App trendspotting

If this industry teaches us anything, it's not to make predictions...

A new page for ebooks
Will books go the way of music? Will the new digital formats kill paper, sit alongside it, form a consistent niche or sink without trace? A nightmarish question, one that nobody has a definite answer for. But what is certain is that there is momentum behind the space now. According to app tracker Flurry, more ebooks were released on the iPhone App Store in October than games. One out of every five apps launched that month was an e-book.

Key to the growth of the iPhone ebook sector has been the release of Amazon’s Kindle iPhone app, which added momentum to an already growing niche populated by book and magazine reading apps such as Zinio. The Kindle is now available outside the US, and continues to post impressive sales – with observers suggesting it passed half a million in 2009.

Of course, the elephant in the reading room when it comes to e-books is Apple. Will the newly-unveiled iPad do for digital reading what iPod did for MP3? It’s hard to bet against Apple doing a fantastic job and providing readers with a great experience while offering hope to beleaguered print publishers. One can imagine how thrilled a determinedly anti-paywall media group like The Guardian would be. It won’t countenance charging for web content, but has sold over 70,000 newspaper apps at £2.39 each.

App stores for mid-range phones
Every one of the app stores to follow in the wake of the Apple storefront has been built around a smartphone platform. That’s fine, there are hundreds of millions out there – and the space is only getting bigger. Still, what about the feature phone crowd? Mid-range handsets can do video, imaging, MP3 and more. GPS will probably be next. So why ignore them? Well, it seems as if the smartphone myopia is in decline.

Last month AT&T – the original Apple partner – confirmed it is to launch a new AppCenter service based on BREW. By choosing Qualcomm’s veteran platform, AT&T will gain access to thousands of apps developed over years of activity. Indeed, Qualcomm has stated that it’s billed over $1 billion in the lifetime of BREW. The platform will be able to leverage Java and Flash languages, and will be used by mainstream device makers. In fact, HTC just confirmed its first move into the BREW market.

Interestingly, Qualcomm’s own expertise in the apps space is the driving force behind its own platform for lo-fi apps. Plaza was unveiled in 2008 as a developer platform and marketplace for widgets, and shortly after a separate Plaza Retail white-label app store platform aimed at operators, was also confirmed. The big deal about Plaza Retail is that it’s capable of supporting Java, Brew, Flash and Android, with Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm and LiMo due to be added in the future.

In the last few months, Plaza has picked up momentum. Latin American operator America Movil signed to the platform to power its Ideas Widget service across 18 of its subsidiaries in Latin America. Then, the Brazilian subsidiary of global operator group TIM committed too. Qualcomm says that TIM’s app store will be available to its 40 million subscribers in Brazil, who’ll be able to download the app store client from TIM’s portal.

Drag and drop DIY apps
If your company wants an app, but you don’t employ developers and you can’t afford to hire an agency, what options do you have? Well, it’s this niche that’s being targeted by DIY app building software companies. Late last year, for example, AppMakr launched a kit that claimed apps can be made in an hour for $199 using a foolproof WSYWIG interface. For even greater speed, users can enter a website URL and AppMakr will create a sample iPhone app in under 30 seconds built from that content.

Of course these apps are then sold via the AppMakr marketplace (it costs $499 to self-publish), so there’s a risk of duplication with other apps that have a similar look and feel. But for the mass market, it’s an intriguing option.

More noise around Augmented Reality; not so much substance
We at ME remain a little cynical about AR. A fantastic technology still looking for the right application, surely. What can it do that Google Maps can’t most of the time? But this doesn’t stop AR being an eye-popping illustration of what a high-spec connected mobile phone is capable of. And its purveyors remain darlings of the investment community.

The European pioneer Layar bagged an extra $1million recently, while its Japanese counterpart Tonchidot raised $4 million to further develop its Sekai Camera app. The latter gives people the chance to create ‘Air Tags’ – virtual notes that are linked to a real-world location. Sekai Camera was downloaded 100,000 times in its first four days of availability in Japan, according to Tonchidot. Its global launch was supported by a press release that trumpeted: “Sekai Camera is social, and so much fun! It is serendipity here and now!”

Interestingly, AR was one of the few areas where the running was made not by iPhone but by Android. Expect to see the tech roll out to other platforms too in 2010. Indeed, Japanese developer HyongaSoft has
already unveiled OMPASS World Cities for Windows devices.

More to apps than iPhone
Even after 18 months it’s clear to anyone in the business that iPhone delivers the best user experience of apps and the most dependable and mature ecosystem for publishing them. But common sense dictates that the others must be closing the gap – and that it would be mad for content providers to ignore the millions of users of Nokia S60, BlackBerry, Android, Windows and so on.

Happily these platforms are sharpening up their collective act. Nokia has admitted that Ovi was hurriedly put together and that a new version will transform the experience – yet it still claims one million Ovi downloads a day. BlackBerry has worked prodigiously on its App World service, which ...