Apple Inc. will shut down the Quattro Wireless advertising network it acquired earlier this year and will support its new iAd network exclusively as of Sept. 30, according to a letter Apple sent to Quattro clients Thursday.
The move was widely expected because the Quattro Wireless team had been key in helping to develop iAd, a new service that Apple started on July 1. IAd delivers interactive rich-media ads inside iPhone and iPod touch apps.
“We believe iAd is the best mobile ad network in the world, and starting next month we’re going to focus all of our resources on the iAd advertising platform,” said Andy Miller, Quattro’s former chief executive who is now vice president of iAd for Apple, in the letter to Quattro clients.
The Business Insider news website earlier reported Apple’s plans to close Quattro.
IAd has been slow to take off, as Apple’s tight control over the creative aspect of ad making resulted in some delays, according to ad executives and other people familiar with the matter. But some of the first brands to come out with iAds, such as car maker Nissan Motor Co., have reported a high rate of users clicking on the ads.
Apple has started to release the new iAds for brands like Dove and Nissan onto the mobile world, but most of the brands that have signed up for Apple’s new iAds program isn’t that pleased with the process. Basically Apple is taking the same approach as they build their products – they want to control the process as much as possible. For Agencies this has been doubly hard, since they are use to coming up with the Creative or having some say in how things are finally done.
But with Apple, they really want to put their input onto the creative and also in the timing of the ads. This has cause some resentment with brands like Chanel, who has dropped out as a early advertisier on iAds.
With Plus Factory Mobile, you don’t need to lose control. We currently work with many Agencies on building their Rich Mobile ads (like iAds), but we still want you to have the creative say. Our philosophy is to work with your creatives and add our expertise to making it the best ads on the mobile platform. To learn more about our Mobile ad programs, please contact Warren at warren@plusfactory.com.
We all know about the war between Steve Jobs vs Adobe Flash. Basically Steve hates it on his iPhones and iPads. But what if you don’t hate Flash so much and want it on your iPhone?
Well now you can have it anyway you like. With a new ‘jailbreak’ option, you can put Adobe Flash on your iPhone and see all the Flash sites out there (instead of seeing a missing box).
If you want to install Frash on your iPhone, full instructions are here. Be forewarned though, it involves jailbreaking. Jailbreaking is totally legal, but Apple has the right to void your warranty if you do it.
A CNN report says currently Apple has close to 250,000 apps, Android has 100,000 followed by BlackBerry with 8,000 and Palm WebOS with 3,500 apps.
A recent report by Nielsen revealed that 50 percent of BlackBerry holders are contemplating to switch over to either an iPhone or an Android based phone. BlackBerry can plug this migration of loyal customers if it is able to increase the number of applications available for its phone.
Applications provide customers the opportunity to personalize their phones. With wallpapers, social games, music downloads and new icons, thus making applications a critical minimum for smartphones.
In fact, the current success of the present smartphone industry is largely driven by the acceptance of the smartphone OS by developers. Apple iPhone App Store says its applications for iPhones are provided after vetting them thoroughly, thus paving the way for developers to produce the best apps for Apple.
Ovum, a Datamonitor company, reported that iPhone manufacturer generated 67 percent of all mobile application downloads in 2009, though its smartphone market share was only 14 percent.
Ovum expects mobile application downloads from non-operator application stores to increase by a compound annual growth rate of 41 percent through 2015. Total downloads over that span are expected to jump to 21.3 billion from 2.69 billion in 2009.
Generally, developers prefer ease of coding in an OS that allows them to migrate successfully to other platforms.
Nonetheless, the Nielsen report suggests that Androids have taken over Apple being an open source platform. Thus the Android will compete on the basis of quantity of apps while Apple iPhones will compete on the basis of quality.
This leaves BlackBerry and PalmWeb OS in the lurch. Not long ago, Palm ruled the corporate market and its Pre-model was considered to be an iPhone killer but due to lack of apps it was swapped by HP for a paltry sum of $1.2 billion.
Lack of applications hinders the popularity of smartphones. In case of BlackBerry, users have to wait for another launch instead of updating their devices with new apps.
Moreover, new applications are a key source of after-sales revenue for companies which BlackBerry may miss out.
Thus it’s the developer who will decide the future of smartphones. Currently, developers closely watch the new phone sales figures to anticipate the market direction as they get the lead time to write suitable applications.
The battle will be a choice exercised by developers between competing OS and as of now Google’s Android and iPhone iOS are leading the pack. Otherwise, the situation is quite reminiscent of the bygone days of open-source Linux vs. Microsoft Windows battle.
Android has overtaken both the iPhone OS and BlackBerry for the coveted position of #1-selling US smartphone platform. An NPD study released today shows that 33% of smartphone sales in the United States are Android OS devices. RIM is now down to just 28%, while iOS has boosted up to 22%.
The original Motorola Droid lead Android smartphone sales, while the Droid Incredible and HTC Evo came in close behind. The Eris and Hero nabbed the fourth and fifth spots. A great deal of credit for the expansion of Android goes to Verizon, whose buy-one-get-one-free deals spurred a surge in Android adoption.
Next quarter may see some changes in these numbers. This data only takes into account the first few days of iPhone 4 availability. Still, it seems unlikely that a couple months worth of iPhone sales will be able to close that 11% gap. Android is likely to stay on top for quite a while.
Just as businesses, nonprofits and other organizations rushed to create websites during the mid-1990s, many of them are now deciding they need an iPhone app.
Yes, you can now add iPhone apps to the slew of technological “must-haves” that companies have grappled with over the past decade. Podcasts. Blogs. Video. Twitter accounts. Facebook pages. Now iPhone apps have made the list, yet it’s a lot more work — and costs substantially more — to create an iPhone app than it does to sign up for a Twitter account.
Before you embark on what may be a costly and time-consuming project, be sure your organization really needs an app. iPhone apps often appear to be breathtakingly simple — that’s part of their appeal, after all — but that simplicity often is the result of painstaking attention to detail by designers, user experience professionals and iPhone programmers.
Competition may be a key factor in your decision. “Most apps are not super-expensive, and your competitor is working on one right now,” says Mark Stetler, chief executive of iPhoneAppQuotes.com, a service to match companies with iPhone developers. “By some estimates, in the next 18 months, every other phone-carrying American will be carrying a smart phone. The market is too big to ignore.”
Once you decide you need an app, consider these tips:
• Hire an expert
Unless you have a staff with expertise in iPhone development (unlikely), you will almost certainly need to hire a software developer or firm to create the app. A whiz at websites may know next to nothing about creating an app for the iPhone.
“Experience is everything,” says Princeton-based Sapan Bhatia, developer of the “Use Your Handwriting” app. “One cannot overstate how different iPhone app development is from the traditional software development model.”
More specifically, look for a developer or development company “who has worked on the kind of app you want,” says Stetler. You need GPS capabilities? Find someone who knows that. 3-D gaming functions? Look for a 3-D pro. Even within iPhone app development, programmers have areas of expertise, and you don’t want someone who knows nothing about maps, for instance, when that’s a key element of your app.
• Know your budget and timeline
What’s the price? Estimates vary, but app developers often charge between $100 and $150 an hour.
Stetler says the developers available through iPhoneAppQuotes.com charge an average of $100 an hour, with a simple app costing as little as $2,500, and more complicated ones, with social networking features and GPS capabilities, costing $10,000 or more. Depending on what you want, and who you’re hiring, you can easily hit a price tag exceeding $15,000 and up.
• Define what you want
Apps can’t be everything to everyone. Instead of thinking of an app as serving all of your customers, in every way possible, think of what specialized service it can provide. A wonderful app from the American Museum of Natural History, called Dinosaurs, lets you view hundreds of photos of fossils and dinosaurs, essentially serving as a virtual guide from home or during a museum visit. Instead of addressing all of the museums collections, it focuses on just one — an approach that’s in tune with many apps popular at the App Store.
Such an approach will help you stay focused. “Software development is a tricky business,” says Stetler. “One can almost define where a project starts, but many projects never end. Define the important functionality and be disciplined about seeing it through.”
• Pay attention to the “user experience”
iPhone owners have high expectations for apps, in part because of the overall quality of the iPhone experience. “The standard for a ‘good enough’ website is much lower than the standard for a ‘good enough’ iPhone app,” says Bhatia. When people are using an iPhone, he says, they often “forget that they are using a computer.” That means you need a developer in tune to the design and interface issues central to creating a successful app.
• Consider a do-it-yourself service
Don’t need a truly customized app? In that case, you may want to consider a do-it-yourself app-building service, such as AppBreeder and SwebApps. With Swebapps, you’re able to create your app through a process allowing you to choose icons and select functions for them, like displaying your website, offering a photo gallery and presenting news about your firm. Swebapps charges a one-time fee of $399 and $29 per month under its basic app package. Independent consultants or small businesses looking for a presence in the App Store may find this a suitable solution. It may not be your dream app, but it’s a start.
Time Inc. has pushing out iPad apps, to showcase their step into new media. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for them. Inside the publisher, the digital editions have become a source of hair-pulling frustration. That’s because the magazine giant has been unable to get Apple to let it sell and manage subscriptions for its iPad apps–much to Time Inc.’s surprise.
Last month, the publisher was set to launch a subscription version of its Sports Illustrated iPad app, where consumers would download the magazines via Apple’s iTunes but would pay Time Inc. directly. But Apple rejected the app at the last minute, forcing the Time Warner unit to sell single copies, using iTunes as a middleman, multiple sources tell me.
Since then, Time Inc. executives “have been going nuts,” trying to figure out how to get Apple to approve a subscription plan. One of the more desperate suggestions, which apparently didn’t get traction: pulling the publisher’s apps out of the iTunes store altogether.
Subscriptions, whether they’re for ink-and-paper magazines or their digital editions, are a big deal for Time Inc. and every other magazine publisher. They value them in part because they provide recurring revenue, but primarily because they provide a treasure trove of data.
The ability to control digital subscriptions also gives publishers the ability to make their existing print subscriptions more valuable, by bundling the two together. Imagine a scenario where existing Time or Sports Illustrated subs get the digital version free, or at a very steep discount.
No other magazine publisher has approval to sell their own iTunes app subscriptions, either. But Apple and Steve Jobs had made a point of reaching out to Time Inc. executives and editors before the iPad’s launch, and encouraged them to build digital editions for the platform.
And Time Inc. executives tell me they had been communicating with Apple throughout the spring as they developed their subscription plans, and had been told that Apple approved.
So what happened? The Time Inc. insiders I talked to don’t have a clear answer, presumably because they can’t get one from Apple itself. One theory: Apple is concerned about the publisher’s plans for the consumer data it would collect with each subscription. A darker one: Steve Jobs loves the idea of digital magazines and wants to control the market for himself.
Time Inc.’s official comment on the topic is oblique: “We are working with a number of partners and potential partners and hope to offer in-app subscriptions some time later this year.” And so is Apple’s: “We have two platforms that we support for apps of all types, including magazines: HTML5 provides an open platform for developers to create and distribute whatever they want, and the App Store which is a curated platform offering customers the largest offering of apps for any mobile device with over 225,000 apps and 5 billion downloads.”
Confusing the issue even more is that Apple already allows a handful of app makers–like Amazon and The Wall Street Journal, which like this Web site is owned by News Corp.–to bill customers directly. Amazon itself, meanwhile, has been sparring with publishers over subscriptions for its Kindle platform. Jeff Bezos keeps most of the data and money that those transactions generate, too.
Hearst says it plans to sell iPad subscriptions to its Esquire and Oprah magazine apps when they debut later this year, but they’re not really subscriptions in a conventional sense. Instead, the publisher will sell a bundle of magazines as a one-time purchase, and iTunes will keep 30 percent of the purchase price and all of the billing data.
Hearst Magazines Executive Vice President John Loughlin says he’s not happy about the arrangement, but says it will have to do for now. He hopes that competition from the likes of Google, which has announced plans to sell its own magazine apps, will force Apple to relent.
Conde Nast, meanwhile, hasn’t talked about subscription plans except to acknowledge that it has some. Newly appointed President Bob Sauerberg says the company may have more to say about the matter within a month. But others at the company say the problem is a vexing one. One executive at the publisher offers this summary: “Don’t get me started.”
With the recent launch of Apple’s iAds program, advertisers and marketers have realized they can now create rich media ad units for consumers on both the iPhone and iPad platforms. While Apple iAds is a certainly a great service, they’ve placed a minimum requirement of a $1million media buy to get on their ad network and have a minimum development time of 2 months for HTML5 ads.
Prohibitively Expensive? Yes.
Long Development Time? Yes.
Is there an alternative? Most definitely!
Plus Factory Mobile is here to offer you what Apple iAds can’t.
We offer a full creative/development package to build iPhone/iPad ads for your brand/campaign at a fraction of the cost and time. On top of that, we can also add a media inventory on numerous mobile ad networks to pinpoint and serve your ads to your targeted demographic.
We build all our iPhone/iPad ads in HTML5, the cutting-edge technology that Steve Jobs has declared as the new ‘it’ technology for mobile. To learn more about our iPhone/iPad programs and solutions, please contact Jamie at jamie@plusfactory.com. Or call her at 800-774-0680 ext. 111.
After much hoopla, Apple’s iAds are now slowly launching into market. The first one was for the Nissan Leaf. If you haven’t seen it live on your iPhone, thru one of the apps (hint: try the AP app), then you can view this live capture version on YouTube. Some notes:
- The app is pretty clunky on the 3G network, and not as smooth as depicted in the YouTube video
- Its hard to see that the ad is an iAd. In its default state, the ad is a small tiny banner on the bottom of the screen. In the corner is an “iAd” text, indicating that its an iAd. Without the “iAd” text, you would never know its an iAd or not. Once activated, the iAd takes over your full screen.
So without much further ado, here is the Nissan iAd. Enjoy.
As promised, Apple has launched iPhone 4 Case program to give away free cases to customers. Do note that the free Bumper aka case will be given only to those customers who purchase iPhone 4 before September 30.
The customers who will buy iPhone 4 before September 30 would be eligible for free iPhone 4 Bumper. After buying the phone, users will have to download the iPhone 4 Case Program app from the App store. You need to sign in with iTunes Store ID or Apple ID to select the Bumper of your choice and then order it.
The app reads – if you’re experiencing iPhone 4 reception issues, then you’re eligible to receive an iPhone 4 Bumper or other select third-party case from Apple at no charge. However, those who’ve purchased iPhone 4 before July 23 must apply before August 22 or within 30 days of the purchase.
