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Google VP lays down mobile stats, boasts 150 million Maps users
Care for a cup of Google data, anyone? At SXSW, the vice president of location services, Marissa Mayer, stated some interesting facts about the state of all things mobile at the Goog. Most notably, the company provides its map service to 150 million users. Just to give you an idea of how many peeps that is -- it's about half the number of individuals in America. Crazy, we know. What's more, Mayer claimed that Google Maps guided users 12 billion miles per year and that its latest build of the app saves people an average of two days worth of travel time each year. Another bit worth noting is how the company feels about Google Maps for iPhone. "We like being the default provider, but we'd like to get some of these updates out to a broader audience. That's still a debate / question we're considering." Updates? An actual Google Maps application that works as a GPS on an iPhone? Wake us up when iOS 5 is previewed, or we can just keep dreaming.
Mobclix finds the monthly value of an app user
Mobile advertiser Mobclix put together this infographic supposedly showing the "monthly value of an app user." It's the monthly advertising revenue for each app category listed, divided by the average number of users in a given month. As you can see above, iPhone apps are clearly generating more revenue per user than Android apps across the board, and Utilities apps top the list in terms of monthly value per user, as compared to Entertainment and Games apps. Before you start building an ad-driven Utility app for iPhone, though, don't forget that this chart basically sidelines the population stat. While the "value per user" on Games apps seems low, that's only because there are so many more users in that category. Lots more people, believe it or not, use their smartphones to play games than do actual work. Likewise for the Android listings; we already know that Android mobile app sales aren't quite as high as iPhone app sales, though there are more Android handsets out there than iPhones already. This is more of an interesting look at the people who use the apps. Utilities users on the iPhone tend to be a little more valuable as app users, while Games users are relatively cheap and plentiful. That's a pattern we've seen on platforms before, and things will likely stay that way even as the market for mobile advertising gets even bigger. [via AppAdvice]
Visualized: the state of the smartphone wars
As AT&T's iPhone exclusivity reluctantly teeters on the brink of oblivion, it seems a good time to take one last look at the smartphone playground, the way it is before V-Day. The New York Times has handily done that job for us with the above chart, which simultaneously gives us a sense of scale when comparing US carriers and lays out the concentration of Android devices across those networks. It also shows a big fat bump of iOS on AT&T, making it the biggest carrier in terms of combined iPhone and Android users -- nothing shocking there, but the real fun will be in taking a look at this same data a few months from now. Will the iPhone fragment itself all over the four major networks? Will AT&T's Android stable ever be respectable? Tune in to your next installment of "fun, but mostly irrelevant statistics" to find out.
Lessons from early days on the Mac App Store with Evernote
Evernote's Phil Libin has posted an article over at our fellow AOL site TechCrunch talking about the app's first week on the Mac App Store and how it all stacked up (he also did a quick hit in the first few days over on the Evernote blog). He says he's learned some pretty astounding things from Evernote's experience so far in the Mac App Store, and probably first among these is a conclusion that I expect a lot of developers to come to in the next few months. While many devs have believed, due to their success on the iOS App Store, that mobile apps were the wave of the future, Libin boils it down: "It isn't mobile that's overwhelmingly important, it's the app store." That's quite a conclusion right there, but sure enough, as you can see in the chart above, the stats stack up. Evernote saw 320,000 downloads through the Mac App Store last week, 120,000 of which were brand new users. That's half of the new accounts created last week, and it's enough to push the Mac OS to the biggest platform on the service. Again, Libin puts it strikingly powerfully: "The presence of a well-formed app store is the single most important factor for the viability of a platform for third party developers." Libin provided additional detail in a recent email to TUAW, saying that he forecasts 95% of all downloads of the Mac client to be straight from the App Store, eventually. According to him, "desktop is viable again," all thanks to the Mac App Store (and hopefully, he muses, a similar platform for Windows someday). He noted that there was quite a bit of effort involved: "Getting into the store for launch day was non-trivial. We declared that this was the most important priority for our Mac team about six weeks [prior to launch] and pulled a few all-nighters between then and now, but it was clearly worth it. Many of the under-the-hood changes that we had to make to get approved were good code hygiene anyway, and we're better off for having made them." That doesn't mean the direct-download version is going away, Libin explains: "primarily because the App Store doesn't let us have an automatic beta track, which has become pretty important to our release engineering," they will be keeping the conventional version available. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'} The whole article is well worth reading, and if indeed Evernote's experience on the Mac App Store becomes representative of many featured independent developers, the opportunities offered there in terms of discovery and ease-of-use will have an enormous impact on how desktop software is bought and sold.
Skype hits new record of 27 million simultaneous users in wake of iOS video chat release
Even though video chat has been available in some form or another for a good few years, it seems to only really be hitting its stride now, perhaps owing to the fact smartphones are no longer the brick-shaped and -sized beasts they once were. The latest evidence for this trend comes from Skype, who unveiled video calling on the iPhone a few days ago and yesterday managed to reach a new milestone in its history: 27 million users online at the same time. That comfortably overshadows the previous record, which wasn't even over 26 million, and while not all of those logged-in Skypers can be attributed to its FaceTime alternative, it's undeniable that the recent growth in Skype's customer base has been catalyzed by its introduction of video calling. And now that it's coming to Android phones and TVs of all creeds, that number should only continue to grow.
Cobra iRadar on the CES 2011 show floor
We liked the idea of the iRadar when we first heard about it, and Cobra put the device front and center at its CES 2011 booth (well, right next to the girls in skimpy police uniforms). The iRadar is a radar detector that hooks right up to Cobra's official iPhone app, and it will not only alert you when you see speed radar units out on the road, but it will also tune in to two different services. "Aura" is Cobra's own service that keeps a "verified" database of red light cameras and speed traps, and the iRadar ThreatCenter is a database specific to the iRadar that tracks, in real time, when the iRadar goes off. In other words, if someone with an iRadar drives by a speed trap right before you do, you'll be alerted ahead of time. Cobra told us that it has seen over 30,000 downloads of the app, so there's quite a bit of interest out there. The iRadar itself is designed to be a very simple radar detector -- it's just got a small button and a speaker, since most of the information is relayed through the iPhone. But Cobra confirmed that it is working on other radar detector models that will work with the app (as well as an Android version sooner rather than later), and it's even considering bringing the ThreatCenter system to non-smartphone enabled models. Eventually your iPhone may be alerting other Cobra users, even those without phones, about the speed traps you see. "That's why the app is free," the Cobra rep joked. iRadar is US$129, and both the detector unit and the dock come with the purchase. You may not have a need for speed, but if you do, Cobra's unit offers a nice integration with your iPhone. Please note that radar detector use may not be legal in some jurisdictions. TUAW reminds all our readers to always avoid distractions, focus on the road and drive prudently and safely. Be sure to check out the rest of our CES coverage on our CES page.
OpenFeint sees giant spike in Christmas users and downloads
Here's some more evidence that the App Store had a really amazing holiday weekend last week. OpenFeint has announced that it saw a 184% spike in new users on Christmas Day last week, the largest single day in the service's history for new users. Over the four days around the holiday, OpenFeint reportedly added more than 1.4 million new users to the service. Downloads were also really high, with 5 million OpenFeint-enabled games downloaded over the holiday weekend. That includes Android games, which saw 73% growth, and iOS games, which spiked by 187% over the weekend. That's a lot of new games and new players. We've heard other evidence already that last weekend was really busy for the App Store. Apple hasn't released any stats so far (and we've got a line in to EA to try and find out if it can share any of its download figures from the weekend), but we can tell you with some certainty that last weekend saw plenty of new traffic for the App Store and its apps.
Need for Speed World population passes 3 million registered racers
After going free-to-play back in September, Need for Speed World has added roughly 2 million users to its online racetracks, surpassing 3 million registered users in total. Just imagine rush hour! Although the majority of the expanded user base can be attributed to the change to a free-to-play business model, the recent localization of the game into French, Polish, Russian and Spanish likely contributed to the rise in licensed drivers, too. Now, how would EA say, "Please buy some DLC" in those languages?
2.8 million downloads for Gun Bros, 7.3 million for Zombie Farm
I am anxiously awaiting some stats on this past week's releases in the App Store -- over the past two weeks, we've seen some gigantic games released for iOS, and yet familiar names like Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, and Fruit Ninja are still topping the charts (along with some big EA titles benefiting from that price drop). But even if it takes a while for all of those releases to find their place on the App Store, here's news of a few more recent titles that have done well. First up, freemium shooter Gun Bros (featured as our Daily App choice a while back) has picked up 2.8 million downloads so far, and claims 175,000 daily active users so far. That's not huge, but it's a nice sizable audience for a freemium title, especially one that tends a little more towards the hardcore gamer. Glu is also supporting the app with updates, including a new planet to play on, special Christmas-themed gear, and some extra in-game currency rewards for users who update the app. Zombie Farm is doing even better than that -- the wacky cross between zombies and Farmville has earned 7.3 million downloads since launch, and is still growing at about 25% a month. Currently, the app's reviews section is full of complaints about some bugs, but nevertheless, Playforge has claimed 2.76 billion minutes of playtime, and while it hasn't shared actual revenue numbers, there's no question that players have probably spent plenty of money on the game's in-app purchases. I would call both of those solid hits for sure. We'll have to see what other big games rise to the top after this raucous holiday season on the App Store continues.
Backflip Studios reports 20 million active monthly users
When the news hit earlier this month that Zynga had purchased iPhone developers Newtoy (after Ngmoco and Tapulous were also purchased this year), I immediately joked on Twitter that we should make odds on which iPhone developer gets acquired next. In all seriousness, however, Backflip Studios is actually a pretty good candidate to be acquired by a larger company. I heard Julian Farrior speak at GDC earlier this year, and Backflip shows all the signs of a healthy, growing developer: quite a few solid apps, lots of ways to generate revenue and a healthy knowledge of how to make apps popular and profitable. Backflip has one more juicy plum a prospective investor might want to pull: 20 million monthly active users. Backflip is also claiming 2 million daily active users in its apps, and it's reportedly making over half a million dollars a month in ads alone. Farrior is a big fan of multiple revenue streams, though, so paid apps are probably a nice source of income for the company as well. Farrior also says Backflip is porting popular titles to iPad and the Android platform, and the company has some big plans in store for 2011. Of course, as with all successful app developers on the App Store, the question is if Farrior even wants a partner in development. Lots of small studios that are doing well on Apple's platform probably aren't interested in bringing another partner on. But some of the investors shopping the App Store have some pretty deep pockets, and when a big traditional game publisher comes along offering a big check, lots of experience and infrastructure for marketing and development, it's hard to think that a studio like Backflip wouldn't be tempted.
OpenFeint has doubled community since Game Center's launch
When Game Center was first announced way back in April, the first question everyone had was about all of the third-party networks that had already built up in the space. OpenFeint was the biggest of these, and founder Jason Citron had no apparent worries about Apple's advance into social gaming -- he said that OpenFeint would continue to offer features beyond what Game Center did, and that developers would be easily able to use both networks in their apps. A report released last week by OpenFeint says that's exactly what's happened -- the userbase has doubled to a whopping 50 million users since Game Center launched, and games on the network have also increased 119% since Game Center was announced. Those are pretty amazing numbers -- there was a lot of talk earlier this year that Apple would walk into this space and just dominate (and certainly, I've seen a lot of solid Game Center integration since release, and of course because Game Center is automatically installed in iOS, adoption is probably huge), but that hasn't been the case at all. There's definitely room for services like Plus+ and OpenFeint, even with an official network up and running. OpenFeint, as far as I've been told, is also still planning the OpenFeint X service, with more options for in-game microtransactions, so we'll have to see what they're up to next.
Evernote hits 5 million users
Cloud memory service Evernote has reached 5 million users and continues to grow, according to an official statement on the company's blog. The service is gaining tens of thousands of new users per day and has recently seen its highest daily revenue from premium users, plus big jumps off of Apple platforms, on Windows, Android, and BlackBerry. The five millionth user also marks the fastest million users the company has earned, as you can see from the blocked-off sections in the chart above. That's pretty phenomenal growth; it's on an exponential scale, too, so there's probably more where that came from. Meanwhile, Evernote also promises updates are coming on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad side of things. Just a few weeks ago, the company raised a round of US$20 million from some venture funding. 2010 has been a good year for Evernote -- we'll have to see what happens in 2011. [via TechCrunch]
Facebook: Actually, there are 44 million active monthly users of our iPhone app, not 104 million
Yesterday, the internet collective noticed that Facebook was claiming some astonishing monthly active user figures on its respective app fan pages. At the time, Facebook was showing just over 100 million users of its Facebook for iPhone app, nearly 60 million BlackBerry users, and a bit more than 12 million using the Android client. These numbers have continued to rise in the face of contrarian evidence -- for example, how could there possibly be over 100M users of the iPhone app when only 100M iOS devices (a number that includes the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad) have been sold as of June 2010? Easy, it all comes down to how you define "active." Here's the official word we just received from a Facebook spokesman: "There are currently 44 million monthly active users of the Facebook for iPhone app. We recently changed the definition of mobile active users to exclude those who have only liked or commented on stream stories. Instead we are counting "active" users as people who have taken explicit actions within an application. This practice is more aligned with how we count overall active users for the site." So yeah, not 104 million, but that revised number is still a significant proportion of all iPhones (59M iPhones as of last quarter by our calculations) and iPod touch devices (Apple doesn't break these numbers out) to have ever sold, let alone currently in use globally. Any wonder why Google and Foursquare are worried?
Steam releases Mac stats, share drops to 5%
Steam has released its latest hardware survey results, and there's both good and bad news for us Mac gamers. The bad news first: Mac usage of the gaming service has apparently leveled off since the big debut a few months ago, and while the Mac share was originally around 8%, it appears the novelty has worn off a bit, and Mac usage has fallen down to about 5% of the total Steam audience. That's not too surprising (don't forget that the service kicked off with a free Portal game and a good amount of publicity), and it's important to remember that 5% of Steam's 25 million users is still a significant audience. It'll be interesting to see if Apple ever takes advantage of that -- we haven't heard a single official word from them yet about Steam coming to our platform, although the Snow Leopard Graphics Update was tuned to clear up issues that Valve reported. The good news, however, is that Valve has separated out Windows and Mac stats in the hardware survey, so even though there are a few less percentage points of people to look at, we have a lot of interesting information about those Mac users. As you can see in the graphic above, the majority of them are actually playing on a MacBook Pro -- iMacs are the next biggest model on the list, but represent 25% of Mac users as opposed to the MBP's 49%. Steam is also promising a list of most commonly installed Mac applications, but as of this writing, that information isn't posted quite yet. Unfortunately, while Steam is installed on a wide variety of Windows computers, I'll bet that it hasn't quite reached widespread adoption on the Mac side, so these stats will be specifically for Mac gamers rather than the Mac audience as a whole. But it's always interesting to see what stats come out of the Steam Hardware Survey, as a snapshot of just what our technology profile looks like. [via Joystiq]
Facebook mobile app stats shocker: 104 million iPhone users, 12 million Android users
Facebook's recently begun displaying user stats for its mobile apps for several platforms, and the numbers are downright overwhelming. The iPhone takes the largest slice of the cake with (at the time of writing) over 104 million active monthly iOS device users, with BlackBerry users at nearly 60 million, and just over 12 million using the Android client. So what can we take away from these numbers? Well, at last count, Facebook has over 500 million users, so a pretty sizable chunk of them are using mobile apps. Interestingly, the last reported number of iOS users was 100 million; that's the number announced at WWDC, just back in July -- but Facebook lists more than that amount of active monthly users, so we're not sure how these numbers are being calculated. We've reached out to our contacts at Facebook and will update if we get a clearer picture of where the stats are coming from.
APB has 130K registered players, high average playtime and revenue per user
Realtime Worlds as a company has been suffering from all kinds of problems lately, but how's the game doing? With a very short press release, the company (currently "in administration," which is the British version of bankruptcy) has announced that APB is hosting 130,000 registered players. That's actually not too bad for a brand new MMO -- while real population numbers are often hard to come by, the most recent estimates would have the game beating Star Trek Online's current active base. And STO has actually done pretty well, considering how tough it is to start up a new MMO. Realtime Worlds still isn't home and dry, though. At 130K players, APB is just barely doing better than Tabula Rasa at its peak, and we all know how well that turned out. And APB's model means player registrations isn't necessarily a sign of good health. While the press release claims that the average player is playing four hours a day and the average paying player is spending $28 a month, APB's unlimited free social hours and the ability to "spend" in-game points rather than real money could be twisting those figures upwards a bit. Our colleagues at Massively also point out that while Star Trek Online was created relatively cheaply, APB's creation was reportedly much messier and more costly. Still, with a dark cloud over the rest of Realtime Worlds' affairs, they might as well grab a silver lining where they can. If the company survives this launch, APB could have enough of a player base to make itself profitable.
More than 25% of iTunes users want the cloud
A new NPD Group survey says that if Apple ever does release its rumored cloud music service for iTunes, there will definitely be an audience. Over 25% of iTunes users polled say that they would be interested a free iTunes cloud service. And about half of those would be interested in actually paying $10 a month for services like music sharing and streaming their personal libraries through iTunes. Out of an estimated 50 million users in the US, NPD says that 15 million or so would be interested in a free service, and around 7 or 8 million wouldn't mind paying $10 a month to Apple. Keep in mind that this is a survey done in May of this year, Apple hasn't even worked their marketing magic on something like this yet, and it doesn't even exist. If a service like that was actually offered, it's not hard to think that word of mouth and/or a well-marketed feature set would drive that audience even higher. But NPD concludes, not too surprisingly, that there is an audience ready for any iTunes cloud plans that Apple wants to reveal. How 'bout it there, Steve?
Apperang pays users for app installs
The App Store is a busy place -- there are lots and lots of apps out there, and almost all of them need attention. Some developers are apparently willing to pay for that attention, so enter Apperang, a new service that purports to pay users to install certain apps on their iPhones. MobileCrunch has the breakdown -- Apperang has a verification system running that will check if you've installed apps in their system (including Booyah's MyTown and Flixter's Movies -- I saw nine apps on the service, but that may be limited by location), and then will pay out a few cents, both for installing the app yourself, as well as referring it to other Apperang users. Is it kosher? Pretty much -- lots of app developers already pay for advertising that's targeted towards app installation, and this deal isn't any different. Rather than pocketing all the profit, Apperang is just passing it on. A video on the site shows that Apperang is promising US$.25 per app install (if the app isn't free, they'll reimburse you the purchase price), and their FAQ says that the minimum payout is $1. Payout appears to work through Paypal -- that's the only option I can see so far. For some companies, it's just easier to pay a quarter for a new user rather than gamble on advertising or word-of-mouth. I do question how scalable it is from Apperang's perspective, and of course, as a user, there are much better ways to make some pocket change
OpenFeint hits 25 million users, announces 2.5 beta release
OpenFeint has announced that they've reached 25 million users on their social networking service for apps on the App Store. That's an astounding number, and not only does it represent an amazing achievement by the folks at Aurora Feint, but it hints at just how big Apple's official Game Center service will be (whenever they get around to, you know, implementing it). Just for comparison, location networking service Foursquare is still racing to try and hit 3 million users, so in just over a year's time, OpenFeint has picked up many times that number. Those users represent almost a third of the iDevice market and over 85 million devices across 1900 different developers. The service has also announced that they're bringing out the beta of version 2.5 for developers to implement in their iPhone apps and games. The new version includes a revamped API, which will allow for both turn-based and "action replay" multiplayer (a functionality that Game Center won't yet offer, as far as we know); it's also Game Center compatible, so developers who implement OpenFeint in their games will be able to easily transition to Apple's official service when it comes out (that's what we heard from Jason Citron a little while back, too). OpenFeint 2.5 is in beta right now and will arrive on iPhones later this summer.
Booyah raises $20m, aims for 6m users
I've lately been guessing that Booyah might eventually hook up with Ngmoco, since they're both iPhone gaming/app companies with somewhat similar goals that could help each other out. But it looks like Booyah doesn't need any help any more -- it's just raised a whopping $20 million from investors in a new round of funding. Booyah was originally included in the iFund investment, but that contribution pales in comparison to this one, which sets Booyah up as one of the heaviest single-brand hitters in the app market. Booyah is made up of a few ex-Blizzard developers (we interviewed CEO Keith Lee back at GDC), and the growth of its second app, MyTown, has been amazing -- a little while back, they said the app was growing by 100,000 users a week, and they're aiming to hit 6 million users by the end of the summer (presumably with a new app coming as well, not all inside just MyTown). Their user investment is huge as well -- they say that average usage of the app was over an hour a day, and they're now hitting 8.3 million virtual item impressions a day. Along with selling virtual items, they're also putting together high-profile partnerships with companies like H&M and The Travel Channel. And they've done all of this while still standing in the shadow of more well-known check-in services like Gowalla and Foursquare. There's a heck of a lot of activity and potential coming out of Booyah, and with this big chunk of funding, they're set up to do some more amazing things with their next app. We'll have to keep an eye on them.
