When companies like the mobile advertising pioneer Smaato showed off their product at long-forgotten Symbian Smartphone Shows, the average pundit did not expect ads to become a significant part of the financing of mobile applications.
However, the situation has changed and the voice of the market has spoken. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that the long-running “Cannes lion” advertising festival now has a category of its own for all things related to mobile:
Not much to add here…
When it comes to apps being downloaded, the mobile market’s growth has led to some apps being downloaded literally millions of times. Sadly, the “average” developer has seen rather little of this trend.
The folks from InnerActive have now sent us the following chart:
Not much to add here…
When looking at the recent flurry of media reports about apps stealing more or less “useless” data about random individuals, I sometimes wondered if we are looking at a redux of “internet addiction”. After all, the data of a random user sitting in a random country, well, you get the idea…
I have now found the following in my inbox. To save you the reading effort, it is from a company which offers me a list of Android users to spam at will:
Hi,
Greetings of the day, I was reviewing your website and thought might be intrested in our Android Users database , by which you can expand your reach and widen your client base. We mantian 1.2 Million contacts with complete information.
We have an exclusive database of verified contacts by Industry, Job Titles and Geography…
Data Quality and Details:
Data Fields: Contact Name, Company name, Job Title, Website, Industry, SIC Code, Email address, Direct mail address, Telephone number, Revenue Size, Employee Size, etc.
Last date of data update: 24th Feb 2012
Acceptance rate: 100% permission based contacts
Usage License: Once you purchase the list you can use it for multiple times, no restrictions
Multi-Channel Marketing: The list can be used for Email Marketing, Direct Mail Marketing, Fax Marketing and Tele Marketing
Accuracy Guarantee: 90% accuracy on data
Legal Compliance: WE are in compliance with the CAN SPAM Act, 2003 and DMA
Please let me know your thoughts towards procuring or using our Android Users Email List.
To Your Success!
Urp Burp
Business Development Coordinator
Any other “innovative” ideas for snooped data, anyone?
This one goes out to all those of you interested in Apps on TV – Samsung, the incumbent in this market, has recently released a small update to its SDK which mainly fixes the advertising component.
The release announcement reads as following:
Samsung SMART TV team is pleased to release the SDK 3.1.1 version
The SDK 3.1.1 had solved the banner problem of In-App Ads from SDK 3.1.0.
If you try to develop the function of In-App Ads, use the SDK 3.1.1.
The install file URL about SDK 3.1.1 (you can see the information about this version):
http://www.samsungdforum.com/Devtools/Sdkdownload
The document URL about SDK 3.1.1 :
http://www.samsungdforum.com/Guide/GuideList
Not much to add here…
Some time ago, Fujitsu captured the attention of the press by demoing a dual screen phone concept. Sadly, we never heard again from this handset.
However, the booth of the Japanese ACME company NEC contained the following surprise:
It is described as following:
Given that NEC handsets almost never make it to Europe, I am not too positive re ever getting this handset into my hands – stay tuned for further info as we get it!
As always, we try to give you information on the scheduling of next year’s Mobile World Congress – as we have stated before, it will remain in Barcelona.
As can be seen from the picture below, it will be held from the 25th to the 28th of February:
So, good booking!
When Palm first introduced webOS, many developers were wondering why in the name of god the company had chosen HTML5 as its application development platform.
Mozilla now plans to go along the same route with its Boot to Gecko product. It was demoed on a modified Galaxy SII:
The idea behind it is to break the “locked” relationship between developer and app store:
The most interesting feature: press the menu button to see the source code of the page:
The boys also showed off a little 3D demo involving a smoothly rotating skull. Given the power of the underlying hardware, this is not too surprising:
A little demo video, for completeness’s sake:
Given that the product is intended for ultra low end handsets (600MhZ, 256MB of RAM) and that Telefonica plans to release such a handset by the end of the year, things could become interesting…
P.S. Just in case anyone wonders: they still advertise FireFox for Android:
Last year, dual core smartphones were all the rage – after LG dropped its Optimus 2X, 60 million devices followed suite.
At the MWC, we now see the first quad core handsets. As all of them run on Android, please visit our sister site to find out more:
http://tamsandroid.tamoggemon.com/2012/02/quad-core-parade-mobile-world-congress-2012/
The Mobile World Congress saw the initial announcement of bada – some years ago, almost all of the Samsung booth was dedicated to the first-generation Wave handset.
This time, the booth was huge as always – but the bada demo consisted of nothing except for this desk with two Wave III phones:
They were described as following:
The back was taken up by two Omnia W devices:
Even though Samsung did hold a developer day at the congress, not a single of the developer / service booths advertising bada services were around this time.
Finally, a little video showing the bada part of the booth:
Sadly, it looks like bada is not too much of a focus for Samsung at MWC 2012 – compared to the huge investments of space in the last years, there are byut two phones here this time.
What this means, one can not assess – but for this MWC, the Galaxy brand clearly had the focus.
When it comes to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, you must always expect some organizational eekers. This time, the fun started on day one – fiest your eyes on these:
Building collapse
While taking by the VodaFone pavilion, a large crowd watched hectic evacuations:
.JPG "Funny stuff at MWC 2012 – day 1")
The reason: the building was not stable, and had to be reinforced. As if one couldn’t have known THAT in advance:
Security, my a$$
But the real GAU came later. The Congress takes great pride in pestering everyone who enters the venue, to check ID, etc etc.
But it looks like the security was not good enough – Microsoft, for sure, didn’t place this ad for exotic services into its giveaway basket:
.JPG "Funny stuff at MWC 2012 – day 1")
Stay tuned – further funny stuff comes as it is witnessed!
In desktop computing, it is now difficult to find a single-core processor. In smartphones, the situation is not quite as strict – but dual core CPUs are catching on fast.
Berg Insight has sent us the following, interesting bit of data:
Preliminary data from Berg Insight show that sales of high-end smartphones equipped with dual-core application processors reached 60 million units worldwide in 2011. The first smartphones with dual-core processors were unveiled at the beginning of 2011 with sales starting in February 2011. One year later, at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, several handset vendors are expected to announce their first smartphones with quad-core processors. As quad-core processors gradually find their way into high-end devices, adoption of dual-core processors will accelerate in the mid-range smartphone segment.
Looking back at the time of the introduction of HT-capable CPUs, quite a few applications experienced race conditions due to the new “paralellism”. So, definitely test your app on a dual core phone…
Dear Readers,
thanks to a total power grid failure by NS HighSpeed, my train which was scheduled to arrive in Amsterdam at 9h25 has arrived only at like 13h00.
But, I am here now:
DevCon Europe Reporting starts soon – visit our sister site TamsBlackBerry to find out more:
http://tamsblackberry.tamoggemon.com
When it comes to mobile advertising, it is now difficult to find an ad-free free app on platforms like Android and iOS. For many, this seems to compensate at least somewhat for the loss of sales in “classic” business models.
As for the ad market overall, the folks from the advertising firm inneractive have just sent us the following, pretty interesting diagram:
What do you think?
In the good old days of the Palm OS, the main issue faced by Palm was the odd resultion: a base resolution of 160×160 made scaling to more “common” resolutions was difficult.
Apple has had a similar problem with its 480×320 resolution, but managed to follow it up. Samsung is now at 800×480, and the question is what will follow next (and what is technically possible).
A PR company has now sent me the following:
MicroOLED, a maker of highly power-efficient superior image quality microdisplays for near-to-eye applications, today introduced a new 5.4 million pixel density 0.61 inch diagonal, low power consumption OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Display) microdisplay on silicon for applications demanding high picture quality, such as professional camera and camcorder equipment, night vision systems and head-mounted displays used in surgery.
The ultra-compact 5.4 million-pixel microdisplay with a sub-pixel pitch of 4.7 micrometres by 4.7 micrometres is the highest pixel density OLED microdisplay available today. By doubling the pixel density of comparable products, MicroOLED has eliminated the gap between pixels. With no black matrix present, the resulting image resolution is of the highest quality. This makes the 5.4 million-pixel 0.61 inch diagonal microdisplay most suitable for defense, medical and professional camera applications that demand sharp images with very smooth transitional tones.
As of this writing, no data on availability is given – but it looks like the resolution war can continue!
An article from Forbes – inaccurately titled How China Ate Android – is currently making circles all over Nokia employee’s Twitter streams.
It contains the following passage, which is highlighted by the Nokia folks:
How is it possible the mid-tier Android vendors cannot eke out revenue growth with that kind of global Android unit explosion still going on?
The most likely explanation is the rapid expansion of the low-cost Android phone vendors, particularly ZTE and Huawei. I
Sadly, they fail to read on – as it contains the following passage, also:
… they are also eyeing other device segments. ZTE’s Windows model Tania is debuting in the UK at the monthly contract rate of 10 pounds – half of what the Nokia 710 will cost.
If you ask me, Nokia would have fared best with a proper version of Symbian – with Android being the second best. The reason for this has been outlined here before: while Windows Phone 7 is a nice platform, it is, by design, unsuitable for creating high end phones.
However, all the eeking and squeaking mainly takes place in the mid-range area. High-end Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Note have little to fear from Chinese manufactutrers – they prefer the cushier mid- and low-range markets to the cold winds faced in the profitable, but challenging high-end market.
Let’s quote Winston Churchill: “I am not a person to be prodded. If anything, I am the prod”.
Sadly, Nokia has all but given up that position. So, better invest in impact dampers – and get aquainted to that prod…
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