News tagged ‘applications’

ABI Research, which tracks mobile application downloads and revenues segmented by mobile operating system platform, announced in a press release on Wednesday that 3 billion applications designed specifically for Apple's iPad were downloaded via App Store since the iPad first launched in 2010. The iPad downloads represent 19 percent of all iOS App Store downloads.

"Discounting all of those apps that were originally downloaded for Android smartphones, Android still trails greatly behind the iPad in terms of its tablet app offerings," research associate Lim Shiyang said. "Many Android tablets in the market are still using older versions of Android, which disadvantages users from enjoying the better effects of apps produced from more advanced software development kits."

As of the third quarter of 2011 there are 120,000 applications created specifically for the iPad were available on the App Store, comparing with last June numbers that accounted 100,000 applications. The growth of iPad-specific applications and downloads of iPad software is comparable to the explosive start the iPhone had when the App Store first opened.

The latest figures from Net Applications show that Apple closed out 2011 with a commanding 52.1 percent share of mobile devices tracked browsing the Web.  In second place was Java ME with 21.3 percent, while Google's Android came in third with just 16.2 percent.

Apple's share slid from 54 percent in November of 2011, and is down from its high of 61.5 percent in October. But it's also up from the 46.6 percent share iOS was tracked at in February of 2011. Coming in fourth in the data was Nokia's Symbian platform, with 5.8 percent, while Research in Motion's BlackBerry holds 3.5 percent. Interestingly, while sales of new BlackBerry devices have been weak, December of 2011 proved to be the best month of the year for RIM.

If dividing Apple’s devices shares in mobile web-browsing, the iPhone took 25.2 percent and leads all mobile devices. The iPad, though, was the second most popular device, with a 24.5 percent representation.

In the PC market Apple’s Macs platform finished with 6.4 percent in December of 2011 comparing with the 92.2 percent share Microsoft held with Windows. Windows XP, despite being 10 years old, is still leading the market with 46.5 percent. Windows 7 is in second with 37 percent, while Windows Vista holds 8.44 percent. As for Apple's Mac OS X, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard platform remains its most popular at 3 percent, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, released in July, closed out 2011 with a 2 percent share in December.

In the first 20 days of December, mobile device activations tracked by analytics firm Flurry were around 1.5 million each day. As for December 25, it indicated that devices running Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms saw a huge spike in activations, growing 353 percent from average totals earlier in December. The previous record tracked by Flurry belongs to Christmas Day in 2010. On December 25, 2010 the users activated 2.8 million devices.

Flurry's statistics come from the company's analytics software, which is found in more than 140,000 applications. Peter Farago, vice president of marketing with Flurry, claimed that his company's statistics detect "roughly" 100 percent of new iOS and Android devices activated each day. Application downloads on both iOS and Android also grew by 125 percent on Christmas Day, reaching 242 million. For the first 20 days of December, downloads averaged 108 million.

Flurry expects that by the end of the year 2011 Apple's App Store will exceed 10 billion application downloads. Moreover, iOS applications rake in 300 percent more revenue than their Android counterparts. During Apple’s last quarterly earnings conference call Apple has not revealed daily iOS activations in over a year, but announced that more than 250 million iOS devices had been sold during the quarter.

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The new study entitled iPad Usage Patterns On-the-Go and at Work from the Software Usability Research Laboratory was highlighted on Thursday by Jim Dalrymple of The Loop. A new survey has found that an overwhelming majority of iPad owners (83.65 percent) were satisfied with the iPad, while 62 percent ranked Apple's device as "excellent," 10 percent said "best imaginable," and 21 percent said "good."

The survey was also aimed at finding out how people are using Apple’s tablet. 52 percent of participants reported they carry their iPad only when traveling, while 21 percent carry their iPad every time they go out, and 17 percent only carry it on them for work.

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According to a new job application published by Apple this week and discovered by AppleInsider, the company is looking to hire someone for the position of iCloud Application Developer. That means that the company is already looking to improve iCloud service with new applications for the iPhone and iPad. The iCloud umbrella of services was launched in October to replace Apple's previous cloud-based option, MobileMe.

"The iCloud team is looking for a proactive, creative-minded (engineer) to build the next generation of cocoa-based client applications that integrate tightly with a set of cloud based services," the listing reads.

The position requires someone who will develop both new and existing iPhone and iPad applications for iCloud services. Though it offers no indication of what those applications might be, it notes that employees will "build products that people want to use every day."

Apple is expected to add in iCloud a proprietary mapping service from Apple. Moreover, there are a lot of rumors concerning that Apple is building its own mapping and location services for iOS.

We already reported that Apple is working on "HiDPI" modes in OS X Lion for supporting ultra high-resolution displays to achieve image quality that is seen on the iPhone with "Retina" display.

With new claims that Apple is set to release a new 15" MacBook Pro offering a resolution of 2880x1800 early next year, Apple's work on its HiDPI software support has also been gaining renewed attention. By doubling the resolution in each dimension over the existing 1440x900 MacBook Pro, Apple would achieve four times the number of pixels and provide developers with an easy way to scale existing artwork.

Evidence of Apple work on HiDPI was found in developer builds of OS X 10.7.3, with the "Get Info" window for applications seeing the addition of an "Open in HIDPI mode" checkbox, though it is not functional. Despite the fact that with yesterday's release of Build 11D36 to developers, Apple has now removed that checkbox from the "Get Info" window, it indicates that Apple is indeed likely actively working on the feature.

Research in Motion is struggling now for its share of the mobile market. But the price of  its stocks is getting lower and lower, so the company is worth less than the estimated value of just Apple's App Store. An analysis from Trefis' Brian S. Hall notes that at a price of $13.44, RIMM stock finished last week at a total value of just $7.04 billion, less than the $7.08 billion that Apple's App Store is estimated to be worth. As for the whole Apple company, AAPL stock has a market cap of $354 billion, or more than 50 times greater than RIMM.

"The App Store is probably worth more than BlackBerry," Hall wrote. "All of BlackBerry. Just the App Store. Nothing else. Not the iPhone or iPod. Not Mac. Just the App Store."

App Store is now one of the key components of Apple’s success. Just a year of Apple's iTunes Store and App Store’s operation costs Apple $1.3 billion, but last year only developers received $2.5 billion in payments in the App Store. According to a last week report, iOS applications bring in 300 percent more revenue than their Android counterparts.

RIM's stock has been showing decline in the price since the company announced last week that BlackBerry shipments reduced year over year while the company managed to ship just 150,000 PlayBook tablets last quarter. Moreover the company delayed the release of its next-generation smartphone operating system, BlackBerry 10, until the second half of 2012.

On Monday Apple revealed that over 100 million downloads were made via its Mac App Store in less than one year of availability.

"In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world."

There are now more than 500,000 applications in App Stores for iOS and the Mac that were downloaded more than 18 billion times. More than one billion applications are downloaded per month there. Noteworthy, Apple Stores helped developers achieved success with their applications. Here some comments from the developers whose applications are now available in the Mac App Store.

"The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle," said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. "Offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition."

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Nikkei Business reports that Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has reached a basic agreement with Apple on releasing an LTE-capable (able to connect to long-term evolution 4G high-speed data networks) iPad in the summer of 2012 with an LTE iPhone to follow in the fall.

Earlier this month it was reported that executives with the wireless carrier were said to have visited the U.S. in mid-November to talk with Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, but DoCoMo was hesitant to agree to Apple's demands on unit volume and its refusal to allow the carrier to add its own applications to the device.

Nevertheless, NTT DoCoMo has denied the report in a press release, stating there is "no basic agreement" in place with Apple.

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Semi-tethered jailbreak is already available for some devices for both iOS 5 and iOS 5.0.1. But we all want untethered jailbreak and we want jailbreak for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. So why not help hackers to find new exploits and vulnerabilities?

The Chronic Dev-Team has a released a tool to collect crash reports from iOS devices in order to find vulnerabilities that could lead to an untethered jailbreak.

The idea is very simple. When your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch crashes it sends data to Apple (you can turn it this off though). Apple uses these reports to update iOS in the future. By the way, it also uses them to fix exploits found by jailbreakers. P0sixninja says that Apple closed several exploits they have found in IOS 5 beta before the final version of the software was released.

In order to find more vulnerabilities as fast as possible, the team has developed a tool which will copy the crash reports from your device and analyze them to locate potential exploits. The tool will also remove the crash reports from your device and modify your iTunes installation to prevent uploading of that diagnostic information to Apple.

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According to Bloomberg’s report, Apple launched a new class of offerings in App Store, by allowing game development studio Big Fish Games to offer its titles to iPad users on a subscription basis. Such offerings could be a new revenue stream for game publishers and new option for users, which was earlier available only for digital publications. Bloomberg reports:

“Big Fish Games, a Seattle-based game publisher, won approval from Apple to become the first to offer users access to dozens of titles for $6.99 a month. Until now, games have only been available one at a time, requiring users to download individual applications”.

The option will be available through a dedicated Big Fish app where subscribers can gain unlimited access to such games as “Mahjong Towers” and “Mystery Case Files” series.

Games that can be accessed through the subscription service are streamed to an iPad from Big Fish Games’ data centers and initially they will require Wi-Fi access to be played.

The standard subscription package from the game publisher will be offered for $4.99 a month, increasing to $6.99 monthly subscription early next year when more titles can be accessed through the app. Also the company will offer a free ad-supported option to play up to 30 minutes per day.

Marketing firm BlueKai compiled the profile of the typical iPad buyer. So, a typical iPad owner is male, has pets and buys video games. Scientists or health care workers, international travelers, apartment dwellers and proponents of organic food are also among those people who are highly likely to purchase the iPad. The firm also found that vitamin takers, domestic business travelers, married couples and college graduates are typically owners of the iPad.

BlueKai created an infographic (below) to reflect its findings, including information received from other research firms. According to comScore, 45.9 percent of tablet owners belong to households earning $100,00 per year or more, while Nielsen has discovered that 70 percent of all iPad use occurs in front of a TV.

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In October research company Nielsen conducted a new survey among 3,000 U.S. children at the age from 6 to 12 ahead of 2011 holiday season, and found out that the iPad is the most-wanted gift for kids, while the iPod touch ranks second and the iPhone comes in third. 44 percent of kids are interested in getting an iPad, 30 percent want an iPod touch, while 27 percent prefer to get an iPhone.

Apple's popularity among children is likely driven by gaming, as the most popular applications on iOS have consistently been games since the App Store first debuted. The iOS lineup beat out a number of popular gaming machines in the survey, including the Nintendo 3DS, Kinect for Xbox 360, and the Sony PlayStation 3.

The iPad dominates among teenagers: 24 percent of those polled said they are interested in buying an iPad in the next six months. Apple's iPhone is in the seventh place with 15 percent, while iPod touch is in twelfth with 8 percent.

TUAW reports that a developer John Heaton have found some hooks (showed above) in the iOS code suggesting that additional instant messaging or iChat-like services could be supported in iOS devices. Such integration would allow people who own iPad, iPod touch, iPhone or Mac to exchange messages with each other.

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Smartphones can be useful for doing many things, especially for management of personal information. If you regularly deal with business cards, you likely found specialized applications that allow you to effortlessly scan any business card to create a new contact entry on your device. The App Store has dozens of such apps as iPhone’s Business Card Reader from Shape Services.

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