Source: iPhone Buzz

If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.

Mobile advertising has been growing well and mobile advertising industry is said to grow at a very fast rate this year. This restriction from Apple could be a huge blow to the mobile advertisers as Apple constitutes a large section of mobiles owned in US.

Just like Google is the king of search engine land, who rules the throne of Mobile Applications Store ? I guess I shouldn’t be asking this, as the obvious answer to come in chorus would be, Apple. And why not? If you have a monopoly over the app store market with with 99.4 percent share , you are definitely the most robust emperor.

With more than 2.5 billion apps downloaded and revenue of more than $4.2 billion in the year 2009, Apple’s monarchy in the app store market couldn’t be challenged by few small stores that sprouted under the hood of the app’s craze amongst the iPhone lovers. According to the predictions by Gartner, the app market will reach nearly $30 billion in revenue by 2013, absolutely a gala time for Apple and good news for those eying business in the field.

Apple has some budding competitors that the company may not risk of ignoring. First on the list is Google’s Android which already has 20,000 apps accredited to its app library. The others trying their hand out in the field are RIM and Microsoft but will need much time to reach onto the former leader.  Apple currently owns 150,000 apps and is high on hopes to double the count by the end of 2010.

So even in the closest rounded figures Apple is actually 100% app market share holder. Couldn’t be more better for the American company. But will Apple continue the dominance or should fear from Google’s Android? Its already battling a cold war with the search giant as the news about its alliance with Microsoft to have Bing as the default search engine on its iPhone gets some air recently. The next decade will witness quite interesting changes in the technology industry.

News Source: Infoworld

Image source: Koreaittimes

The glass is no replacement for speakers and will not help you bring down the roof. What it could do was help you in situation where you needed to get the volume a little louder than what it is.

The video by Mobile Crunch explains how:

Vonage World Mobile will now provide customers with unlimited mobile international calls to more than 60 countries for one flat monthly rate as they call from their mobile device. For making the call, the caller need not buy any international calling card or type in special prefixes or pin codes. Instead they simply launch a Vonage app and talk to their peers. Vonage will cover 20 more countries than Skype which might give it a little upper hand however its Blackberry, iPod Touch and iPhone centric application and also Skype already providing the service at $12.95 a month service, the offer may not succeed to lure the market and customers.

Apart from this Russ Shaw, general manager of Skype’s mobile business has apologized for the delay for Skype versions for Nokia N97 and Blackberry Smartphone. Skype had few days before released the a beta version of Skype for Symbian to work on Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and Feature Pack 2 devices, including a number of popular E and series handsets. In February 2009, Skype had announced that it would have an N97 version of Skype available in the third quarter and had also promised a ‘thin’ Skype client available as a free download for BlackBerry smartphones in May, initially a beta version for the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Curve. But it seems there is still some more waiting to go.

Though there is a data limit of 1 GB on monthly mobile internet use, it offers unlimited wifi use. The tariff starts at £30 a month for two years and there is an additional charge for the handset. The handset can be bought for £59 for an 8GB iPhone 3G and  £239 for a 32 GB iPhone 3GS.

Guy Laurence, chief executive of Vodafone UK, said that the company had been preparing its network for over a year to handle the introduction of the iPhone.

Ernest Doku of mobile phone comparison site Omio was quoted by Telegraph as following:

“Consumers who were hoping that with four networks vying for a share of the iPhone market that a price war would ensue, are likely to be disappointed, particularly those who have been holding out for Vodafone’s announcement in the hope of picking up a New Year bargain.”

“The networks are battling on the fronts of quality of call reception and data usage limits, rather than the cheapest deals. It will be interesting to see if their stance changes in the New Year, when the feeling is that the real battle for market share will commence.”

As the smartphone market gets heated with numerous phones being launched, UK market sure seems to be sizzling with iPhones from various operator.

Source:

BBC

Telegraph

Vodafone UK

You can view the commercial here by edibleapple

On The iPhone Blog, they are calling the new commercial new, merrier bit of marketing and ask if you care to sing along?

On the twelfth day of Christmas my iPhone gave to me:

In their blog Bing mentioned

Let’s talk about some cool stuff you can do with the Bing App. Our investments in voice search (you may have played with them on Windows phones or BlackBerry already) continues in our iPhone App and works great for map locations as well as old fashioned web search. Just say “San Francisco weather,” for a quick result, or even say a full address for a map or directions. Try something complex, like “1 Microsoft Way, Redmond 98052.” (Yes, I know how to get to work.) Hold the phone to your ear and speak, or press the mic button—simple.

The home screen shows the Bing image of the day with click able hotspots.

Blog also said

“We’ve got smooth mapping action. Swipe through each step of the directions, and check out how fast the map pans and zooms … For times when you only have one hand free and can’t pinch, there is a handy zoom-out button.”

The new app has already started making waves and users are enjoying the interface and the new experience. There are various other features such as movies, news and flight status.

This one looks like a tough competition to Google. I wonder how Google would answer back, would it be through iPhone app or through android app!

As the demand for these smart phones increase, more and more players are jumping into the market. The market is flooded with operating system for mobile and to choose a smart phone is more tough than ever today. To help you a little, here is a list of top five smart phones available in the market today:

Apple iPhone 3 GS

Motorola Droid

HTC Touch Pro 2

RIM Blackberry Bold 9700

Palm Pre

In the short statement issued, Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel said, ”Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours.”

Earlier in October, Nokia had filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming that the iPhone maker had infringed 10 of its patents and asked for a compensation on usage with interest. Nokia had claimed that the technology used for the wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption in iPhone belong to Nokia.

Image Source: Cult of Mac

The total selling point of gPhone would be anti iPhone, with a slogan “Own the experience” whereas  iPhone had “We control the user experience.”  Its no doubt that Google is trying to break the control of Apple over the smartphone business.

Google will reportedly sell its phone directly to customers as well as through retailers. That suggests the search giant may not have a network partner on board, and would sell unsubsidized phones instead. Phones sold outside of the carrier system means the Google phone could cost as much as $500, and would have to run on a SIM-friendly GSM networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile.

While a carrier-free Google phone would be an unusual move in the age of exclusivity contracts, it’s not unheard of. Handset makers such as RIM and Palm sell unlocked versions of their smartphones through Amazon and other retailers.

The suggestion that the phone will not be tied to a specific carrier, backs up a previous assertion by Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumor who made similar claims last month after Google’s “design partners” filled him about the phone, according to the Street.com.

Source : InfoWorld

The battle between iPhone and gPhone is the battle of vision of how a smart phone should look like. The image above is the sketch up of gPhone by an artist. We can already see that gPhone is a similar myth as iTablets.

Image Source : gPhoneGoogle

Such technology have a potential of changing the total business plan of Apple. Apple has been known for its quality products and expensive gadgets. If Apple moves into the forced advertisement model than they would have to cut the cost of the devices and  even make them free. Furthermore, their anticipated tablet would also work in the similar manner.

Mobile devices can bring different dimension to marketing, one of the recent reports have identified that the future of the mobile marketing would to leverage the power of location based advertisement. This will allow marketers to exactly target the correct people to present their advertisement.

Beyond the ambiguity surrounding the patent application, it’s come out recently that Apple did indeed talk to AdMob about a possible acquisition before it was snapped up by Google.  Sources close to the company have revealed that it wasn’t only AdMob that Apple had its sights set on, but that it’s “talking to everyone” in mobile advertising about potential deals.

Source : WSJ

So what happened with AdMob?

Apple met with AdMob about a month ago, according to a source briefed on the situation. We first noted these talks last week, when we covered Google’s announcement that it had purchased AdMob. Bloombergran a similar story over the weekend, noting that “Apple contacted AdMob a few weeks before Google made its bid.”

Source : businessinsider

Apple has a great advantage in advertising model with its strong connection with the consumer and its reach to mass media with its Apple TV. Apple would in many ways profit from them, but would people tolerate such action. May be or may be not. But its going to be interesting to see what mobile marketing has for consumer.

Flurry, a mobile based analytics firm have released a report which shows an optimistic future of Droid with strong challenge to iPhone.

Flurry monitors usage of over 10,000 developers’ applications on iPhone and Android. In total, Flurry tracks applications on approximately two out of every three unique iPhone and Android handsets in the market, including over 15,000 million user sessions per day.

Source : flurry

The above chart shows that Droid has become the fastest selling Android mobile set. Though, the first week sale of Droid is less than that of iPhone 3Gs, it must be noted that iPhone3Gs was released simultaneously in eight countries. This makes Droid’s sale very strong. Droid have had very good advantage with its wide coverage network Verizon and their aggressive marketing against At&T’s network for which Verizon nearly came under legal action. It seems that with each sale of Droid, the competition is rising for iPhone. Further, with strong base of Google, the developers platform for Android is sure to rise which will further increase the competition over mobile apps. Till now, iPhone is still leading the way but there is always a fear that it might remain just as a niche market and not the leader.

The benefit of MoneyMarket is to decide whether or not you as an investor should purchase a certain currency at its current exchange rate AND to gain a better understanding of your currency’s future value by being able to experiment with your exchange rate against other global currencies. The exchange rates are based on real time information provided by Google Finance.

4 simple steps to get started:

1. Select your Home Currency
2. Select the amount you’d like to invest (experiment with)
3. Select 5 countries you’d like to compare your currency against
4. Use our simple interface to slide the exchange rates up or down to see how your home currency is affected against other countries

Use the trends link to get more information on an individual currency.

For the first time ever, Apple has exceeded Nokia’s profit in United States. While Nokia’s third quarter operating profit stood at $1.1 billion, in the same period iPhone has generated a profit of $1.6 billion.

“Nokia’s profit margin for its handset division has been shrinking during the global economic downturn in 2009,” said Neil Mawston, an analyst with Strategy Analytics. “We believe the United States, where Nokia now trails Apple in market share, is the key to Nokia’s recovery in 2010.”

Nokia has been trying hard to fight the stiff competition its facing from iPhone ever since iPhone was launched. The most recent N900 is being called as the iPhone killer and hope it will help Nokia get its place back.

Image Source: BindApple

and recently StarHub, a mobile operator in Singapore announced that they would be selling iPhone before this year ends.

Even being one of the most popular smart phones, iPhone has been highly criticized for its pricing. The niche machine which has had slashed rates for the festive season have been obnoxiously priced in upcoming markets like India and China.

The announcement means all three of Singapore’s mobile operators will offer the iPhone, which is currently only available from Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), which began selling the handset last year. In October, MobileOne said it had reached an agreement withApple to offer the iPhone.

“StarHub and Apple have reached an agreement to bring iPhone to customers in Singapore later this year. StarHub looks forward to offering iPhone and a range of tailored service plans to customers in Singapore,” the operator said in a statement that used the same wording as the statement released by M1 last month.

Though the price plan for iPhone has not been revealed yet; SingTel offers 3G 8 GB iPhone for S$398 and 3G 32 GB for S$678 currently.

Source: Yahoo! News

]]> http://www.mobilecandy.net/2009/11/starhub-to-offer-iphone-in-singapore-52/feed 0 http://www.mobilecandy.net/2009/11/apple-strikes-back-might-launch-iphone-3gs-to-fight-droid-this-christmas-42 http://www.mobilecandy.net/2009/11/apple-strikes-back-might-launch-iphone-3gs-to-fight-droid-this-christmas-42#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:27:27 +0000 Manoj Jasra http://www.mobilecandy.net/?p=42 Just when we thought that iPhone would be facing stiff competition from Droid this festive season, rumors of Apple launching an 8GB iPhone 3GS at unbelievable $99 price tag for Christmas are already doing the rounds. According to Boy Genius Report:

Definitely not confirmed, but rather interesting nonetheless. We’ve heard now from two sources that AT&T, and we guess Apple, are contemplating launching an 8GB iPhone 3GS at the $99 price point before Christmas. One source said this was AT&T’s way of combating the DROID madness.

Image Source: CIO.com

Droid has been receiving great reviews since its launch and has already been rated above its peers. After a discount of $100, Droid is at the same level as iPhone 3G. The cheaper version of iPhone by Apple with AT&T would come for $100 lesser and a 3.2-megapixel camera. This could give a great boost to the sale of iPhone as people would obviously be drawn to the price.

At $200, Droid is loaded with some of the best features. Its GPS navigation by Google has got everyone talking while the camera resolution is one of the best in its class. What needs to be seen is whether a cut in $100 would make people forget about the niche features Droid is offering.

Touch screen phones are something everybody can use and would like to posses unlike smart phones which explains the difference in the growth rate. The trend of touch screen phones was set by iPhone and clearly dominates the market with a huge share of close to 33 percent followed by LG Dare at about 9 percent while all the other top devices seem to have high competition among themselves.

LG seems to be doing really well in the touch screen arena with three phones in the top ten list. The paper also said smart phones and touch screen both are popular with the age group under 35 with 51.4 and 57.7 percent respectively.

According to AppsFire.com, only 20% of the applications are really being used.  In fact, the 1000th most popular app has been installed on less than 2% of iPhones/iPods which makes the long tail of the app downloads quite long.