'Net Features : Android

Mobile Apps are a $30 Billion Big Business

Allison Howen — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:30:00 GMT

Mobile applications are a $30 billion business, according to new Market Data from ABI Research.

The market intelligence company reveals that cumulative mobile app revenues are forecasted to pass $30 billion by the end of this year, which is nearly double the amount that was reached by the end of 2011. The cumulative revenue includes money made from pay-per-downloads, in-app purchases, subscriptions and in-app advertisements.

“Consumers’ high interest in apps has for a long time been obvious from download volumes, but it’s 2012 that will go down in history as the year when the economic side of the business finally took off,” said ABI Research Senior Analyst Aapo Markkanen. “We’re no longer talking only about a short-term gold rush. Apps have become a major digital industry.”

It is also important to note that even though Apple was the catalyst behind monetizing mobile applications, Markkanen claims that Android developers are estimated to receive about one-third of annual app revenues.

Mobile Traffic Declines in July (And More Statistics)

Michael Garrity — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:30:00 GMT

Affiliate Window, one of the United Kingdom’s leading performance marketing networks, has unleashed upon the world its July report concerning mobile and m-commerce statistics.

Most curiously, the company found that the share of Web traffic through mobile devices actually dropped from over 12 percent in June to making up around just nine percent of total traffic in July. This isn’t terribly peculiar, as May saw a slight decrease, as well, following month-by-month increases for the first four months of the year.

On the upside, however, the volume of mobile clicks actually increased. And not only that, but the share of sales through mobile devices also rose, finally crossing the nine percent threshold at 9.42 percent. Ultimately, this figure, coupled with the drop in traffic, seems to show a closer alignment between mobile conversion rates and those of their desktop counterparts, as mobile conversion rates improved throughout July, increasing to 3.14 percent.

The report also breaks down mobile and m-commerce statistics by mobile device. It shouldn’t really be a surprise that Apple is (still) leading the pack, with the iPhone driving 38 percent of all mobile traffic by the end of the month. However, it’s not all sunshine for the brand, as iPad traffic actually ended up dropping below 40 percent. On the other hand, iPad sales reached a high of 63 percent of all mobile sales by the end of the month, and the iPhone ended up accounting for 24.87 percent.

Android devices saw traffic increases in July, with the number resting between 18 and 19 percent, up from June’s 17.5 percent. BlackBerry and “Other” devices both decreased, driving 1.5 and two percent of July’s mobile traffic, respectively. In terms of sales, Android saw another increase, ranging between 11.5 and 13 percent throughout the four weeks of July, while BlackBerry and “Other” devices both stayed below two percent.

From a year-to-date perspective, iPads have driven 57 percent of all mobile sales, with iPhones coming in second at 27 percent, and followed by Android (11 percent), BlackBerry (3 percent) and other devices (2 percent). Adding to this, Affiliate Window found that the iPhone, Android and “Other” devices allow showed an improvement in conversion rates in July; in fact, they were all almost identical at around 2.1 percent.

I think it’s fair to say that if you take anything away from this report, it’s not to put too much stock in the future of BlackBerry.

Full-Screen Banner Ads Come to AppsGeyser

Allison Howen — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:30:00 GMT

AppsGeyser, the free Android application building platform, is helping developers monetize their apps with the launch of full-screen banner ads.

The company decided to launch full-screen banner ads after preliminary testing revealed that when full-screen ads were run upon opening an app, revenues for the app increased tenfold. This is especially true for "once-a-day" apps, such as a weather app, which users typically only open for a short period of time everyday.

In order to activate the ads, developers will need to qualify for monetization, and then select the full screen option in the Monetize Apps tab. It is also important to note that full-screen ads will be in addition to banner ads, not instead of banner ads. For developers who aren't sure whether the full-screen ads are a good fit for their app, AppsGeyser recommends testing it out by creating more than one version of the app and analyzing which version obtains more revenue per user.

"Giving developers a free Android app builder to ease development is only the first step in our process,” says AppsGeyser Co-founder Vasily Salomatov. “We measure our success by the success of our developers. We're eager to help more developers increase their revenues by a factor of ten!"

Android Releases Jelly Bean Source Code to Developers

Michael Garrity — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:30:00 GMT

Not too long ago, Google released the Android Jelly Bean raw source code for its Android Open Source Project. This makes it possible for developers to work on updates and releases for tablet and smartphone apps far more easily, and it also provides greater support and more features to the Jelly Bean operating system.

Developers should have a greater array of customization options, as well as the ability to add a greater number of features to their Jelly Bean applications, because its compatible devices and their binaries are already prepared to work with the source code.

The full, latest version of Jelly Bean is available for use; the first device to utilize the OS is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus HSPA+. This version is reported to have new features and faster, more efficient app updates, on top of being easier to use. It also offers resizable app widgets, improved speeds, better notifications, extended Android Beam Bluetooth capabilities, and more.

Following this release, Australia-based mobile app development company Smarter Apps announced that it would be bringing in a set of feature-rich products and services to its clients that are interested in developing for Jelly Bean.

The Most Popular Smartphone Is...

Allison Howen — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:30:00 GMT

Here is the proof that 2012 is the year of mobile…

A recent study by Nielsen reveals that two thirds of new mobile buyers in the U.S. are now opting for smartphones, which has led to more than half (54.9 percent to be exact), of U.S. mobile subscribers now owning a smartphone.

And although this is good news for the mobile market, as well as for Web workers who are already monetizing off of this new channel (retailers, marketers, affiliates, etc.), it is not good news for some companies who have put many dollars into mobile, yet are still being left in the dust – we are talking about you, Microsoft.

The Q2 smartphone study shows that the Windows 7 phone is only used by 1.3 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, while other Windows phones only make up 3 percent of the market. This means that less people have a Windows phone than still have a Blackberry, since RIM devices make up 9 percent of the U.S. smartphone market.

The study also reveals that Android leads the smartphone market in the U.S., with 51.8 percent of smartphone users owning an Android device. And Apple is currently in second place, with more than a third of smartphone owners (34.3%) using the company’s iPhone. However, it is also important to note that Apple has the highest manufacturer share of smarphone handsets. Additionally, among smartphone owners who bought their device during June 2012, 54 percent said they chose an Android phone, while 36 percent bought an iPhone.

PayAnywhere Adds Two SDKs for Android

Allison Howen — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:30:00 GMT

Mobile payment processing solution PayAnywhere has announced the addition of two Android software developer kits (SDKs) to its developer library, which will join the company’s current SDKs for iOS devices.

The new Android SDKs – Basic and Advanced – enable developers to embed credit card point-of-sale functionality into apps that run on any Android device, which makes it possible for those apps to accept and process Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express credit card purchases.

After being enabled by PayAnywhere APIs, mobile apps can accept swiped credit card transactions via the PayAnywhere credit card reader and payment processing service for smartphones and tablets, as well as accept keyed-in transactions when cards aren’t present.

In addition to credit card processing, the PayAnywhere SDKs offer a host of other features such as the ability to capture signatures, attach invoice numbers to transactions, print or email receipts, keep a record of transactions, view detailed transaction reports and more.

“The handling of credit card transactions and moving money from consumer to merchant is quite an involved and complicated process,” says Gordon Rimac, chief technology officer at PayAnywhere. “That’s one reason many enterprises, even those with extensive developer resources, approach PayAnywhere about incorporating our transaction and payments processing solution into their apps. Handling payment processing is something PayAnywhere does exceptionally well, and through our SDKs, PayAnywhere is making it very easy to leverage our core business expertise while letting developers stay focused on theirs.”

While both SDKs allow developers to add credit card transaction capabilities into apps, the Advanced SDK enables merchants to fully brand their app so that consumers don’t know that PayAnywhere is handling the transactions. Developers can learn more about the PayAnywhere APIs here.

Monitor Your Websites 24 x 7 with New Mobile App

Michael Garrity — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Website and Web application-monitoring service provider Site24x7 is releasing a new app for Android devices that will allow users to connect with its services at any time from any where.

Whenever a user has a need to check critical website metrics on the go, including availability status, outage reports, service-level agreements (SLAs) and more, they are just a click away. Site24x7 is also offering Root Cause Analysis reports, which are gathered using a tool that combines traceroutes, ping, DNS analysis and screenshots of a Web page at the time of an error or outage.

Site owners can even opt-in to instant alerts via push notification that will let administrators and developers know immediately any time a website or server goes down. The app also features manage-configured monitors that let users easily track availability and the current status of their configured monitors.

The application is available for users with a Site24x7 account with devices running Android 2.2 or higher, and a mobile Web client is offered for non-Android users.

GetResponse Launches App for Email Marketers

Allison Howen — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:50:00 GMT

A new Android app from email marketing provider GetResponse provides email marketers with the ability to control their campaigns, marketing lists and email reports from their mobile devices.

The app offers marketers immediate and continuous monitoring and management of email campaigns. Authorized users of the app will be able to create and send plain-text emails to marketing-list contacts, preview HTML versions of newsletters and follow up messages, send and schedule newsletters, add new contacts to lists, import contacts from a smartphone address book, search database lists, view contact details, track new subscribers and view charts that display open rates, clicks, bounces and other valuable metrics.

And although the web-based desktop version of GetResponse should still be used for more complex functions like design, the mobile app presents a way for marketers to monitor their campaigns at all times.

“Our objective is to deliver progressive SaaS solutions to help our customers develop and expand their business,” says Simon Grabowski, GetResponse founder and CEO. “We constantly update the functionality of GetResponse to increase the effectiveness of email marketing. The new Android App is yet another innovation to make lives of busy customers easier."

Check out some screenshots of the app:

Google Challenges Facebook for Mobile Developer Attention

Michael Garrity — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:35:00 GMT

Mobile application development platform Appcelerator recently teamed up with the International Data Corporation (IDC) to analyze the social mobile application landscape, and their results show that Google is poised to give Facebook a run for its mobile money.

After surveying nearly 2173 Appcelerator application developers across the globe, the surveyors found that most of them have a rapidly growing interest in social mobile. These developers also feel that Google will be the key to implementing their social strategies over the next year because of the company’s “broad range of assets,” including Android, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube, among many others.

Google’s various offerings make the company an important figure in the social mobile world because of their closely linked integration with one another; 39 percent of the developer’s questioned said these Google assets are actually more important to their upcoming social mobile development than Facebook’s social graph. Overall, though, developers reported that they don’t feel like they have the proper knowledge or tools to take full advantage of social in their application strategies.

“This translates into a big competitive opportunity for Google – and potential significant risk for Facebook – especially because developers perceive Google as innovating faster than Facebook,” says IDC’s VP of Mobile & Connected Consumer Platforms Scott Ellison.

Unfortunately, it’s not all great news for Google. The survey also reveals that Android is seeing waning interest from developers because of its continued fragmentation, effectively propelling iOS much further ahead in terms of developer attention.

Meanwhile, HTML5 appears to be moving to the center stage with both pure mobile browser apps and hybrid apps, making it a new challenger to the long dominant native apps that have pretty much always ruled the mobile development arena.

Mobile Web Usage is Doubling Every Year

Linc Wonham — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Global Internet usage through mobile devices – not including tablets – essentially doubled from 4.3 percent in January 2011 to 8.5 percent in January 2012, according to Web analytics company StatCounter.

StatCounter also reports that the use of “mobile devices”, referring to smartphones and feature phones only in their research, to access the Internet has doubled year-over-year since 2009.

“While global Internet usage through mobiles is still under 10 percent, the pace of growth is remarkable,” says StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen.

StatCounter also announced the latest numbers regarding the world’s leading mobile vendors, mobile operating systems and mobile browsers, based on research covering all traffic to the StatCounter network. That data includes more than 15 billion pageviews monthly on a network of more than 3 million websites.

Most likely driven by its dominance in India, Nokia is still the world’s leading maker of mobile devices (again, phones only) in terms of Web pageviews, and Symbian maintained its lead as the top OS in the StatCounter sample. But both brands’ numbers are clearly in decline while Apple’s devices (not even including the iPad) and iOS are making dramatic gains.

Apple is the second-leading mobile device-maker worldwide but leads the U.S. and U.K. markets, and its iOS was also second worldwide with 24 percent of the Web pageviews in the StatCounter sample. Apple’s operating system was first in the U.S. with 45 percent of the views, just ahead of Android with 39 percent. Worldwide, the Android OS was again just below iOS for third place.

The Android browser was tops in North America with a 37-percent share of the pageviews, but second worldwide with 20 percent and behind Opera’s 24 percent. Apple’s Safari browser finished slightly behind Android in both samples.

The takeaway for website owners is of course the exponential rise in mobile access to the Internet since 2009 – about a 100-percent increase in each of the past three years. This should come as a surprise to no one, but it is interesting to see the numbers from different research reports from time to time. The global use of mobile devices to access the Web in 2009, according to StatCounter, was 0.7 percent. It jumped to 1.6 percent in January 2010, 4.3 percent in January 2011 and now 8.5 percent in January 2012.

BrightCove App Cloud Available

Administrator — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:30:00 GMT

Wouldn't it be nice if you could develop that next killer app in the cloud? Well you can! Cloud content service Brightcove has made App Cloud, an end-to-end platform for the development, deployment and operation of native apps for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, available to the general public.

App Cloud combines an open HTML5 Web development model with "intelligent" cloud services to accelerate app development, optimize performance, measure effectiveness, and enable dynamic updates to installed apps. Developers use HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and the App Cloud software development kit (SDK) to create apps.

“The App Cloud beta program has been very well received over the past few months, and we have been impressed by the quality, breadth and creativity of the apps developed by our beta users,” said Ashley Streb, Vice President of Technology at Brightcove. “Now, any organization can take advantage of App Cloud to easily build, deliver, and manage dynamic, custom content apps across multiple devices for a superior end user experience.”

Brightcove indicated that more than 1,200 individual users have participated in the App Cloud beta testing program and several App Cloud-powered apps are currently available for download through the iTunes App Store and Google's Android Market including apps from the U.S. Department of State and Lifetime Networks.

Smaato Measures Mobile Fill Rates and CTRs

Michael Garrity — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:00:00 GMT

A quarter two study by mobile ad optimization platform Smaato was released today and finds that ad inventory has been increasing at a faster rate than budgets, ulitmately leading to a decline in advertising fill rates.

The study was put together to look at a variety of mobile Web-based topics, including mobile ad adoption, fill rates and the overall effect on mobile ad network performance.

Another discovery that the study unearthed is that phones using Windows' mobile operating system had much higher clickthrough rates (CTRs) than iOS, Android, Blackberry and Symbian, both in the United States and across the globe.

Mobile Ad Networks
According to the study, the average ad network fill rate, worldwide, was 18 percent in quarter two of this year. That represents a 2 percent drop from quarter one and a 3 percent decrease from quarter two of 2010.

For the top 40 mobile advertising networks in the world, rates varied greatly, from 3 to 58 percent, but among the top 20 networks in the U.S., rates consistently declined from an average of 27 to 19 percent.

Smaato CEO Harald Neidhardt cites both the downturned economy and "an increasingly fragmented market" as reasons for the decline.

However, one bright spot that the study found was that there are typically higher returns for networks engaging in "specialization," such as offering a service like geo-location. Nine of the top 40 global networks that were specialized performed above the average Smaato index despite having smaller volumes than their competitors.

Mobile OS CTRs
Moving past networks and onto operating systems, the study measured the CTRs of various devices using different OS platforms.

Worldwide across operating systems, the highest CTRs to lowest, in order, were Windows Phones (taking the top spot for the second consecutive quarter), Symbian, RIM, iOS and Android, though the Google-owned OS saw its performance increase by nearly 50 percent from the same time last year.

It's a different outlook in the U.S., however, with Windows Phones just barely ahead of iOS, RIM out performing Symbian, and Android still trailing all of them.

Never fear, however, as Neidhardt sees a bright future for Android. "As the trend continues, we will see even greater demand from big brands and advertisers for the Android platform, and therefore greater revenue opportunities for publishers and developers as Android continues to proliferate."

Data Shows a Country Divided in Mobile OS Choice

Allison Howen — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 03:30:00 GMT

A new study shows that consumers in the South and Southwest tend to be more likely to use an Android phone, where as consumers in the Midwest and Northeast are more likely to use an iPhone.

Jumptap, a targeted mobile advertiser, revealed these patterns from their monthly mobile STAT (Simple Targeting & Audience Trends) data report based on data from the first half of 2011.

The study also shows that although Android may be the most used mobile platform, iOS ads perform better than ads on any other operating system.

According to the report, Sony Ericsson was the only Android device with ad performance close to iOS— with a .54 percent click-through rate, which is higher than Android’s industry average of .52 percent. However iOS devices have a dominate .78 percent click-through rate when it comes to ads.

“Our advertisers are requesting the most granular data available on mobile users so they can create the most targeted campaigns,” said Paran Johar, Chief Marketing Officer for Jumptap. “This new data reveals some interesting patterns for advertisers to consider when targeting consumers using Android devices vs. iOS devices.”

And although states like California, Texas and Florida are team Android and states like Illinois, Wisconsin and Louisiana are team iPhone, the bigger surprise is that Blackberry still has some dominance— in states like New York and Oregon.

Mobile Ad Engagement is Best at Midday

Linc Wonham — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:55:00 GMT

While the primary function of mobile ads has been to drive consumers to the Web, many campaigns are increasingly setting their sights elsewhere.

New data released by Jumptap has found that 34 percent of performance-focused campaigns are set to initiate a call or download, rather than direct the user to a website. The report evaluated over 11 billion ad requests made to the Jumptap network by over 83 million unique users. It also revealed that the peak time for mobile ad engagement occurs around midday, as opposed to the early morning or late evening time slots.

Conversely, click-through rates are at their lowest during the morning commute and first hours of the workday.

“Mobile, like PC Web-based advertising, is very measureable,” says Paran Johar, Jumptap’s chief marketing officer. “As such, many brands and app developers are measuring their ROI very closely and allowing consumers to respond to ads in varying ways including click-to-call , click-to-map, click-to-download or click-to-SMS”

The report showed that Android continues to drive the largest share of ad requests on the Jumptap network. Google’s mobile platform increased its share by more than 3 percent from the previous month to 42.4 percent while Apple’s iOS gained less than a percent to 30.3 percent.

While ad requests are handily dominated by Android devices at a growing rate, iOS leads in user engagement with the highest average click-through rates of all the mobile operating systems. These distinctions are important to note as advertisers and developers weigh the importance of reach and engagement and showcase how a cross-platform strategy is critical to a mobile campaign.

Is PayPal on the Ropes?

Mike Phillips — Fri, 27 May 2011 18:19:00 GMT

The hits are coming fast and furious to PayPal in what's adding up to be the most serious threats to the payment system giant to date.

Three of the most powerful banks in the U.S. – Bank of America N.A., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo – have come together to create clearXchange, a person-to-person mobile payment system. Customers can transfer money using a mobile phone number or email address. This is a direct shot at PayPal, which has been the only real game in town for person-to-person payments; most notably on eBay but used in many other ways. Convenience and security are the selling points for clearXchange, and a massive customer base will help, too. Chase alone has 26 million active checking accounts.

"Our customers want easy, safe and innovative ways to send and receive funds electronically," the Wells Fargo spokesman says. "The most natural way to do that is with your bank, where you keep your money."

Then Google jumped into the fray by partnering with MasterCard to release Google Wallet, a mobile payments system that allows consumers to use credit and debit cards to pay on the go. Soon, all credit and debit cards will be integrated into the system. Whenever Google launches a competing product, the target is wise to worry.

But PayPal will not go down without a fight. They are suing, claiming Google stole trade secrets and employees, as well as reneged on a signed deal to use PayPal to process payments in the Android app store. Some of those former employees are also named in the lawsuit for providing Google with trade secrets.