(Credit:
Apple)
Apple's App Store hit another milestone Tuesday, topping 3 billion downloads.
The store, which launched in July 2008 with just 500 applications, now offers more than 100,000 free and paid apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Apple didn't break down how many of the downloaded apps were paid and how many were free, but the App Store does provide lists of its most popular apps in those categories.
The App Store reached the 1 billion download mark in April and the 2 billion mark in November.
The success of the App Store has forced other mobile companies to try to mimic its success. LG, Research In Motion, Nokia, Google, Palm and Microsoft all have their own stores or plan to open one.
So far, no one has been able to match the number of applications or downloads from Apple's store.
Apple found a nice Christmas gift under its tree this year.
App Store downloads for the iPod Touch were 1,000 percent higher on Friday, Christmas Day, than the average of the three previous Fridays in December, according to a report released Monday by research firm Flurry.
Downloads for the newest generation, the iPod Touch 3G, soared more than 900 percent on Christmas, noted Flurry's "2009 Holiday Report: Christmas Growth." But the 1,000 percent leap in iPod Touch downloads overall may have been triggered by a flood of iTunes gift cards, believes Flurry.
The rising popularity of the iPod Touch also gave Apple reason to celebrate. Of the estimated 58 million iPhone and iPod Touch devices on the market, about 40 percent of those, or 24 million, are iPod Touch devices, according to another Flurry report released in November.
With a large number of Touch devices likely given out as holiday presents (it was one of Amazon.com's top three electronics sellers), App Store downloads for the iPod Touch jumped past those for the iPhone for the first time, outpacing them by 172 percent. The trend continued the following day, with iPod Touch downloads on December 26 exceeding those for the iPhone by 104 percent.
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Flurry)
The volume in overall App Store downloads also grew by more than 50 percent in December (with estimates for the final week of the month) over November, surpassing Flurry's estimate of only 20 percent.
Flurry's Vice President of Marketing Peter Farago spoke with CNET about the success of the App Store. Though some forecasts question how much further the App Store can grow, Farago thinks this is just the beginning. "The growth has been meteoric for Apple for iPhone and iPod Touch penetration," he said. "They're already past 50 million units in the marketplace for iPhone and iPod Touch."
Farago notes that while the iPhone is a killer device that gives people a portable computer in their pocket, Apple knows it needs third-party developers, which is one reason the company controls the store. And developers will go wherever they can get a good customer base, realizing that they can build an app once for the App Store and draw in a lot of consumers.
Even recent criticisms leveled against the App Store haven't dented its growth. Though some developers have complained that the App Store is hard to deal with, Farago says there are a lot of success stories from people who have created and sold apps through Apple.
Farago also sees the iPod Touch as Apple's silent killer, with a huge market share that will help the company in the years to come. "What I'd be scared about if I were a phone maker is that Apple has a relationship now with all these teens and pre-teens using a device that is basically an iPhone with the radio turned off," he said. "They've got 24 million [customers], and with Christmas, probably add a couple million or so to that. All those kids are getting trained to be iPhone users in the next two to five years."
Google's Android Market can't compare with the App Store at this point, but its recent download volume should offer Android vendors some holiday cheer. December downloads from the Android Market store grew by more than 20 percent over November. Downloads for Motorola's Droid, in particular, rose 93 percent on Christmas Day compared with the three previous Fridays of the month. The Droid also captured 48 percent of all download volume versus other top Android devices, including the myTouch 3G, G1, and the HTC Hero).
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Flurry)
Farago also sees the Android market off to a promising start. The installed hardware base isn't there yet, but that may start to change next year as Flurry expects about 50 new Android devices to hit the market. Once enough of those devices get into the hands of consumers, more developers may be drawn to create Android apps.
Of all Android devices, the Droid is so far leading the way. "It's the most successful [Android] headset that enables downloading pretty easily," said Farago. "For a phone that's not the iPhone, it's got a pretty good installed base."
Though Android may always play second fiddle to Apple, at least in the foreseeable future, that doesn't mean the Android Market can't have a significantly good business, notes Farago. Flurry predicts that by the end of next year, 150,000 apps will be available for Android phones, up from around 20,000 to 25,000 now.
Flurry provides analytics for mobile app developers to help them track downloads for their applications. As such, the company is able to determine which mobile devices are downloading which apps.
Most college professors will tell students to put away their iPhone or iPod once class starts. But not Ken Joy. His class requires them.
Professor Joy teaches ECS 198H, Introduction To iPhone Application Development, to undergraduates at the University of California at Davis. On the first day of class in late September UC Davis became one of a growing number of schools that are tailoring classes and focusing academic resources on the making and selling of applications for Apple's popular mobile platform.
A professor for almost 30 years, Joy has mainly researched computer graphics and visualizations, until he and a former grad student came up with the idea to offer a class that teaches to the iPhone SDK (software development kit). Joy didn't have much experience in mobile platforms, but he was game for teaching something "relevant" that would keep his students motivated.
"Nothing is more relevant than the iPhone or iPod Touch right now," Joy said in an interview this week.
One of the apps developed in Professor Joy's first iPhone app making class.
(Credit: Sunny Dhillon and Fei Li)He's not the first to teach this class to undergrads. Stanford University has offered the class for a year, as have Florida's Stetson University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
But while those schools have taken advantage of Apple's iPhone Developer University Program--which provides free access to the SDK, Apple hardware, and Apple employees as teachers--Joy's course is a bit more of a grassroots effort.
ECS 198H wasn't approved as a university course until 10 days before the fall quarter started in September--in other words, students already had their class schedules set. But less than four hours after Joy placed it in the registration guide, the class was filled to its 35-student capacity, with another 40 people staking out wait-list spots.
"I saw the e-mail (about the class) and I thought, 'Oh gosh.' I jumped right on my computer and signed up for the class as soon as I saw it," said Kip Nicol, 22, a computer science and engineering major. "It was a pretty hot class."
Jules Houts, 21, also studying computer science and engineering, jumped at what looked like a "fun" class, he said. "It seemed better than operating systems or something like that."
Besides room on their schedules, students also had to provide their own iPhone, iPod Touch, or Mac that can run the SDK, thanks to the UC system's well-publicized budget problems.
"We had no choice; students had to find resources themselves," said Joy.
And they did. So did several faculty and university employees who chose to audit the class, or sit in without getting a grade, illustrating much of what we already know: the App Store is popular. Apple's online marketplace for iPhone and iPod Touch programs has been bombarded with submissions from developers in the year and a half it's been open for business. There are more than 100,000 applications currently for sale and 8,500 new and updated programs submitted every day. And its competitors want a piece too: Research In Motion, Google's Android, Palm, Nokia, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile have followed suit, opening up application marketplaces, though none has university professors teaching courses about them. Or at least not yet.
Granted, squeezing the entire learning and development process into a 10-week academic quarter was a challenge. The first five weeks were spent learning the SDK, some Objective C programming language, and making simple apps like an RSS reader, while the last five weeks they split into two-person teams building their apps.
Joy said he is impressed with what his newbie iPhone developers came up with: an app for properly tuning a piano, one for tracking location of the GPS-equipped UC Davis student-run bus system, and one application for all UC Davis students, including information about student groups, maps of the campus, class locations, to name a few. That one will be in the App Store next quarter, Joy is already predicting.
The class was deemed a success, but it's unclear if it'll be back on the schedule come next fall. "We hope to offer it next year, but with the budget problems of the University of California system, no one quite knows what's going to happen."
Either way, Joy says teaching to the SDK is one of the most hands-on real-world classes he's ever taught to undergrads.
"We got to develop some apps for the real world. Students got to see a really good SDK...This is something we normally don't get in a university," Joy said. Most classes "tend to solve limited problems and don't really deal with real world that much. These that do, trying to develop bigger applications, get the students closer to the experience of industry. Which is very good."
"It was one of the funnest classes I've taken because it was project-oriented, and it created a community of developers," said Houts, who created the piano-tuning application.
But besides teaching the programming language to build iPhone apps, Joy's class also included business how-tos for those who may want to create their own iPhone app developer companies.
Some students, like Houts, are already thinking that way. As a member of UC Davis' lacrosse team, he plans on making an iPhone game based on his sport, a market he believes has some good potential.
"There's nothing except for a lacrosse stats (app) on the App Store. I want to make a little lacrosse game, and be the first to get on that market. There's a new lacrosse Xbox game that just came out, so it's still a new market right now."
If all goes well, Houts said he could see himself starting an iPhone app-making business. "I think I'll submit the first couple apps under my name, and if they're successful then I might start something."
The App Store has been a huge success for Apple and for some developers, but there have been a few hiccups along the way. Apps have made it past Apple's rigorous reviews machine only to be pulled down permanently, or have their developers required to remove key features.
Those who still have some of these apps can consider them collector's items, since they continue to work, despite not being able to be re-downloaded from the App Store. We've rounded up 10 of the most notable pulls (along with one that had to be tweaked for less functionality). Click the slideshow link below to get started.
Any we missed? Leave them in the comments.
Apple's App Store has been a runaway success, but it's also been mired in controversy due to the application approval process. The company, however, isn't making apologies for its stringent gatekeeping and insists it's acting in the best interest of its customers.
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Apple)
"We've built a store for the most part that people can trust," Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, told BusinessWeek in an interview posted Monday. "You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you'd expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works."
Schiller offered BusinessWeek a breakdown of app rejections. Of the applications sent back to developers, about 90 percent are due to technical issues and simply need code tweaks to make the apps work properly.
About 10 percent are rejected because they try to steal personal data or try to help someone break the law or because they contain content that Apple considers inappropriate, BusinessWeek reported.
About 1 percent are turned away for reasons that fall into gray areas, Schiller told BusinessWeek.
One of Apple's latest run-ins with a developer was over the use of Apple product images in Rogue Amoeba's audio-streaming app called Airfoil Speakers Touch. After three-and-a-half months of back and forth over an update for the already-live app, Apple is apparently going to let the company resubmit the app update with the product images intact as originally submitted. However, the ordeal has apparently soured Rogue Amoeba on future development for the App Store.
"At this time, we have no plans to return to the platform," Rogue Amoeba CEO Paul Kafasis told CNET on Monday. "Apple has corrected one small problem with their review process. But the platform as a whole still has many issues that need to be addressed before we consider it a viable place for our business to commit resources."
The App Store currently has more than 100,000 third-party applications available for download. Apple has reported more than 2 billion downloads since the online store opened in July 2008.
Apple's iPhone platform has attracted a wide range of developers, including many gaming companies over the last year. While competition in attracting developers is increasing among mobile operating system companies, it seems the performance of the App Store will keep Apple at the top of list.
French mobile gaming company Gameloft said at an investor conference on Friday that it is cutting back its investment in Android in favor of the iPhone, according to a Reuters report. Gameloft's finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said "many others" were doing the same thing, although he didn't mention the other companies by name.
Rochefort said the main reason for choosing the iPhone over Android was "due to weaknesses of Android's application store."
"It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue," said Rochefort.
Gameloft has more than 75 games available in the App Store and Rochefort said they sell 400 times more games for the iPhone than they do for Android.
Games are a big focus for Apple, especially with the release of its newest iPod Touch in September. It was there that Apple began comparing itself to the gaming elite like Nintendo and Sony.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said during the event that the buying experience was "too expensive" and "not a lot of fun." Schiller also pointed out that, at the time, there were more than 21,000 gaming titles on the iPhone, compared to 3,600 on Nintendo, and 600 on Sony.
Earlier this month, Apple said it had more than 100,000 apps available with over two billion downloads.
Apple's App Store boasts more than 100,000 apps and more than 2 billion downloads, but not all of its developers are as happy as some would think. One well-respected developer decided to call it quits.
Citing his frustration with the App Store approval process, Rogue Amoeba's Paul Kafasis said on his company's blog last week that he is throwing in the towel on iPhone app development after an exasperating three-and-a-half month app approval.
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Rogue Amoeba)
"Rogue Amoeba no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applications will likely be rare," said Kafasis. "The iPhone platform had great promise, but that promise is not enough, so we're focusing on the Mac."
Kafasis' growing irritation with the App Store centers around an update he wanted to release for his Airfoil Speakers Touch iPhone app. The app allows users to receive audio from any Mac or Windows-based PC and the update fixed some issues with audio sync.
However, Apple rejected the update because it used images of Apple products in the app. The way Airfoil Speakers Touch works is that it shows you graphically what machine and application your audio is coming from on the host computer. If you are connected to an iMac running Safari, that's what will show up in the iPhone app.
This isn't something that Kafasis hacked together--this functionality is freely available as part of Mac OS X for developers to use. In fact, Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0 was still in the App Store, approved by Apple, with these images.
"The only thing Apple's process was doing was preventing a needed bug-fix from reaching the hands of our mutual customers," said Kafasis.
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Rogue Amoeba)
In order to get the fixes to customers, Kafasis took out all of the offending images and replaced them with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) logo. If you tap on the logo, you will be taken to a page explaining why the images have been removed.
Kafasis is asking users to consider donating to the EFF. While the organization isn't involved with his decision to place its logo in his app, "if Apple is to change, it may take such an organization to make it happen," he said.
As a developer, Kafasis also wants users to know the frustrations they have to go through to put out software. "We wanted to ship a simple bug fix, and it took almost four months of slow replies, delays, and dithering by Apple," said Kafasis. "All the while, our buggy, and supposedly infringing version, was still available. There's no other word for that but 'broken.'"
This isn't the end of the road for Kafasis. A Mac developer for 11 years, he will re-focus his efforts back to his many popular Mac applications and continue developing for that platform.
A Mad Magazine contributor has been told by Apple that his iPhone app featuring drawings and contact information of members of the 111th Congress has been rejected because it depicts politicians in an objectionable light.
Richmond's iPhone app in action.
(Credit: Tom Richmond)According to Tom Richmond, who wrote about his app's rejection on his personal blog, his app--dubbed Bobble Rep-111th Congress Edition--in no way should have been construed as objectionable.
Richmond said that the focus of the app was to create a "database of all the members of the United States Congress which allowed the user to find the names and contact information of their senators and congressional representative either via Zip code or by using the iPhone's GPS location services." Rather than use the politicians' individual portraits, the app depicts each senator and representative in caricature form, which Richmond drew himself. All told, the app features 540 caricatures of the politicians.
... Read MoreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
More than 100,000 apps are now available for download from Apple's App Store, making it the largest such retailer in the world.
App Store icon
(Credit: Apple)The App Store launched in July 2008 with just 500 applications. The store is now available in 77 countries, which has contributed to what Apple said Wednesday is well over 2 billion downloads.
Apps from the App Store work with both the iPhone and iPod Touch.
When introducing its new iPod Touch in September, Apple positioned the device as a superior gaming platform to Sony's PSP or Nintendo DS. Apple said its rivals charged too much for games and didn't offer enough selection. At the time, Apple had more than 21,000 game titles in the App Store, while Nintendo had 3,600 titles and Sony had 600.
The message apparently has gotten through.
"The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve," Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios at EA Mobile, was quoted as saying in Apple's press release Wednesday.
Not everything has been perfect with the App Store, however. Most notably, Apple's app approval process has caused frustration with developers, who are sometimes left in the dark about the reason an app is rejected.
Say Tweetie, and most folks think: "I tawt I taw a puddy tat."
But as a social-networking kinda guy, Tweetie is the name of my favorite iPhone Twitter app.
Tweetie lets you access all the standard Twitter features on your iPhone. You can see and respond to the tweets you follow, post your own tweets, and search for tweets by keyword.
Tweetie has always offered a clean, simple interface. But with its newly-redesigned version 2.0, the app is even friendlier. The buttons to tweet, check mentions of your name, send a direct mail (DM), and search for tweets are now within easy access at the bottom of the screen.
Checking your own profile is also smoother. A single Profile screen displays your bio, location, and URL, as well as the number of your followers, those you're following, tweets, and favorites. Tapping on a category like Followers displays the names and photos of all the people tracking your tweets.
Tweetie 2.0 also sports a neat, new feature to let you update the list of tweets that you follow--simply drag your finger down the screen, and the newest tweets appear at the top with a pop.
Tweetie provides its own interface for viewing Web pages and other linked content in a tweet. Courtesy of the iPhone 3.0 update, the interface works in both portrait and landscape mode and offers options to view the page in Safari, e-mail a link to the page, or repost the link in your own tweet.
Options are plentiful when creating your own tweets. Like Twitter, Tweetie keeps track of every character you type, so you know when you're approaching that 140-character limit. You can attach photos or videos to your tweets, either by snapping them with the iPhone camera or grabbing them from your library. Your followers can then view them on yFrog, a site that lets you share images and video via Twitter.
Geotagging is another hot trend that Tweetie offers. You can add a Google Maps link to your current location in a tweet and search for other Twitter users in your area.
Like several other iPhone apps, Tweetie ran into trouble earlier this year with the Apple police, who initially denied approval of its 1.3 version over alleged naughty words in its Twitter Trends feed. Of course, Tweetie is just a conduit that displays whatever appears on Twitter, so it's ridiculous to ding the app for the content. Fortunately, Apple eventually OK'd the update, and it's been smooth sailing for Tweetie since then.
The Apple's App Store is loaded with other Twitter apps, and I've tried a variety of them--both free and paid, including Twitterrific and TweetDeck.
Twitter fans all have their own preferences. You can even vote for your favorite Twitter app.
But Tweetie is the app I've stuck with the longest, and the one I heartily recommend.
Tweetie 2.0 will set you back $2.99--even those of us who migrated from Tweetie 1.0 have to pay for the new edition. But the upgrade is well worth it. Tweetie 2.0 requires iPhone OS 3.0 or higher and is compatible with both the iPhone and iPod Touch.
