Apple App Store and Google Play downloads, 2008 - 2013
This week, both Apple and Google have released new download numbers for their mobile app stores. Apple has served 50 billion app downloads, while Google is just behind with 48 billion downloads. These are huge numbers and both growth curves are remarkable, even though it certainly looks like Google Play soon will surpass the App Store in terms of total downloads.
From Nexus One to Nexus 10 | Ars Technica
A look back at all of Google’s developer-centric Android reference hardware.
PC Shipments Post the Steepest Decline Ever | IDC
New market report from IDC:
Worldwide PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), down -13.9% compared to the same quarter in 2012.
At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market.
Windows 8 might not have been the injection Microsoft was looking for, and the OS definitely has its quirks, but I still think the strategy behind it was/is the company’s best bet. It might however arrived a year too late. The decrease in PC sales is not (only) because of whether or not Windows 8 is good or bad, it has more to do with the increasing impact of smartphones and tablets. People need full blown PCs less often. According to this report, it’s not just Windows machines that are taking a beating, Apple’s OSX PC sales are down as well.
This training wheel year for Windows 8 devices should have come a year earlier. Now, Microsoft needs to get its OS on more affordable, more lightweight and better tablets and hybrids a.s.a.p. That’s where the company (and all Windows OEMs) so far have failed. With a somewhat tablet ready OS as Windows 8 (and Windows RT), the company at least has a chance. But we will have to see some actual Windows 8/RT equipped devices that can compete head-on with iPads (and Android tablets) in terms of specs, user experience, mobility, quality app-selection AND price very soon, otherwise the race may be lost. You can no longer sell devices more expensively just because they offer “the full Windows experience”. This is to many consumers a turn off, not a turn on.
Lenovo, with some nice Windows 8 products under its belt, has managed to beat the market and shows 13% growth in the US compared to the same quarter last year. Total numbers for the worldwide market are a little less impressive: the company records a stagnation and has shipped the same number of devices as in Q1 2012.
HTC First video review | The Verge
I like the understated design of the HTC First*. And Facebook Home looks snappy and kind of attractive with a few useful additions to Android. And maybe more importantly, it can be completely turned off for a stock Android 4.1 experience.
*Aka: “No, this is not the Facebook Phone, but it’s a Facebook phone”.
The 12 Cellphones That Changed Our World Forever | Wired
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the cell phone, Wired goes through 12 groundbreaking mobile devices. One thing that strikes me when seeing this and other posts covering the cell phone time line, is that it’s not just Apple that has gone stale in terms of hardware form factor innovation.
After the introduction of the iPhone, the industry, and we users, just settled for the big touchscreen slab. Now, new designs just mean different screen sizes and more or less bezel. And until Google Now, Siri and other alternative data input methods get reliable enough, I think we’re stuck. But if the emerging wearable tech trend takes off, it will speed up the improvement of the quality and reliability of voice input rapidly. Which in turn will spur form factor innovation even further. Looking forward to it.
A few points on the Samsung Galaxy S4
Shiny plastics aside*, the soap bar design of the Samsung Galaxy S4 seems to be very, very size effective. The S4 really makes a case for that 5 inch phones are totally manageable. The phone has about the same dimension as the 4.7 inch — already tightly designed — HTC One, and just slightly larger than the 4.5 inch Nexus 4 and the 4.2 inch Blackberry Z10. The Galaxy S4 is the second slimmest phone of the current top players, beaten only by the iPhone 5, but it still manages to include the largest battery. The Blackberry’s bezel size as well as its hardware specs are starting to look very last gen. And the device has barely hit the stores. The Galaxy’s soft round corners and back should also make the device easy to slip in and out of your pockets. Even though the difference in design from last year’s S3 is small, I think the impossible thin bezels of the new S4 makes the design pop and come into its own.
I don’t know how much of a difference the increase from 720p to 1080p on 4.5-5 inch screens really makes in real life usage, but I know one thing all these 1080p Android phones are doing very effectively: They make the iPone’s 640p screen look very long in the tooth. Again, I don’t know how much you gain in real life usage, but the difference on paper is now disturbingly big.
PenTile pixel arrangement. Really, Samsung?
Much have been said about Samsung moving away from Android, but the Galaxy S4 it still very much an Android device. Even though Samsung goes a long way to embed a lot of software and hardware features in order to make it stand out from the crowd. Btw, the ability to easily implement brand differentiation was one of the biggest factors why Android got its widespread adoption in the first place. It’s a platform feature. Which might, or might not get out of hand. But more on that another time. With that being said, I don’t have too high hopes for all of these Samsung services, The company’s software services are usually kind of gimmicky and/or poorly implemented. That health tracker do however look interesting.
Glove enabled touch as in the Nokia Lumia 920 is a welcome addition. So is wireless charging.
It will be interesting to see how the camera performs against the iPhone 5, HTC One and the Lumia 920.
Latest available version of Android from the get go. Nice work.
I’ve actually seen some LAG in a couple of hands-on videos of the device. Has Samsung gone overboard with Touchwiz and the added features and somehow ruined project butter? I played with an old Galaxy S2 with Android 4.1 the other day, and it didn’t lag at all.
*Some of you have misunderstood how I feel about plastics. I have nothing against plastics, it’s a great material. But I think that there’s good and bad plastics, and Samsung often use very thin, cheap feeling and shiny plastics. Which I don’t like. But given the popularity of the Galaxy line of devices, I’m clearly in the minority. Even so, I believe Samsung has succeeded in spite of the shiny plastics, not because of it.
60 billion mobile apps where downloaded in 2012
Google Play and the Apple App Store together accounted for nearly 40 billion of the total 60 billion mobile app downloads in 2012. The rest of the downloads were mostly Android downloads from third party Chinese app stores. The mobile app market mirrors the smartphone hardware market: The largest volumes come from Android, while most of the money comes from iOS. One important difference. When it comes to apps, developers — not the hardware vendors — take the lion share of the money.
A few good outtakes from the Berg Insight report:
Revenues from applications, including direct revenues and in-app ad revenues, reached € 6.4 billion in 2012. Apple’s App Store is the clear leader in monetisation of mobile apps and will keep the number one position during the forecast period.
Third party app stores pushed Android to become the leading platform in terms of app downloads during 2012. While many Western third party app stores are struggling, the situation is different in other parts of the world. Third party app stores are especially popular in China and other markets where Google Play hasn’t become the default on-device app store.
Every app can find its own way to success, but common strategies today among many of the top revenue generating app developers are to publish apps featuring a social layer on more than one platform using free to download monetisation.
Like almost no other digital product, mobile apps represent a global opportunity with more or less instant worldwide distribution.
For those of you with extra interest in this market, the summary of the report contains pretty detailed data on download numbers, revenue split between direct and in-direct (ad) revenues, Google Play and Apple App Store revenues etc.
Source: Berg Insight, report summary (pdf-link)
75 million iOS devices were sold in the last quarter of 2012 (and 4.3 million were iPod Touches)
Never mind all the corporate economics, Apple makes a lot of money, but can’t keep growing like crazy forever and ever, I get it (read about it here). Do mind this: 75 million mobile computers were sold in one quarter by one company. It’s of course great for the company selling them. But it’s also very good news for developers targeting the iOS platform. Here you have 75 million new devices out of which the most low-end device has a responsive 326 ppi 3.5 inch touch screen. To put the 75 million devices in some perspective: Android do have traction, no question about it. But what about the third platform? Windows Phone is fighting to get it. WP7 was announced 3 years ago and the first phone came out in the fall of 2010. There are now roughly 30 million WP7+WP8 users. On a good day. Again: 75 million iOS devices were sold in the last quarter alone, on the platform that currently serves both most downloads and is generating the highest revenue per downloaded app. Android is definitely improving, but no wonder most mobile developers still have an “iOS first” strategy. Bonus info: We got a rare insight on how many iPod Touches were sold, so let’s break it down:
Total iOS devices sold in the last quarter: 75 million
iPhones: 47.8 million (50% iPhone 5s and 25% iPhone 4 and 4S respectively?)
iPads: 22.9 million
iPod Touches: 75-(47.8+22.9) = 4.3 million representing 34 % of total iPod sales in the quarter.
So now, all we have to do is to come up with a great app that stands out from the other 800,000 in the App Store. Damn, there’s always something, isn’t it?
Picture: Wikipedia
IKEA Google TV in 2013?
Asus, Hisense, TCL and others will show products with Google TV launching in the coming weeks. Existing partners like LG, Vizio, Sony, and others will show off the newest Google TV platform that makes finding what you want faster and easier. Combined, these set-top boxes, integrated TVs, and IPTV boxes with Google TV are available from 9 partners across 10 countries around the world.
Google TV may not be the solution we hoped for to our smart TV problems, but it’s certainly better than most proprietary, vendor specific solutions out there. Btw, Hisense and TCL, which we haven’t heard too much about before are more interesting than you might think: Both are large Chinese white label TV vendors. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a decent Google TV experience in your noname TV from Target? One interesting partner of TCL is IKEA, which launched its Uppleva range of TVs last year. The Uppleva TVs actually have some (awful) smart TV functionality already today. So hopefully, Uppleva 2.0 will ship with Google TV instead.
Apple App Store vs Google Play: Daily direct app revenues
Distimo — 2012 year in review:
Although the growth of Google Play in the past four months is close to that of the Apple App Store in 2012, it is important to remember the absolute values in the Apple App Store were already much higher. The growth in the Apple App Store was higher than the total daily revenues in Google Play when comparing absolute daily revenue values.
This gives some perspective. But direct revenues are improving for Android apps. It’s also worth remembering that download numbers are huge on both platforms which can be nice if your main revenue channel is in-app ads, which revenues are not included in the graph.
On tech in general and mobile in particular.
