Apple Now Largest Smartphone Vendor
Apple has now beat Nokia as the world’s leading vendor of smartphones. Nokia’s smartphone shipments declined to 16.7 million units in the last quarter. During the same period, Apple shipped 20.3 million iPhones, a dramatic improvement.
Apple is now sitting on the smartphone throne with the likes of RIM, HTC, Samsung, and now Nokia at its feet. The Android platform as a whole, though, still outships Apple in smartphone numbers. But that has been leveling out of late. Are we reaching a stable state? Only time will tell.
Please Don’t Require Login
I write iPhone apps for a living. I have a regular job with regular people, working for a small startup in Ottawa. One thing we discovered is that requiring a user to log in is a barrier to entry. We needed users to create accounts and log in so that they could answer surveys, and we would know if they’d answered them before. (Using accounts wasn’t required for app use, but it was required to use certain parts of our apps.) But people didn’t like creating accounts and logging in, so we transformed our system to make it so that users didn’t have to log in. We just logged them in anonymously instead.
Frankly, I wasn’t surprised. I download a fair number of apps every month. When an app wants me to log in, that’s strike one. If an app requires that I create an account and log in before I can do anything at all, that’s strike two and strike three. (Unless, of course, it’s obvious why an account is needed for the functionality of the app.)
That’s the situation I found myself in when I downloaded the ItSpot shopping app. It’s an app that helps me find shopping deals in the city I live in. Cool. It requires logging in with an account. Not cool. I deleted the app. I don’t see a correspondence between shopping deals and creating an account. It already asked for my location, which I gave it. It made sense to require a location, because this app gives me shopping deals based upon it. But then it required that I create an account or log in with Facebook, and that’s where it lost me. Sorry ItSpot dudes, I wanted to help you guys by using your app. But you just made it too annoying.
Early Days Ad Revenue
iBorrow (IOU) Lite is an ad supported version of the iBorrow (IOU) app. I haven’t had that many downloads, but I still decided to take a gander at the ad revenue it’s generating. I never expected much, but the ads’ eCPM is truly terrible. I am currently using two ad networks, and here are the numbers:
AdNetwork 1:
Ad Requests: 323
Ad Impressions: 157
Clicks: 0
CTR: 0%
AdNetwork 2:
Ad Requests: 966
Ad Impressions: 778
Clicks: 2
CTR: 0.26%
My total revenue so far has been $0.18. This is not encouraging.
The Samsung Nexus S
I work full time as a mobile developer. In that capacity I was given a Samsung Nexus S yesterday to help me with my Android work. It replaces a cheap little Android that works about as well as a rock with buttons. So this is my first experience with a “real” Android phone, and I have to admit that there are lots of thing I like about it.
The Good
- Back Button
The Back button is awesome! No more putting soft Back buttons everywhere like on iPhone apps. And it doesn’t work just within an app, but also between apps. So if your apps kicks out to the YouTube app to display a video, and you hit the Back button, you go back to your app. I think this is the single best thing about the Android over the iPhone. - Notifications
Wow! Just swipe down from the top and see a list of notifications. Touch one and it brings you to the app. Marvelous. - Dynamic Themes
I know it’s a silly thing, but I really like the dynamic themes. - Widgets!
It took me a while to figure out how to install widgets, but I finally did it. I like ‘em!
The Bad
- Gmail Inbox
When I am viewing an email and there’s a little button at the top left that says “Inbox”, why does it not take me to the inbox? I touched that thing thirty seven times, and it didn’t work once. - Menus
There’s a dedicated menu button on the phone. I don’t like it. It means that I have to look two places to find the functionality I want, one of which is hidden. - Ugly Apps
I miss the nice iPhone apps. They are just so more functional and polished on the iPhone. - Inconsistencies?
I put a question mark because I’m not sure if it’s inconsistency or what. The problem I’m having is that I just get confused. I have to do a lot more figuring out than I ever had to do on my iPhone. - Lack of Polish
I guess this is to be expected of anyone whose company name doesn’t begin with “A” and end with “pple”. But the Android GUI just doesn’t look as nice and doesn’t feel as nice as the iPhone GUI.
That’s what I think after less than a day of use. We’ll see how I feel later!
App Approved!
My latest app has been approved! Now I’m just putting the finishing touches on the website, and I’ll be sending out some press releases soon. This is an exciting time that’s also filled with a little trepidation.
I’ve never been that strong at web design, and the page for my app on this site is severely lacking. On top of that, everyone talks about how important marketing is, but they always seem to start with the premise that you know people. I don’t know people. I know nobody. But I’m going to try to do some marketing anyway, and we’ll see how that goes.
Emotion Tugging
When I watched the new iPhone 4 commercial at Apple’s iPhone 4 unveiling, I knew that Apple had a new hit commercial on their hands. Now Apple has unveiled four more commercials touting the iPhone 4′s FaceTime feature.
I saw one journalist write about these new ads, and the fact that his (almost) Luddite friend wanted an iPhone 4 because of the FaceTime commercial. (Sorry I forget where I saw this.) It’s all about the emotion. Who can help feeling a throat lump when a father convinces his daughter to smile in spite of her new braces? Or to feel a pang of sympathy when a far-away soldier beholds his unborn child on a monitor? This is powerful stuff.
Never mind the fact that this is a feature that many of us will use once or twice for the novelty, and then ignore. The only people I know with iPhones are people that I mostly correspond with via IM and email anyway. I rarely talk to them on the phone. Now if my parents got an iPhone, that would be great. I could get my children to video chat with them, and it would be great. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
FaceTime will draw people to the iPhone 4, but I think it’s the Retina display that’ll keep them coming back for more.
iPad Killer App
Many platforms only start to become really popular and gain traction when it gets a killer app. An app that is so compelling, it is worth investing in the platform just in order to be able to use that app. A killer app can also be an app that takes an existing platform to a whole new level, like what Grand Theft Auto did for the PlayStation 2. A boatload of PS2′s were sold just to play GTA.
I’ve been playing around with the iPad for a couple days now, and I really miss my apps. There is no Read It Later, no Reeder, and no Tweetie. So I still found myself pulling out my iPhone for many things, while the iPad was more of a novelty to play with every once in a while.
Not anymore! I think I found my iPad killer app. YouTube! Disappointed, aren’t you? You thought I was going to reveal some hidden gem that nobody knew about, right? Well, just hear me out.
Watching YouTube on my iPhone is alright, but everything is SO SMALL. Watching YouTube on my computer is great, but then I had to lug out my computer just to watch a small little video. Using a laptop to watch a video is alright, but you can’t curl up with a laptop.
The iPad, on the other hand, lets me curl up in a stuffy chair or lounge on my leather couch. I call up my subscriptions and check out any new videos that come up, and the videos look big because I’m holding the screen right there in my hands. Plenty big! It’s just a pleasant experience, and I’ve found my new YouTube watching methodology.
If you have an iPad, and haven’t used YouTube much, check it out. If you don’t have an iPad, well that’s too bad. 
Killer App Two?
The iPad is also becoming my blogging tool of choice. It’s just handy for that. I started typing this article on the virtual keyboard, but partway through I grabbed the physical keyboard and sat down at the kitchen table with it. Now I’m typing happily away. Too bad there’s no lap solution for typing on a physical keyboard. I tried it with this dock thing, but the iPad kept losing the connection with the dock because of my shifting around.
The WordPress iPad app is decent, though not the most intuitive thing I’ve used. (Figuring out how to publish a post you’ve written is not an easy task.) I’ll continue to use it to post articles. Good stuff.
Apple Announces iPad
Recently Apple introduced the iPad to a waiting world. The commentary I’ve seen has been mostly negative, but I don’t think this product is going to fail.
Could it use some changes? Sure it could. A camera would have been really nice. Multi-tasking would have been especially nice. (Imagine having several running iPhone apps embedded into the iPad’s desktop!) Flash would have been nice, but from what I’ve heard HTML5 will provide a decent replacement.
So where does that leave us?
I’d love to have one of these, and can do without the multitasking or Flash. But I would really really like to have a camera. So we’ll see. I’ll probably be getting one anyway. I’m currently working on a new iPhone app which would work well on the iPad if I can think of a good interface.
I’m hopeful.
Nice Rebuttal
This is a nice little rebuttal video someone made to a recent attack ad against the iPhone.
Pricing Apps: More is Better
AppsFire recently did some work trying to determine which apps on Apple’s AppStore are the most profitable? Surprisingly, it’s not the cheapo $0.99 apps that are making all the money (through volume, everyone assumes). It’s the high quality apps that charge more:
This list computed using the simple UNITS SOLD x UNIT PRICE formula may yield a few ‘outliers’ and the science is not perfect [...]. In any case, the findings are staggering: the money makers are real apps, all very solid, all but one with a price tag greater or equal to $2.99, but often well above $10.00. The top app costs $899 and the second one $99. These apps solve real issues, and are made by solid developers. And guess what, they are deriving serious revenues too!
The key takeaway here is for the developers and businesses that are hard at work developing apps: if your app brings something real to the table, be it a game or a utility similar to the ones you find on the left, then price it accordingly. The price is right when there is a salary at the end of the month. Don’t succomb to the temptation of the $0.99 app, it’s a lure and only serves to feed the get-rich-quick fairy tales that even kids would find hard to believe.
The only app I ever put up on the AppStore is Chewy Xbox, and it was free because Microsoft said it had to be (because it accesses their Xbox Live information). And I’ll be re-releasing the app soon, with some improvements. Most of my work was done for other people, and I now have a full time job doing iPhone work. [Update: I won't be releasing the app after all. The source of Xbox Live data I use is no longer reliable, and I can't find a replacement. Microsoft has ignored me.]
So I can’t say from experience that apps that sell for more than $0.99 do better than the 99 cent apps. But if I ever do end up selling an app on the AppStore, I plan to sell if for more than 99 cents. Because I think all the time and effort I’d put into an app is worth at least the price of a coffee.