Honeycomb users buy the most apps

Android users have a bad reputation when it comes to paying for apps, but this chart released from Google recently show that Honeycomb tablet users are bucking that trend. In fact, it suggests that if you are really looking to monetise you app on Android, then your focus should be tablet users.

Source: Androidos

Samsung tease the Nexus Prime

This sweet teaser video - Android advertising has come a long way from those ultra-macho Droid promos - for the Nexus Prime has me very excited about Google's event next Tuesday 11th October.

Android App Review - Diversion

At first glance you'd be forgiven for immediately dismissing Diversion as a poor game. Ezone.com's free app has very silly and camp graphics and looks like a simple run and jump clone, however there's more about this game than meets the eye. If you can ignore the crazy colours and costumes, then there's a rather addictive puzzle game for you to get engaged with here. Although the format is repetitive, running and jumping to the end of a course of platforms, with the odd mini boss thrown in for good luck, Ezone.com include enough variation and challenges to keep things interesting. For example, some levels require your character to swim, use zip lines, fly, climb and teleport across the 3D environment. Yes the characters and costumes look ridiculous, but it's relatively easy to find something for your character to wear that isn't too embarrassing. 

Also, with over 100 levels for a free download it's definitely value for money.

Good:

Free

Hundreds of levels

Creative and challenging

Bad:

Terrible character design and costumes

Some people will find it repetitive

Large 16mb download, but installs onto the SD

Via: Android Market

Mobile games dominate app stores

We knew this all already, but here's further evidence from Nielsen that mobile games dominate the app space. Users are more likely to download a game app over any other and are also more likely to pay for them.

Source: Mashable

Google add killer "Download Map Area" feature to Maps on Android

What's the most frustrating thing about having maps and GPS on your smartphone? Not being able to use them in places where you need maps most, such as when you're on holiday, because you don't have a data connection. Well, Google's killer new Download Map Area feature for Android now means that you can use maps offline in future, with a little forward planning of course.

Google update - Google Maps 5.7 - allows you to pre-download and save maps onto your Android phone. When you have a data connection, just browse to the area that you want to visit and then click on more. Within that menu you now have the option to download that map, within up to a 10 mile radius. For now, it's just the basic map and remember that you won't have a data connection when you visit the location, but it's a really useful feature.

Source: Google 

LG Optimus Pad 3D Android tablet available at Best Buy, for a price

LG Optimus Pad 3D is now available at Best Buy, according to the UK version of their website, but for an eye watering £749.99. LG's flavour of Android Honeycomb has appealed to me ever since reading about the T-Mobile G-Slate. Throw in the power of a 3D gimmick and I was hooked. However, with Samsung's excellent Galaxy Tab 10.1 set to retail at around £250 less it's now hard to justify spending that much money on a tablet that I'll need to wear glasses to use.

UK mobile app market worth £280m in 2010

Mobile stats specialists Research2Guideance have released figures that the UK app market was worth £280m in 2010. Here are the headline figures.

• The UK accounts for around 8% of the global app market
• 860m apps were downloaded in the UK in 2010
• Free apps accounted for 757m of the total, around 88%
• Paid apps accounted for 105m of the total, around 12% 

Unfortunately, you don't get the full report unless you're able to pay them a heap of money, so I don't have any more detail. However, one interesting additional piece of information that they tease you with is that females are adopting smartphones at a faster rate than men in the UK now. Research2Guideance claim that the number of women who own smartphones will be equal to that of men by the end of 2011.
Source: Research2Guideance

My next Android phone will be 3D

I follow technology religiously, but even I find it amazing to think that the next Android device that I own will be a 3D device. When Docomo released the first Android 3D smartphone back at the end of last year, it received little attention from anyone except for Darth Vader. You heart was telling you that 3D mobile devices were on their way, but your head kept saying not to get too excited about seeing one in Europe anytime soon. HTC have changed all of that with the announcement of their beautiful EVO 3D smartphone. There's currently only a summer US release date confirmed for the device, but it's bound to show up in the UK towards the end of the year, probably under the Desire HD name.

Popcap survey reveals smartphone owners are avid gamers

PopCap games, the Seattle based developer of infuriatingly addictive games like Peggle and Bejweled, have published survey results which demonstrate just how much impact smartphones are having on how consumers game. In a nutshell, if you have a smartphone you're a downloading and playing a lot of game apps. Here are some interesting observations that I pulled from Popcap's survey.

Smartphone owners are avid gamers
The Popcap survey revealed that 84% of mobile phone gamers who own a smartphone have played a game in the last week, which apparently qualifies you as an avid gamer. Smartphone owners also admitted to playing more games than last year, with 63% having increased their gaming in 2010. In fact, 68% of smartphone owners claimed that gaming was now part of their daily lives.


Consoles are no longer the gaming platform of choice
Some scary results for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft here. When asked which gaming device they play games on most often, 44% of those surveyed said their phones, compared with 21% for consoles and 30% for computers. Smartphone owners were even more likely to pick up their iOS or Android device to game than their consoles, with 55% of them playing games on their phones as a first preference.

Personally, I think that the results for consoles should be tempered by two points. Firstly, the survey only included mobile gamers, so they of course would be more likely to play games on their phones as a first choice. Secondly, I'd like to have more information on the amount of time people where spending on gaming on their phones. Instinctively, feel that smartphone gaming is still all about short bursts of entertainment where console gamers will spend many more hours on these devices, playing much deeper and challenging games, with friends online. I can't imagine that we're all going to throw out our consoles anytime soon.

Smartphone owners are converting from free to paid
As an app publisher, I was excited by the news that smartphone owners are converting from free apps to paid content. In total, 49% of smartphone gamers said that they'd upgraded a free trial game to the full paid version in the last year. In addition, 34% of smartphone gamers said that they had paid for additional content for an originally free game in the past year.

For any developer or publisher considering a freemium model for their app these results are especially encouraging. You would expect freemium to paid content conversion to be a lot higher for games, but 34% is more than I expected.  

Sources: Popcap Survey PDF & Popcap Survey press release

Android's growth in 2010 visualised

Google have posted a video on YouTube which visualises Android's rise to global dominance in 2010. You can see devices activated across the world between October 2008 and January 2011. If you look very very closely, that single red dot in London in February 2009 is me activating my beautiful HTC G1.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Tips, Tricks and Hints

The Samsung Galaxy Tab gave Android users the chance for tablet goodness months before Google developed the Honeycomb OS for these type of devices. The result is a great, but flawed, little tablet that needs a few tweaks to really get the best out of it. I've been the proud owner of a Galaxy Tab since November 2010. I love the smaller form factor, it's extremely light and portable but also has a screen big enough for comfortably browsing the web, working and consuming multimedia. Here are my tips, tricks and hints for getting the most out of your Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Upgrade the browser
The stock Samsung web browser that comes pre-installed on the Galaxy Tab is terrible. It's slow and handles Flash really badly, which is very poor when you consider that Flash should be a selling point for any Android device. Luckily, there is a simple solution to this problem, download a new browser from Android Market.

I can recommend Dolphin Browser HD from the Dolphin Browser team. It's a very fast mobile device optimised browser that has lots of fantastic add-ons,  tabs for multiple web pages and handles Flash very well. Any Flash elements on the page aren't downloaded immediately, so that pages load faster. To view the Flash you simply click on that area and it will work right away. If you hate the idea of that and don't mind a slightly slower browsing experience you can disable this feature.

Make all apps scale to the screen size of the Galaxy Tab
Not all of the apps within Android Market are optimised for the Galaxy Tab's 7inch screen, which means that some apps display with a large black border around them on your tablet. Annoying, but again there is a way to fix this and ensure that all apps scale properly on the Galaxy Tab. Here is a step by step guide on how to solve the problem.

Step 1: Download Spare Parts app from Android Market
Step 2: Launch Spare Parts, scroll down to Compatibility Mode, untick it and then tick it again.
Step 3: Turn off your Galaxy Tab and then turn it back on again.
Step 4: Launch Spare Parts again and then untick Compatibility Mode once again.
Step 5: Turn off you Galaxy Tab and then turn it back on again for a second time.
Your apps will all now display at the correct size.


Why do apps disappear from my Galaxy Tab homescreen?
The Samsung Galaxy Tab will sometimes delete apps from your homescreens when you switch the device on and off. It's a very annoying bug which means that I very rarely switch my device off. Personally, I don't find this a big issue, as I'm used to keeping devices like my phone on all of the time and the Galaxy Tab seems to use up very little power when sleeping. However, it's a riddiculous to think that Samsung missed this problem.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any solution to fix it. Apps are deleted because the Galaxy Tab links apps from your homescreen to the applications list on your device. When you add a new app, which if you're anything like me is often, the two lists no longer match-up, the Galaxy Tab can't find the app when you reboot it and so deletes it from the homescreen. Stupid isn't it? Hopefully, future updates to the Android OS on the Galaxy Tab will resolve this.

Will my Samsung Galaxy Tab be able to run Honeycomb?
I wouldn't hold out too much hope for an official Honeycomb update from Samsung, even though the company has claimed that Google's official tablet browser is on the roadmap. Samsung have a poor record with Android updates, with the Galaxy S taking forever to receive Froyo. However, there will be unofficial builds of Honeycomb onto Galaxy Tabs, if you're brave enough to try to update the OS yourself. Personally, I'd wait until these are properly tested before trying them myself, but if Honeycomb can be made to work on a Nook Color there's no reason it can't run on a Galaxy Tab.

Google play clever game with Android Pin Badges

Why do I have to collect all things Android?

Stupidly, for a man whose house is already full of Android collectibles, I've found myself bidding on Android Pin badges this week. At first, I was attracted to the fact that they look pretty cool and were only available at Mobile World Congress, but a little more investigation has revealed that they are actually part of a very smart marketing ploy by Google.

We all know that Google went big with Android at MWC in 2011, the slide at their Android stand proves how big. Of course everyone is going to visit the official Android playground, but how do you get attendees to check out all of the other related Android stands and make those people feel loved as well? According to the Guardian, you give them a game to collect Android 82 badges and a map leading them to participating stands. Genius. 

Sources: The Guardian, Pocket-Lint

Apple's new stance on app subscription is an opportunity for Android

In-app vs Outside-app
Apple's retrospective rules changes to how in-app subscription works in their app store presents Android with a huge opportunity, because it reinforces the key philosophical difference between the two platforms, closed vs open. In-app purchasing has been a brilliant feature for publishers and app developers, because Apple has allowed apps to get around their 30% store charge by handling the purchase on their mobile sites themselves. Notable apps that use this method include Amazon Kindle, Spotify and Sky Sports.

Strictly speaking, Apple's rules didn't ever really allow for purchase outside of the app, they just chose not to enforce it. Here's the official line from the their guidelines.

App Store Review Guidelines :

11.2     Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected

Now that has all changed, with Apple giving developers and publishers until 30th June 2011 to switch to using the In App Purchase API. You can understand Apple's reasoning behind this move. They've built and incredibly successful ecosystem for apps across some amazing devices. With publishers increasingly looking at the iPad and the future of subscription it was time to close the loop. Not receiving $1 on the cost of an eBook is one thing, but missing out on $30 for a $100 annual subscription is quite another. However, it will be very interesting to see whether Apple will really start rejecting Amazon's very successful apps, and exactly what kind of response that would receive.

Google's Digital Newsstand
At the beginning of the year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google have been talking with media giants about the possibility of developing a e-newsstand for Android. The article suggests that Google are offering a lower fee than the 30% charged by Apple per in-app purchase and would also provide more data to publishers about their customers. The Wall Street Journal are careful to state that the who project may never materialise, but I'm not even sure that it has to for Android to benefit from Apple's change of heart on outside-app purchasing.

Open to outside-app purchasing
Android Market currently allows developers to include outside-app purchasing in their apps. Ironically, this is because Android hasn't actually supported in-app purchasing until very recently. Provided Google continue to improve on the e-commerce side of Android Market to make it more attractive for customers to actually buy apps and continue to allow outside-app purchasing, then the platform will become more and more publisher friendly. Maintaining the open market philosophy behind Android, in opposition to Apple's increasingly closed off walled garden paradise, becomes a real advantage over its rivals.


Source:  MondayNote


Source: Wall Street Journal

A tour of Google's Android Stand at Mobile World Congress

Google seem to have the fun factor edge at Mobile World Congress, as this tour of their Android Stand demonstrates. Giant robots, smoothies, toys and even a slide. Isn't MWC supposed to be all about phones?

 

Source: The Next Web

Sony reveal Playstation Suite game store for Android

I love those moments in life that make you think everything just changed. Android was huge in 2010, with growth numbers to prove it, but the app store is its Achilles' heel. Android Market is brilliant at many things, but selling apps unfortunately isn't one of them. Developers have struggled to make money on the Android platform with freemium seeming like the only way generate revenue, but only if you have a huge brand. No revenue means a lack of premium quality apps in Android Market, something that you didn't really notice when mobile was all about smartphones, but that will become much more obvious as the number of Android tablets increase.

Sony's announcement of a Playstation Suite app game store for Android means that everything just changed. There's genius behind Sony's decision to make the store "hardware-neutral", which is a pretty big step for the company when you consider that gaming has been all about hardware for years, because it means that all Android users will have access to to Playstation Suite. Sony's store will also attract major game developers in a way that Android Market hasn't been able to. Fragmentation will still be an issue with Engadget reporting that it will only be available for Gingerbread level Android, but then when isn't it on Google's platform.

I can help but feel that this is a big moment for Android. Having premium games on the platform will make a big difference to current users and help attract even more people to Android. It looks like it's time to start clearing space on a home screen for all of the different app stores I'm going to be using in 2011.

Source: Engadget