My top 10 Android apps

1. Angry Birds
Lives up to the hype. Very addictive. Beautifully simple game play.

2. Kindle for Android
It's easier reading books on your phone than you might think. I read the entire Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest ebook on my Desire and enjoyed even page. Very cheap books.

3. Aldiko
Brilliant for free books and a really nice library system for storing them. All of my Cory Doctrow reading is done here.

4. Engadget
The gadget kings have the quality app you would expect. Addictive.

5. Pulse
I've posted before about how good this app is. A truly beautiful way of browsing your RSS feeds. It also caches a lot of data, so works nicely on the tube.

6. TweetDeck
 Combines your Twitter, Facebook, Buzz and Foursquare accounts together brilliantly.

7. AppAware
How do you find new apps in the clunky Android Market? AppAware is how.

8. Robot13
Fantastic free comic reader. The comic itself isn't bad either.

9. Galcon
Practice your Adama moves in this old school space strategy game.

10. Watchdog
How do you know which apps are behaving badly on your phone and draining resources? The Watchdog will keep an eye on them for you.

Droidcon Day 1: Earning money from apps in Android Market

The first day at Droidcon was a barcamp in which the community proposed talks and presentations were free-styled. There were some common themes that emerged, here's one of them.



It's tougher to make money selling apps than you think
Forget the hype, the truth is that it's actually very difficult for developers to make serious money selling apps, unless you're a game. The average iPhone app earns around $6000 over a two year period for its developer. With its bias towards free apps and high barrier to first purchase (Google Checkout), Android is even tougher. Apps featured on the Android Market homepage generally earn around $400 per day.

However, it's not all doom and gloom. Some apps are doing very well and generating serious money for their developers, especially games. Developers are increasingly looking at innovative ways to generate revenue from their apps. Here are two such methods:

Freemium
When Rovio came to publish Angry Birds on the Android platform they decided not to charge for the app, but to include advertising within the game. Angry Birds sells for 99p on iTunes (at time of writing), so we're not talking about a high price point here. The strategy worked, with Angry Birds receiving 1m downloads on Android on day after release. Some estimate that it might now be up to 10m downloads on Android.

Location based ads
Currently, only Google makes money out of Maps. How can developers make money from location apps? CloudMade have created a location-based advertising platform, which replaces Google Maps and will deliver advertising to any application that uses it.

Super Mega Worm

When you're house bound, suffering from Johnny Utah knee, mobile games become your friend. After getting bored with the ubiquitous Angry Birds Lite for Android, I decided to look around for others. Glad I did because I discovered the insane Super Mega Worm, for the iPhone.



From the trailer, I've deciphered that the game's plot revolves around a mega worm that's trying to eat the world to safety. Mega Shark seems to be an influence here. I love mega animals. Hope this comes to Android soon.