Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
« Older Entries |10 Marketing tips for your iPhone apps
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
Last night I gave a presentation at Refresh Mobile, a combination of the South Florida iPhone meetup and the South Florida Android Developers meetup, about how to market your iOS, but not only, applications.
These are the slides from the presentation:
Update:
Here’s the video of the presentation courtesy of Damian Montero
Tags: Android, Apple, iOS, iPad, Meetup, Presentation, Refresh Mobile
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Design for mobile: 8 things to remember when designing for mobile
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Yesterday I gave a presentation at the Miami Design Meetup where I pointed out 8 things I think you should always remember while designing interfaces for mobile apps and websites.
Tags: Apple, Mobile, User Experience, User Interface
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The new Twitter iPhone app is out
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
Just updated Tweetie 2 to the new version simply called Twitter. In order to update it I needed to use “update all” from iTunes and sync my iPhone. At first glance you can see they changed the icon (I liked the old one much better) and when you first open the application, it shows you trending topic and suggested users even without logging in.
The same interface is used for the search page as well. I also noticed you can updated your account informations (bio and such) but I’m not 100% sure that this wasn’t possible before.
Tags: Apple, Tweetie, Twitter
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Is the Gizmodo iPhone HD scoop a fake?
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Talking with a friend about the new iPhone HD revelations by Gizmodo, we noticed how the logo on the letter Apple sent them to repossess the iPhone prototype wasn’t their latest version. Not only the logo, but on the bottom right the font used is the condensed Garamond that Apple used to use years ago. This is exactly Apple’s stationery circa 2005. Here’s a comparison between Gizmodo’s letter and others Apple sent to other individuals. Let’s see if you can spot the differences.
Gizmodo’s letter:
Comparison n.1:
Comparison n.2:
What can we deduct from these images? We have 3 possible scenarios:
1) Gizmodo got seriously punk’d
2) Gizmodo really received the mail but they were too lazy to scan it so they just recreate one themselves
3) Somebody at Apple should update Mr. Sewell’s stationery
What do you think about this story?
Tags: Apple, iPhone HD, News
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Hardware art
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
It takes more than just a glass screen and a aluminum case to make hardware into a piece of art.
Images from Minimal Mac
Tags: Apple, iPad
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Goodbye Laptops
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Ok, maybe it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it won’t be long before it will happen.
originally from: http://superamit.tumblr.com
Tags: Apple, iPad
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Memory Zoo: our first iPad application
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
I’m proud to present our first application for iPad: Memory Zoo, a simple memory card game for kids. We already have many ideas on how to expand the application but we decided we really wanted to be in the store on the launch day. The application has already been approved by Apple, now it’s just a matter of waiting for those iPads to be shipped and for people to start downloading the app.
Memory Zoo features one and two players mode, two difficulty levels, best times chart and awesome animal illustrations for kids.
Check out few screenshots from the app:
Tags: Apple, Games, iPad Applications
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Goodbye bikinis, hello gambling!
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
Apple recently surprised everybody, me included, with its new policy about “overtly sexual content” on the iPhone, taking down from the store all the apps with questionable content. One of these apps was Featured Pinups by PinupLifestyle.com. This is an application we built at 39, in partnership with the owners of Pinup Lifestyle, to showcase the featured pictures posted on the site itself. No doubt there were few mildly erotic pictures, but all very artistic and in a clear pinup style. We can’t help it if pinups are sexy. Geeks aren’t sexy. Pinups are sexy, it’s their thing. For sure it wasn’t one of those “Hot bikini not-technically-naked-but-you-can-imagine-the-rest” apps; pictures were very tasteful and professionally done. Anyway, our app wasn’t the only one to be taken off the store, and some of the other developers actually called Apple and found out what are these new guidelines they forgot to mention to us.
The new guidelines are that Apple will be removing all applications featuring bikinis and lingerie in the next 48 to 72 hours.
Yes, no more filthy apps on iTunes. But don’t worry guys, Apple is great, and while with one hand is taking away, with the other one is giving back. In another very recent change of their guidelines Apple cleared the way to some sort of pseudo-gambling:
3.3.17 Your Application may include promotional sweepstake or contest functionality provided that You are the sole sponsor of the promotion and that You and Your Application comply with any applicable laws.
What do I think about these changes? Well, about the “overtly sexual content” problem, we’ll clean up the app and submit it back. For sure if you have any kind of photography app that doesn’t have to do with barely dressed models, this is the right time to submit them because there is going to be much less noise in that category. About the gambling, I’m sure we will see a large use of it as a tool to promote the applications as well or to collect leads. Will I do that? Maybe.
Tags: Apple
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What I think the new Apple device will be
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
I have been thinking about posting my thoughts about the upcoming new Apple device for a while. Because I didn’t have the time to do so, I will just make a list of features I think this device will have:
- It will be shipped in a single size, with 10″ screen
- It will have touch screen and, more important, touch recognition on the back of the case, where the fingers naturally rest when you hold the device
- It will use a dual-core ARM processor produced by Semi PA, an ARM licensee acquired by Apple.
- The OS will be a modified version of iPhone OS, so the final user will only have a superficial access to the device.
- Non optimized iPhone applications will work in iPhone size windows while the optimized one will run in full-screen mode. The device will support multi-tasking.
- It will be offered mobile operator free but it will be mobile operator ready. You will be able to pick the provider of your choice.
- Apple will offer free unlimited wireless connectivity with a MobileMe account to access to limited content like iTunes, iDisk, Mail and other Mobile Me services.
- It will offer unlimited connectivity for subscription applications like magazine and newspapers
- It will have GPS .
- It will not support Adobe Flash.
- It will have a front facing camera, with facial recognition for the users (remember that new feature in iPhoto?)
Tomorrow will find out the truth. I know I will get one no matter what, what about you?
Tags: Apple, Table
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Christmasfy Me: case history of the freemium model on the iPhone
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
As many of you may have noticed, in the last forty days or so I promoted all over the place a simple Christmas application we published called Christmasfy Me. Not only was it a fun application that we wanted to build, but it was also our first experiment with in-app purchasing. Not too long ago, Apple opened the in-app purchase feature to free applications. I personally think this is a great tool for a lot of people to monetize their apps, and at the same time, somehow solve the problem of not being able to release demo and trial versions of their apps.
As promised, I’m going to fully disclose the results I gathered with Christmasfy Me in hopes of helping others to better understand this business model.
The application
Christmasfy Me is an iPhone application that lets you take a picture, or select an existing one from your library, and apply Christmas elements to it. You can then save or share these pictures via email, Twitter, or Facebook. You can view a video of how this application works at www.ChristmasfyMe.com. The application originally came with three unlocked items, we then unlocked an additional three items for a total of six. To unlock the remaining 20 items, the user had to pay $0.99.
Some factors we need to keep in mind
This iPhone application was built and released as a seasonal application; this means that the same kind of application (not necessarily with the same theme) may have totally different results and numbers during other periods of the year. The application was released in a period that is usually notorious for having more downloads that any other period throughout the year: between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Considering that after Christmas the sales dropped considerably, I will only take into account the sales from 11/26/2009 to 12/31/2009.
The numbers
Over a period of 37 days, Christmasfy Me was downloaded a total of 66,623 times. Of those downloads, 32,189 happened in the US while the other 34,434 account for world-wide downloads, mainly in the UK and Italy. In Italy, the application even ranked as the second most downloaded free application in the photography category and about 120th in the overall Top Free chart for a few days. I can’t hide that I was expecting to do better than this. Of course, I’m not unhappy with the results, but everything was timed in order to be included by Apple in their holidays selection and that never happened. Even on its better days, as far as downloads go, the app never ranked better than 500th in the Top Free Apps chart. This says a lot about how many downloads you need to be in the top 100, especially considering the fact that rank and number of downloads don’t usually grow proportionally.
As far as in-app purchases go, we sold a total of 2,193 “upgrades” over the same period. This is actually better than I expected, considering that this was an average conversion rate of 3.29% and, based on the results published by Riptide of their in-app purchase experience, I was expecting something closer to 2.5%. The regional results demonstrate how US customers are more likely to buy in-app content, with an average conversion rate of 4.11%, and accounting for 60.37% of the total of in-app purchases. So, if you decide to build your business on in-app purchases, forget markets like Italy, where the conversion rate was well below 1%, and focus on the US and the UK. Also, If you look at the chart, you’ll notice that conversion rate dropped after December 16th, the day we released a new version where, among other updates, the number of free elements went from three to six.
Conclusions
It might not be the most profitable business model since you need a high number of downloads to make a decent profit, but definitely less than what you would need with ads. More and more powerhouses like ngimoco, Gameloft, and Tapulous are switching to this model with many of their apps. Also, this may allow you to create complex and expensive apps while allowing your customers to pay only for the features they really need (Boxcar docet). The biggest con I found is that a lot of people expect everything to be free to download. I’ve even been accused of “stealing” money because there were only three free elements in the first version. That cost me a bunch of one star ratings in the App store.
I will definitely explore and use this model more in the future. I think there is more that can be done to improve performance and revenue. I’ll be sure to keep you all updated with our results.
Tags: Analytics, Apple, Business, Christmasfy Me, iPhone application, Monetization
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