ReadWriteMobile is a channel dedicated to helping its community understand the strategic business and technical implications of developing mobile applications. We hope the expert analysis and discussion will help you develop, launch and refine your mobile apps.
Today Nokia has released its Ovi Store download numbers and they're starting to look good. In fact, it appears that Nokia users are now downloading more applications than Blackberry users.
According a press release put out this morning, Nokia says it now reaches 140 million customers worldwide and is seeing more than 200,000 people per day signing up for Ovi, the marketplace which features applications, music, video and other downloads. Also, the Ovi Store, available in 190 countries, has now reached a milestone of 2.3 million downloads per day.
Location-based check-in applications are hot, or at least that's what the media keeps telling us. However, studies have found that while location-based users are passionate, adoption is limited.
That said, developers, advertisers and marketers still need to be aware of the general trends in this area. These apps may be small now, but usage is growing. Foursquare, for example, has 3 million users who have checked in 185 million times as of September - an increase from only 40,000,000 check-ins in May.
Now is the time to experiment before these services hit the mainstream. Below are two new tools for doing just that.
Mobile browser maker Opera is out with its latest report on the state of the mobile Web, and this time, it's calling the growth "stunning." Since August of last year, the number of uniques has increased by 108.3%, page views by 143.2% and data traffic by 134.4%.
Reportedly, Internet retailer Amazon.com is at work building its own standalone mobile application store for Google Android devices that would possibly appear on Amazon's own Android-based tablet computers.
Amazon has yet to comment on these rumors, but gadget site SlashGear recently got its hands on what appears to be the Amazon Distribution Agreement, the legal document which interested developers would have to sign before being able to participate in Amazon's program.
When it rains, it pours! Today, there's a ton of new information about mobile advertising trends and new initiatives, all of which should catch the eye of marketers, advertisers and developers alike.
For starters, a new report from Millennial Media finds Android ad requests are on the rise. Meanwhile, IDC notes that Apple's iAd program is now closing in on Google's mobile sales, and this year we may end up seeing the two companies tied for market share. Also, Blackberry smartphone maker RIM has just announced its own ad solution called Blackberry Advertising Service and it looks appealing. As for location-based ads, there's good news here too: local ad revenues are expected to grow to $2 billion by 2014.
Blackberry maker RIM has seen its market share rapidly decline in recent months, at least that's what analysts have been saying. But according to new data from Statcounter (by way of Royal Pingdom), Blackberry is growing just as fast as Android in terms of Web usage. In fact, Blackberry users have doubled their Web presence over the course of the past year.
We've discussed Appcelerator's Titanium mobile development recently because it is an excellent way for startups to expand their service across multiple platforms. Over 4,000 apps have been published using the service, and Appcelerator leverages its large community of developers to research trends in the mobile industry. According to a report released today by Appcelerator and International Data Corporation (IDC), developers are growing more confident in the long-term outlook of Android devices than iOS devices despite Apple's attempts to ease restrictions.
The Google Android Market team recently announced plans to extend support for paid applications to more countries worldwide, a move that will allow developers to earn additional income from their "for sale" mobile applications.
Registered developers were sent an email containing information about the upcoming changes a few days ago, according to several reports. The email hints at Google's expansion plans, but did not detail which countries in particular would be added. However, analytics firm Distimo is now reporting it has seen 13 new countries where paid content has been added over the weekend.
Today Microsoft announced that developers interested in building applications for Windows Phone 7 can now use Visual Basic to do so, in addition to the previously supported platforms of C#, Silverlight and XNA. This, says Microsoft's Brandon Watson via an official blog post, was the biggest request from the company's developer community to date.
Interested developers can now download the Visual Basic CTP (Community Test Build) for Windows Phone Developer Tools package which includes templates, designer support, emulator and phone support and IntelliSense for Visual Basic, an auto-completion tool used in coding.
