Android Apps Are Priced Higher in Europe Than In The U.S. (Report)

App store analytics company Distimo has released its December report on mobile apps, this time zooming in on the physical location of publishers in Google Android Market, and how the prices of their apps compares to those of developers in other countries.

Distimo found that publishers in the Euro zone (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain) tend to price their applications higher than those in the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Japan.

The average price of an Android app published by a developer in Europe is $4.42, which is 49% higher than publishers located in the United States ($2.96). For comparison, publishers in Japan price apps $2.28 on average, while the UK comes out at an average price of $3.31.

In Android Market, application prices are denoted in the publisher’s home currency, which is how Distimo is able to look at the differences in pricing per region. Looking at the physical location of publishers of paid applications, Distimo found that 65% is in the United States, and 12% in the United Kingdom. This makes sense of course, because those are the countries Android Market arrived first.

The Euro zone accounts for 20% of publishers, and Japan for a mere 3%.

Distimo doesn’t only track Android Market, and in fact has just broadened its analytics services to include Windows Mobile Marketplace and Nokia Ovi Store next to Android Market, BlackBerry App World and the Apple App Store.

Unsurprisingly, Distimo found that applications for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile are generally priced higher. This is likely the result of the fact that more enterprise applications make their way to those devices, and its owner are more keen on spending money for tools that help them to do their jobs more efficiently.

According to Distimo’s report, the average price of applications for Android, iPhone / iPod Touch and in Nokia’s Ovi Store hovers around $3.50. Windows Marketplace for Mobile and BlackBerry App World are clearly more expensive, averaging $6.99 and $8.26, respectively.

 

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/android-market-pricing/

Google Voice Does An End Run Around Apple And Shows Up In The iPhone’s Browser (Screenshots)

by Erick Schonfeld on January 26, 2010

Remember the dustup last summer over Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone? Everyone was pointing fingers and even the FCC got involved. Michael was so upset that he quit the iPhone rather than give up his Google Voice. Well, now he can come back because Google Voice is finally on the iPhone via its browser, and Apple can’t really do anything about it..

Google Voice will become available today for both the iPhone and Palm Pre/Pixi via a new mobile Website which will go live later today at http://m.google.com/voice. The new Google Voice mobile site shows your inbox with transcribed calls, which you can play from the browser. You can also send SMS messages or dial from the browser. The application ends up making a local call through your cell phone to Google Voice, which then routes your call through its own lines. When someone gets the call, they see your Google Voice number instead of your AT&T number. And when you get a voicemail, a notification even pops up on your iPhone with the transcribed message (through SMS).

It is built on HTML5 with most of the functionality of the original iPhone app, except that it cannot access the local contact list in your iPhone’s address book. It lets you manage a separate Google Voice contact list which is kept in the cloud instead. Google Voice voice routes your calls through its servers and acts as a new hub through which you can manage calls and forward them to various phones. You can also manage your settings and various phone numbers. The HTML5 makes it very fast, allows for local caching of data, and supports the voice tags necessary to play the audio voicemails through the browser.

Mobile apps like Google Voice really show what can be done in the browser and point to an alternative way to build sophisticated apps for the iPhone without going through the gatekeepers in Cupertino. VoiceCentral, one of the third-party Google Voice apps that was also pulled from the App store, created a similar browser-based version of Google Voice for the iPhone. Both of these apps went the browser route because they didn’t have any other choice, but you can hardly tell them apart from regular apps. Once mobile phones allow access to deeper phone functions such as the local contact list from the browser, there will be even less reason to create a device specific app. The Web, after all, supports many different platforms. With a few tweaks to the UI, the mobile Google Voice site also works on Palm phones.

 

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/google-voice-iphones-browser/

FunMail’s Picture Messaging App Launches On Android

 

FunMobility’s picture messaging app for the iPhone, called FunMail, has a seen a fair amount of traction, with 100,000 downloads since its launch in November. Today, the developers are rolling out a similar app for Android phones. You can access the app here.

Similar to the iPhone app, FunMail for Android allows users blasts their text into the application, which then breaks down whatever the user typed for context. FunMail’s learning technology “Media Brain” will return a handful of context-related graphics (pulled from Creative Commons sources and their own user-generated library), with your original text. The user picks the graphic they want, and off it goes via SMS, Facebook, or Twitter. In addition, FunMail leverage’s Google’s voice-recognition and transcription technology, enabling consumers to turn spoken messages into images that can be shared.

The service is free to the users but FunMail plans to monetize via partnerships (though its unclear what those partnerships will be). Considering the decent amount of downloads of the iPhone app, the Android app could be popular. And the app’s ability to leverage the phone’s transcription and voice-recognition technologies makes FunMail even more compelling. The iPhone app, which you can download here, has also received an upgrade, with new content and performance enhancements.

 

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/funmails-picture-messaging-app-launches-on-android/

Loopt To Start Pushing Check-In Specials Hard Using A New App And Facebook

When Loopt released its iPhone app alongside the App Store launch in 2008, it seemed to have everything going for it. Founder Sam Altman was given time on stage at WWDC to show off the app. It was featured prominently in the App Store for a while. And it was really one of the first hot location-based services. But then it cooled off, partially because the app needed to be open to update your location. And since the iPhone didn’t allow for third-party applications to run in the background, it was severely hamstrung. Meanwhile, a series of check-in based location apps that didn’t need to be open all the time came along and stole the location buzz. More importantly, they brought to light new business opportunities for local venues with the idea of location-based deals. Loopt’s new goal is to make a strong push for that.

As you can see in the deck we’ve obtained below, Loopt is working on yet another new product that is all about location-based deals. This deck is apparently making the rounds with a bunch of agencies and advertisers, as Loopt hopes to get them on board when they launch they app in a few months. The new app is called LooptCard. Clearly, from the deck it will run on the iPhone, but it should also work across all the major mobile platforms, we’re told. And these advertisers are being told that Loopt already has several retailers and venues on board with deals for when they launch.

 

http://www.techcrunch.com/

A New Era For Corporate Culture: iPhone Use Doubles in the Enterprise

iPhone use has doubled in the enterprise since last summer when Apple released the 3GS. The big bump in sales helped Apple post $3.38 billion in profits this past quarter. More than 70% of Fortune 100 companies are now testing the iPhone as their smartphone of choice. A big driver is iPhone's support for Microsoft Exchange.

The news highlights why Google is planning to launch its next Nexus One as an enterprise device: The corporate market has smartphone fever.

The news also points to the inherent weakness of the RIM Blackberry in comparison to the iPhone and the Nexus One. Touch devices such as the iPhone and the Nexus One are designed for applications and accessing the Web. The Blackberry is designed as a messaging device.

But the enterprise is going through a shift that affects not just what device is used but how the overall organization functions.

That shift is embodied in the deeper commitment to collaboration technologies in the enterprise. As mobile technologies become more robust, the affects across the organization will be seen in a number of ways.

Operations and other non-customer facing tasks will be done more often outside the walls of the corporate office. People will increasingly work at home. Mobile devices will be pretty much required by knowledge workers.

Telepresence will become more predominant. Corporations are investing in unified communications technologies to allow for better video conferencing over any type of device, including smartphones.

Technology providers will need technologies to work across any device. You see this trend beginning to evolve. RIM and IBM announced an integration at Lotusphere last week. Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections will be loaded onto Blackberry devices. Big Blue is also developing applications for the Android OS to allow for encrypted email, using Lotus NotesTraveler, the IBM technology. Traveler is now available on the iPhone as well.

The Blackberry still has a significant lead over the iPhone, and the Nexus One is but a baby. But Apple and Google's intentions are pretty clear, and RIM is not blind to the shift, as exemplified with its IBM partnership.

 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/01/a-new-era-for-corporate-cultur.php