Droidcon Day 2: Environment aware smartphones are coming soon

Day 2 at Droidcon was a more traditional conference, with presentations and guest speakers.



Environment aware smartphones are coming soon
Qualcomm's Leon Farasati, basically the guy responsible for those awesome Snapdragon processors that make our phones so brilliant, revealed in his talk that mobiles intelligent enough to recognise their environment and situation were very close to being real. This means that your next generation smartphone will know when it's in your handbag or pocket, beside your bed or in your car and alter its settings to reflect its surroundings. Amazing.

Droidcon Day 1: Peer-to-Peer (P2P) apps coming to Android

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.


Apps that make use of peer-to-peer on smartphones are coming soon
Several presentations at Droidcon featured P2P applications and extensions of the Android platform. We're likely to see an explosion of apps that make use of P2P in the games arena especially, but this type of functionality could also be used on the Amazon Kindle app for Android to share comments, bookmarks and features. Wouldn't it be great to be able to share extracts from books and lists of what you're reading with other friends with the Kindle app?

One barrier to P2P on smartphones is the power draining problems of bluetooth, but the next generations of phones will have improved wireless connectivity that will use far less power. One very interesting talk by Nick Hunn explored how this new technology would usher in an age of Android phones that linked to satellite devices that communicate with one another, such as a pedometer, a house alarm  or your car instruments. Your phone would become a data aggregation hub and really start to monitor your every move. Cool. 

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.

Droidcon London

I'm immersing myself in all things Android app at Droidcon over the next two days. The handy schedule on the Droidcon app has helped me put together the following highlights.

Create killer location apps

Excellence in Android app experience

Best of UK mobile business

Android had a dude problem

Turn good ideas into great apps

The economics of apps

I'll blog notes from each presentation.