Boy, is the iPod Touch SWEET!

Here’s an interesting piece of news for you! Apparently, the iPod Touch is the driving force behind Apple’s 2 billion+ app downloads! According to Admob, for every 1 app downloaded on the iPhone, 1.8 apps are downloaded on the iPod Touch! And here’s the breakdown of iPod Touch users. I love it when marketers try to define age groups. According to comScore and Flurry Analytics iPod Touch users are defined by:

Lots of teen angst. 69% are between 13-24 years and are primarily characterized as teen centric.

Less cash. Only 66% have at least 25K annual income.

Zeal for fashion and gadgets. More likely to be in the market for mobile, clothes, TV’s and other consumer electronics.

Voraciously share their lives. Made up of heavy MySpace, Facebook and SMS users

Of course, one thing both devices have in common is machismo, depending on which industry report you read they are 65-70%+ male.

And what are the implications of this 13-24 age group? Well, it is widely known that teenagers love all shiny things, but get bored of them quite quickly. Thus, they are not loyal app users!

AppManifesto suggest that one option marketers have is to create a “explicitly design a throwaway app”. I find several problems with this. First, marketers aren’t the ones creating apps – developers are. Second of all, SO THIS IS WHY THERE ARE SO MANY MIND-NUMBINGLY STUPID APPS OUT THERE!! If app markets is to ever find clarity and value, the answer isn’t to pour more useless apps into it.

This has been a great week for the iPod Touch – there was an article written earlier by VentureBeat saying that the iPod Touch is building the next generation of iPhone users. Good job, iPod Touch! You are faithfully building Apple’s empire. Google, step it up!

Appulous is finally up… nvm.

I am relatively new to the whole app thing and thus, had never heard of Appulous until I happened across a link one night. “The solution to a flawed iPhone App Store”, it read. “How curious!” I exclaimed! HOWEVER, I was unable to find exactly what the solution was, as the site was protected by a troll bridge (as the site moved to a new server)! The questions were all beyond my knowledge and research abilities and so the question remained a mystery until last night, when I randomly clicked on the link again and ABRACADABRA I was taken to a troll bridge-less site!

The solution is quite good. Find downloadable previews of apps to test them out before you pay a fortune for them at the app store. Content generated by its huge network of users.

Alas, the troll bridge has been put up again! For good reason, I suppose – the site was a little laggy last night, still. In the meantime, I’ll keep checking! Major updates are said to be coming to the site to make it more functional for users.

Butt out of the way, gaming developers. Apple’s coming in!

Woe to all iPhone developers out there. It seems that Apple has recently become more certain about developing their own iPhone and iTouch game applications. Suddenly, the post I read yesterday that asked whether the iPhone could be considered a serious gaming device (here) seems all the more relevant.

For the record, I said it wasn’t. The iPhone tries to be everything, which makes it not that great at anything. It’d be great for small games to play while you kill time, but I believe that beyond that, it can’t really stand against the PSP or DSi. Of course, I will eat my words if I am proved wrong.

But there are those out there that believe that iPhone represents a significant threat. id Software’s John Carmack says,

“I think mid- to long-term it’s a significant threat,” he says.  “I don’t carry a DS or a PSP around, but I’ve got my iPhoen [sic] everywhere.  So if it plays good games, I’m less likely to pick one of the others up. … I think the stars could align and it could start to eclipse those other systems in terms of unit sales.”

Plausible, but doesn’t the same concept apply to cameras? Sure, the best camera is the one on you – I still find myself whipping out my cell phone with its measly 1.3 megapixels because it’s the only camera on me, but it doesn’t mean that I would throw away my cameras even if I found myself with a 5 megapixel camera phone. The iPhone has way too many limitations to be a serious gaming platform and it isn’t plausible for Apple to ramp up its platform to turn it into more of a gaming device. OR MAYBE IT IS! I DON’T KNOW! Also, all I know is that I tried to play ngmoco’s Eliminate game…

…and could not get over how limited the controls were. I kept standing in one place and getting shot at… and dying. “BAH!” I said, “where is my real gaming console!” Or maybe that’s just me being an old geezer out of touch with today’s technology.Well if anything, iPhone developers are soon going to have a hell of a lot more competition soon.

Read the whole article, it’s pretty interesting. Has a quote from Steve Jobs about how he started viewing the iPhone as a gaming device.

[SlapApp]

Facebook app tries to organize the mess that is Apple’s app store

Good news, everyone! Apple’s app store is notoriously messy, disorganized, etc, etc, etc and mplayit has decided to do something about it!

And in a rather ingenious way too, may I add.

Who better to recommend apps to you than your friends? mplayit has built a Facebook app on which you can recommend and share iPhone apps with your friends. Additionally, apps come with full videos, pictures, and text describing functionality.

The smartest thing about this is that the social media network already exists. The developers don’t have to wait for the iPhone app sharing network to slowly build itself. Oh Facebook, you really are useful after all!

[theAppleBlog]

Eliminate Pro is the 22nd top grossing free app

So that sounds a bit strange, you’re thinking. Free means $0, and $0 times infinity is still $0. Well, Eliminate Pro has done it! According to theAppleBlog:

ngmoco appears to have found the sweet spot in add-on content where users don’t feel like they’re being extorted by a game’s in-app purchasing system. Eliminate Pro uses a system in which players earn rewards for in-game achievements that can be used to purchase armor and weapon upgrades. The catch is that you only get a certain amount of time during which game play earns you points. You can keep playing for free, but in order to get more rewards, you have to pay for more usable time.

Ingenious, it is. Developers submitting to Apple’s app store have been pressured to price their apps at FREE or 99 cents. Pricing has been an issue – those who give their apps out for free depend on ads for revenue, which isn’t too much in the first place.

This is the problem Kuchbi has. We have a couple of apps out in the app store right now. FastFood and iCricket are both free, and both have premium versions for $1.99. The problem is there’s no real incentive for users to download the premium versions, so we have to work on getting more users for free versions to get more exposure to ads. There has to be a better way!

Props to ngmoco. This is a breakthrough for developers.

[theAppleBlog]

Droid sales come up short of iPhone

…not beat iPhone in opening sales.

Well, was anyone surprised? Verizon’s Motorola Droid failed to match iPhone sales on its opening weekend. Compare 100,000 Droids with 1,000,000 (that’s 1 MILLION) iPhones in 2 days. Oh, 1 million 3G iPhones and 1 million 3Gs iPhones. [theAppleBlog]

We’ll see how the numbers continue to move in the future. I mean, there’s no chance Droid will ever replace the iPhone (I will gladly eat these words if I am ever proven wrong), no matter how many iDon’t ads Verizon runs. But it’d be interesting to see how the Droid holds up over time.

Submitting an app to Apple's app store?

According the Wired, the process has gotten a bit more transparent. Developers can now see progress reports on the apps they’ve submitted. [Wired]

Traditionally, submitting an app into the store has given many the developer a mass of headaches and hernias. But this is at least a small step towards giving developers an easier time.

In related news, Apple has denied two Google apps (Latitude and Voice) entry into the app store. Because it would confuse users. And because it duplicates iPhone features? [Gizmodo]

The problem with having only one space where apps can be distributed, and having that space being dictatorially controlled by Apple is… well, things like this happen. There must be a solution out there! Somewhere!

Handy little smartphone chart

Found this handy dandy thing at Geek in Disguise. Granted, it’s missing a few phones. But I love charts because they’re such a great summarizer of information. And in this technological world that moves at the speed of light, summarizing of information is a necessity.

Whenever I think of Motorola, I can’t help but think of the style-over-function-Razr. Sure it was cool, but when you thought about it, it really wasn’t. But the Motorola Droid looks like it’s going to smash the competition. What do you think? Would you choose the Droid over the iPhone?