You'll never work in this industry again - AST 1997
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Iphone becomes less enticing for developers
MOBILE AD BROKER Admob has published the first sliver of real evidence that Iphone usage is slipping due to the onslaught of Android powered devices.
Admob was courted by Apple prior to a $750 million buyout by Google. The firm was seen by both as a vital tool for bolstering their revenues from the ever growing number of mobile subscribers.
The firm released detailed figures for which handsets it served ads to and it makes for bittersweet reading for both Apple and Google. The bigger picture showed that almost 50 per cent of all ads served by the firm were to smartphones. Feature phones, the phones that punters plump for when they can't afford a real smartphone, continue their sharp decline with Admod serving around 35 per cent of its ads to such devices.
That in itself isn't bad news as smartphones represent a bigger canvas for advertisers, however the lack of Flash support on Apple's Iphone must be limiting the flow of creative juices of artsy media types everywhere.
The Iphone holds a commanding lead when it comes to ad display share, as 50 per cent of all ads served were to Iphones, a growth of 17 per cent since February 2009. For Steve Jobs that figure must sound stellar until he reads that it was eclipsed by Android devices, which saw a 22 per cent growth, coming in just shy of 25 per cent. Further bad news lies beneath the headline figures for Jobs.
Admob was able to track, with great detail, what devices displayed its ads, and when looking at monthly breakdowns the Iphone is losing ad market share hand over fist. In the US, the Iphone was down 0.9 per cent from January 2010 and that figure was 5.9 per cent in the UK. Worryingly for Jobs' Mob the Iphone's drop in share was the highest of any device in Admob's top 10. Even smartphone suicide artists, Palm managed to post better, albeit negative, growth figures.
The biggest gainers in the US were Motorola's Droid, Samsung's Moment and HTC's Magic, all Android devices. Aside from a very impressive showing from Nokia's N73 here in the UK, individual Android devices posted very favourable results in the West.
Going further east, Nokia fills the tables in India, Indonesia and South Africa. However Symbian suffered a terrible year, with Admob's figures showing a stunning fall from grace for the much maligned mobile operating system. After starting 2009 as the most popular platform for ads with 43 per cent, by February 2010 that figure was whittled down to just 18 per cent.
The fruity toymaker simply cannot ignore Android anymore, with further research carried out by Admob showing that more than 70 per cent of Iphone developers plan to code Android apps. However less than half of all Android developers can be bothered to bend over and accept Steve Jobs' unswerving development and deployment practices.
Advertising is playing an increasing role in funding developers as respondents said that almost 80 per cent of their revenues came from adverts. However considering the figures are being published by a firm peddling advertising, that's hardly surprising. Nevertheless, given that the average cost of apps hover around the $2 mark, it's evident that developers have to recoup their outlay in other ways and advertising is a simple and well tested way to do that.
Given the over the top demands that Apple places on its developers, it's hardly surprising that five per cent of those who answered said that they were "very dissatisfied" with the Iphone. Only Symbian topped that, but considering that Symbian has all but fallen off a cliff in the past three years one wonders how many developers see their future in coding apps for old Nokia devices.
Unlike most fanbois who are struck by pretty graphics and colourful fascias, developers typically look beyond the glitz and see the underlying functionality. Perhaps that is the reason why the Iphone has a mere one per cent lead over Android when it comes to market share among developers themselves. Clearly many developers would have both devices in order to effectively demo their apps before sending them to Apple's censors, but given that currently more develop for the Iphone than for Android, it seems that personal, not professional choices push them towards Android.
These figures don't spell the end of the Iphone but they do tend to suggest that punters are recognising credible alternatives, namely Android. If the availability of apps is the primary driver for a smartphone system succeeding then the one that rakes in the most cash for developers is more likely to last the distance.
For Jobs' Mob the honeymoon is well and truly over. Iphone growth has stagnated and in a few markets reversed at an alarming rate. Clearly at some point the cut down smartphone's appeal would plateau, however with the sheer number of Android devices appearing, the cappuccino firm is seemingly unable to hold out against the army of technologically superior devices.
Going down into the nitty gritty of Admob's figures, Android handsets are eating into the Iphone's main method of revenue generation for developers. The good news for them is that they are able to take advantage of Android's openness and freedom to produce apps, which not only generates more cash but also promotes Google's open source smartphone OS. µ
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In stark contrast to the AdMob report, Symbian continues to demonstrate solid momentum. The company impacts all aspects of the mobile industry, not only mobile browsing and ad traffic, which is the primary areas the report examined. Globally, Symbian owns more than 50 percent market share of operating systems and is growing at 20 percent a year. The latest IDC research analyst report attests to this - http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22176610.
With the highly competitive Symbian^3 devices due to enter the US market as early as Q3 of 2010, Symbian’s presence in the states is growing and anticipates a significant increase in AdMob’s relevant shares moving forward.
Andrea Heuer for Symbian Communications
Maybe having a browser capable of running AdBlock wasn't such a cool idea after all...! :)
The incredible march of the Android army shows that the mobile market will consolidate down to 2 platforms... Android and iPhone.
Nothing else matters.
Symbian will fail. Palm will fail. Windows Phone 7 Series is a joke and stands no chance and will fail.
The 2 main app platforms, Android and iPhone will just get stronger.
By charging just small percentage of Retail List to Sellers, that always be more than .00. Which is Only lawful Amount, Software costing less than Dollar, Resold for hundreds, On Each System.Since 1993.New Rules Comin' Boys.
Microsoft has ended its first ever - and possibly most generous - program for people buying copies of Windows in bulk.
The Select License introduced with Windows NT in 1993 will no longer be offered to customers as of July 1, 2011. Customers are being moved to Select Plus, introduced 18 months ago.
No reason was given for phasing out Select, but the license offered plenty of opportunities to game the system and to extract money from Microsoft without buying software. The program has also grown in complexity during its 17 years as Microsoft has added more products.
Select saw Microsoft give customers discounts on the amount of money they said they expected to spend during the three-year-life of an agreement, rather than the money they'd actually spent. That created an incentive to forecast high for big discounts. Making it even sweeter: Microsoft didn't ask for the money back if you didn't spend what you said you would.
Conversely, customers who forecast too low were penalized as they could not get a retrospective discount from Microsoft.
This meant smart customers, particularly in the mid-market where they were less likely to buy in the kind of volume that landed the biggest discounts, would show Microsoft big plans to spend over the coming three years, get their discounts, and projects would then - ahem - get scaled back.
Under Select, customers could also avoid committing to Microsoft's Software Assurance upgrade license. SA lasts two or three years and pre-qualifies customers for any upgrades to their chosen software that comes along during that time.
Select didn't mandate you had to buy SA, and that meant rather than buy SA and hope an upgrade would be delivered during the lifetime of your contract, you could buy Select if you knew an upgrade was imminent and then add SA - thereby buying your way into the upgrade that came with it.
Directions-on-Microsoft analyst Paul De Groot said Microsoft wants to reduce its number of volume-purchase programs while being able to respond to growing competition. He noted that while some discounting opportunities will have been lost to savvy customers, Microsoft can still make changes that simplify how it charges.
"Microsoft is facing more competition in core areas, like Office and Exchange, that will limit its ability to lock customers in,' De Groot said.
"That gives me reason to hope that changes to volume licensing programs, many of which were developed for a very different time by a much smaller Microsoft, will better reflect how business wants to buy software today."
Microsoft said Select Plus would provide automatic price savings for customers purchasing copies of Windows in volume and streamline the contract process by providing a single, organization-wide agreement that never expires. C® drashek TM Pat Pend TS AKA Slick
I think this is missing the point, the main issue for devs with iphone is the appstore. The coding, the apple stuff , those are all standard problems and frankly apple is far better than the worst. But the main problem is that only the top apps are 'seen' on the appstore, to break into that you either become viral ,often just by luck, or have a nice advertising budget. Now that android has got enough of a market to actually make sense, you'll see a lot of developers moving there in the hope that they'll be 'first' with apps and be visible as big fish in what they hope is a smaller sea..
apple need to fix appstore to make it easier to view the hundreds of thousands of apps.
I'm just waiting for my contract to run out. After that, I'm heading to open source Android. I'll never buy another overpriced, anti-freedom product from Apple again.
Sure, I've enjoyed the iPhone interface, but I don't like having to hack my computer and/or iPhone just to sync the same device on my desktop and laptop, run the programs I want on MY device...and don't get me started on battery life.
I get confused with these figures! What are they measuring?
If you look at this site for the last 3 months Mobile Web usage you get very different figures.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-200912-201002
With a Feb close figures of
Apple %33.9
Symbian %32.7
RIM %11.1
Android %5.3
I would expect some variation between different analysis techniques but not this much. Who is right?
Well said. This shows those silly apple fan boys that development for iPhone is dying and they should buy some ipads Now. Lol.
Android will murder everyone soon.
It's apple's shitty Objective-C and crappy documentation that makes the iPhone a ball ache for anyone to get into.
It's like reading the decaf version of nIck fArrell.
Tastes the same but an inferior version of the Troll Master.
more proof that lAwrence lAtif is an idiot. Not going to waste my time trying explain fractions, percentages, and basic math to him today... and forget about inferential statistics.