Android Strides Ahead In US Smartphone Market Share

A new market survey by Nielson in the United States has shown Android drive ahead and gain 37% of the smartphone market share, a strong 10% margin over Apple and the iPhone which sits in second place at 27%. The figures show a significant change since the last Nielson survey, done in October that had the iPhone with the largest smartphone market share at 27.9% and BlackBerry in second place at 27.4%. Android has largely absorbed the 5.4% market share BlackBerry lost as well as the decreasing share of Symbian and older Windows Mobile devices to go from 22.7% in October to its 37% market share in March.

The survey also revealed that Android is now the most desired smartphone operating system for consumers, with 31.1% of consumers surveyed saying they would choose an Android phone compared with 30% who would go with an iPhone. In both the market share and desired operating system, Android is showing significant increases whilst Apple is seeing minor reductions compared to others such as BlackBerry or Symbian.

A final aspect of the survey was what recent smartphone acquisitions were and it reveals that 50% of all new smartphones purchased were running Android, whilst 25% were iPhones and 15% were BlackBerry phones. It is worth noting that this survey was solely focused on smartphones and as such did not include reference to the other iOS devices such as the iPod Touch or iPad. Jump the break for two more graphs.

[Via AllThingsD]

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Following Apple’s Rejections, Tapjoy Caps Pay-Per-Install App Downloads

Last week, a number of reports suggested Apple had silently tweaked its algorithm that handles ranking of App Store applications, giving more importance to the quality and usage stats of an app rather than simple download numbers. The tweaked system, never confirmed by Apple but noticed by several third-party App Store ranking engines and advertising agencies, had its effect mostly on free apps in the Social Networking and Games categories, with the Facebook iPhone app quickly climbing to the first spots of the charts after months of sitting in the 10-20 positions. At the same time, Apple also began rejecting updates to applications that implemented “pay-per-install” methods – a system that, especially in iPhone games, allows you to earn virtual goods and currencies by downloading another app from the Store. As noted by pay-per-install and advertising network Tapjoy, the rejections came as Apple apparently started enforcing section 3.10 of the App Store Review Guidelines, which doesn’t accept developers who “attempt to manipulate or cheat” the App Store’s user reviews and charts. In this case, apps powered by pay-per-install options manipulate the charts as users go download additional software not for quality or particular interest, but just because they want to unlock the virtual goods.

At the VentureBeat Mobile Summit, Tapjoy CEO Mihir Shah said the company rolled out last week a cap on how many times an application can be downloaded through Tapjoy’s programs. Details on the cap aren’t clear, but it sounds like the new strategy is aimed at complying with Apple’s rules in a way these “offerwall” programs don’t manipulate the charting algorithm of the App Store, yet providing some exposure for Tapjoy’s advertisers. Admittedly, whilst advertising has always been a part of the Internet and it doesn’t surprise anyone that a company pays money to get exposure, having certain apps ranking higher in the App Store only because they invested more in pay-per-install methods doesn’t exactly sound great. If Apple wants to promote quality rather than download numbers, they have every right to rebuild their garden’s walls – as I stated previously. Tapjoy is yet another third-party company that had to change its service to keep up with Apple and the App Review Team. mocoNews concludes its article on Tapjoy with this quote from the company’s CEO:

Still, app developers should have some flexibility to market their applications within other applications, Shah said. “There has got to be a number of very creative long-term ideas that impresses a balance between marketing spend and organic rankings,” he said.

Creative ideas, as Shah calls them, clearly can’t come from paying money to gain visibility in the App Store. Rather, I believe Apple would see developers investing more in iAd for apps, or clever techniques to team up with fellow developers and promote iOS apps together. But right now, pay-per-install networks have to change.

The “Re-Imagined” TweetDeck 2.0 iPhone App Hits The App Store

TweetDeck has today released its completely new 2.0 iPhone app that has received a “Hollywood re-imagining”, being rebuilt from the ground up to be “fast, flexibe and full-on powerful.” The update, which has been a long time coming, adds a number of new features and improvements whilst retaining the “guiding principles” of the original.

One of TweetDeck’s new and innovative features is the use of pinching on a column to access the columns’ settings so that any combinations of Twitter timelines, mentions, DMs, Facebook feeds and so on can be merged into one customized column. The whole user interface has also been redesigned, following the direction that their Android and Chrome apps have gone in, and of course it now takes advantage of the Retina display.

Also improved is multiple account handling and gestures, which although not extensive as those present in Tweetbot, are greatly improved adding the ‘pull to refresh’ and pinch for column settings gestures and general improvements in swiping through your various feeds. Finally there is built-in Deck.ly support, letting you write those longer messages on Twitter without hassle.

The 2.0 version comes after “several months of feverish work” and a promised iPad revamp of the app is also coming in a Universal binary “in the next couple of weeks”. In fact technically TweetDeck 2.0 is not an update and the old versions of the app have been temporarily removed from the App Store to avoid confusion. So don’t go to the updates tab of the App Store, it won’t appear there, you’ll have to download the new TweetDeck app from the actual store.

Jump the break for some more screenshots of the new update.

[Via TechCrunch]

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White iPhone 4 Prototype Spotted On eBay

In the past few weeks, white iPhone prototypes and leaks have been popping up all over the place. Following a series of videos posted by a Vietnamese website showing a white iPhone 4 running an old iOS 4 build with different versions of multitasking and Spotlight, BGR managed to shoot some photos of another white iPhone running on T-Mobile USA network. Not to mention the fact that Apple is widely expected to finally introduce the white iPhone 4 tomorrow after a 10-month delay, although no official announcement has been made yet.

If you’re that kind of collector that doesn’t mind spending money to get your hands on Apple memorabilia, however, a white iPhone prototype is available on eBay. The prototype unit reports the usual XX Apple-internal marks on its case, runs iOS 4.3.1 (build 8G4) and it appears to be an AT&T iPhone. The unit has 16 GB of storage and it’s got DF3039 engraved on the front panel – perhaps an ID number for the unit. The eBay seller has posted several pictures of the device, and claims it’s “a mint condition Executive iPhone 4.” The price? This prototype is currently bidding at $2,838.00 and, as you can see from the photos, it comes with an old-style proximity sensor different from the one that will ship with the public version of the white iPhone. [via 9to5mac]

Evernote’s Most Valuable Users Are On Apple Platforms

There has been some discussion in recent times about whether iOS users are more valuable to a company than Android users may be. Evernote CEO Phil Libin weighed into the debate yesterday and talked about how their revenue varied from platform to platform. Libin used three metrics in evaluating each platform; revenue, users gained and revenue per developer. In all three, iOS was the leading platform with nearly a third of all Evernote’s revenue coming from that platform. It’s where Evernote has gained a large chunk of its users and is perhaps one of the best success stories of the iOS app platform.

Evernote is also a big fan of its Mac users who generate more revenue growth than their Windows counterparts and also stick with the service for longer – although Windows still currently brings in 24% of revenue compared to the Mac’s 20%. Libin is unsure of why Apple users are more willing to pay for their service and additionally notes that the desktop should not be ignored, reflecting upon the fact it still brings in 44% of Evernote’s revenue.

In Libin’s speech at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit he also noted that most users of his service don’t return after a short period of using the service, but those that do bring in a lot of revenue to Evernote. For example of the 31,334 users who registered in March 2008 only 11,000 remained three months later. In that month those users only brought in $700 to Evernote but by January of 2011 they ended up bringing in over $10,000. Libin attributes this to the fact that as users stick with the service they find it more valuable and end up subscribing for the premium features.

[Via VentureBeat]

BananaTunes Streams Your Music From iOS To OS X Through AirPlay

Erica Sadun, author of the great AirPlay hack BananaTV has come out with a new beta application; BananaTunes. Taking advantage of the recent reverse engineering of AirPlay it will allow you to transmit full stereo music from an AirPlay enabled iOS device to any Mac running BananaTunes.

Previously AirPlay hacks such as BananaTV or AirFlick and AirTuner only expanded upon the video side of AirPlay but thanks to that reverse engineering magic we can now stream music too. TUAW reported mixed results with BananaTunes (it is beta after all) with it working fine with their iPad 2 but having some issues with an iPhone 4. I personally had no issues using both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 in playing music to my Mac through BananaTV, except a few initial seconds of stuttering that soon disappeared.

Ultimately Erica plans to merge the BananaTuner functionality into the BananaTV software, but for now you can download these two zip files (or this all-in-one installer) to try it out, but be warned it requires OS X 10.6 and only runs as a 64-bit application.

[Via TUAW]

Apple Releases iMac Hard Drive Firmware Update

A few minutes ago Apple released a firmware update for the Mid-2010 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs. The update – a 767 KB download – aims at fixing hard drive issues that prevented some systems from booting properly. My iMac surely had this problem – especially after installing Lion on a second partition, I noticed several booting issues that this update will (hopefully) fix.

Go download the iMac Hard Drive Firmware Update 1.0 here.

Cloud2go Is The First CloudApp iPhone Client With Streaming API [Giveaway]

If you use CloudApp as much as I do, you know that being able to upload files or links from an iPhone adds a whole new layer of sharing possibilities to an amazing service that was born with the Mac in mind, but it’s rapidly extending to other platforms and services with support for Windows machines, and direct integration into apps like Tweetbot. CloudApp makes sharing files (like screenshots, text documents, PSDs, and even audio files) and shortening links a real pleasure: not only the app is well integrated into the Mac’s ecosystem with great keyboard shortcuts and “raindrops” plugins, the developers also built a full-featured web application that allows you to set up your own custom domain, delete files, or check on stats.

How about the iPhone? Over the past year or so, I’ve been using Cloud2go by Matthias Plappert to quickly upload files from my iPhone and share them thanks to the app’s custom URL recognition. The fact that Cloud2go also packs full access to your CloudApp account and is neatly organized in sections based on your file types helped along the way as well. But the latest update to Cloud2go, released a few minutes ago in the App Store, makes things so much better: the new version introduces a Twitter-like swipe bar to delete / rename / make private / share files and links, as well as the possibility to watch files and stats update in real-time through CloudApp’s streaming API. This means that if you’re uploading a file from your Mac and you watch Cloud2go on your iPhone, you’ll see the file automatically pop up in the list as soon as the desktop upload is finished. Same applies to view counts: as people click on your links, you’ll see the counter go up in real time.

Cloud2go 1.1 also brings improved error handling, a faster sync algorithm and better navigation between uploaded items. Go download the app here, as it’s the best CloudApp client you can have on your iPhone right now. Read more

Rubbernet Monitors Your Mac Apps’ Network Usage

If monitoring bandwidth and network usage on a Mac is your thing, Conceited Software’s latest app might just be what you need. Rubbernet is a €30 tool that can be installed on a local machine and networked Macs (unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be support for Hamachi computers just yet) and provides an easier solution to more complex applications like Little Snitch, which besides network monitoring also offers firewall functionalities and lots of settings to play with on an app-by-app basis. Rubbernet, powered by a nice interface design and a daemon that runs in the background all the time on your Mac, allows you to see what apps are consuming bandwidth on your computers, and what kind of connections to remote servers are being established.

The app supports multiple accounts (as you can see in the screenshot above), but I haven’t been able to test it with another Mac on my local network. The Summary app gives you a glimpse of all the active apps that are connected to the Internet, including upload and download rates. The Connections and Activity tabs, on the other hand, will show you all the single IP addresses your Mac is connecting to including, in the case of single applications under Activity, a breakdown of all remote hosts, open ports, and a graphical visualization of downloads and uploads over time. These graphs update in real-time, with a minimal footprint on your Mac’s memory.

You can download Rubbernet here. A free trial is available, so you should check it out and see whether the app can recognize your networked Macs and improve the way you keep network usage under control. No one wants to let Dropbox eat all the bandwidth during an Apple event.

[Disclaimer: Conceited Software’s Rubbernet is a MacStories advertiser. This is not a sponsored review, as it’s entirely based on my personal experience with the app.] Read more