Netbiscuits Blog

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007858

FierceDeveloper's Jason Ankeny just published an interesting article on Nokia's ongoing rejection of Google's open source mobile OS Android. Read it on the FierceDeveloper website or just down below:

The worldwide smartphone market posted 64 percent annual growth during the second quarter according to research firm Canalys--Apple (with shipments up 61 percent year-over-year), Nokia (up 41 percent) and Research In Motion (also up 41 percent) all contributed to the jump, but the biggest difference maker was Google, as shipments of devices running its Android mobile OS increased a staggering 886 percent over the previous year. Last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said sales of Android smartphones now total about 200,000 a day. "People are finally beginning to figure out how successful Android is," Schmidt said at the inaugural Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Calif., adding that Android device sales totaled about 100,000 per day just two months earlier. "It looks like Android is not just phenomenal but incredibly phenomenal in its growth rate. God knows how long that will continue."

Rapid advances in mobile technology have introduced a new medium for consumers to interact with travel companies, and the results are quickly becoming evident among European travelers, says a new study issued by the leading US travel industry research company PhoCusWright.

In the U.K., France, and Germany, more than 90% of travelers plan to carry mobile phones with them while traveling in the upcoming year, according to PhoCusWright's European Consumer Travel Report. And while travel-related mobile activities are still relatively uncommon among travelers across the markets, these activities show strong indicators for growth in the coming year. In these three markets, usage of mobile devices for travel-related activities is likely to double in the next year.

For the complete article pls. visit the PhocusWright website.

Android overtook iPhone in new sales for H1, but BlackBerry may be under pressure

Smartphones now account for 25% of all US mobile subscribers, according to The Nielsen Company. That's up from 16% a year ago.

Read more here:

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/38027/25-of-US-mobile-subscribers-now-own-a-smartphone

A market assessment commissioned by the BBC Trust to help it decide whether the BBC should release smartphone apps came to a view many will find surprising: that the paid apps goldrush will be extinguished by the mobile web in a few short years.

According to the report from consultancy Mediatique...

    “We conclude that the availability of content for free online, which is increasingly accessible via web browsers affording re-purposed content via mobile devices, will make it harder over time for content suppliers to charge for apps that provide access to content available online for free; the advantages of apps (bespoke mobile-purposed content, findability, novelty) will therefore reduce over time.

    “Only 25% of apps on Apple’s App Store are free, but these generate 77% of usage. Not all analysts expect the market for apps to continue growing and see mobile web browsing as a more effective consumer proposition over the longer term.”

    “The BBC would be entering a market that is already trending toward free apps (in news, sport and long-form video content) and is likely to trend further in that direction over time, irrespective of the BBC’s entry.”

No-one’s denying the trend toward free consumer content on the desktop web. It’s been possible to charge for mobile app versions, in my view, because they repackage that web content for the palm for the first time, and because there’s no pre-existing free-content culture on mobile.

Neither is anyone ignoring the likely improvements that will be made to mobile web apps in the coming years, especially on Android. But it’s stretching optimism a bit far for Mediatique to say that free content will prevail on mobile in the same way it has on the desktop.

Sure, many leading news publishers’ apps are already free, funded by some nascent ad sales or sponsorships. But, if you take Mediatique’s expectation as a rule, many app developers and publishers alike might as well pack up and go home—or else pray that someone’s working on a web apps store as commercially viable as iTunes Store is today.

http://moconews.net/article/419-behind-bbc-trusts-apps-decision-paid-apps-are-screwed-anyway/
 

Forrester's vice president and principal analyst Julie Ask just published a report on “How to Build a Mobile Web Site" and identified 5 ways of appraching the task. Here are some excerpts from an article by Mobile Marketer and the link to the related page on Forrester's website.

According to the report, daily mobile Internet usage among United States adult mobile phone users grew from 7 percent at the end of 2008 to 10 percent in mid-2009 and to 15 percent in mid-2010.“The browser-based mobile Web experience is more important than ever, with dramatic growth in the usage of the mobile Internet — especially from smartphones — in the past 24 months,” said Julie Ask in the report. “In 2009, consumer brands built iPhone applications: they are now asking what’s next. “The answer for many is to improve the quality of their mobile Web site,” she said.

Posted by Julie Ask on June 8, 2010 at Forrester Blog

Last year, every consumer brand seemed to be building an iPhone application. Towards the end of 2009, they began to say, 'We have an iPhone application. Now what?" For many, the answer seems to be "mobile Web." The open question is "how." I'll be publishing an in-depth study on how with my colleague Brian Walker, going into more depth on the implications of commerce for mobile Web builds. One of the strategic questions that must be answered first is, "do I build a mobile Web site for all devices (= long tail)?" or "do I have a more tiered approach with custom development for the handful of devices (short tail) which drive most of my traffic and a more automated approach for all the other devices (long tail)?" Good questions.

There are some good sources of information online. AdMob and Millennial Media publish monthly reports based on ad requests they see. Netbiscuits just published a white paper with a lot of good data.

First, how long is the long tail? According to the Netbiscuits white paper, it was 2,496 devices in February 2010. How short is the short tail (= 50% of the traffic)? In February 2010, only 12 devices. What is the number one device in each report? Yes, the iPhone -- or now iOS 4 platform. In terms of global traffic, Netbiscuits put Apple first with 36% of traffic while AdMob's numbers for Apple were a bit lower at 33%.

How long the long tail is and how short the short tail is varies by country. Netbiscuits provides some interesting insights taken from the page requests for a mobile site monitored in four different countries. The short tail in the US? 2. Yes, 2. The long tail -- 1,687. Wow. Who makes those 2 devices? Apple. And Apple. The short tail is longer in other countries. In the UK, it is 9 devices according to Netbiscuits. In Germany, it is 2, but Nokia claims the second spot. In Australia, it is 4. While Apple has more than 50% of traffic in the US according to Netbiscuits, it "only" has about a third in the UK and Germany.

Is the short tail getting shorter? In some countries, yes. Between May 2009 and February 2010, the short tail in Germany decreased from 9 devices to 7. Still it is important to notice that short and long tail vary not only by country or by time but also by the kind of content or service offered on the mobile Web.

Of course, the US and Western European markets are very different than those in Asia and other parts of the world. Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia have different short tail and long tail profiles. First, the short tails are much longer. In Indonesia (according to AdMob data), the top 3 devices are only about 10% of all of their traffic -- or ad requests. In the Philippines, the top 10 devices only deliver 30.6% of ad requests, with the iPhone and iPod touch delivering only about 7% of traffic. Apple isn't even the number one smartphone here. In Malaysia, the short tail is 26 devices. These countries are much more fragmented.

So what about this short tail of Apple and Android here in the US? You should check out AdMob's April report. They do an extensive breakout of the two platforms as measured by ad requests -- their proxy for traffic. The iPhone is mostly about a NA play, but only 49% of unique devices are in NA. Another 28% are in Western Europe. Android? AdMob shows 75% of devices in North America. AdMob still sees a 2:1 ratio of iPhone OS devices to Android OS devices. Other notable trends in the AdMob report? While Apple still leads in traffic, their percentage of overall traffic (ad requests) has been dropping this year -- from 51% of smartphone share in January 2010 to 42% in April 2010. Android has grown some -- from 21% to 25% in the same period. Who is gaining share? Nokia -- growing from 19% to 23% in the same period.

How long is your short tail? Depends. For at least one of my clients, the top two devices are 90% of their mobile Web traffic. This puts their short tail number at 1. Their number two device falls into the long tail. They have 1,500+ devices combining for less than 10% of traffic. Not every situation is this extreme. As you are planning your mobile Web implementation strategy, it is worth analyzing. You want to make an explicit decision on how you want to cover the full range of devices, even if this means a tiered approach.

Millennial Media published less traffic research in their latest report. They focused more on the effectiveness of campaigns. Worth a read.

ComScore released a report on the fastest-growing mobile application and browser content categories based on data from its MobiLens service.The results show that the browser is the premier channel for accessing content and services on smart and Web-enabled feature phones.

"With mobile media consumption on the rise, the discussion of how consumers are accessing content -- whether it is via application, browser or both -- continues to be an important factor for companies looking to invest further in their mobile brands," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. "Although application access is clearly on the rise, with several categories more than doubling their audience via this method, content consumption via browser continues to be the most popular method for Americans to access mobile media."

"Although growth in application usage on smartphones continues to grab the spotlight in the mobile market, the audience using their mobile browser remains larger and is growing just as quickly," added Donovan. "Brands need to remember to take into consideration the user experience across both channels when building their mobile strategies."

More information can be found here

According to new estimates from ABI Research, mobile marketing and advertising combined will grow at an impressive 40% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over the next five years, bringing the numbers substantially higher than the well under a half billion dollars spent in total in 2009.

Like most growth estimates, ABI bases its predictions on several factors including the standard growth estimates for mobile apps and the mobile Web, as well as the fact that "compared to campaigns in more traditional media, mobile marketing can be relatively inexpensive. Moreover, ads can be highly targeted and naturally paired with rich mobile content that growing numbers of consumers are accessing through smart mobile devices."

While growth in the industry is obviously steady, the report also cautions against inhibiting factors such as fragmentation issues, noting, "Mobile is still fragmented by the lack of standardized device platforms, networks, and web browsers, and the need for different campaign formats for different kinds of messages."

Read more about the ABI Research report.

Today we received a nice e-mail for the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) in UK. It says:

"Congratulations! You have been selected as a finalist in the Technology Innovation category for the 2010 Meffys! Netbiscuits is one of the outstanding companies that has been shortlisted for this prestigious award and the winner will be announced at the Meffys Gala Dinner on 21 June, 2010 in London."

Thanks to the MEF team and to the representatives from over 45 companies, publications and analyst houses for four hard days of judging. We are looking forward to win this challenge!

For more information, pls. go to www.meffies.com

 Meffies 2010 finalists have been selected by representatives from: Analysis Mason, Beep Marketing, Billboard, Content to Mobile, comScore, Five Eight, Financial Times, GoMo News, Informa, Israel Mobile Association, Know Your Mobile, KPMG, London Calling/ Digital strategist, MMA, MobiAdNews, Mobile Choice Magazine, Mobile Communications International, Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Europe, Mobile Industry View, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Media, Mobile Retailing, Moco, Msearch Groove, Music Week, MusicAlly, One World Malaysia, PocketGamer, Politecnico di Milano, Publicis, Recombu, Reuters, Screen Digest, Strategy Analytics, Telecom TV, Telecoms.com, Teletime Magazine (Brazil), The Daily Telegraph, The Institute of Engineering & Technology, The Mobile Consultancy

Informa’s Philippa Hobbs has written a comment on the "Mobile Web Device Report" that we published earlier today. She compares the relevance of Apple and Nokia devices for one of the cases from the German market that the report highlights. Her conclusion:

"It’s no surprise that Apple’s devices dominate the rankings. (...) But it is certainly not the case that in each individual market where the vendor’s devices are available it takes the biggest share of traffic. In Germany, the Nokia 6610i overtakes the iPod Touch, driving almost a quarter of total traffic to this particular website. Furthermore amongst the top ten devices in Germany driving traffic to this website, the Finnish vendor’s share almost matches Apple’s. In fact, Netbiscuits told me that if you take into account all unique devices detected, Nokia’s share is actually ahead of Apple’s by 2.3 percentage points, with a total of 38.6%, across 187 different models."

To download the report, pls. go to www.netbiscuits.com/mobile-device-report

To read Philippa's entier article, pls. click here.

Hi all

interesting article, which states that there was a dominance of apps, which in my view was never there, since our customers do always 20 times more traffic on their mobile websites than on any app. But its clear that the market prepares for te browser to win.

Best

BiscuitMonster

---

Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA), a global strategic market intelligence and advisory group, has issued a report predicting that device-neutral web applications will soon challenge single-platform native applications.

• Explosive growth in mobile web usage, such as for social media and mobile e-commerce
• Access to richer user experiences. New generation web apps will have access to native device features, such as global positioning services (GPS), cameras, Near Field Communications (NFC) as well as contacts and address books, within the next three years
• Preference to access popular content and services on any platform, such as laptops, smart phones and tablets such as the iPad.

• Architectural advantages in reaching users across multiple device platforms
• Greater distribution control
• Clear cost advantages
• Greater usage "stickiness"
• Faster go-to-market (often weeks quicker to deploy)

Clause 3.3.1 of the Terms of Service (ToS) that developers are required to sign in order to create Apple-approved applications for the App Store has been changed, to effectively ban the use of third party compilers that create cross-platform applications.

The changes and why were they made

To quote verbatim, the amended clause states that, “Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”

This means that developers must create their iPhone and iPod Touch applications using either a variant of the C programming language, or by using javascript. The applications must then be compiled directly from this code, thereby forcing any developers that wish to publish software on the App Store to write natively for the iPhone. They cannot use any third party development environments or toolkits that generate code for them, which could then be compiled into software for multiple potential mobile platforms.

The reason given by Apple is that allowing such ‘intermediate’ software layers to sit between the code and the finished application risks the creation of lower-quality or less-efficiently written apps. Presumably, Apple does not wish to have such potentially inferior applications diluting the quality of the content in the App Store. Furthermore (although it is pure speculation to suggest), maybe Apple feel that write-once publish-many tools risk the proliferation of ‘lowest common denominator’ applications, the functionality of which would be (at least) partially defined by the limitations of other operating systems. This could reduce the exclusivity of the applications written for the App Store and, thereby, the attractiveness of buying an iPhone versus handsets that use other operating systems.

Implications for mobile apps developers

Either way, the practical consequence of Apple’s decision is that development tools such as Adobe’s new CS5 and other popular utilities can no longer be used by App Store developers. While most end users and even most wireless industry participants will be unfamiliar with such software, numerous different third party utilities and tools have been used to create applications that are already hosted on the App Store today. Some of those apps have even become very popular and have been created by large, reputable software houses.

The implications of Apple’s decision for the mobile application developer community are that, having created their App Store apps, they then need to take their ideas and re-write them as needs be for other platforms, rather than being able to write once and publish to multiple platforms. So developers need to put in extra effort just to target the App Store user base. It also means that the advantages conferred on developers by labour-saving specialist development tools will be lost in the App Store applications they create.

One of the most crucial requirements for successful software development is the maximisation of creativity and inventiveness, often through the minimisation of the level of technical competency required. For example, visual development environments take a lot of the manual coding requirements out of the development process and mean that software can be written by people who are essentially designers rather than programmers. Natively coding the functionality that the aforementioned utilities enable would take far greater technical programming competency, time and expense - and could risk disenfranchising some developers from the App Store eco-system.

A hidden agenda?

The full reason why Apple took this decision has not been stated, considering that there had been no objection to the use of such non-apple-sanctioned software before. As well as due to the very obvious facts that there is no evidence that code compiled through ‘intermediate software layers’ invariably results in inferior apps; and that it is equally possible for developers to create inefficient, badly performing applications when writing natively for the App Store. Natively compiled code is no guarantee of application quality, as stated, the bulk of the ‘quality’ of a successful app resides in its concept and design, not in its programming.

A strong possibility for the real reason behind Apple’s decision is that the company intends to finally implement multitasking in the next version of the iPhone OS - and can only reliably do so with natively compiled applications. However, while multitasking on the iPhone mk4 seems certain to happen, this theory is again supposition. If it were true, however, then one could say that the ToS change was a move intended to protect consumers from having a bad end user experience with apps on their iPhone (or more importantly a bad end user experiene with the iPhone itself). Or it could be perceived as a move to stop applications compiled in other ways from showing up any embarrassing deficiencies in Apple’s new multitasking OS…

Of course, whatever the reason, it is Apple’s prerogative to change the ToS for their SDK and they have every right to make this decision. But maybe they should also remember that the interests of the software developers that create applications ‘for them’, i.e. for their product, extend beyond just the iPhone/iPod Touch. After all, the global installed base of mobile phones that the various versions of Apple’s iPhone accounts for is small – while the commercial market potential for the long-tail remainder is expected to be far greater; and it is this long tail that will be the ultimate target for mobile software developers.

Apple’s role in the industry

By creating an increasingly ‘walled’ developer community Apple are knowingly making the job of mobile application developers more difficult. The result of their ToS changes will take time to be seen. They could serve to promote the quality of App Store applications to the active detriment of the rest of the mobile applications market. Or they could backfire on Apple and only serve to weaken their attractiveness to developers. It has already been reported online that some developers have apparently decided to cease working on applications for the App Store because of the changes. But what is certain is that while the rest of the wireless communications industry is trying to foster interoperability and promote cross platform applications, Apple is seeking to ensure the separation of iPhone/iPod Touch application development.

Consequently, Apple’s attitude towards the developer community could be considered a disappointing one - and potentially says a lot about their interest and long-term commitment to the wireless communications industry. Namely that their involvement is solely for their benefit and that they are not interested in being an active and contributing member of the wider wireless communications eco-system. As they have no interest in enabling the promotion of the mobile application developer community beyond the development of the App Store-specific community. The App Store itself being a walled community that benefits no other party in the wireless telecommunication industry, besides Apple.

With all the telecommunications media attention that they receive it can be easy to forget that Apple is just a consumer electronics manufacturer, who happen to have one particular product, that happens to be a mobile phone. Their long-term commitment to the telecoms industry is not assured as their involvement in it is only one small portion of their overall business. Despite the fact that it is an industry that has provided a significant boost to Apple’s share price (not that I’m suggesting that any commercial company has an obligation to display ‘loyalty’ or ‘gratitude’ to any particular industry). Therefore is it really any wonder, for example, that they do not choose to have a presence at events like Mobile World Congress?

Web apps now more attractive than ever?

So, current developments do not seem to indicate that Apple for one is likely to contribute to any of the mobile applications interoperability initiatives and instead seem keen to reinforce the argument for the protectionism of proprietary implementations. But perhaps this in turn only goes to strengthen the argument that the solution to cross-platform mobile application interoperability lays outside of the realm of the OS anyway and in the (relatively) common ground of the browser?

The browser is already a native app for the respective OS of the phone it is installed upon. While all code executed through the browser uses web-based programming languages and is in essence just content being rendered through a generic application environment. Support for different types of content and for application functionality will be determined by the capability of each individual browser, which will require some logic on the server side on the part of the developers, in order to optimise application performance for different handsets. But there is a rich source of third party web development tools for developers to enjoy, in addition to which Apple’s SDK ToS does no apply to iPhone web apps…

The web is a guaranteed software development ground for the future - it is not something that is going to go away – unlike SDKs that are based on proprietary operating systems (even if those operating systems themselves are based on web technologies). At this early stage the business models for monetising web apps remain uncertain. But with carriers and handsets manufacturers needing to address device fragmentation there could be much to gain for mobile applications developers who, in the long term, choose to target more than just ’siloed’ communities of users. Communities wherein the agenda is being privately driven by a third party and where the terms of participation might only become yet more restrictive.

http://www.intelligencecentre.net/2010/04/19/changes-to-the-terms-of-apple%E2%80%99s-iphone-sdk-annoys-developers-serves-to-perpetuate-mobile-application-fragmentation-but-may-advance-the-argument-for-mobile-web-apps/

Just in case you missed this wonderful article published by Mickey Alam Khan last Monday, let me copy&paste it for you here again. Have fun & a great weekend!

Mickey Alam Khan is editor in chief of Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily and here is what he thinks about "Web vs. App".

That much seems clear from the tough line out of Apple headquarters: curated applications are better than the open Web. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon should not take that lying down.

While this publication and almost all media and tech geeks are big fans of Apple design and marketing genius, a line must be drawn when the message getting louder from Steve Jobs seems to be “my way or the highway.”

Take what Mr. Jobs told media last Thursday about search on mobile phones, for example: “Search is not where it’s at,” The New York Times reported him as saying. “People are not searching on a mobile device like they are on the desktop.”

Of course, consumers don’t search on mobile devices like they do on desktop or laptop computers – they search differently. But they do search. There is evidence backing that. Ask Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Mr. Jobs has been quoted extensively all over the place, commenting on his aversion to Adobe Flash – “It’s too buggy” – and dissing competition and picking up fights with them. He is following that old war saw: The art of defense is attack.

Apple senses that the competitive world it operates in is arrayed against it. From the direction of its devices – the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad – it is clearly seeking 100 percent control of hardware, software, content and transactions. In this process, the content producer becomes the mere filler for Apple’s vast meat grinder.

Fruit from the walled garden
It is ironic that in 2010 Apple is seeking to revisit AOL in 1993 with a walled-garden approach. Diverting traffic to its devices and through its portals, Apple is intent on becoming the ultimate arbiter of digital media.

In other words, Apple, with its applications, is bent on creating a parallel digital universe to the World Wide Web, where Apple-approved applications are perceived as superior to Web sites on mobile and non-mobile devices.

That is a troubling development for the future of open commerce and free speech – if consumers buy into the Apple-curated-content school of thought. Surely smart minds at all Internet and multichannel marketers understand that threat to their ability to maneuver online without a vetting process.

We can expect more news from Google and Microsoft in the next few months, most likely with their own applications and Web upgrades. But these players must up their game if they want to stay relevant in digital media.

Apple’s messaging, marketing and products are highly seductive to consumers – one button away from solving life’s problems. But be wary of that siren call. To confuse an interactive strategy with an Apple strategy is the quickest way to disintermediation.

Take a few examples of where this has happened with other online companies.

Book publishers are completely beholden to Amazon for moving their merchandise. Advertisers have few options other than Google – thank God for Microsoft’s Bing – for search advertising. And yes, record labels can’t survive without iTunes – an Apple invention.

Do publishers want to visit a scenario where consumers cannot read their products before paying a toll at the Apple gate? Do retailers want to surrender all buyer transaction data to Apple – if the electronics company is the payments gateway? Do marketers want to wait for Apple approval on all ads appearing on applications?

Message must click through
It is now incumbent on the leading Web players to explain why the open Web is still relevant or as good – or even better – than an applications experience. It is for them to prove to consumers why the World Wide Web is still the best place for content, commerce, communications and entertainment.

Benign tyranny must never be the excuse for perfect customer experience. Better the slight imperfections in the system than the loss of freedom to enter the market, grow it and exit it at will or under contest.

Time is running out for marketers and Internet companies to make the case for an open digital environment and for the free Web as we know it, online and mobile. Failure to act will convince consumers that applications are the better option, and not the complement, to the Web.

When Mr. Jobs dismissed search on mobile, Google executives should have had the chutzpah to retort: Then Apple should disable the search function on iPhones and iPads. Better still, why bother with the Safari browser on both devices – who needs the Web anyway?

The F-word is constantly coming up in mobile! Here is a new article published by FierceDeveloper on the latest fragmentation issues among Android devices.

Interestingly, it says that “Google will begin decoupling some standard applications and components from the Android platform's core and make them downloadable and updatable through Android Market, meaning consumers must no longer wait for manufacturer firmware updates or operator approval when Google or its developer partners revamp their software.”

That’s a great idea, as it gives the user the power over the OS of his or her device. But it’ll be a challenge also for Google to explain the advantages of their OS version over the manufacturer-installed OS version for each and every single Android device. And I doubt that handset manufacturers in general will appreciate Google’s step very much.

Our conclusion is simple: Fragmentation is a reality that can’t be eliminated. So you have to find the best way to live with it. And that is Netbiscuits, of course... ;-)

BTW, I just heard that Microsoft will shortly enter the handset manufacturer market (with the help of Sharp). So articles on Microsoft device fragmentation can already be drafted!

TechCrunch guest author Richard Wong, a venture capitalist with Accel Partners, an investor in AdMob, GetJar, and SunRun, and a former mobile industry executive, published an excellent article on a question that comes up very frequently. His recommendation is simple: Find the best way to deal with the complexity that characterizes the mobile space and don't wait, but start now! Thank you, Richard, we wouldn't have been able to put it any better!