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GDC 2010: Backflip Studios' year in the App Store
He revealed that a full $1m in that actually came straight from ad sales -- he's made deals with AdMob and other companies to put ads in his popular Paper Toss app, and he uses those ads both for straight revenue, as well as to promote his own games (more on that later in the talk). Farrior offered up a frank and honest look at what it was like to run an iPhone app company for a year.
Apple job listing hints at official App Store advertising
A little over a month ago, Steve Jobs blasted Google at an Apple Town Hall meeting for entering Apple's territory. "We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business," Jobs told employees. "Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them [...] This 'don't be evil' mantra? It's bullshit." Notice Jobs didn't say, "We didn't enter the ad business." A recent Apple job listing for a Senior Interactive Web Developer pretty much confirms that Apple is entering the mobile advertising business head on. The listing begins "Apple advertising is an opportunity to redefine the advertising on mobile devices. It's an exciting environment and a fast-paced development organization. We're looking for an experienced interactive developer." The successful applicant will be responsible for developing the front end web UI development of compelling, interactive digital advertising experiences. The posting hints that Apple wants to make it as easy as possible for developers to monetize their apps. As AppleInsider points out, Apple wants to make it as trivial for developers to add advertisement placements to their applications as it currently is to add buttons or interface controls. With the iPhone and Android totaling 75% of U.S. smartphone web traffic as of last November, it's no surprise Apple wants to enter the ad business on their device that is responsible for 51% of the market. Last November, Google bought Admob, the largest mobile ad company in the world, for $750 million. Shortly thereafter rumors emerged that Apple had been in talks with Admob before Google's deal. Less than two months later, Apple acquired Admob competitor Quattro Wireless in a deal valued at $275 million. It looks like Apple is as serious about the mobile ad business as Google is about the smartphone business.
iPhone users come in all ages but probably live near a big city
The end of this week has brought a little flurry of information about the differences between iPhone and Android users. First up, Admob has released the results of a survey that says the iPhone is twice as popular as comparable smartphones in both young and old demographics. Unfortunately, we can only guess as to why (it would be a little more interesting if either age showed a preference for one phone over another), but it seems the iPhone has yet another remarkable trait: appealing to users of all ages. No wonder Apple is jumping in on the iPad -- they really do have a pre-release audience. But they can't sit on their laurels for too long -- according to a report at Myxer's Boombox (via Fortune), the Android OS is picking up the pace, especially in what city folk call the "flyover states." Android use of the program has actually surpassed iPhone users in Montana, the Dakotas, and Arizona and New Mexico, and the numbers are close in the Midwest, including Kansas and Missouri. That's interesting -- that could have something to do with the distribution of Apple retail stores, or maybe just more urban center dwellers are drawn to the iPhone. DC seems to be the exception, as Virginia and Maryland are much more Android, but otherwise, if you're in a state with a big population center, odds are that you own an iPhone. Fascinating.
iPhone dominating mobile web in Americas and Europe
The news isn't that terribly shocking. AdMob has released its latest report that the iPhone is not only the leading smartphone in North America, but in other parts of the world as well. We've covered some of their previous reports charting the iPhone's growing dominance. The iPhone is topping smartphone operating system use in the following markets: North America: 54 percent Latin America: 56 percent Western Europe: 78 percent Eastern Europe: 51 percent Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand): 92 percent Apple has yet to overcome Symbian loyalty in Asia and Africa, where the platform has been long-established. The report also shows that even though the iPhone is still the top smartphone in North America, Motorola's Droid is gaining ground. It was the third most commonly used device, just behind the iPhone and iPod Touch, and the second most-used smartphone. The much-hyped Palm Pre barely takes a sliver of the market here. You can study the entire report over at AdMob's site. [Via Electronista]
Stats show Motorola Droid is the new elephant in the Android room
Remember back in the day when the West was still wild, the gold rush was still in full effect, you owned whatever land you could manage to fence off, and tycoons were being made and broken on a daily basis? No? Well, some of you whippersnappers might be too young to recall it, but trust us, it happened -- and it seems like that's the kind of frontier mentality we're getting again today in the nascent Android landscape. Just a couple weeks after launching, mobile ad clearinghouse AdMob reports that the Motorola Droid is already accounting for a whopping 24 percent of all its Android-based traffic -- no small feat, considering that the then-unreleased device didn't even move the needle in their October report (pictured in the left graph). The HTC Dream -- the world's first retail Android device, you might remember -- still reigns supreme at 36 percent, but it's amazing that the entire Android space is still volatile enough to register nearly a 25 percent shift with the launch of a single new device on a single carrier. For comparison, the CLIQ clocks in with a lowly 6 percent -- proof that Verizon's aggressive advertising has been working some magic. Question is, what'll be the next device to completely screw up this pie chart again?
AdMob withdraws from 3rd party ad networks
AdMob is one of the bigger names in iPhone ad-supported applications. They provide embeddable advertisements that developers can incorporate into otherwise free apps. Recently, third-party ad networks like AdWhirl and Tapjoy have appeared on the scene, offering to negotiate ad displays from multiple sources to increase developer revenues and increase fill rates. Yesterday, citing increased technical complaints and parameter obstruction, AdMob announced that it would no longer work with these third party mediation services. This move affects developers who turned to dynamic advertisement solutions from third parties. AdMob will continue to allow developers to use their own solutions for maximizing ad fill rates outside these services. Ad-supported applications are not particularly common in the App Store, where they have been relatively unsuccessful as a monetizing solution (jailbreak apps on Cydia and Icy have provided somewhat more effective results). App Store titles must compete in a huge market with delays in providing updates. The relatively close relationship between software creators and their target audience and quick update/release cycles appears to work better with ad-supported models than the more formal App Store environment. Further details about the AdMob policy change can be found on their blog.
iPhone nabs 59% of smartphone 'net traffic, 43% of mobile web traffic
Fortune has the results of an AdMob survey up, and they're pretty surprising -- Apple has apparently taken over 59% of smartphone traffic on the Internet, and in the mobile category in general, they've got a giant 43% of 'net traffic surveyed. But there's another side here: the report doesn't just point out that Apple accounts for the lion's share of mobile 'net traffic, but it states that smartphone traffic, and specifically the iPhone in general, hugely overshadows the actual sales numbers. The iPhone has 8% global market share, but accounts for 65% of HTML traffic. And smartphones in general overshadow their sales to a lesser degree: smartphones represent about 12% of mobile device sales, but AdMob calculates them at around 35% of their traffic last month.What does this mean? AdMob suggests it's a phase -- right now, because we're so early in the development stages of this platform, mobile web makes up the main chunk of traffic. But in the future, we may go through applications to get data, or use push notifications, and/or come up with other, more streamlined ways to get information out to mobile devices. But for now, iPhone and iPod touch users are still browsing the web, and as a result, they are accounting for way more traffic than their sales hint at.
iPhone and iPod touch continue to dominate smartphone web traffic
Admob has released another monthly survey of smartphone metrics, and Apple continues to look very healthy both in the U.S. and around the world. In website requests, Apple iPhones and iPod touch devices are up 4.2% from the previous month, while Nokia, still the top dog in handsets world wide, is down 3.6%.One other interesting piece of data is that half of the requests for internet data on the iPhone are coming from 3rd party apps, telling us the impact those apps are having. Apps like sports scores, news and weather apps, streaming music players etc. are really getting heavy use, not only from the iPhone but similar numbers apply to other smartphones as well. The research paper also sees the Android phone coming on, with 2% of mobile requests in the U.S., and is the number four smartphone behind the iPhone, Blackberry Curve and Blackberry Pearl. With the iPhone combined with the iPod touch, Apple has the top devices in the world generating mobile traffic. Admob measures the impact of various mobile phones by looking at requests for mobile ads from a network of 6,000 websites and 1,000 applications. While the numbers may not exactly reflect the universe of mobile phone use, it does show trends that are important to keep an eye on.When you consider that the iPhone is only about 2 years old, the numbers are even more impressive.If you'd like to read the complete report, click here.
iPhone continues to build momentum
In a new study released by AdMob, the iPhone is rolling over many of the other smart phones in the US and the world in terms of data traffic. You can download the complete study in PDF form here. Highlights of the research include: Worldwide, the iPhone makes up 33% of all smart phone traffic In the U.S., the iPhone accounts for 49.5 % of all tracked requests Against all phones, including non-smart phones, Apple had 11.2 % of mobile online traffic. The iPod Touch was getting 6.7% and the Motorola RAZR has dropped to 2.9% of traffic From the AdMob research, here's a look at the top ten smart phones worldwide in terms of Internet traffic.Other items of note: the iPhone of had 10 percent of traffic in the U.S. in August of 2008, now jumping to 49.5 percent in less than a year.AdMob notes that the traffic share is not the same as phone sales. The data reflects a combination of market share and data use. It is likely that the ease of use that Safari offers is helping to drive internet data usage, while other browsers may be painful to use and not nearly as inviting.It's good news for Apple, and it's likely that excitement about the iPhone will increase with OS 3.0 being released this summer, along with the likely debut of new iPhone hardware.AdMob specializes in working with advertisers to get their ads on mobile phones. They also are heavily involved in research to track trends in the mobile space.
Radar.net wants to be your iPhone's photo sharer
We're at a new juncture in the course of iPhone development, I believe. Twitter has basically monopolized the "text exporting" function of your iPhone -- if you want to broadcast text from a mobile device, most of us do it through Twitter. But now, we're seeing a whole host of sites and services aiming to be the distributors for your richer media: photos, audio, even video (as well as the iPhone can handle it, anyway). Radar is one such service, and they'd really like to handle any photos you want to send out into the world. But unlike a site such as Twitpic, they're not content with being just the repository. They want to host, share, and deliver. Whenever you want to mess around with pictures on your iPhone, whether that be taking them and sharing them, browsing your friends' pictures from Flickr, or looking at funny shots from CollegeHumor, Radar wants to be there.They gave TUAW an early look at their new software, just released to the App Store, and we were duly impressed -- they've got hooks into a surprising number of places, and it's clear they've worked hard to make themselves fit somewhere into your photosharing flow. But is it worth it to have yet another site acting as a go-between for you and your photo content? Read on to find out.%Gallery-47505%
