app within a month of launch. Observers suggest this could turn into a £2m-a-year business for the media group. The Guardian has made a big fuss of the revenue-raising potential of mobile apps, given its strong opposition to paywalls on its internet sites. The big issue is what happens once everyone who wants the app has paid for it once – and whether this will accelerate print decline.

Sagem to customise phones for Puma French OEM Sagem has teamed up with Mobiles Republic and Cellmania to launch a new platform for branded phones – the first project is Puma. It will provide online access to multimedia content from Puma via a carousel-based menu on the device. This will enable the sports brand to aggregate all its content services into a single UE. The Puma phone will launch in the second quarter of 2010. Mobiles Republic’s APPY client enables the discovery of rich media through a carousel menu that can be customised by the operator/brand.

BBC and Spotify to keynote MWC The GSMA has kept the emphasis on content at the 2010 Mobile World Congress by adding BBC and Spotify to its conference line-up. The speakers are Erik Huggers, director of future media and technology at the BBC, and Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify. Other more additions include the CEOs of Adobe, Bharti Airtel, China Unicom and RIM.

Mobile Entertainment February 2010 | 5

One billion

1,000 apps

High score

...ad requests from Android devices on the AdMob network in December

...now available on the Palm webOS App Catalog – and 70 per cent of them are free

More than eight million Brits now play mobile games, according to the UK National Gamers Survey Report

IN BRIEF

OPINION

Siano funding bonanza Mobile TV chip maker Siano has completed its fourth round of funding, raising another $24 million from investors such as JVP, DFJ-TamirFishman, Star Ventures, Walden Israel, and Bessemer Venture Partners. The company develops and markets semiconductor chips for reception of digital TV on mobile, portable and hand-held devices and has enjoyed traction in China, Brazil and Europe.

Forecast: cloudy If content providers want the freedom to market and sell apps without fragmentation, they need to explore the mobile browser, says Rich Holdsworth, CTO at Wapple.net...

Kerching RingRing Amobee will aim to expand beyond the operator space with the purchase of UKbased RingRing Media. It says the deal brings it one step closer to fulfilling its long-term vision of creating the industry’s largest mobile advertising exchange'. At present, customers for Amobee's ad serving 'dashboard' include major operators such as Telefonica and Vodafone. They use the tech to power their own ad operations. It's a very different business from that run by RingRing, which is more of a buying agency and represents advertisers and media buyers rather than owners of inventory. “This acquisition solves an industry issue. By leveraging the RingRing Exchange we are able to streamline the process and connect supply and demand using the best technology on the market,” said Zohar Levkovitz, CEO of Amobee.

mobivention on-Stream Mobile Streams is to provide content for distribution by mobivention in Europe, Saudi Arabia and South Africa The agreement ensures a fresh range of wallpapers, videos, games and appa featuring IP like Mr Bean for mobivention’s operator partners and D2C portals in Sweden, Denmark and Germany. The deal covers Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Poland and Italy, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

Nokia music is where it’s at Handset maker Nokia has launched a location-based music app called Gig Finder. It lets users search for music concerts, buy tickets and get recommendations of other bands they might like. The app taps into the GPS feature of handsets to find gigs nearby a user's current location. It also offers directions to the venue using Ovi Maps, lets people share details about gigs via SMS, email or Facebook, and also ties into the Nokia Music Store to buy music by the artists. The product is the work of handset maker's Beta Labs team. Gig Finder is currently available in the UK, US, Canada and Ireland, with more to follow in the coming months.

6 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

he smartphone-owning minority will have you believe that the world has gone mad for mobile apps. They’ll point to three billion iPhone app downloads and hundreds of thousands of products in the space, and proclaim the future to be secure. Without doubt, it’s a strong argument. But for me the real future is in browser-based services that work on all devices – smart or not so smart. Today, it’s true that apps provide a rich user experience. Once installed, they can access the heart of the device and enable the kind of rich possibilities you won’t find through a browser – such as animated graphics, integrated phonebooks, rotation, shared GPS data and so on. So yes, there’s no doubt that apps offer some great benefits. But let’s consider the bigger picture for a moment. Even in the ‘first’ world, smartphones still represent a small portion of the handset market. In the developing world, they are even more scarce. If you consider every phone on the planet as your potential market, it stands to reason that installed apps are not the answer. Another issue is OS fragmentation. With iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and others, there are plenty of unique platforms to make applications for. This multiplies budgets – and those apps aren’t cheap to begin with. Then there’s the autonomy element. You might think that once you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of building your app, you are free to sell and market it as you please. But in reality, you’re at the mercy of the app stores owners and their policies for acceptance, pricing and promotion. So I believe the future can only be in browser-based services that are available anywhere, any time, on any operating system and are continually refreshed and updated. We’ve seen this trend develop among our bigger brothers in the software space ever since the phrase ‘the network is the computer’ was first uttered. Microsoft and Google are working towards a cloudbased future. So should we.

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Consider a desktop application like Outlook, for example. It’s installed on your PC and integrated with your desktop in every conceivable way. But when you think about it, that’s also a serious limitation: all your emails are on your hard drive, so are your contacts, your appointments, to-do lists and so on. When you’re away from your machine, it’s pretty much impossible to access the full range of these features. Instead, you have to use web-based alternatives such as Microsoft’s nightmare, Gmail. Whatever method you choose to resolve this issue, it’s a lot more cumbersome than starting with a cloudbased solution in the first place. And that’s exactly where the future of mobile services will flourish. Mobile internet services based on browsers present an opportunity for unrestricted connection with audiences. No installation is required and you don’t have to engage in a battle – or pay – to have a presence the all-important top of the app store listings. Instead, you are free to sell, promote and distribute your services as you see fit. This, of course, is just as it should be. The app brigade will tell you that content hosted on mobile internet sites doesn’t compare to downloadable apps. From a certain point of view, they are right. I firmly believe that the decision to choose either a mobile internet strategy or one based on apps will depend largely on exactly what you want to achieve. For anything that offers dynamic data, interactive services and user participation, then you really should give mobile internet a go. It’s cheaper, more flexible, it’s more tightly integrated into your overall e-strategy and it’ll work on pretty much any connected handset. And with the internet embracing tech like HTML5, browserbased content is improving all the time. For spirit levels and tilting pints of beer, it’s apps all the way. Rich Holdsworth is CTO of Wapple.net, which offers tools for building rich mobile websites, applications and marketing campaigns that are automatically optimised for any mobile device on any network.

You might think that once you’ve built your app, you are free to sell and market it as you please. In reality, you’re at the mercy of the app store owners and their policies for acceptance, pricing and promotion.

”

www.mobile-ent.biz

Google

$450 million

600 quid

...and Facebook are the top mobile brands, says Strategy Analytics. Are you shocked?

That's the bill for iPhone piracy so far, claims 24/7 Wall Street.

The cheque sent to Spinvox investors by Nuance was for £600. The rest of the cash paid off loans.

IN BRIEF

OPINION

HTC BREWS up HTC has unveiled its first BREW-based phone, the HTC Smart. It’s the vendor's first phone based on the Qualcomm platform, and comes loaded with the HTC Sense UI that is already available on the Hero and other Android devices. The firm denies this is a feature phone project and says the phone is full of smart features. It should be available in the spring. The launch comes as AT&T is readying a BREW app store. HTC has grown fast in the last few years on the back of smartphones based on third party OS – notably Windows.

Presenting BlackBerry A new BlackBerry accessory allows users to display Microsoft Powerpoint presentations direct from their phone. The Bluetooth-enabled BlackBerry Presenter also lets users edit presentations, navigate presentations, view speaker notes, loop slides and even reference information on one slide while displaying another. The kit supports roaming up to 30 feet between the devices, so animated presenters can walk around while demonstrating their hockey stick growth curves. BlackBerry Presenter will be available at a later date on ShopBlackBerry.com for $199.

Live TV accessory for FLO Qualcomm's FLO TV division FLO TV is to launch a live TV accessory for iPhone. Having launched its Personal Television device last year, the firm is now setting its sights on the iPhone. The company is working with accessory-maker Mophie on a dedicated iPhone case, which will include a FLO TV antenna to receive broadcast TV from its network. Users will be able to stream channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox. iPhone users will be asked to pay around $9 a month for the service, on top of the initial cost of the case.

AT&T’s mid-range app store US operator AT&T is to target feature phone users with a mid-range AppCenter app store based on BREW. By choosing Qualcomm's platform, AT&T will gain access to thousands of applications developed over years of activity primarily on its rival Verizon, which has used BREW for the best part of a decade.The platform will be able to leverage Java and Flash languages, and will be used by handset partners, including HTC, LG, Samsung and Pantech. By 2011, AT&T said that 90 per cent of these devices will be running BREW. It will share 70 per cent of revenues with developers.

8 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

Googlepipe The arrival of the Nexus One handset was exciting. But it’s Google’s web-based retail channel that could really change mobile for ever, says Ewan McLeod... ell that was a day to remember. The day Google got stuck into mobile merchandising and nailed the mobile operator to the wall. That’s it: thank you for coming, mobile operators! You did your best. But now you’ve been ‘owned’. Well, maybe not yet. But do look out for the big G. With the Nexus One, Google has ushered in an entirely new way of buying a consumer handset: from its website in six clicks. Shit! Is it that simple? Yes, it is. If you’d like a Nexus One, they’re shipping right now. You buy it from Google. Not from your operator. Here’s how it works. You visit Google.com/phone and select your financing option. You either buy your phone outright, or you get it financed by a bank/mobile operator that also supplies your voice and data connection. The whole proposition makes the operator an alsoran. It’s been relegated to bit-part status in the new Google process. Choosing your network is now like choosing whether you want to pay with MasterCard or Visa. It doesn’t make much difference. Yes, we’ve had billions of marketing dollars spent making sure we ‘care’ what operator we select. But, the reality is there isn’t much difference between them. Who do you buy your electricity from? Do you care? Exactly. For all my excitement, I realise that it’ll be a little while before consumers begin relying upon Google for their telecommunications needs. You can see it happening though. You can see the strategy. Soon you’ll be able to buy all manner of handsets through this channel in a slick six-step interface powered by your Google Checkout account. If you, as an operator, are not on the Google.com/phone page, then you’ve got a major problem, because 100 per cent of people buying through this mechanism will never, ever choose you. In one stroke, Google has converted the mobile operator into a bit pipe, into an incidental ’supplier’. At present, it’s only offering one handset and demand will be limited to die hard geeks. But what happens when Google adds five more ultra desirable phones? Or 50? How will the operators react when the manufacturers, freed from the constraints of having to serve their operator overlords (no wifi in that phone’, ‘switch off VOIP‘), start to respond to market demand quickly. Freed from these restrictions, imagine how they’ll react to a Google portal that’s retailing 50,000

“

If you, as an operator, are not on the Google.com/phone page, then you’ve got a major problem, because 100 per cent of people buying through this mechanism will never, ever choose you.

”

devices a week to a rabid audience of consumers finally getting the devices and services they want? There are pitfalls of course. Your average operator is pretty good at dealing with fulfilment. If I phone 3UK at 11am on Monday and arrange for a new handset, chances are it’ll be at my door by 9am on Tuesday. How well will Google handle returns? Can I phone Google and complain about lack of T-Mobile signal? Where does my relationship lie with the transaction? Google will have to figure this out. But ultimately, the overriding issue is that it doesn’t give a stuff about the operator. The networks are in the way. Google’s focus is advertising revenue. Yes, it might make a small margin on unit sales, but making sure people get access to Google services and get online is its top priority. When you start counting the billions of dollars of mobile ad revenue to be had over the next decade, you can see why Google wants to promote smartphones and wade into the existing marketplace unhampered by the operators. Clearly, Android is the means to get mobile users online. Research says people search the web 30 times more on an Android phone than they do on a feature phone. So feature phones don’t help the Google project at all. In fact, browsing search results featuring Google Ads on these devices is next to useless. This is the start of the new era. Making Google the search engine of choice on the operator portal was useful. But here is the real strategy. If anything reflects Google’s belief in the potential of mobile, it’s this. Fascinating times. Ewan McLeod is the founder of Mobile Industry Review, a mobile market watching website (www.mobileindustryreview.com) www.mobile-ent.biz

Learn more: Mobile World Congress 2010, hall 1, G05 or visit http://mwc.materna.com www.mobile-ent.biz

Mobile Entertainment February 2010 | 9

One a second

Sky high

$529

Social location app Foursquare registers one check-in by users to a venue every second

Over 1m have downloaded the Sky News iPhone app eight months after release

...is the total cost of the ‘industry-busting’ Google Nexus One SIM-free handset

IN BRIEF

OPINION

App-solutely necessary?

Quattro: Apple bites Apple lost out on AdMob, but made up for it by snapping up big US mobile ad player Quattro Wireless for $275m. The deal will give Apple direct access to Quattro’s network, which lets advertisers distribute embedded ads in apps and iPhone-tweaked websites. It accelerated the frenzy around the ad space after market leader Admob was sold to Google for $750m in November.

So many iPhone apps. But how many offer re-purposed web content in a snazzy UI? Stuart O'Brien ponders...

Google phone lands After all the speculation, the Google phone turned out to be HTC-made Nexus One – and the innovation was in the selling rather than the specs. As predicted, the handset runs the latest version of the Android OS, has a 3.7-inch touchscreen and runs off Qualcomm's 1GHz Snapdragon chipset. However, the disruptive element lies in the fact that Google has launched its own web-store to sell selected Android handsets, starting with the Nexus One. It's being sold SIM-free for $529.

3bn iPhone downloads Apple has passed the 3bn downloads milestone for the iPhone App Store. The figure was reached less than four months after it passed the two billion milestone in late September. The App Store was launched in July 2008. "Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months – this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before," said CEO Steve Jobs. "The revolutionary App Store offers users an experience unlike anything else available on other devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon."

Sino-iPhone success China Unicom has sold 300,000 iPhones since it launched the device on October 30th. After a sluggish start, heavy marketing propelled the device to respectable numbers. Sales spiked significantly after what was seen by many as an underwhelming 100,000 units sold as of December 9th. China Unicom cranked up its iPhone marketing machine over Christmas with a 46 city ‘show and tell’ campaign to drum up awareness.

Correction: Mobile Messenger In the December issue of Mobile Entertainment, we mistakenly referred to Mobile Messenger as an “Israelbased content distribution specialist.” Mobile Messenger is actually based in Los Angeles, California and is a mobile solutions provider, rather than a content distribution specialist. We apologise for the error.

10 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

t's interesting to take a look at the kinds of apps coming to market, now that it’s getting more mature – and big brands and publishers have had the chance to sit down and think about how apps best fit in with wider web strategy. One of the most talked-about examples of this to emerge in recent months was the The Guardian's effort, not least because it followed a period of intense navel gazing at the UK newspaper group. The firm has been outspoken in its rejection of paywalls around its expensively assembled online content resource. However, it has always talked positively about the potential of mobile to generate revenue. In the end, The Guardian's app allowed the newspaper group to do three important things: learn how to make an iPhone app; experiment with an exciting new business model; and discover whether its left-leaning (and increasingly international) liberal audience is receptive to this kind of mobile-based rich media. In terms of the latter point, the early signs have been broadly encouraging – 68,979 downloads were registered at £2.39 in the app's first month on sale. That, as we pointed out in an online editorial, equates to annual revenue of about £1.4 million once Apple has taken its cut. It’s a decent start. And the paper must see this as evidence that the potential audience for mobile versions of its product is certainly there. In print The Guardian sells 300,000 newspapers a day and the company also has one of the most popular websites in the UK. But here's the thing: The Guardian app offers up exactly the same content as the newspaper's free web and (excellent) mobile sites, so it's going to be very interesting to see if, once the early-adopter sales spike has subsided, the average user will splash his or her hard-earned cash on something they can get for free within two clicks of a touchscreen. If you can browse to the same content on a website from your phone, then all that distinguishes the mobile

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app is a slick user interface (and let's be clear here that the design of The Guardian's app is quite splendid) and some clever functions. Do loyal readers really think that’s worth £2.39? It's not just media organisations asking consumers to answer that question. Visitors to Arsenal Football Club's Emirates stadium this season have been bombarded with ads pushing them to download the club's official iPhone app. Now, this author is a regular at the Emirates and also owns an iPhone, but I have absolutely no intention of paying £2.99 for the (admittedly great looking) app. Again, this is because all the content (bar video clips) is available for free on the main website (or the BBC's for that matter). I suspect that we may see more of these kinds of products as the app store revolution continues to pick up speed. As more and more marketing managers start telling their underlings to ‘get me a mobile app, now’, there’ll be a temptation to make products that ‘scrape’ web content and re-purpose it for iPhone, Ovi, Android, BlackBerry and so on. Certainly, there’s been a marked increase in press releases sent to ME from companies that claim to have a solution that will build you an app ‘in an hour for just a few quid’. Maybe 'phase two' of both The Guardian and Arsenal app strategies will go some way to solving this issue. These two companies, and others like them, must surely be thinking of a strategy beyond one in which content is free in one channel and premium (or subject to a oneoff purchase) in another. They have to, because the more savvy consumers beyond the early adopters will eventually (and rightly) start to ask the question: “Do I really need this app?” After all, at some point, everyone who wants to download either app will have done so, which means subscriptions, micro-payments or ads will have to come into play to keep that revenue recurring. And for that to happen, the content really does need to stand up and be counted. Stuart O’Brien is associate editor of ME

If you can browse the same content that’s in an app on a website from your phone, then all that distinguishes the app is a slick user interface and some clever functions. Do users really think that’s worth £2.39?

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www.mobile-ent.biz

12 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

www.mobile-ent.biz

APPS SPECIAL: 50 MOST INNOVATIVE

The game changers Social networking? There’s an app for that. Location-based restaurant recommendations? There’s an app for that. Watching clips of busty women on treadmills? There is, regrettably, an app for that too. There’s an app for everything. Apps mania will be in full effect at Mobile World Congress, with its dedicated App Planet zone. To celebrate, we’ve compiled a list of what we believe to be the 50 most innovative apps in the (Western) world today. Start arguing now... 1. GOOGLE VOICE The app so potentially disruptive, Apple wouldn’t let it onto the App Store. Google Voice gives people their own ‘Google number’, complete with voicemail, that they can route to any device they like at any time. It also transcribes voicemails. Great for anyone with lots of phones who wants to tie them to a single number, but pretty worrying for the mobile operators. Google Voice is popular among the more hardcore Android users in the US. Could go much wider in 2010. 2. SPOTIFY When it launched for iPhone and Android, Spotify’s app wasn’t the first streaming music application. However, it was the first to use ‘caching’ technology to let users save their playlists for offline listening. At a stroke, it addressed the biggest criticism of these apps: ‘what happens when you’re on the Tube or plane?’ 3. FOURSQUARE Is Foursquare a social networking app? A location-based service? A game? It’s all three. It revolves around users ‘checking in’ to bars, restaurants etc, and letting their friends know what they’re up to, but also earning points and achievement badges. It is now seeing a check-in every second. All it has to do now is find an effective way to make money... 4. POCKET GOD The games industry has been banging on about episodic content for years, without ever really nailing the idea. Pocket God managed it in a matter of months on iPhone. It’s a god game set on an island that gives weekly updates with new content. Its ferociously loyal audience has kept it at the top of the App Store charts – and it was one of the first iPhone games to succeed with in-app payments, too. 5. LAYAR REALITY BROWSER Expect to hear a lot of excited talk about augmented reality at MWC, even if opinions www.mobile-ent.biz

vary greatly about a) what it’s for, and b) what the business model is. Layar is the most intriguing mobile AR app, thanks to its structure. Developers are encouraged to create ‘layers’ – from gig listings to house prices to Beatles magical mystery tours – making it a platform for rapid, creative innovation. 6. ELIMINATE PRO When Apple removed its restriction on allowing free apps to use in-app payments, the games industry wondered who’d be first to make the ‘freemium’ plunge. It turned out to be ngmoco with Eliminate Pro. This first-person shooter is free, but funded by payments for energy packs, which are required to level up your character. Did it work? We don’t know yet, but it was important to try.

With thousands of apps to choose from, you might need a little help to separate the wheat from the chaff

7. GOOGLE MAPS NAVIGATION How big a deal was Google Maps for Navigation’s announcement late last year? Ask the SatNav companies whose share prices plunged in the aftermath. The app marries mapping with navigation and voice search. Crucially, it does it for free, undercutting the premium pricing structure of its established rivals. For the moment it’s restricted to the Android 2.0 handsets niche, but like Google Voice this app will have a huge impact in the year ahead. 8. FIREFOX MOBILE Just to make your head spin, number eight is a mobile browser whose innovation is that it might help the industry to focus less on apps in the coming years. Mozilla’s Firefox Mobile is currently only available for the Nokia N900, but could have a significant Mobile Entertainment February 2010 | 13

APPS SPECIAL: 50 MOST INNOVATIVE

Riding the twin hype-waves of social location and real-time, Buzzd is one of the most appealing location-based apps around. 17. EBAY FOR BLACKBERRY Why the BlackBerry version? It ties tightly into the handset’s calendar and inbox: mobile crack for hardcore eBayers. 18. I AM T-PAIN The iPhone music app that made Auto-Tune the toast of the App Store in 2009; social elements boosted its word-of-mouth buzz.

19. CHOMP Offers social iPhone app discovery with a streamlined review system, strong social features and a great recommendations engine too. 20. RUMMBLE The UK’s answer to Foursquare and Gowalla, Rummble offers a slick and innovative take on the hot social location genre. 21. 7DIGITAL MUSIC STORE One of a cluster of apps hoping to be the iTunes of BlackBerry, 7Digital’s store won plaudits for also including a decent player.

4 impact as it spreads to other devices. It can sync bookmarks and other data with the desktop version, allows developers to create add-ons for extra functionality, and handles multimedia content without a fuss. 9. TWEETDECK There are many mobile Twitter apps, so ordering them by innovation is a hiding to nothing. Even so, Tweetdeck looks well set. It has all the power features, including the ability to manage multiple accounts, create groups, browse Twitter lists and geo-tag tweets. But so do its rivals. What made us place this higher was its synchronisation with the desktop version of Tweetdeck: an example of proper cross-platform design. 10. THE GUARDIAN It’d be easy enough to take a newspaper website’s RSS feed and whack a nice app UI around it, then boast about your iPhonestraddling zeitgeistiness. However, the Guardian took its time, and came up with an app that shows a more interactive and relevant way to go mobile. Users can customise the homescreen, mark their favourite sections and/or journalists, and specify which bits they want to read offline. 14 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

5 Over 100,000 apps and we had to choose 50. It was like Sophie’s Choice times 25

Podcasts ensure it’s not just text and pics, too. An example to its rivals. 11. GOWALLA A Foursquare rival that offers a similar mix of checking in and game-like aspects, complete with virtual items. 12. FACEBOOK The most polished social app on iPhone, while its BlackBerry incarnation makes excellent use of the device’s push capabilities. 13. TAP TAP REVENGE 3 iPhone’s premier music game, with a freemium business model and more than a million in-app track download sales. 14. SHAZAM ENCORE Been around for years, but the music ID app caught fire as an app and now has 50 million users. 15. SHOPSAVVY Barcode scanner apps are all the rage, but ShopSavvy was one of the first to popularise the idea on Android. 16. BUZZD

22. OVI MAPS RACING N-Gage is dead, but Ovi Store could be a haven for innovative games. Ovi Maps Racer mixes real-world maps with virtual racing. 23. FLOOK This UK-developed social location app lets people upload postcards of ‘local secrets’. Strange, but in a beautiful way. 24. CHORUS Like Chomp, above, Chorus aims to serve up accurate iPhone app recommendations, based on the habits of the user and their friends. 25. KINDLE FOR IPHONE Amazon’s e-reader spin-off ties in both with its Kindle store, and the Kindle device itself – you can start reading on one then transfer to the other. 26. LOOPT Social location apps are prominent in this list, with Loopt offering a sophisticated blend of recommendations and real-time social alerts. 27. USTREAM LIVE BROADCASTER Livestreaming is hot in 2010, with Ustream’s app helping people to broadcast live video to the web, direct from their handsets. 28. WIKITUDE One of the pioneers of mobile augmented www.mobile-ent.biz

RAISE YOUR BRAND PROFILE: SPONSOR THE INDUSTRY'S PREMIER NETWORKING EVENT! IT WORKED FOR QUALCOMM, NOKIA, SAMSUNG, MIG, WIN, HANDS-ON AND OTHERS. IT’LL WORK FOR YOU. An ME Event

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people in one room, it’s a superb opportunity for sponsors to launch products and boost brand awareness.

Huge pre and post-event coverage via ME’s magazine, website and email alerts Branding at the event on interactive video walls Opportunity to invite clients and suppliers Access to list of all event attendees Meet-Up events take place at the 24 club in London’s West End.

For more information call Katy Grant on 01992 535646 or email katy.grant@intentmedia.co.uk www.mobile-ent.biz

Mobile Entertainment February 2010 | 15

APPS SPECIAL: 50 MOST INNOVATIVE

reality, Wikitude is evolving into a platform for developers, like its rival Layar. 29. SEKAI CAMERA More mobile AR? You got it! Japanese app Sekai Camera has quirky charm based around location-based virtual post-it notes. 30. SKY MOBILE TV NEWS AND SPORTS Mobile TV used to be an operator thing. Now it’s increasingly an app thing too, with Sky’s sporty iPhone app a prime example. 31. STARBUCKS CARD MOBILE M-commerce got an (espresso) shot in the arm with this app, which lets people pay for coffees using their iPhones.

32. PHREADZ Currently in beta, Phreadz is a ‘social multimedia network’ offering threaded conversations. YouTube meets Twitter meets Web 2.0. 33. SKIES OF GLORY Like Eliminate Pro, SGN’s Skies of Glory iPhone game is free to download, but funded entirely by in-app payments for extra planes and missions. 34. BUMP It seemed like a novelty app to swap contacts by bumping iPhones, but Bump could spawn more interesting uses. 35. LEAF TROMBONE Playing a virtual trombone by blowing into the mic? With other players judging you in real-time? It sounds bonkers. It is bonkers. But innovative too. 36. ANYTIME POOL You still don’t get many games that span iPhone and Facebook properly. Anytime Pool is a sign of cross-platform social gaming things to come. 37. U2 MOBILE ALBUM This BlackBerry app turned out to not be a full album after all – but it was groundbreaking in its use of push and social features. 38. LITTLE WORLD GIFTS Virtual item gifts are big business on Facebook, but still rare on mobile. This iPhone app makes an intriguing first stab at it. 39. REAL RACING iPhone racer hailed for its 3D graphics, with online tournaments and the ability to upload replays of your best laps to YouTube. 40. LITTLE BOOTS REACTIVE REMIXER 16 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

This branded version of the RjDj iPhone app lets fans remix three of Little Boots’ songs using touch and ambient sounds. Playful and imaginative. 41. COMIXOLOGY Can comics really make the jump to mobile screen? iPhone app Comixology showed they could, and with a business model to match. 42. TUNEWIKI Of all the third-party music player apps, TuneWiki is hotly tipped. Get lyrics in realtime, while using social location features to discover new tunes. 43. SKETCH ONLINE Like Pictionary for the Android generation, this multiplayer online game gets one person to draw, and others to guess the word. Google loves it, and so do we. 44. IEVERTON One of the rash of club-branded iPhone apps, Everton FC’s is included here for its use of push notifications and in-app purchases. 45. TURF WARS The only iPhone Mafia game to use GPS to let

10 Whether it’s SatNav, browsing, reading about US foreign policy or merely blasting the heads off zombies, there’s an app out there for you

players annex real-world places, terrorising their actual manor while building an empire. 46. BROADERSHEET Why read one newspaper when you can get an app to pick stories from all of them? That’s Broadersheet’s USP. 47. FLIGHT CONTROL The iPhone game that defined a genre – ‘line drawing’ – and popularised the idea of location-based high score tables for local bragging rights. 48. SONIFI For music artists, letting fans remix your songs on iPhone is all the rage. But Sonifi lets two people do it at once via Bluetooth. 49. OPERA MINI Thanks to smart compression tech, Opera Mini is driving mobile web usage among feature phones. 50. VLINGO Voice control technology has been around forever, without ever catching on. Vlingo is part of a new breed of apps that might be able to change that. www.mobile-ent.biz

APPS SPECIAL: APP BILLING

MACH 2

Headlines that proclaimed the ‘end of End2End’ were only partly right. Actually, the portal management specialist was re-branding as MACH – and switching focus to app billing. Tim Green quizzed the firm’s MD, Bernadette Lyons…

So, what happened to End2End and the old games storefront business? Well, as we all know, there was tremendous change in that space, with consolidation in publishing and then the emergence of the app store. You have to ask, how much retailing is there to do when there’s only EA, Gameloft and Glu in the space and developers are doing their own marketing on the iPhone app store? So the market changed, but our skillset was always about managing relationships and about financial settlements to a degree, so the switch to billing rather than retailing felt quite natural. We’ve been planning it for two years. What specifically is the new focus? We’re offering OEMs and operators – anyone looking to run an app store – a payments platform that can charge subscribers directly via their phone bill in a one-click process. We’ll start with preloaded apps that ship with devices, but ultimately we want to become the billing partner that can help these app stores offer pain-free billing across all products. Why is operator billing so important? The obvious reasons. Not everyone has PayPal or a credit card. And PSMS has terrible drawbacks such as a lack of flexible price points, multiple clicks, problems with identifying whether a user has credit and so on. There’s a high drop-out rate with PSMS. On-phone billing offers one-click and it can perform real-time authentication so if a user doesn’t have credit, for example, you can offer them a demo or a free version – you keep them as a customer but you don’t lose money. From the developer side too, this type of billing is very transparent. We can reconcile settlements very accurately, much more so than with PSMS. But isn’t operator billing already available in app stores? Not really. It’s difficult to do. Mostly the payment companies still use PSMS in the process. But we have the benefit of a huge parent in MACH, which has great tech, a long track record in digital payment clearing and existing relationships with 600 operators. Hence the name change… Yes, it made sense for us to change to MACH and to really leverage that relationship and brand. 18 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

How important is your games background? It’s still the case that games are the most downloaded apps. But we’re focused on everything. What will make the space very interesting is when operators, through initiatives such as OneAPI, start making it easy for app developers to access things like presence and subscriber information. Then we’ll see more opportunities to monetise apps, and this kind of in-app billing is, again, something that works best with a one-click process that doesn’t take the user away from the page. Isn’t one of the problems with operator billing the rev shares involved? Credit cards take a few per cent, but with operators it can be 35 to 40… Obviously, operators have to set their own rates. But I would say that many credit cards have a 30c minimum, so when you’re dealing with low-end apps of the sort we are

LYONS: “Games are the most downloaded apps. But we’re focused on everything”

seeing more and more of, the rates aren’t so different. Can you be the billing partner for multiple partners, some of whom are in fierce competition with each other? I don’t see a problem here. All sorts of competing retailers use Visa, after all. It’s not really an issue. And there are such complex relationships in the market anyway, with operators competing aggressively with OEMs on the one hand and then subsidising their handsets at the same time. How do you see the future of the portal space that you’re departing? There’s already an evolution in place. You only have to look at Vodafone 360 for that. I think we’ll see the operators recognise the importance of user interface and of shipping devices with their own themed clients, which could benefit the on-deviceportal guys. www.mobile-ent.biz

Having millions of customers downloading applications on your store could be considered a great success

When they pay for them itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s called a great business

Uniting application stores and mobile operators through one single Mobile Application Billing hub MACH Mobile Application Billing Hub One-click-buy user experience Direct operator billing Flexible price points (any price in any currency) Real time transactions

WWW.MACH.COM

APPS SPECIAL: 2010 PREDICTIONS

Will mobile books turn paper into the ghost of Christmas past? Did you see what we did there Dickens fans?

Trendspotting If this industry teaches us anything, it’s to not make predictions. Do we never learn? Here’s some ideas for 2010 in apps… A NEW PAGE FOR EBOOKS Will books go the way of music? Will the new digital formats kill paper, sit alongside it, form a consistent niche or sink without trace? A nightmarish question, one that nobody has a definite answer for. But what is certain is that there is momentum behind the space now. According to app tracker Flurry, more ebooks were released on the iPhone App Store in October than games. One out of every five apps launched that month was an e-book. Key to the growth of the iPhone ebook sector has been the release of Amazon’s Kindle iPhone app, which added momentum to an already growing niche populated by book and magazine reading apps such as Zinio. The Kindle is now available outside the US, and continues to post impressive sales – with observers suggesting it passed half a million in 2009. 20 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

Of course, the elephant in the reading room when it comes to e-books is Apple. There are feverish rumours of an iSlate that will do for digital reading what iPod did for MP3. If true, it’s hard to bet against Apple doing a fantastic job and providing readers with a great experience while offering hope to beleaguered print publishers. One can imagine how thrilled a determinedly antipaywall media group like The Guardian would be. It won’t countenance charging for web content, but has sold over 70,000 newspaper apps at £2.39 each. APP STORES FOR MID-RANGE PHONES Every one of the app stores to follow in the wake of the Apple storefront has been built around a smartphone platform. That’s fine, there are hundreds of millions out there – and the space is only getting bigger. Still, what about the feature phone crowd? Mid-

BrightAI’s David Lane believes rival formats will gain ground on iPhone in 2010

range handsets can do video, imaging, MP3 and more. GPS will probably be next. So why ignore them? Well, it seems as if the smartphone myopia is in decline. Last month AT&T – the original Apple partner – confirmed it is to launch a new AppCenter service based on BREW. By choosing Qualcomm’s veteran platform, AT&T will gain access to thousands of apps developed over years of activity. Indeed, Qualcomm has stated that it’s billed over $1 billion in the lifetime of BREW. The platform will be able to leverage Java and Flash languages, and will be used by mainstream device makers. In fact, HTC just confirmed its first move into the BREW market. Interestingly, Qualcomm’s own expertise in the apps space is the driving force behind its own platform for lo-fi apps. Plaza was unveiled in 2008 as a developer platform and marketplace for widgets, and www.mobile-ent.biz

APPS SPECIAL: 2010 PREDICTIONS

shortly after a separate Plaza Retail whitelabel app store platform aimed at operators, was also confirmed. The big deal about Plaza Retail is that it’s capable of supporting Java, Brew, Flash and Android, with Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm and LiMo due to be added in the future. In the last few months, Plaza has picked up momentum. Latin American operator America Movil signed to the platform to power its Ideas Widget service across 18 of its subsidiaries in Latin America. Then, the Brazilian subsidiary of global operator group TIM committed too. Qualcomm says that TIM’s app store will be available to its 40 million subscribers in Brazil, who’ll be able to download the app store client from TIM’s portal. DRAG AND DROP DIY APPS If your company wants an app, but you don’t employ developers and you can’t afford to hire an agency, what options do you have? Well, it’s this niche that’s being targeted by DIY app building software companies. Late last year, for example, AppMakr launched a kit that claimed apps can be made in an hour for $199 using a foolproof WSYWIG interface. For even greater speed, users can enter a website URL and AppMakr will create a sample iPhone app in under 30 seconds built from that content. Of course these apps are then sold via the AppMakr marketplace (it costs $499 to self-publish), so there’s a risk of duplication with other apps that have a similar look and feel. But for the mass market, it’s an intriguing option. MORE NOISE AROUND AUGMENTED REALITY; NOT SO MUCH SUBSTANCE We at ME remain a little cynical about AR. A fantastic technology still looking for the right application, surely. What can it do that Google Maps can’t most of the time? But this doesn’t stop AR being an eye-popping illustration of what a high-spec connected mobile phone is capable of. And its purveyors remain darlings of the investment community. The European pioneer Layar bagged an extra $1million recently, while its Japanese counterpart Tonchidot raised $4 million to further develop its Sekai Camera app. The latter gives people the chance to create ‘Air Tags’ – virtual notes that are linked to a realworld location. Sekai Camera was downloaded 100,000 times in its first four days of availability in Japan, according to Tonchidot. Its global launch was supported by a press release that trumpeted: “Sekai Camera is social, and so much fun! It is serendipity here and now!” www.mobile-ent.biz

Interestingly, AR was one of the few areas where the running was made not by iPhone but by Android. Expect to see the tech roll out to other platforms too in 2010. Indeed, Japanese developer HyongaSoft has already unveiled OMPASS World Cities for Windows devices.

The Sekai Camera app from Tonchidot (above, bottom) enables people to create virtual notes linked to real-world destinations

MORE TO APPS THAN IPHONE Even after 18 months it’s clear to anyone in the business that iPhone delivers the best user experience of apps and the most dependable and mature ecosystem for publishing them. But common sense dictates that the others must be closing the gap – and that it would be mad for content providers to ignore the millions of users of Nokia S60, BlackBerry, Android, Windows and so on. Happily these platforms are sharpening up their collective act. Nokia has admitted that Ovi was hurriedly put together and that a new version will transform the experience – yet it still claims one million Ovi downloads a day. BlackBerry has worked prodigiously on its App World service, which will embrace in-app payments and manifold other enhancements in 2010. And in the first phones to showcase Android 2.0, Google

got closer to demonstrating how formidable an OS Android can be. UK app developer BrightAI is seeing some evidence of a shift. In January 2009, 60 per cent of its projects were iPhone, now it’s nearer 25 per cent, with the same amount allocated to Android, Java and BlackBerry. David Lane, MD of BrightAI, says: “The iPhone store is so crowded now that our clients are looking outside it to other platforms. It makes sense, as there are so many consumers being overlooked. It’s a good thing, I think, but whatever the platform, the issue of discoverability needs to be looked at.” START-UPS GO TO WORK ON THE APP DISCOVERY PROBLEM With well over 100,000 apps on iPhone and more than 10,000 on Android, it’s obvious that navigation is already a critical issue. The storefront owners are trying their best, but could it be that commercial firms will tame the problem for them? Start-ups like userrecommendation specialists Chomp, Chorus and Sidebar have already seen the chance to solve a massive problem – and make money while doing so. Read more about this in Stuart Dredge’s opinion piece on page 5. Mobile Entertainment February 2010 | 21

CONFERENCE FOCUS

Wednesday, 26th May • BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London

Money matters This May, ME will present the Monetising Mobile conference – putting the focus on how to make actual money from the apps revolution...

Monetising Mobile: How to make apps pay their way Wednesday May 26th 2010 BAFTA • 195 Piccadilly • London W1 Ticket price: £199 + VAT (before April 1st) £229 plus VAT thereafter.

n July 2008, Apple started the second age of mobile content in the West. The first – the WAP era of Vodafone Live, Orange World and Jamba – had been a limited success at best. Apple turned the whole thing upside down. Every other OEM is in the space now, and Apple has marched towards three billion downloads. But it’s not all roses. Consumers are grappling with the sheer volume of apps available, and content providers are struggling to make a living from a market dominated by free apps and a nascent advertising ecosystem. There’s lots to discuss. Which is why Mobile Entertainment is delighted to present a special conference dedicated to apps and widgets – and specifically how to make money from them. Monestising Mobile is based on the same set-up that worked so successfully for last year’s Mobile Music Now event, and the London Games Conference, presented by ME’s sister publication, MCV. There’ll be a late afternoon start, a series of short keynotes, panel sessions and dinner to give every delegate the chance to network.

Up for discussion ME is currently in the process of finalising the agenda for Monetising Mobile. Please check the website for developments. The subjects for debate will include:

In-app advertising Branded apps Micro-payments Subscriptions Operator/credit card billing Price points App store comparisons Development tools Retail/marketing strategies

On the agenda at Monetising Mobile will be in-app advertising formats – like 4th Screen’s iSlide (above)

Want to know more? Any questions about attending, speaking or sponsoring should be addressed to the following, or call +44 (0)1992 535 646 The exquisite BAFTA centre will host Monetising Mobile. So many marvellous filmic memories, darling

www.mobile-ent.biz

Content: Tim.Green@intentmedia.co.uk Sponsorship: Katy.Grant@intentmedia.co.uk Delegate Bookings: Jodie.Holdway@intentmedia.co.uk

Mobile Entertainment February 2010 | 23

APPS SPECIAL: STORE FRONTS

You need a very big screen to house all your apps. Maybe Apple will release an iPhone the size of a football pitch.

App-a-glance comparison Fragmentation alert! Any hope that the coming of the app store might ease the porting worries of Java developers was sadly misplaced. There are loads of them. Here’s a store-by-store comparison sheet for you to crib from… pinions differ on when the app store revolution began. Some might argue that BREW was an app store. Mobango and GetJar would contend that their browser-based stores paved the way from 2004. But any man or woman on the street would cite July 2008 as the date it all kicked off app-wise. That was when Apple showed the industry how an app store could work – as long as you had one device, an autocratic genius in charge and a slavishly devoted user base. Such was the Apple iTunes app store’s success that it led many to believe the age of rageinducing fragmentation was over. No more of that Java nonsense, with all those flavours, screen sizes and operator APIs: just write once for iPhone and

www.mobile-ent.biz

watch the money roll in. But, of course, the Apple app store got very crowded. Then the other OEMs, operators and OS makers weighed in with their own stores. Suddenly there are over a dozen platforms to consider, if you want decent reach. So far, only Android has any kind of momentum to threaten iPhone. But Ovi is slowly – painfully – improving and BlackBerry App World has major plans. Meanwhile, more stores are emerging all the time. The last quarter of 2009 saw Vodafone 360 and Orange App Shop launch, and Windows, Samsung and LG each refine their offerings. Confused? Let’s hope this guide can help… (Thanks to Distimo for help with the data. Please visit www.distimo.com for more information.)

Android Market Launch date..............................................................Oct 2008 Device support ..............................................20 (end 2009) Reach...................................................................................6.5m OS support..................................................................Android No of applications.......................................................20,000 Downloads to date .......................................................400m Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type.....Credit card, Google checkout, operator Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability .............................................................25 Developer submission fee .............................................$25 Mobile Entertainment February 2010 | 25

APPS SPECIAL: STORE FRONTS

Apple iTunes app store

GetJar

Mobango

Launch date .............................................................July 2008 Device support ....................................iPhone, iPod Touch Reach....................................................................................50m OS support .............................................................iPhone OS No of applications ....................................................131,000 Downloads to date ............................................................3m Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type ............................................................Credit card Subscriptions billing .........................................................Yes In-app billing .......................................................................Yes Country availability .............................................................77 Developer submission fee .............................................$99

Launch date .............................................................Dec 2004 Device support............2,000 internet-enabled phones Reach .................................................................................200m OS support.............................................Downloads in Java No of applications.......................................................60,000 Downloads to date .......................................................750m Rev share.........................Paid downloads from H2 2010 Billing type......................Paid downloads from H2 2010 Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability...........................................................240 Developer submission fee ............................................Free

Launch date .............................................................Dec 2004 Device support.............Most internet-enabled phones Reach .....................................................5m registered users OS support.............................................Downloads in Java No of applications.......................................................24,000 Downloads to date .......................................................618m Rev share .....................................................Free downloads Billing type ..................................................Free downloads Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability.....................................................Global Developer submission fee ............................................Free

BlackBerry App World

LG app store

Nokia Ovi store

Launch date ...........................................................April 2009 Device support ........................Five BlackBerry handsets Reach ....................................................................................36m OS support.............................................................BlackBerry No of applications .........................................................4,400 Downloads to date............................................................n/a Rev share...............................................................80 per cent Billing type .....................................................................PayPal Subscriptions billing.............................................mid 2010 In-app billing ...........................................................mid 2010 Country availability .............................................................36 Developer submission fee...........................................$200

Launch date .............................................................July 2009 Device support...........LG GM730 and KS20 (at launch) Reach ......................................................................................n/a OS support ...............................................................Windows No of applications .........................................................1,400 Downloads to date............................................................n/a Rev share...............................................................80 per cent Billing type ............................................................Credit card Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability .............................................................17 Developer submission fee ..............................................n/a

Launch date ............................................................May 2009 Device support........100 series 40 and series 60 devices Reach ....................................................................................50m OS support.........................Flash, Java, Symbian, Maemo No of applications .........................................................5,500 Downloads to date.........................................n/a (1m a day) Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type.........................................Credit card, operator Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability...........................................................180 Developer submission fee .............................................$50

26 | February 2010 Mobile Entertainment

www.mobile-ent.biz

APPS SPECIAL: STORE FRONTS

Orange App Shop

Samsung Apps

Vodafone 360

Launch date .............................................................Dec 2009 Device support.....................Pre-loaded on Nokia 6700, Sony Ericsson W995, Sony Ericsson Yari U100i Reach ......................................................................................1m OS support.......Android, Symbian, Windows, BlackBerry No of applications .........................................................5,000 Downloads to date............................................................n/a Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type ................................................................Operator Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability..........................................................Two Developer submission fee ............................................Free

Launch date............................................................Sept 2009 Device support...Samsung Windows & Android devices Reach ......................................................................................n/a OS support.....................................Windows and Android No of applications.............................................................500 Downloads to date............................................................n/a Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type.........................................Credit card, operator Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ..............................................In development Country availability.......................................................Three Developer submission fee..........................................None

Launch date............................................................Sept 2009 Device support......Samsung H1 & M1, four Nokia S60 Reach ......................................................................................n/a OS support ........................................................................LiMo No of applications .........................................................1,000 Downloads to date............................................................n/a Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type ................................................................Operator Subscriptions billing .........................................................Yes In-app billing .......................................................................Yes Country availability........................................................Eight Developer submission fee ............................................Free

Palm app store

Sony Ericsson PlayNow

Windows Marketplace

Launch date ...........................................................June 2009 Device support.....................................Palm Pre, Palm Pixi Reach.............................................................................500,000 OS support .................................................................Palm OS No of applications .........................................................1,000 Downloads to date............................................................n/a Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type ............................................................Credit card Subscriptions billing .........................................................Yes In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability.........................................................Four Developer submission fee .............................................$99

Launch date.............................................................Aug 2009 Device support ........................All Sony Ericsson devices Reach ......................................................................................n/a OS support......................................SE, Windows, Symbian No of applications ................140 (400 in development) Downloads to date............................................................n/a Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type.........................................Credit card, operator Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability .............................................................69 Developer submission fee ..............................................n/a

Launch date..............................................................Oct 2009 Device support .......................All Windows 6.0 and later Reach....................................................................................30m OS support..............Windows Mobile/Windows Phone No of applications .........................................................1,000 Downloads to date............................................................n/a Rev share...............................................................70 per cent Billing type.........................................Credit card, operator Subscriptions billing ..........................................................No In-app billing ........................................................................No Country availability .............................................................33 Developer submission fee .............................................$99

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