Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Insights from Tracking 200 Apps Across 50 Apple Tablets in Testing
Using Flurry Analytics, the company identified approximately 50 devices that match the characteristics of Apple's rumored tablet device. Because Flurry could reliably "place" these devices geographically on Apple's Cupertino campus, we have a fair level of confidence that we are observing a group of pre-release tablets in testing. Testing of this device increased…
Apple Tablet : What We Don't Know (Yet) // PC Mag
What do we know about technology's worst-kept secret? Not a heck of a lot.
In fact, for something that everyone seems to know about -- that Applewill unveil a tablet this week -- there's no hard fact that points to the company doing just that. Apple's said jack about a tablet, yea or nay, unless you count the leaks to the Wall Street Journal that many have assumed originated with Apple itself.
Without facts, what we have is rumors and rumors of rumors.
That admission makes this more of an anti-FAQ than an FAQ, so bear with us. Just remember that until Wednesday, when Apple kicks off the event everyone's assuming will focus on a tablet, no one outside the company, or at best, a very small circle of reviewers, knows anything.
Will Apple unveil a tablet on Wednesday? If it doesn't, it will be one of the biggest "gotchas" in modern consumer electronics history, a vaporware debacle fueled by Apple enthusiasts and Wall Street analysts, but not suppressed by the company.
Apple keeps secrets better than the former Soviet KGB, so nothing is certain until the words spill out of their executives' mouths. But virtually every analyst and pundit has bought into the tablet. Last week's invitation-- which read "'Come see our latest creation' last week -- seemed to seal the deal, that Apple will pull back the sheet and reveal the device Jan. 27.
If it doesn't deliver, the backlash will be as newsworthy as the tablet's debut would have been.
How big a screen? A 10-in. diagonal display. Or maybe a 7-in.
That's one of the biggest ongoing arguments about the tablet: Will Apple go for a one-two punch, with a smaller tablet based on a 7-in. screen at the outset, then ship a larger device later? Aaron Vronko, who has torn apart all kinds of consumer electronics -- and whose company RapidRepair services iPhones and iPods -- says that a 10-in. tablet is inevitable, but that Apple may open with a 7-in .
Vronko based his bet on the power demands of LCD screens and the lack of production volume for power-sipping OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays in the 10-in. size.
Others have claimed that Apple will sell more than one model. Last November, reports circulated from Asian component makers -- the source of many of the last year's rumors -- who said Apple would deal out a pair of devices , including a smaller model that relies on an OLED display.
How much will one cost? We don't know.
But everyone else apparently does. The range runs from a low of $500 to a high of $2,000 , with most speculation focusing on the $800 to $1,000 range.
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, has for months said that a tablet would fill the price gap between the iPod Touch, which maxes out at $399, and the lowest-priced MacBook, which lists for $999, the reason why he and others have pegged $800 as the probable price.
But Apple often goes against the grain when it prices products, and it's not known for low-balling. Expect a higher price, we say, because of demand -- sure to be intense among the faithful -- and because it gives Apple room to later reduce the price, the tactic it used with the first-geneation iPhone in 2007.
The immediate out-of-pocket impact could be softened if Apple, as some expect, partners with one or more mobile carriers that would subsidize the consumer's costs by requiring commitment to a multi-year data plan.
How will the tablet connect to the Internet? Again, no one knows for certain, but the sure bet is that the tablet will support Wi-Fi, just as do the iPhone, iPod Touch and all Macs.
It only gets interesting if the tablet also includes 3G. Will the tablet have enough battery to power 3G data reception for long periods? Which mobile network will be in play? How much will data plans costs? And will carriers be able to handle the added demand for bits when some -- AT&T, anyone? -- can't keep smartphone customers happy?
Brian Marshall, an analyst with BroadPoint AmTech, went on record earlier this month as promising Verizon would support the tablet in the U.S. Like most of his colleagues, Marshall said multiple carriers would partner with Apple.
Last week, however, other analysts -- who declined to be named -- cautioned against assuming Verizon was on board.
There's no reason, of course, why Apple has to announce carrier partners Wednesday, since it's unlikely the tablet will be immediately available. Apple could postpone that until nearer the availability date.
When can I buy one?March is the earliest , most fantasy timetables say, although mid-year is also likely. Some have pegged it as far away as the third or fourth quarter.
Although those same pesky Asian sources were among the first to name March -- based on purported orders and an extrapolation of how many units Apple needed in the pipeline prior to launch -- the rest of us can look to Apple's history for some hints.
In January 2007, CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, but said the gizmo wouldn't be out until June, one of the first times that the company pre-announced a product. The six-month lag between the date it was revealed and the sale date gave Apple time to fill the channel, beat the hype drum and get its other ducks in a row. A similar timetable for the tablet puts its on-sale date in mid-summer.
On the other hand, Apple touted the SDK for iPhone 2.0 in March 2008, the operating system that powered the iPhone 3G, which hit stores July 11. The four months were needed to give developers time to build App Store applications, the defining change Apple instituted that year. If Apple releases a tablet SDK this week and wants to give tablet app developers the same four months, that translates into a late May launch.
What will I do with one? It's easy to make a product no one has seen be a product that pleases everyone. But what will the tablet do when reality intrudes?
At the least, say the prognosticators, the tablet will be an e-book reader , a competitor for Amazon's Kindle, if only because that market could be lucrative, as sales in the last quarter of last year attest.
The presumption is that Apple will sell access to book, newspaper and magazine content via iTunes.
Everyone expects a browser, of course, but beyond that, it gets a little hazier. Harry McCracken, former editor-in-chief of PC World and now a prominent blogger, recently asked readers of his Technologizersite to vote on what they thought the tablet would contain. Their take: 81% think the tablet will include a video player (QuickTime?), 63% bet on e-mail and 61% believe it will play games.
Will the tablet run Mac OS X apps? Surprise! This is something else we don't know.
Most analysts have voted thumbs down on the idea and instead believe that Apple will go with a closed ecosystem like the iPhone and iPod Touch that relies on company-approved applications sold through an App Store.
To keep control of what ends up on tablets, Apple will have to either use the iPhone OS or create a separate operating system, most likely yet another offshoot of the Mac operating system.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld . Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer , send e-mail to gkeizer@ix.netcom.com or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed .
Tablet hype for the New York Times
A Playland for Apps in a Tablet World
Apple’s move to open up the iPhone to outside programmers in 2008 started a software-writing frenzy. Giant companies and bedroom tinkerers alike rushed to get their applications into the App Store and onto the phone’s 3.5-inch touch screen.
Ge Wang, co-founder of Smule, which makes music apps like Ocarina, said a tablet “could mean entirely new user interfaces, screen layouts.”
Related
Times Topics: Apple Inc.
Bart Decrem, chief executive of Tapulous, maker of Tap Tap Revenge music games for the iPhone.
Now those developers are about to get a bigger stage — or at least a bigger screen.
The tablet computer that Apple is widely expected to introduce on Wednesday will run applications designed for the iPhone, judging from data that an app-tracking company is picking up from devices in use around Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.
But the larger screen — most likely 10 inches diagonally — and other features of the tablet could inspire developers to create new twists on apps, like games that two or more people can easily play at once on the same device.
“Given the success of the iPhone, developers are going to start devoting resources to developing for the bigger format,” said Gene Munster, a senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. “The larger screen really plays to the imagination and clearly gives app developers a new kind of canvas.”
Ge Wang, co-founder of Smule, the company behind applications like Ocarina and I Am T-Pain that turn the iPhone into a music machine, said he expected the tablet to be better than the iPhone at detecting the touch of many fingers.
“On the iPhone, there are five touch points max,” Mr. Wang said. “You don’t need much more than that because that’s about all you can fit on that screen.”
A tablet with a bigger and better multitouch screen, he said, “could mean entirely new user interfaces, screen layouts, instruments, contraptions and games.” Mr. Wang said his company was not working on anything specific for an Apple tablet but was eager to begin experimenting.
Other developers of iPhone applications see the tablet as a way to grab a bigger share of the wider software market. Some analysts estimate that the App Store generates as much as $1 billion a year in revenue for Apple and its developers, and a larger device is likely to expand that pie.
“We are always competing with the television in the living room,” said Bart Decrem, chief executive of Tapulous, a start-up in Silicon Valley that makes games and other applications for the iPhone and its phoneless cousin, the iPod Touch. “We spend a lot of time battling with Rock Band, Guitar Hero and even YouTube for our users’ time.”
Tapulous says it is profitable, with rapid revenue growth from sales of its popular tap-to-the-music games. Its series of Tap Tap Revenge games have been downloaded more than 25 million times. “A new form factor like a tablet that gets closer to a PC or a television screen could help get us more market share and mind share,” Mr. Decrem said.
Tapulous will adapt its current lineup of applications for a tabletlike device, but will wait to see how well the tablet sells before pouring resources into developing new applications for it, Mr. Decrem added. The tablet is expected to go on sale in the spring, and it is not known what price Apple will set.
A few clues about what kinds of applications Apple employees are trying out on the tablet come from Flurry, a mobile analytics company that offers developers a free tool which gathers data about the use of their applications. With the data, Flurry can generate reports about the location of an application’s users, for example, or how long it took a user to complete a game level.
Applications with the Flurry software built in also send a unique code identifying what kind of device they are running on. Flurry said its systems began detecting a new class of device last October. About 50 of the devices have been detected so far, most of them being used near Cupertino, said Peter Farago, vice president for marketing at Flurry.
“We saw a lot of testing of applications that deal with daily media consumption, like news, books, streaming music and radio,” Mr. Farago said. “But we are also seeing so many social apps, like multiplayer games you can play with your friends.”
While he said contractual obligations prevented him from naming specific applications, Mr. Farago said the data also showed “a heavy emphasis on what people can do during those in-between moments and while in transit” — using apps for finding restaurants or keeping shopping lists, for example.
Laura DiDio, an independent wireless analyst who keeps a close eye on Apple, said she expected the tablet to demonstrate some innovation in navigation and weather forecasts. She said she also expected to see apps that used the tablet as a teaching tool and allowed people to hold a videoconference while sharing media.
There are indications that Apple may want the tablet to run some business-oriented applications that require complex interactions with the screen. A former Apple designer has said programmers at the company were developing a multitouch version of iWork, Apple’s equivalent to Microsoft’s Office software suite. Apple has declined to discuss any plans for a tablet.
It is not known how many of the more than 100,000 applications available for the iPhone will run on the tablet. But Flurry’s data indicates that the tablet will run an upgraded version of the iPhone’s operating system, possibly running older applications in a small window on the screen.
“Apple has just spent a year and a half training developers to program their devices,” said Carl Howe, director for consumer research at the Yankee Group, a technology consulting company. “I don’t think they’re going to break that model.”
Mr. Howe added that while he believed most of the current App Store offerings would work, they might look a little unusual.
“Taking a 3.5-inch experience and scaling it up to 10 inches or so would distort things,” Mr. Howe said. “But the guidelines for the original iPhone apps mention planning for more device sizes, so developers have thought about how their apps translate to larger screens.”
A tablet may also bring changes to the economy of the App Store, where developers who choose to charge for their applications face market pressure to keep prices low, said Marc Strohlein, an analyst at the market research company Outsell. Many of the most popular paid apps sell for 99 cents.
“More memory and new features will encourage the development of more sophisticated apps of higher quality, which will push up the price tag,” he said.
Developers’ excitement over the tablet could quickly fade if the device does not catch on with the public. “Historically, tablet computers have not been big sellers,” Mr. Strohlein said. “No one has quite gotten it right before.”
The App Store Economy // UPDATE
Update: Thanks to everyone for weighing in about the infographic. The data used was given to us on an exclusive basis from analytics firm Flurry. Indeed, three-quarters of the apps in the App Store are “paid apps,” which was used to calculate the average app price and the subsequent revenue figures in the previous version. However, only one-quarter of the apps actually downloaded are “paid apps,” so the average price per transaction (paid + free downloads) is actually much lower than the average app price in the store. The graphic has been updated to reflect this price. Also, some of the averages in the Flurry data were calculated using projected user numbers from the first quarter 2010; that has been corrected to reflect only data up to the end of the year.
For clarification purposes, here is the math:
According to Flurry, Average listed price of a paid app: $3.63
74% of apps listed in the app store are paid. Average listed price of an app (including free): 3.63 x .74 = 2.70 (with rounding)
Only 1/4 of downloaded apps are paid. Average price paid for an app (including free): 3.63 X .25 = .91
While we make every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information contained in our posts, sometimes errors make their way onto our site, and this was one of them. We deeply regret any confusion this may have caused. Please accept our apologies.
best, Om
Graphic courtesy of Column Five Media
Monday, January 25, 2010
Join Michael Salafia for a night of discovery
| |||||||||||||||||||||
Friday, January 22, 2010
Does admob ctr convert to sales?
Their answer is no...http://groups.google.com/group/admob-advertiser-discuss/browse_thread/thread/fbdbc872918d8747/c53f30934fbf94ef?show_docid=c53f30934fbf94ef&pli=1
innovative digital media marketing group
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
youtube.com/LifestyleCheckr is #61 most subscribed reporter
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
youtube.com/LifestyleCheckr is #81 channel today
In its second day, LifestyleCheckr YouTube channel has cracked the top 100 channels list on YouTube.com, rating in at #81.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
edible RHODY "Nutrition 101 - Fit2Cook4Kids Teaches the ABCs of Healthy Eating and Much More"
Feature article bout Fit2Cook4Kid in Fall 2009 edible RHODY magazine.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
What are other people with your job title making?
Google Rolls Out Nexus One, Its Rival to the iPhone
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Googlestepped up its attack on the mobile phone industry on Tuesday, introducing a new touchscreen phone called Nexus One to compete with the iPhone.
http://bit.ly/6twmWE