What People Do on Their Tablets

Tablets clearly are content consumption devices, a survey by IDG shows. People browse the web, read emails,  watch videos, use mobile apps, play games, read magazines, newspapers and books.



Tablet Apps and User Behavior

Android and iOS apps combined hit 1 million

Android and iOS combined for a total of one million applications, according to app tracker Apps Fire.

This number shows all applications that have been developed on both platforms, but doesn’t mean that today you’ll find exactly one million apps if you combine the two largest mobile app stores, since some apps run on both platforms.

It isn't always so easy to figure out what it all means, though.

Some apps are helpful for branding or marketing, while others actually represent new products and categories. A million Android and iOS apps

Large brands use apps to create or support major ad campaigns, for example. In other cases, such as mobile gaming, apps arguably represent a new category of "games" that increasingly compete with console gaming.

In the former case, apps are helpful in the same way that other channels are helpful; in the latter case the foundation for whole new revenue streams or business segments.

In a third set of cases, mobile apps are more about user engagement, making it easy for users to interact with content sites they also use when in tablet or PC mode. In yet other cases, mobile apps create a capability that might have indirect or direct monetization potential, but are important for the displacement of other apps that represent a revenue stream.

Facebook Mobile Messenger, for example, could disrupt mobile service provider text messaging revenue. Facebook Mobile Messenger

Users Likely are Downloading More Mobile Apps Than They Think

Consumers often incorrectly estimate their habits and behaviors. Yankee Group researchers say consumers report downloading about two apps a month. But tracking software installed on a test group by Yankee Group researchers revealed that respondents actually downloaded an order of magnitude more applications for their smartphones than the consumers reported by recollection.

Android owners download an average of more than 20 apps per month, while BlackBerry owners download only two. That is a finding consistent with other surveys. This behavior may be explained by the variety of apps available, Yankee Group researchers say: Android app stores offer more than 130,000 apps, while RIM’s App World offers only 23,000.

Consumers remove an average of 11 apps each month. In fact, the tracking software shows consumers remove 73 percent of the apps they download.

Messaging Tops Smart Phone Usage

A recent three-week study of how 150 smart phone owners use their devices shows that the users spend an average of just over 94 minutes a day using their phones, and more than a third of that time, or as much as 28 minutes, is spent reading, writing and responding to email.

The aggregated time spent on all downloaded add-on apps, including Facebook, WordswithFriends and Pandora, is the second largest, totaling just under 11 minutes. Voice calls represent 13 minutes a day worth of usage.

Yankee Group Research Report

App Battle Heats Up

Whether mobile apps are as strategic as most people think, or not, there is little question more resources are going into the battle.

Common Mobile App Mistakes Many Brands Make

Some day we probably will look back on the early days of mobile apps and have something of the same sense we did early in the development of the World Wide Web, when companies did things such as posting electronic versions of their brochures online, and basically left it at that.

So what are some common issues that Macroview Labs encounters when engaging with big brands that want to create mobile apps?

Common mistakes include duplicating a web site on the mobile screen. That does not take advantage of the capabilities a mobile has, such as cameras, bar code scanning, accelerometers and GPS, for example.

Companies design for the wrong users, the wrong devices or for use cases where mobile signal coverage is going to be an issue. Brands tend to want to recreate an ad experience, when the key thing is to engage users.

Aron Ezra, MacroView Labs CEO, has quite a lot of experience engaging with, and creating applications for, large organizations and brands ranging from major Las Vegas casinos to NASCAR, Elitch Gardens and the city of Arlington, Texas.

“Artwork is really important,” says Ezra, something you can verify yourself at http://www.macroviewlabs.com/work/sample. “Fresh content also is important, because you have to give people reasons to come back.”

Mobile Marketing and Technology

Windows Phone 7 Seems to be a Top App Developer Platform

Among publishers and developers, iPhone, Android, iPad, RIM and Windows Mobile were the
top five mobile application platforms of choice in 2010, according to Millennial Media. The Android, iPad, Windows Mobile, and Symbian platforms saw the most growth from 2009. The iPhone and RIM platforms saw year-over-year decreases.

Windows Phone 7 is tied for second place with iPad as the platform that will be added to most publishers’ and developers’ plates in the coming year. At 29 percent interest, Android is challenging the Apple iPhone as the top development platform.

Of those advertisers and marketers developing applications, the entertainment vertical is the most-active sponsor of new mobile apps, followed by technology, media, retail and consumer packaged good verticals.

Only 6.7 percent of developers use an internal sales force, as you might guess. Instead, developers sell using app networks, and rely on advertising networks to generate revenue.

The results were generated by surveys of  600 digital and mobile industry professionals in November
2009 and August 2010. In 2010, 41 percent of survey respondents classified themselves as an agency advertiser or marketer, 30 percent as an application developer, and 29 percent as a publisher.

read more here

Moms text at home, use apps outside the home

We have a tendency to think of some products as "commodities." Even when that characterization is correct in some ways, it very often is not completely correct, with some important potential marketing implications.

Unless I completely miss my guess, I'd say the "Droid" and "Evo" probably appeal mostly to men, for example.

My unscientific sample suggests the typical first impression some women have is that the Droid and Evo are "heavy," the implication being that neither is a device  would prefer to carry and use.

The point, whether the characterization is mostly right, or not, is that user segments likely exist that service and app providers, as well as device manufacturers, have only begun to assess and design around. To be sure, a smartphone is a multi-purpose device. But most people have lead apps that are more important than most others, and could create opportunities to differentiate the end user experience.

Mobile Users Prefer Browsers over Apps

Although about a third of U.S. mobile phone subscribers used a downloaded application in August, according to comScore, and app downloads have shown impressive growth, many mobile device users appear to think browsers offer the better user experience.

Mobile users polled by Keynote Systems for Adobe reported a preference for mobile browsers to access virtually all mobile content. Games, music and social media were the only categories in which users would rather use a downloaded app than browse the mobile web.

Mobile Users Prefer Browsers over Apps - eMarketer

Mobile Gmail Now "Feels" More Like an App

Google has improved the performance of Gmail on an iPhone, suggesting that the performance gap between native mobile apps and web apps will grow smaller over time.

The new improvements make scrolling faster. In fact scrolling speed seems to match swipe gestures. This is helpful for long conversations where a few quick flicks will get you to the information you need much faster than before.

Also, toolbars stay on screen while users are scrolling, rather than moving down after each scroll. Being able to access toolbars from any point on the page should make it easier to triage email and move around the app.

Gmail in mobile Safari: now even more like a native app - Official Google Mobile Blog

Android Drives Use of Add-on Apps

Android users spend on average 42 minutes every day with add-on applications, like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Skype, about 60 percent more than Blackberry, Windows Mobile or Symbian users, a study published by mobile analytics company Zokem indicates.

GSMA and Zokem: Android Drives the Use of Add-on Applications

Short Mobile App Shelf Life Isn't Necessarily a Bad Thing

Today the average smartphone has 22 apps on it, but the half-life of an app is about a month. In six months only five percent of them have been retained, according to Borrell Assoiciates.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. The most-popular type of mobile app downloaded to smartphones is "games." People play them for a while, then move on.

Other types of content, such as movie or other content apps, will have a similar short shelf life. People watch TV shows or movies and then do not necessarily return to using them in the future. That's not a problem; it's an opportunity.

But the general observation still holds: few developers are likely to make much incremental revenue from their mobile apps. But that might not be the primary purpose for producing an app.

Promotion always has been a leading reason for advertising, and apps with short lifespan that promote purchases of movie tickets, content, games and other products still are worth doing, from that perspective.

Mobile App Stores Shorten Time to Market and Time to Payment

Mobile app stores have shortened "time to market" for mobile apps, especially compared to older distribution methods such as placement directly on mobile phones.

Mobile app stores also mean developers get paid faster, according to Telefonica.

Mobile Games Explain Much About Mobile App Disuse

You probably have seen statistics indicating that a typical mobile app gets used for perhaps a month, and then usage declines dramatically over the following two months. One reason is that so many mobile apps are either pieces of content or gaming apps, and will lose their novelty over time.

After looking at about 40,000 game titles, O'Reilly Radar estimates a popular game app, on average (median), spends about 15 days on the "Top 100" list.

Popular iPhone games stay highly-ranked only for a few weeks - O'Reilly Radar

Are Mobile Apps More Like Songs or Software?

Nobody knows yet how the mobile applications will develop, and how big a business it might become for various ecosystem participants. So far, the Apple App Store has sold about $1.4 billion in apps, of which developers keep about 70 percent.

Some developers can point to mobile apps as a significant revenue generator in its own right. Most cannot make that claim.  But some might suggest the developing business is quite a lot more like the "song" business than the software business, according to Getjar.

On average, it takes about the same time to write a mobile app as it does to compose a song, says Ilja Laurs, GetJar CEO. Both cost about the same to download, $1.90 on average.

Advertising and e-commerce will add some revenue on top of actual sales revenue. But at least so far, most "for-fee" mobile apps appear to sell like single songs, rather than productivity or other apps people use on their PCs.

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LeapFrog Explorer to Take Advantage of App Trend

LeapFrog Enterprises is unveiling a new "Leapster Explorer" touchscreen gaming system that supports downloading of apps using a wired PC connection.

The Leapster Explorer is a multi-faceted device, allowing kids ages four to nine to play games, read e-books, watch 30-minute videos, or download new educational apps.

 It connects to a computer via a universal serial bus cable. The device isells for $69.

Apple’s iPod Touch seems to be the driver, rather than the iPad, as the Touch has become quite popular with tweens, for example, and many parents will not want to pay $500 for an iPad. LeapFrog has half the market share for the educational gadget market in the United States.

The Explorer comes with its own customizable pet, such as a dog, which the child can name and use as a persistent avatar on the device, and which also can be uploaded to the online site LeapWorld.

About 18 Leaplet apps will be ready for the launch.

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Web Apps or Browser Apps?

In the "battle" between mobile apps and apps that run from inside browsers, Conduit, has found success with its cross-browser web application platform, and has announced support for Google Chrome.

That means publishers will be able to develop an application once for Conduit’s platform and have it work on Chrome and other major browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.

Conduit has also made thousands of Chrome-compatible apps available at its App Marketplace, making it the largest source outside of Google for Chrome apps.

From May 2008 to March 2010, the company’s active users rose more than 500 percent, from under 20 million to over 100 million, and its revenue grew tenfold. From August 2009 to May this year, the amount of apps with over one million active users rose from single digits to over 40.

A recent Coca Cola Zero app was shown to over a million users within a day, and within ten days it reached more than 80 million people with nearly 1 million minutes of combined viewing time. That last statistic is worth considering. Many apps are ads, or simply links to web pages.

Conduit announces Google Chrome support for its massive web app platform | VentureBeat

Mobile Web Will Win Over Apps

As intrigued as most people seem to be with mobile apps, mobile browsers not only are likely to catch up, but the attraction of an app--that it executes properly on a mobile screen--will diminish over time as mobile Web devices and browser-based alternatives start to work as they would if the user were on a PC.

"I think its crazy that every brand, company, agency and corporation is having an arms race to pump out their app," says Chris Brashear. "Mobile browsing is cross platform, faster speed to market, less expensive and ready to explode," he says.

Mr Brand Manager: Put down the app and walk away… there are larger opps in mobile

Google Indexes Mobile Apps

Sometimes, when you use a smartphone, the best search result is not a web page, it's an application.

That's probably the reason why Google added an OneBox for iPhone and Android apps. If you enter a query that includes keywords like 'download', 'application' or 'app' on an iPhone or on an Android phone, you'll see a list of results from Apple's App Store or from the Android Market. link

As of today, if you go to Google.com on your iPhone or Android-powered device and search for an app, we’ll show special links and content at the top of the search results.

You can tap these links to go directly to the app’s Android Market or iPhone App Store page. You can also get a quick look at some of the app’s basic details including the price, rating, and publisher. These results will appear when your search pertains to a mobile application and relevant, well-rated apps are found.

Google Indexes Mobile Apps

21 Billion Mobile App Store Downloads in 2013

Mobile application downloads will  reach four billion in 2010, rising to 21 billion by 2013, says Gartner. Those downloads will be driven by worldwide smartphone shipments surpassing 390 million by 2013, growing at a rate of 20.9 percent per year.

According to Gartner consumers will spend $6.2 billion in mobile app stores during 2010, about 20 percent of all apps downloaded. There will also be $600 million dollars worth of advertising revenues generated by those downloads.

Gartner forecasts the total download revenue will increase to nearly $30 billion by 2013. The number of free or
ad-funded apps will increase to 87 percent by 2013. There also will be an increase of business models where the download is free, but there are additional charges associated with use of the applications.

In some cases users will have free access for a period, to be followed by purchase. In other cases users can use the free version, with limited functionality, but can get access to full functionality by upgrading for a fee.

Subscription services, or charging for content within an application are other revenue models. Some apps might also charge for access to new levels or areas within the application.

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