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Report for app store GetJar forecasts number of downloads will rise from 7bn in 2009 to almost 50bn in 2012

Mobile app downloads are expected to increase from more than 7bn downloads in 2009 to almost 50bn in 2012, according to a report.

The independent study, carried out by Chetan Sharma Consulting for Getjar, the world’s second biggest app store, forecasts that the global mobile application economy will be worth $17.5bn in 2012, more than CD sales, which it predicts will be $13.83bn.

It says that market will continue to grow exponentially as mobile devices become as powerful as computers, and wireless networks deliver consistently higher bandwidths. “With the consumer appetite for mobile apps rocketing, the opportunities for developers are huge,” says the CEO and founder of GetJar, Ilja Laurs.

The study says that initially the focus of making revenue from apps was based entirely on paid downloads or subscription-based models, but this is going to change. Today, advertising-based revenue accounts for about 12% of app revenue, but by 2012 this figure is expected to rise to 28%. For some platforms such as Google’s Android, advertising revenue is predicted to be even bigger than revenues from paid downloads.

The price of mobile applications ranges from $0.99 to $999 but the average selling price in 2009 was about $1.90, the study says. Over the next three years this is predicted to decrease by 29% and apps will get cheaper; however, advertising revenue derived from apps is likely to stay relatively flat.

By 2012, so-called “offdeck” apps that are offered independently from a carrier will be the biggest revenue generator, accounting for almost 50% of all app revenue. By comparison, in 2009, apps available from mobile operators still accounted for more than 60% of all app revenue, but this will fall to just under 23% by 2012.

As the WSJ Digits blogger Jennifer Valentino-DeVries points out, the study will by no means be the last word on the subject, but it provides at least a look at why so many companies are excited about mobile.

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(Source The Guardian)

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HTC Desire and Sony Xperia X10 launches lined up

Virgin has become the latest mobile phone network to catch the Android bug – it has launched two smartphones based on the Google OS and will release two more next month.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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(Source The Register)

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• It’s been a while since we talked about Spotify, which has been putting a lot of energy into gearing up to launch in America. With co-founder Daniel Ek talking at South by South West yesterday, people thought the company might launch itself in the states – but no such luck. Ek
said the service was doing well, but that relationships with US music publishers were tricky. He also said Spotify now had more than 320,000 paying subscribers.

• Has Google’s Nexus One phone been a flop or not? Flurry, a mobile analytics company, estimates that sales are at around 135,000 since launch – just a smidgen of the numbers shifted by other handsets like the iPhone and Droid over the same period. Ryan Block, formerly of Engadget and now with GDGT, says that’s not failure – after all, Google is only selling it online and not giving it the huge push other handsets get. Still seems like the company wouldn’t want to put in so much effort for so little payoff. One thing we do know for certain, though: Google has had its attempt to trademark the Nexus One name rejected, though it’s got nothing to do with Philip K Dick.

• And… it’s almost a year since Microsoft took the great leap forward and introduced Internet Explorer 8. Now the company is forging ahead with IE9. You can see some demos and read more about what it can do in these guides. Some stuff in there about HTML5 support, CSS3 and SVG. One note – perhaps unsurprising – is that it will not support Windows XP.

You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, @gdngames or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, drive, gadget, google, HTC, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, moto, motorola, new, phone, phones, review, sam, service, sol, test, twitter, uk, venture

Microsoft has unveiled the RC of Silverlight 4 and annnounced that the browser technology will be one of the ways to develop for Windows Phone 7 Series

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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An amendment to the Digital Economy Bill will be introduced and passed within the space of one hour on the last day of Parliament, according to Labour MP Tom Watson

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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Only 865,000 behind the Jesus Phone

Google has sold a mere 135,000 Nexus One phones since its much-ballyhooed launch on January 5, according to the latest numbers from mobile analytics outfit Flurry.…

What is your recession sales strategy?

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(Source The Register)

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When Apple decided to sue Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC, it was hard to see it as anything other than a broadside at Google. After all, HTC makes Nexus One handset, and Steve Jobs has previously told staff that he’s angry because “We did not enter the search business… they entered the phone business”.

The ever-growing conflict between the two is something I mentioned on Monday, and plenty of people have weighed in on the subject, including former Sun Microsystems boss Jonathan Schwartz, who said that any company launching a software patent lawsuit was basically undertaking an “act of desperation”.

But most of the action so far has been from Apple’s side – the accusations about its rivals (including Nokia, which has in turn accused the iPhone maker of “legal alchemy”); the offended and aggrieved statements by Jobs and so on.

So where’s Google in this fight? Is it just staying quiet? Step forward Tim Bray, the Canadian technologist best known for his work on XML. Bray – who has written eloquently on software patents before and who left Sun himself last month – announced over the weekend that he was joining Google’s Android team.

Oh yeah, then he immediately poured fuel onto the fire with an extremely strong broadside about why he dislikes Apple’s approach:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.
I hate it.
I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom’s not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient.

Strong words, and proof that Googlers are prepared to fire back from time to time. It will be interesting to see how long Bray is allowed to speak his mind like this (staff commenting, even obliquely, on lawsuits is something most corporate lawyers dislike intensely) but it’s refreshing to see somebody on either side speaking openly and on the record.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, Apples, best, blog, compare, comparemobiles.com, free, gadget, gadgets, google, HTC, iphone, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, new, nokia, phone, phones, sol, uk, world

Last-minute amendments to the bill, which will soon move to the House of Commons, deal with disconnection of file sharers and web-site blocking

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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Disses Apple iPhone’s ‘Disney-fied walled garden’

XML co-inventor and languages expert Tim Bray has taken a job at Google just a month after he left Sun Microsystems Oracle.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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(Source The Register)

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The former Sun Microsystems’ employee Tim Bray has left the company to join Android’s opposition to Apple’s iPhone

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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Setbacks with the internet group’s first handset will see competing products arrive on the market first

Google’s attempt to break into the mobile phone market has hit serious problems in Britain with the launch of its flagship Nexus One device understood to have been delayed until the middle of next month.

The setback means that by the time Google’s first own-branded foray into the market this side of the Atlantic is available to consumers, its local network partner Vodafone will have launched a competing product, which analysts say is better, called the HTC Legend.

While Google has been working with the industry on the Android mobile phone software for several years, the Nexus One, made by Taiwan’s HTC, is the first handset over which the search engine group has had complete control. But launching a new phone has proved more difficult than Google expected.

It was released in the US in January, but Google’s decision to sell it solely through its website immediately came in for criticism as buyers struggled to get help with technical problems, and Google, which has traditionally relied on email for consumer contact, was forced to introduce telephone helplinessupport and the problems it has experienced in the US has given it reason to pause over the phone’s launch outside the US, to make sure it has its customer service operations in place. Last week Goldman Sachs slashed its estimate for Nexus One sales this year from 3.5m units to 1m worldwide.

In the UK, Google will not only sell the phone at full price to any customer who wants to put their existing sim card into it, but it has also teamed up with Vodafone, which will offer the device free to anyone willing to sign a £35 monthly contract.

But the delay in the launch of the Nexus One, which under Google’s original plan would have been available earlier this month, means that it will come after the launch of rival Android devices that analysts reckon are at least as good, if not better. Vodafone, for instance, will be offering the HTC Legend in April which has the same operating system as the Nexus One but is more stylish: being built from a single piece of milled aluminium. Orange and T-Mobile, meanwhile, will both be stocking the HTC Desire – which is exactly the same as the Nexus One, but has an optical trackpad instead of a trackball – from next month.

The delay also means the Google device will be available in the UK only weeks before another hotly anticipated gadget, Apple’s iPad. Several of the UK’s mobile phone companies are finalising deals with Apple to sell the tablet computer to British consumers. Unlike its last mobile device, the iPhone, which was offered through just one exclusive partner for the first two years, the iPad is expected to be available through multiple network operators from the start.

Apple will ship two versions of the iPad in the UK, one that can access the internet using short-range wi-fi networks and one that can also access 3G mobile phone networks. But Apple needs to sign deals with at least one UK mobile network, because the iPad makes use of micro-sims, meaning that buyers cannot just put the sim card from their existing handsets into it. In fact, it will be the first device launched in the UK that uses micro-sims.

Apple said earlier this month that the device will go on sale in the UK towards the end of April but the mobile phone companies believe that the 3G version of the iPad will not be available until May. Orange, T-Mobile, O2 and Vodafone all expect to be selling the iPad to customers and they are all locked in talks with the Californian company. Apple, however, has made it plain that it does not want iPad users to be tied to long-term contracts with any mobile phone operator. Instead it wants users to be able to pay for mobile network access on a pay-as-you-go basis.

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(Source The Guardian)

Tags: 10, 3, all, android, apple, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, email, free, gadget, google, HTC, iphone, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, released, sam, service, sim, Sim Card, sol, t-mobile, talks, uk, vodafone, world

Vtesse, a fibre provider that is gearing up for national contracts, is establishing the network to gauge the level of demand for such services

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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LONDON (Reuters) – Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile operator by revenue, is to close its navigation business as it could not compete with free services provided by Google and Nokia.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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The acquisition of monitoring software company is part of CA’s plan to add new customers in emerging enterprises

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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The company’s chief technology officer said he expects a launch of mobile handsets with 4G capability within three to six months after launching its 4G network

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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Google apps ‘postponed’ on China carriers

Motorola will soon push Microsoft’s Bing search engine onto Android phones in China, after announcing an alliance with the Redmond software giant that will see Bing appear on Androids across the globe.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

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(Source The Register)

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Part of Amendment 120A mirrors a BPI lobbying proposal, but the peer who tabled the amendment says there was a “mixture of influences”

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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Bits of the internet on a phone? WE OWN THAT!

Gathering information from around the internet and presenting it on a mobile phone is protected by patent, according to Wireless Ink, which is suing Google and Facebook over it.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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(Source The Register)

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In a vote of 633 to 13, the Parliament voted down the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which aimed to regulate intellectual property

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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‘No decision’ on Opera Mobile

Opera has released an Opera Mini 5 beta for Google’s Android platform.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

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(Source The Register)

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