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Android breaks 80% smartphone share in China

By on 2012/09/07

“Google’s Android is continuing its impressive run in the Chinese smartphone market, soaring to 83 percent market share in the second quarter of 2012, according to a new report from Analysys. Nokia’s Symbian and Apple’s iOS have each been left with 6 percent share.”

Amazing figures from EnfoDesk. Symbian has dropped from 32% to 6% in just one year, bringing it on par with iOS. Now consider that Google Play does not provide paid apps in China, and you have a good explanation to the discrepancy between the total number of Android users and number of sold games on Android.

Read: Android breaks 80% smartphone share in China as Apple, Nokia pick up scraps (thenextweb.com)

Brad Wardell: How I would have done Windows 8

By on 2012/09/07

“Treat Windows as the right tool for the right job:

Windows 8 Desktop Edition
Windows 8 Phone
Windows 8 Server Edition
Windows 8 Tablet Edition

There is no reason why each of these OSes needs to have the same shell experience. It’s like they didn’t learn anything from the days when they tried to cram the Start button on WinCE years ago.”

I think the comparison to Windows CE is fairly striking. Microsoft has already tried once to bring the desktop to mobile devices with the first “Palm-Sized PC” and “Handheld PC” devices (I had lots of them in various sizes), and it failed. Again with Windows 8 users are forced to use a desktop UI on tablets for numerous tasks, and it feels like turning back the clock nearly 13 years.

Read: How I would have done Windows 8 (littletinyfrogs.com)

Money and the App Store: A few figures that might help an indie developer

By on 2012/09/07

“Eighteen months ago, when I left Ubisoft to start an independent game studio and focus on making my own games, I looked online a bit to get an idea of how much income I could expect to make as an indie. At Ubisoft I used to work on big AAA console games, and I had some figures in mind, but I knew they wouldn’t be relevant for my new life: $20M budgets, teams of 200 hundred people, 3 million sales at $70 per unit… I knew being an indie developer would be completely different, but I had very little information about how different it would be.”

This article from January 2012 provides some really good insight into how much money you can expect to make on a game if you get lucky on the App Store. Well worth a read in case you (like me) missed it.

Read: Money and the App Store: A few figures that might help an indie developer (thegamebakers.com)

‘Doodle Jump’ Creator: Gamers Expect Freemium

By on 2012/09/07

“In a video interview with Mashable, Pusenjak explains why players now expect freemium content in their mobile games.”

Worth watching.

Read: ‘Doodle Jump’ Creator: Gamers Expect Freemium (mashable.com)

The fall of Angry Birds

By on 2012/08/26

“Right now, 18 of the top 25 grossing of all apps are Free To Play Games (72%). Also, it should be noted that 22 of the 25 top grossing apps are in the games category (88%), confirming the fact you need to be into games if you want to have the biggest potential payout. The reason for this is people have a stronger emotional attachment to games than any other type of app, therefore they are more likely to spend money.”

In case it isn’t clear to everyone yet – don’t make a game that users need to pay for up front.

Read: The fall of Angry Birds (treysmithblog.com)

Under the hood: Rebuilding Facebook for iOS

By on 2012/08/26

“So while utilizing web technology has allowed us to support more than 500 million people using Facebook on more than 7000 supported devices, we realized that when it comes to platforms like iOS, people expect a fast, reliable experience and our iOS app was falling short. Now that our mobile services had breadth, we wanted depth. So, we rewrote Facebook for iOS from the ground up (I really did open up Xcode and click “New Project”) with a focus on quality and leveraging the advances that have been made in iOS development.”

The new Facebook app is an amazing experience compared to the old app. The rewritten Facebook app has drastically changed my view of choosing HTML5 for dynamic views in apps.

Read: Under the hood: Rebuilding Facebook for iOS (facebook.com)

WhatsApp now delivers 10 billion messages each day

By on 2012/08/26

Amazing figures, in October last year WhatsApp announced a volume of 1 billion messages per day.

With a volume such as this their company better get purchased soon, or they will have to start charging for the service. No way that they can keep these volumes for free.

Read: WhatsApp now delivers 10 billion messages each day (bgr.com)

Nearly one in five Android users plan to switch to iPhone

By on 2012/08/26

In a survey of more than 2,000 smartphone users, Robert W. Baird analyst William Power shows that 17% of all Android smartphone users plan to buy an iPhone as their next phone.

Read: iPhone 5 ‘Poised For Lift-Off,’ 50M+ Sales Possible (barrons.com)

U.S. government seizes three popular Android piracy sites

By on 2012/08/26

“The Department of Justice on Wednesday announced that in connection with Dutch and French law enforcement agencies, it has seized three of the most popular sites for illegally downloading Android apps. The three domains — Appbucket, Snappzmarket and Applanet — are now in the custody of the federal government.”

It will be interesting to see if this affects the number of malware on the Android scene.

Read: U.S. government seizes three popular Android piracy sites (bgr.com)

Don’t Stop Polishing: The Need to Stand Out in Mobile/Social

By on 2012/08/26

Nick Bhardwaj discusses F2P design lessons learned from My Horse and Natural Motion’s CSR Racing. Well worth watching.