Is that free?

So much to talk about! So little time!

Its all news news news this week. I've started seeing iPhone 4s 'in the wild'. Over the weekend the owners were especially evident. Out on the tube on Saturday afternoon they could be spotted a mile off after queuing for hours, just look for the the dishevelled, smug looking guy with a posh paper bag. Legend has it, that the O2 store was even giving out bags saying 'iPhone 4 - I've got mine' - though to be honest, they may as well have written 'mug me now' on them. For the stat monkeys among us, they've sold 1.7m since launch.

Meanwhile, Google are trying their best to shout over the rabble that Apple has created. CEO Eric Schmidt claiming that Android Applications now number over 65000, up over 15000 - just this month. Brilliant news for the end user, and in line with the every increasing number of Android Handsets being sold. I make no secret of being a big fan of Google and Android, and their more open applications framework. However, what is concerning is a recent report by Larva Labs - a mobile app developer on the amount of revenue being raised on Androids market. At the risk of recycling statistics from this article, it Apple has paid out $1 billion to app developers since its launch, whereas Google has paid out a comparatively paltry $20 million.

From a personal point of view, I believe a lot of this has to do with the simple yet intelligent synchronisation of your iTunes account with the App store. It seems that buying apps from Android market place is just a tad more hassle to the average user - who, chances are, might already have a iTunes account. Equally, it may also be down to the sheer numbers of free Apps available on the Android marketplace. For the purpose of this article I had a look around to test if the marketplace had remembered my credit card details since the last time I purchased an app. The biggest problem I faced was actually finding a paid for app anywhere near the top of the 'most popular' lists. I can understand the average users mentality. Firstly, its sometimes hard to justify the investment in something you may only use for 5 minutes on the way to work (though Android does have a brilliant 24 uninstall and refund policy). Additionally, when you can get a similar app for free, why bother. Ultimately we will have to ask the question: will a lack of app sales eventually put developers off creating software for the platform?

I suppose this makes advertising revenue even more important, as we may well find it being the one thing propping the Androids application industry up.

Embedding

I have to admit to being entirely distracted in the last week. Work is the usual culprit, and in no small way, the beginning of the World Cup has played its hand in keeping me away from my computer. Anyhow, despite England failing to do anything to talk about on the pitch, Apple have been busying themselves with the upcoming launch of the next iPhone. As have the customers, with AT&T and apple themselves now refusing to take any further pre-orders, and in some cases, even pushing back the launch date (presumably to increase stocks at launch).

In any case, its coming, June 24 (to a lucky few).

Those of you more interested in actually using the device than looking at the possibilities it offers for serving ads might think the rest of the article will be irrelevant. Well, I'm pleased and sorry, in equal measures, to say that this is not the case. Ads will continue to be a very important source of revenue for Apple and its new mobile advertising partner, Quattro.

First up, I'd really like to examine IOS from the perspective of a consumer. The most immediate advantage is that a better advertising framework will continue to attract great developers to the platform, and you'll get great apps and games, sometimes for free! As well as this, you are going to see far better ad integration within these apps. There is nothing worse than an annoying ad that gets in the way of whatever it is you're doing. Apple have promised that IOS will make this a thing of the past. Remember the days, when you are on the final boss of Super Planet Destroyer 3 and the bus stops just a little too abruptly, and your finger hits and advertising banner, shutting the app, and shoving you into browser mode to go to the advertisers webpage. Instead, should this occur (some bus drivers will always be trigger happy with the brakes), Apple tells us it'll be far easier to negotiate your way back to the app, and it'll still be in the same place you left it.

For the developer, Apple claims we'll see far better use of embedded content. Streaming video, similar to that which really, has only come into its own on the net in the last two years or so, will be far more commonplace. We'll also see embedded ads become far more interactive, but lets just hope that they go further than "shoot the (insert animal here) to win $1m". Speaking of money, the deal is, that developers will receive 60% of revenue generated. Which, from the perspective of someone without much knowledge of historical revenue percentages from mobile advertising deals, sounds fair.

What wouldn't seem quite so fair, should you already deal with them, is that Apple has effectively banned developers from aggregating content with Googles MobiAd platform. I can understand this to a certain degree, as some say the MobiAd platform was swiped from within Apples grasp by Google, and so some bad blood may still exist there.

Allegedly, Ads are dynamically sent to devices which may mean that we'll see a larger variety of more relevant ads within the apps we are using. One of the fundamentals of advertising is that ads, are of course, far more effective if served to an audience with a pre existing interest in whatever is being sold.

Come June 24th and beyond, we'll see what the new hardware and software of Apples iPhone will let developers do. I hope it delivers more relevant and better implemented advertising to the consumer. Since, I am one.

Hate to say....

I now feel compelled to write the final part of this Android review in haste, due to the increasing glut of iPhone news that is almost all worthy of comment. Despite this impulse, I’ll do my best to give this article the finish it deserves. Maybe a little of what’s currently hitting the headlines will be relevant in a piece about the future of androids application market anyway.

What is remarkable, on both iPhone and Android, is the amount of free apps out there. These must be financed partly by the passion of the developers, partly by a desire to show off their talents and partly by financial incentives. I cannot claim to have any idea about the time lengths and difficulties of coding a smartphone app, so its hard to say whether this kind of model is viable over the next few years, or if we will see more developers start to desire some even more financial payback for their exertion. Supposedly an app entering the top 100 can expect to earn anything between $400 and $5000 a day, but then that leaves 149,900 apps earning far less than that. Techcrunch has some very interesting graphs and statistics on this here

What is clear is that both Google and Apple are both staking considerable amounts of money on mobile search, and that advertisers are prepared to, at the very least make some kind of foray into the mobile market. What is a very positive indicator going forward, is that some of the biggest names in the game, namely P&G and Nike, have recently developed Apps specifically for their brand.

I think as the Android platform matures, we’ll see a more consistent and transparent model for of ad supported payment for the app development market, whereas some apps now have no ads, some have a great many. What I hope is that, app development by big name brands also continues. These apps are usually of a high quality, and are good for both the brand and the consumer. The brand gets meaningful interaction with their product, and a campaign that can easily spread by word of mouth. The consumer gets a free app.

On the subject of paid apps, the future is a little more obtuse. Are people willing to pay money for Apps when they are so often viewed as a free commodity? My experience of paying for apps is more of a ‘foray’ than a commitment. I believe this will depend as much as whether we can adjust to spending money via our mobiles, like we did in the transition from shopping in the high street, and online, as it will on whether microtransactions are ‘micro’ enough for us to wear. If we can extrapolate from other industries such as video gaming, it does suggest that they may be.

So what does this mean? Well I’d hate to be quoted in 3 years time making a prediction that turned out wrong. On the flipside I do love to say ‘I told you so’. I’d suggest that as things look at the moment, we’ll see less apps being developed, and a consolidation of the developers into biggers studios, much like the videogame market over the past 20 years. This move will, however be counteracted by a better App funding system implemented by Google, in the near future, and as a result of this, I think we’ll see more ads in ‘free’ apps.

iPhoneyou

The new iPhone was announced today, big news for the umpteen Apple fans out there. I'll be continuing my review of the Android app market in the next post, but shortly after that, it'll be important to talk about some of the huge implications for mobile advertising that comes with the new iOS4.

In the meantime, I suggest you check out Engadgets hands on and first look articles here and here

The State of the Apt

With a week long holiday to Eastern Europe out of the way, its now time for the second part of my Android review! Hold on tight!

Unlike Androids dev teams, I won't divide this post into games and Apps, so its all going to be going in together.

Google execs recently touted 100,000 Androids units shipping per day. That's an impressive figure, and especially, since every casual journalist under the sun is clawing to get their hands on the next iPhone , or second best, an exclusive piece of news on it. Mainstream press aside, there is no doubt that the Android platform is gaining traction. In the same way a console lives or dies on the strength of its software, Android's success will only continue if its Apps continue to appeal.

So, hows it going?

Well, in total they currently number over 50000, and I do not plan to get to grips with every one of them individually. Instead I'll talk about the ones I've used regularly myself, and hopefully we can extrapolate this to the rest of the market. At the very least it might give those wondering if the Android device they are thinking of buying can do everything the iPhone can do.

With the number of Android devices increasing at a steady, and impressive, way, we can assume that as popularity of the hardware increases, App developers will also be keen to tap into this emerging market. Its seems like only a few months ago (January?) that there were 30000 apps for the device, so an increase of 20k in six months is impressive to say the least (iPhone currently has 150k in case you were wondering).

So, the apps I use:

BBC news Widget

Engadget Widget

Weather

London Tube Map

DoggCatcher podcast downloader

Youtube

Facebook

AdvanceTaskKiller

Retrocamera & FX Camera

Games - Robot Defense, Bebbled, Jewels, Maths workout, Spacephysics

Qype

Skype

Google Starmap

Finger Painting

Magic 8 Ball

Dice

and a fair few others!

Writing this down in a list makes me actually sit back and realise how many I've been using without thinking about it.

Among them Doggcatcher and Spacephysics are the only paid for apps.

Without giving it any thought at all, I could say, that generally, the apps I have used have been impressive. Read on to get to the nitty gritty. The ones I use the most, have two key attributes: They work and they are relevant/useful to me on a day to day basis. The ones that I use the least usually fail on one of these attributes. For example, the Tube Map app, is really very simple, but it does what you'd expect of it, you can scroll around the map, plan routes, and zoom in and out etc.

Google, unlike Apple, does not approve every release on Android, and as we covered last week a good app makes it mark on the basis of user reviews. What this means is that there is very little in the way of quality control, and this is especially prevalent when searching for more obscure apps. The Retrocamera app for example is very cool, and does a lot of things, but is slow, and hard to take pictures with, therefore I can never really be bothered to use it. It appears, that as a general rule, if an app crashes, is slow, or doesn't do what you wanted, it is discarded very quickly. We must remember that with 50000 apps out there, chances are there will be one that does work. Additionally, since I haven't actually invested anything in them apart from some time and bandwidth, I don't feel like I've lost anything getting rid of them. In short, we can say that when it comes to apps, I am a pretty fickle user, and I believe others must be as well.

In regards to the paid for apps, I suppose, by the same logic we can say that people are more likely to be a little more faithful. However, they are also more likely to expect more from the app. Doggcatcher, had good reviews, and I wanted my podcasts to appear on my phone so I didn't have to keep downloading them and transfering from my PC. I paid $6 for it, and it works well. Despite this, I have stopped using it, because my supposed 'unlimited' data plan, actually caps out at 1GB. Spacephsics I paid for after playing the demo, as its perfect as mobile game, and works great with the touchscreen - and is my number one recommendation for games on Android.

Of the free apps, I have seen BBC news and Facebook go through several updates, which has improved their performance and functionality no end (particularly with BBC, which was previously fairly buggy).

So to make some casual observations about the state of the Android apps market. I think its fair to say that choice is not an issue, and this will be continue to be even less of an issue as time goes on and Android hardware sales increase. Quality is an issue with some apps, but then this is a free platform, and so we must accept that. Paid for apps, in my experience at least, usually offer more functionality than their free counterparts (though this is not always the case, obviously), and are general stable.

Free apps, are a bit hit or miss. Many put out by major developers (Facebook, BBC, Google) are absolutely brilliant. But conversely, while some apps put out by indie devs can be absolutely brilliant (Tubemap, Magic 8 Ball, Dice) others are sometimes buggy or slow (Retrocamera, FX camera).

I'm still waiting for a Wheel of Tea app though...

Get lost.

So I've been meaning to write a piece on Android for a while.

As an owner of an HTC Hero, its currently my mobile OS of choice, and I have to say, that despite the hardware limitations of the said phone (its a bit slow to respond sometimes), I'm actually very impressed with the operating system itself. So with my personal opinion of the OS out of the way, there are a few other things I would like to cover in the coming three articles.

Firstly: Using the Marketplace

Secondly: The state of the apps

Thirdly: The future of the Android Marketplace

I've had the Android device for 4 months so far, and I've been downloading an eclectic selection of free, and paid for, apps. For anyone who has yet to use the Android app market, upon entering the Marketplace app itself, you are initially presented with about 4 different choices. Firstly 'featured' apps - a selection of mostly paid for apps for premium brands such as Spotify, along with a couple of free apps, selected, presumably, by a deity somewhere in Google towers. Below that you can brows either 'Applications' or 'Games'. Within the 'Applications' menu there are further subcategories for various types of app. Within these you are presented with a list of apps sorted either by date, or popularity. For me, the biggest problem with this is that there are supposedly 30000+ apps on the market. This means that within each category there is, on average, about 3000 apps.

Fine. Thats good of course, choice is almost always a good thing. But it does mean that scrolling through the list is a labour intensive task. Additionally a lot of the apps seem to repeat themselves, and beyond the ratings and reviews you can view, there is no way to sort by 'highest rated'. I suppose you could perhaps argue that 'most popular' (ie: most downloaded) can be correlated with 'highest rated'. Frankly sorting by 'date' seems to be a total waste of time, unless you check the app market every 10 minutes to see what new apps have been released. New apps are released so frequently that this is a community where reputations are built on the strength of user reviews. I can't think of another media in which I rely almost entirely on fellow users to make informed purchase decisions. Since the importance of 'ratings' is given such weight, it would be great to have the choice to sort by 'highest rated - ever' and also 'highest rated - over the last 7 days/month/year etc' - to give new apps the chance to float to the top of the list on their merits. Right now, whatever apps are at the top of the ' most downloaded' list rule the roost, and will continue to do so, regardless of their quality compared to other similar apps.

I can't speak for those of you using the iPhone, but browsing the Android marketplace makes me feel lost very quickly indeed, especially if you aren't extremely specific with what it is you are looking for.

Despite this, I did find a very useful Dice application the other day using the search function, which helped no end with 'drinking snakes and ladders' in the pub.

$1000

Friday’s finally rolled around, which puts everyone in a good mood. Mine was furthered by the news that GQ has launched an iPad (is the little ‘I’ still applicable?) version of its magazine. Admittedly its first issue made them a paltry $1000, but as editor Pete Hunsinger points out – its all profit. The move away from physical media, whether it be CD’s, DVD’s or print, is a no brainer. At the moment, with the emergence of digital media consumption, you can run a digital campaign using the existing material on a dime, so why not? It leaves the big dogs with some interesting discussions about the cost of advertising pricing in this unproven sector.