‘Living With Digital’ survey by Futuresource Consulting provides interesting insights for iPhone developers on smartphone market and user behavior. The consumer survey was carried out in the UK, US, France and Germany on a sample of 2,500 respondents. The survey reveals that 64% of iPhone users watch video on their device.  Other interesting findings of the study are-

• Facebook is driving the mobile internet usage. The social networking site is the most visited site followed by Google and YouTube across all territories while in the UK, BBC occupies third position.
• User generated content (UGC) account for majority of videos watched via mobile devices, although users are also watching clips, trailers and music videos.
• More than 25% of smartphone owners surveyed in the UK and US download apps. Gaming is the most popular across all four territories and 65% of smartphone users frequently play games on their devices closely followed by social networking and music. Over 40% users download social networking applications across all territories.”
• Apple iPhone owners are downloading the most games and paying for content. One in three iPhone users are making in-app purchases.

“A quarter of people in the UK and a third in the US now own a smartphone and this growth is set to continue, with Futuresource research showing that three in four people across the UK and US will own a smartphone by 2014,” said Alison Casey, Head of Global Content at Futuresource Consulting.

“The ever-increasing presence of smartphones across all four territories surveyed in our ‘Living With Digital’ study has seen greatest adoption of iPhone, HTC and Blackberry phones by the younger consumer, with the higher percentage of owners being under 25.”

The report notes that the focus on what users are willing to pay for when accessing content on mobile devices continues to influence the app developers. A common stream of income for the app developers is in-App purchasing, which has emerged as a significant revenue contributor.

Tags: iPhone, iphone developers

Data from comScore Device Essentials sheds light on the influence of Apple’s iPad and other tablet devices. According to the study, covering thirteen countries across five continents, iPad is presently the leading tablet device across all geographies and accounts for more than 89% of tablet traffic. Apple iPad’s contribution to overall non-computer device traffic is highest in Canada with 33.5% followed by with 31.8 percent and 26.2% in Singapore.

Android tablets which significantly lag behind iPad in the U.S. market, bests Apple in the Smartphone space with 35.6 percent as against 23.5 percent for iPhone. iPod Touch contribute notably to non-computer traffic across most countries.

The 2011 European Mobile User Study by Yankee Group brings good news for iPhone developers as it finds that 40 percent of consumers in Europe intending to buy a smartphone will choose an iPhone as their next mobile device. Android-based smartphones came in second with 19 percent followed by BlackBerry and Nokia with 17 and 15 percent respectively. The latest study covered five European countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K and polled 5,000 consumers and 2,250 employees and IT decision-makers.

Declan Lonergan, research VP at Yankee Group  said“These findings highlight the continued strength of Apple in the European smartphone market and, in particular, it’s phenomenal brand appeal.”

“The data also highlights the enormous challenges faced by Nokia and RIM to retain mind share and market share in this increasingly dynamic and competitive marketplace,” he added

Other major findings of the study that would be of interest to iPhone developers include:

• In enterprises, use of consumer tools for work purposes has increased with four times more employees using it with IT’s explicit approval.
• Tablets are improving productivity of the organization with 58 percent employees saying they are more productive during long-distance travel when they have a tablet.
• Most consumers have more than one device and use it depending on the screen best suited for the time and place.

The recent study, once again, shows iPhones popularity in the market and offer great hope for iPhone developers.

A survey conducted by BTIG Research reveals that Apple’s iPhone is the best selling model on Verizon and AT&T network.  The survey was conducted over the past three weeks and surveyed 250 Verizon and AT&T stores across the United States to name their number one smartphone.

At Verizon stores, 51 percent said iPhone was their top-selling phone whereas an additional 38 percent were of the opinion that it was tied a rival Android device, normally the Samsung Droid Charge or the HTC Thunderbolt.

At AT&T stores, 65 percent said the iPhone was their top selling phone while another 31 percent picked Android device.

Overall, in 58 percent of the stores iPhone was the most selling smartphone with an additional 20 percent saying it shared honors with a rival device.

The iPhone application developers across the globe are expecting the new iOS 4.1 Update to be released on September 8th. Several media houses has reported the date Apple is targeting to air the new update.

Last week Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple has announced that the update would be freely available from this week and would end up in adding some more features to the iOS devices; like HDR Photos, HD Video uploading, Game Center etc.

The iPhone developers along with Apple also believe that the new update can fix several problems the iPhone users are continuously facing since it has been launched.
Apple is also going to launch a new iOS 4.2 for its iPads shortly.

Stay tuned with us as we will keep on updating about the further developments on this.

The latest declaration of Facebook has clarified the total number of iOS Facbook app users; and this is not 100 millions but 44 millions.

The figure may be disappointing for Facebook, which has been successful to attract a magic figure of 500 million users world wide; but they are successful to attract almost 44% of the iOS device users including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users. It’s worth a mention that Apple has sold around 59 millions of iPhones by June, 2010.

In their statement, Facebook has said, “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 has put a full stop to all the speculations in the iPhone developers community about the actual number of the users. Although the magic figure of 100 million is a myth as of now, it still indicates that the iPhone Facebook app is hugely popular in the App Store. The pace of growth of Facebook in last couple of years, and the popularity of the app in App Store clearly suggests that the iPhone app developers and other service providers can use it successfully for a more effective branding purpose.

The rumor that Apple is coming up with their CDMA model with Verizon has caught up some more fuel with a corporate engineering opening at Qualcomm. The new proposed opening has contributed in the speculation that technical preparation is going on to launch the CDMA iPHone.

Apple presently sells the iPhone 4 in US via AT&T. The experts in the iPhone development industry believe that Apple has gained enough of its users with this GSM connection, and to grow further iPhone 4 should catch up with some other carrier too. Here comes Verizon, the wireless operator popular to support the CDMA standard, a channel access technology used by various radio communications as the alternative to GSM.

Eventually, Qualcomm has built up the first ever CDMA cellular base station in the early ’90s. So definitely the company has the enough expertise to support Apple CDMA.

Qualcomm, the chip supplying giant, which also has a strong R&D house in wireless telecommunications, is going to hire an “iPhone Developer Guru” for a “secret” assignment.

“The iPhone has no secret for you? Well, that’s what you think… join us and develop the most challenging product of your life!”, the job profile in the online advertisement reads.

“You are driven by a very strict development discipline, well versed in Agile, and your passion is to bring product in the hands of consumers,” Qualcomm job posting adds.

They have specified that they are looking for someone who has been “exposed to application or game development on mobile for years”, and who has developed and deployed apps on Apple’s smarphone.

“Join us now: we are small fast moving team working in a lab 24hrs/day!”, says the posting.

The experts infer that the new member will be responsible basically with iPhone software designing and development. However, iphone application developers also think that this person’s responsibilities may not be limited to this only.

“…we expect you to be part of the team and contribute to all aspects of the product development including Android, Web development, Server side development and operation aspects,” Qualcomm adds has given enough reason to think so.

The skills and experience required for this position include:
Objective C, Xcode, C;
Multi-threaded application;
File, network & socket programming;
OO design, UI design;
Client-Server design;
J2EE, Tomcat; Jboss;
JSON; HTTP, SSL;
Test Driven Development, Unit Tests.

Finally, the academic background required says: “a Master’s is preferred, although not having one is not necessarily a problem.” Qulcomm adds, “if you’ve been programming since you’re kid and have the right experience and skills, we would like to see you.”

May be this would be an appropriate message which Apple could ever give to all the people who point finger at the iPhone 4 Antennagate issue. In a recent research conducted by Changewave Research iPhone 3GS was reported to have more dropped calls than iPhone 4. Even though surprising, the researchers claims with affirmation that they are quite sure about their findings.

5.2% of iPhone 4 owners reported dropped calls during the month of July, while 6.3% of owners of the iPhone 3GS. However the report takes perceptions of iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 users rather than itself checking it itself. Also changewave said that a negative publicity has made many iPhone 4 users unhappy about the new iPhone.  If only the research findings are right we must say this is a cool news for Apple as the lot of  negative news have crept in to the blogosphere and people are still voting for the iPhone despite the negativity around.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 seriously needs some applications and games and instead of hiring a team of skilled developers they prefer alluring existing iPhone and iPad game developers.  Well the high note is existing iPhone app developers now have got an extra option to earn money.

iPhone and Android games were the major target markets for developers to cash in on. But with the intervention of Microsoft with good freebies, there might be few game developers who would fall for the other side of the Window. The ray of hope for Microsoft and also an attractive application for all game developers is the XBOX 360 Live integration in the WP7. This particular integration may make iPhone game developers  jump to latch on the opportunity before any one else gets into the business.

The strategy by Microsoft could be transfer the existing XBOX fan base to mobile gaming too and also make its first serious appearance as a “Mobile Gaming Brand”. But questions still exist how the company will go on from here on in roping in iPhone game developers and in keeping them interested and rich.

Apple sold about 2 million iPad in less than 60 days with unlimited dataplan. It’s bad that, iPad owners in America may not get unlimited data package from here on and not only just iPad owners but iPhone owners too. There seems to be some major changes with tariff of dataplans.

There are two plans namely, Data Plus and Data Pro.

DataPlus is the cheapest plan, that provides you with 200MB of data for $15 per month. Right now, iPhone users pay $30 for unlimited dataplan which is quiet double of latest 200MB plan. If you exceed 200MB in a month with $15 plan, then you need to pay another $15 to get more 200MB.

DataPro is the plan with 2GB of data priced at $25 per month and if you exceed the limit you need to pay $10 for additional 1GB. This plan is designed for the heavy data users on iPhone / iPad. According to AT&T, 98 percent of their total iPhone data users never crossed 2GB in a month. If you never crossed 2GB over a month on your iPhone or iPad then this plan might gives you the feeling of unlimited dataplan.

These new changes are signaling me that the new iPhone gonna have some major changes with respects to it’s carrier support. It might be with AT&T’s exclusivity for iPhone or AT&T is trying to provide better service to their customers.