Android app volume to pass App Store but iOS developers to lead in revenue
The Android platform has lots of software stores in addition to Google’s own Android Market, including GetJar and Amazon. The Ovum report noted that Apple “can’t compete with such diversity, but still leads in the value of its apps.”
If you think the App Store is full of junk you should take a look to the Android store.
“Android apps are living in the Wild West without a sheriff,” Howe wrote. “With five other major mobile OSs competing for consumer dollars, Google can’t afford to simply let pirates kill app developers’ businesses. They need to foster some law and order or developers will flee to other platforms and Android will lose customers”
Interesting, some developers actually ask for a more “close” Android store.
On Google buying Motorola Mobility
This morning I awoke to the news that Google was buying Motorola for $12.5 billion, and I immediately started thinking about why they did such a move and what this will mean for the mobile ecosystem.
I can see two main reasons why Google would want to acquire a phone manufacturer: patents and to disrupt their competitor’s core business.
Lately, patents have been the weakest spot for Android, mostly because Google put themselves in that position.
Andy Rubin back in 2005:
“If Sun doesn’t want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language – or – 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way”
And this is something that personally bother me. Now they are trying to buy as many patent as possible, whining when they loose bids
This anti-competitive strategy is also escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they’re really worth. The winning $4.5 billion for Nortel’s patent portfolio was nearly five times larger than the pre-auction estimate of $1 billion.
Of course they forgot to mention that they set the $1 billion estimate and that they bid 3.14 times their own estimate.
Now they announced they are going to buy Motorola Mobility with a premium of 63% on last Friday’s closing price. But, don’t worry, as Drummond just said in the conference call to announce the acquisition,
We’ve seen some licensing demands… the patent portfolio will help us make Android “open and vibrant”.
Now the question is: what will happen to the mobile ecosystem? I can’t imagine the other Android phone manufacturers being happy about this. (Google is saying they are, but I strongly doubt that—especially because this could mean becoming second-class citizens in the Android world.) Even if Google will release the source code to all manufacturers at the same time (mind you, they still haven’t released Honeycomb), why would someone buy a “generic” Android phone when they could buy the one made by Google themselves, which I’m sure will come with much better hardware and software integration and probably without crapware?
Given the amount of cash Google has in its war chest, they could willingly lose money on each device sold (maybe even give the phones away for free, with ads, of course), to gain an even higher market share. They obviously aren’t new to this practice; they did this with e-mails, documents, browsers, and mobile operating systems. Of course, this would piss off many Android manufacturers, but it will also cut the legs of Apple and their pricey devices. Or, maybe they could just give free tablets to every college in the United States, a market dominated by Apple (I know of school districts buying thousands of iPads for their students).
I suggest you to buckle up because I’m sure the next 12 months are going to be a really exciting ride.
Smartphones vs SmartTV
Unlike the transformation of phones to smartphones, TVs have not become smartTVs because there is no “smart” content for them to deliver. - Horance Dediu
Possible picture of an iPhone 5
If you ask me, this look legit, and if it’s a fake, this is a pretty close guess of what the iPhone 5 will look like. Apparently this picture was taken yesterday in the office of a French operator.
My interview with M62
Few days ago m62, one of the world’s leading presentation development companies, interviewed me about SyncPad. They also reviewed SyncPad in a separated article that you can read here.
Book review: Learn to Program by Chris Pine
I’m not a developer and I don’t want to be a developer, but I want to be able to build small apps when I need to, to understand better the code wrote by the people I’m working with, and to put together simple prototypes. That’s why I decided to give it another shot at learning a programming language, in this case Ruby. I chose Ruby because I love its syntax: simple, elegant, readable. Also, it happens to be the language behind the Ruby on Rails, a widely used web framework that I’m planning to learn next.
After some research, I decided to read Learn to Program by Chris Pine, and I’m glad I did so. The book is a pleasure to read, thanks to the colloquial style in which the book is written. Every concept is really well explained, with several example to support the explanations (and please, always re-write the examples with your editor, even just copying helps to impress those concepts in your memory). At the end of each chapter, the author also invites the reader to take on simple challenges (with possible solutions at the end of the book) to practice the concepts just learned. Beside a couple of challenges, I think they were all very well calibrated for each chapter, and I guarantee you, you’ll feel proud of those little programs you’ll write throughout the book.
After been done reading the book, I feel I have good handle on the basic Ruby syntax, and I’m able to write simple applications. Of course the hardest part is to get used to the logic required to write some programs, but I’m sure time and practice will improve that. Definitely Chris raised the bar for the next programming book I’ll read (yes, I’m looking at you Ruby on Rails Tutorial).
You can find Learn to Program at The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Free round button in Photoshop
I made a button in Photoshop with an on and off state, and I thought about sharing it with you. Feel free to use it. Click here to download the original PSD file.
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