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Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad briefly available in app store

Adobe launched its Touch suite of apps for Android (pictured above) months ago, but it looks like the company is now ready to introduce Photoshop Touch for the iPad 2. The app is available now in the New Zealand iTunes App Store and should be making its way across the globe soon. According to the iTunes description, Photoshop Touch features the standard PS features like layers, selection tools, filters, and adjustments, as well as step-by-step tutorials and uploading to Adobe Creative Cloud. There’s also some Facebook integration for sharing images directly through the app, as well as a built-in Google image search tool.

Unfortunately, like the Android version, there’s a maximum image size of 1600 x 1600; another downside is that owners of the original iPad will be unable to use this software. While we found Photoshop Touch to be a far cry from CS5 when we demoed it on Android back in November, for the price it will likely be one of the most popular image-editing apps available for the iPad. It’s priced at NZ$13.99, but we’d expect it to have the same $9.99 price point as the Android version when it hits the US app store.

Source: Verge

Four Trends to Watch at Mobile World Congress 2012

Whether you’re a “mobile first” publisher, app developer or carrier, all eyes are set on Barcelona at the end of this month for Mobile World Congress 2012. It’s part conference, part trade show, part excuse to spend a week at extravagant parties with mobile’s biggest influencers – all wrapped up into an unparalleled four-day event. Long the mobile industry’s largest global exhibition, it attracted over 60,000 participants in 2011, including 12,000 developers, 3,000 CEOs, government delegations from 131 countries and over 1,500 media outlets.

Not long after the release of the very first iPhone, each year has been billed as “the year of mobile.” But there are signs this year may actually live up to the already-heightened expectations. Smartphone shipments in the last quarter of 2011 were higher than even the rosiest estimates, driven predominantly by the iPhone 4S, and the number of mobile devices is expected to exceed the world’s population this year. Facebook’s S-1 has revealed that 425 million monthly average users access their friends’ activities through their mobile device, growing 25 percent quarter-on-quarter. Lastly, the rapid adoption of the rich media standard Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions (MRAID) is opening the door to new opportunities for brand and performance advertisers to take advantage of the immersive capabilities of the device.

These changes will make this Mobile World Congress the one to watch. Here are four big trends I’m expecting to see at this year’s conference:

1. Alternatives to iOS and Android continue to emerge.

The endgame for mobile is clearly not upon us, as new entrants (Amazon) and old behemoths (Microsoft) invest heavily. Amazon’s strategy of building a beautiful and immersive user experience on top of the raw power and customizability of Android OS is quickly being validated. Apple’s market share in tablets dropped from Q3 to Q4 from 64 percent to 57 percent, respectively, with Amazon securing 14 percent. Microsoft’s close ties with carriers and its upcoming release of a new Windows smartphone this year, as well as Nokia’s channel partnerships, also make both these players relevant in emerging markets. Expect to see more innovation from both of these companies and likely others in the coming months.

2. Machine-to-Machine communication gains steam.

A big theme at CES this year was around smartphones controlling other devices – from televisions to garage doors to home appliances. At MWC, we’ll continue to see this trend grow and expand. We’ll see smartphones monitoring homes and controlling content – think of it as your world remote. There’s no question that both Apple and Google are making bets in this space, ranging from new TV services with Apple TV, to audio-recognition services like Siri, and programs like AirPlay. Expect to see a broader range of devices talking to other devices and the potential of smartphones and tablets to play a critical role in the process.

3. Mobile advertising shifts to “smart” and leaves feature phones for dead.

In the U.S., the smartphone has already taken over the majority of the market. While feature phones still maintain a large market share worldwide, this share will continue to decline as smartphones become more affordable. As mobile advertising increasingly takes off on smartphone platforms, brands and performance advertisers alike are shifting their focus and their budgets solely to smartphones – leaving feature phones obsolete from an advertising revenue perspective. This will likely be reflected in all parts of the mobile ecosystem and reiterated at Mobile World Congress this year.

The spotlight will shine brightly on Apple, Android and possibly even Windows – and no one is going to care (or notice) what campaigns are run on feature phones. Advertisers and agencies just aren’t seeing the same type of returns nor potential on these more limited devices, largely due to the superior native features of smartphones, such as rich media and the app potential. We’re going to see a few traditional feature phone manufacturers try to transition into the smartphone market – expect to hear more from Nokia about its new Lumia handsets. We’ll see how they attack from the low to mid-level market, and if they successfully make the jump from the sinking feature phone market. And speaking of mobile advertising, another theme will be …

4. Mobile ad networks can’t pay the piper, as publishers, games and apps take back control of their inventory.

The old, network-heavy approach to mobile ads just isn’t cutting it for major publishers. Expect to see all major publishers at the show looking to cut new types of distribution deals and control their ad inventory using a new cadre of platforms and services. Why? More money, more control and more transparency over the types of ads shown to consumers. It’s the industry’s dirty little secret. Major publishers are relying increasingly less on third-party mobile ad networks and more on direct contracts with advertisers, agencies, and demand side platforms ramping up spend on real-time bidding exchanges like MoPub Marketplace. The attendees at Mobile World Congress will likely confirm that 2012 is the year where the top 500 mobile publishers will create new in-house positions of mobile ad operations or full time team members that will control their advertising options through new dashboards. As a result, mobile publishers will grow revenues through an increase in audience but also in driving higher profits from their existing inventory.

When the dust settles on shiny new devices and fancy mobile operator announcements, it will be the four trends above that will shape the show and the industry moving forward.

Source: mobilecrunch

Apple’s iOS passes Android in mobile ad impressions

 

 

InMobi, the largest independent mobile advertising network, on Friday announced its “Mobile Insights Report: North American Edition” for the month of January, reports AppleInsider. Thanks to the launch of the iPhone 4S, Apple’s iOS mobile platform surged 12 points to surpass Google’s Android operating system in North American ad impressions. Apple’s share of 23.2% in October of 2011 increased to 35.3% in January, with Android losing 3.2% in the same time frame for a 32.7% share in January. Research in Motion’s BlackBerry mobile platform dropped 8.9% from October to January to an 11.6% share. “The iOS growth we are seeing may be attributed to the tremendous success of iPhone 4S and iPad in the ecosystem,” said Anne Frisbie, vice president and managing director for InMobi’s North American operations. “Overall, we are excited to see InMobi’s available impressions exceed 55 billion in North America, and look forward to continuing our rapid growth through 2012.” The data comes from InMobi’s advertising network, which serves more than 93.4 billion ad impressions around the world each month.

 

Source: verge

[tips]How to attract users to your app and go platinum

 

If you are a struggling artist or developer working on the next great mobile app, you need a strategy for drawing in users.

Keep in mind that buying traffic to convert to users doesn’t always add up. Developing for the mobile platform is vastly different from e-commerce, where the potential average revenue per user (ARPU) is considerably smaller, and in many cases non-existent. At the same time, there’s a limited amount of advertising inventory, and discoverability remains poor.

If you’re considering buying downloads, today’s cost per download (CPD) rates range from $1 to $2, which means it would cost you $10 million to $20 million to buy 10 million to 20 million downloads, which is the current benchmark figure for a successful app.

One way of getting around this is to optimize heavily for organic growth without trying to reinvent the “social graph wheel.” There are already existing, sizable social graphs (like Facebook), and using them will save you time and money

So what’s the trick to get the right kind of growth without breaking the bank? Here are four key tips for taking your app platinum.

Think big

The app you build needs to have huge consumer appeal and real world value. A great example is Onavo. In the face of ever-increasing data charges and operators transitioning to tiered pricing, Onavo takes a unique approach to help customers get the most of their plans. Once installed, the app compresses data to allow users to double or triple their existing data plan. The service claims it can help users save up to 80 percent of their data, which in turn saves them money.

Focus on design and usability

At the end of the day, nothing beats great design and usability. There are over 1 million apps in the iTunes App Store and Android Marketplace for consumers to navigate, so how do you know when your app is ready to test the waters? To stand out you not only need to look great, but have an intuitive user interface (UI) and be responsive. Even the smallest user experience improvements can have an enormous impact on your download figures. Check out Pinterest, the hot virtual pinboard. It has a graphic-intense UI, easy log in procedure, and a great design. With 10 million unique users and a site that drives more traffic than LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+ combined, it’s a great case study on how to make a product stand out.

Add a social and viral component

Social and viral are two much-touted words, and they are the keys for creating successful mobile applications. What better way to ensure you build up a large user base than to get your users to build it for you? Make it simple for people to invite and share with friends, position your application as a specialty product that allows for self-expression, and be sure to leverage existing social graphs for distribution. For instance, imagine where Instagram would be without the integration of existing social networks. Communication apps are also great examples of this. See Voxer, or my own company Rebtel which has benefited tremendously from over 70 percent of our users coming from referral from current users and word of mouth.

Test your app, iterate on it, and test it again

There’s probably no better way to develop a great app than to listen to your users. At the same time, there has to be a balance, as most of the time, users don’t know what they truly want or need until you show it to them. Product testing and soliciting user feedback can make a good product great, and a great product even better. And don’t be afraid if you need to redesign or re-engineer your product; just be sure to move fast when you do.

The bottom line for any developer is, just like the record industry, you can’t buy platinum hit on mobile. So build something with real value, with a great user interface and user experience, and something that proves that the more people use it, the more valuable it becomes.

Lastly, make it easy to share and (if possible) a part of that users’ everyday life. You also need listen to your users and iterate fast, or another product can swiftly gain traction on you. If you do all these things then you have a chance to succeed.

Remember, securing a smash hit on mobile can be hard, but with a great team, some help from smart PR pros, and a little dash of the X-factor sprinkled in, you’ll be more than ready to satisfy even the toughest of critics.

Source: V.B

Game Closure raises $12M for HTML5 cross-platform games

Game Closure has raised $12 million in a first round of funding for its HTML5-based cross-platform multiplayer game business.

The company, which debuted at the Google I/O conference last year, raised the money from Highland Capital, Greylock, Benchmark, CRV, and General Catalyst, said Michael Carter, co-founder of Game Closure. The company wants to provide tools to developers that can help them deal with one of the most painful tasks: taking a game and spreading it out across many platforms without squandering engineering talent.

Last year, the company launched its Popstar Defense game to prove that it could make a single game, written entirely with the HTML5 language (the lingua franca of the web), that could run on web browsers, iPhones, Android phones, Android tablets and iPads. Now it offers a Javascript game software development kit that runs on multiple devices and allows client-server code sharing. The company says it can reduce the time it takes to create game for every mobile platform from 12 months to just four to six weeks.

The Popstar Defense game was a typical “tower defense” game, where you had to defend rock stars on stage from getting the limelight stolen from some invading rockers. It was a multiplayer game where users can collaborate in real-time, and it used decent two-dimensional graphics. As many as 2,000 moving objects could be on the screen at the same time. The company went on to publish a couple more games to educate the team about the hurdles in developing cross-platform games.

“We continued to work hard on the technology and make it demonstrably the best in the industry,” Carter said in an interview. “Once we got to the stage where everybody in the industry saw that, we were able to raise the round.”

The company can now make tools available to other developers and take some kind of cut in return.

“The industry is going through an extremely fast transition,” Carter said. “The platforms are changing. Expectations of consumers are changing. Business models are changing. We started the company at the ideal time.”

Andy Miller of Highland led the round. He said in a statement that Game Closure has the chance to change the face of an industry.

In a statement, Carter said, “Our series A financing was very competitive and gave us the flexibility to think long and hard about which firm and partner we wanted to work with. Still, I knew Andy Miller was the perfect fit after spending just a couple of hours with him: he recently built, operated, and sold his third company, Quattro wireless; he knows the mobile space inside and out; he just left an operational position at Apple as the VP of the iADs platform; and he’s one of the smartest and most level-headed people I’ve had the good fortune to work with. “

Because Popstar Defense and other games were written in HTML5, there was no need to download a plug-in to run them in a compliant browser such as Google Chrome. The game used the same code across platforms, so a developer didn’t have to do a different version for every new device. Users could send out simple web links to invite other players to join the game.

That’s something that the current generation of Facebook games don’t allow. With Game Closure, developers can write in pure JavaScript and then use standard HTML5 applications programming interfaces. Game Closure’s software development kit can compile, deploy and accelerate the game on a specific device. When the game runs on non-browser platforms like a mobile phone, Game Closure creates a native app technology such as OpenGL. That’s important in order to get a game to run at a much faster speed than is possible with HTML5.

It’s similar to the game plan of Sibblingz, which is also creating a cross-platform game development technology that reaches across more platforms. The technology was created by Carter, Martin Hunt and Tom Fairfield. All of them have background at game and web startups such as Meebo. After the company first announced the beta technology in February, more than 7,000 developers approached Game Closure. Game Closure got its start in the StartX student-led incubator for startups created by Stanford University students and graduated in the spring of 2011.

Game Closure has grown from three employees at its start a year ago to more than 26 engineers. The company plans to double in size in the next six months. Game Closure has stepped in where an earlier firm, Moblyng, failed. After laboring for years, Moblyng shut down in December.

Source: V.B

Why you need to be at DEMO Asia next Wednesday

The inaugural DEMO Asia is the premier launchpad event for high-tech Asian products.

It’s also a great place for non-Asian companies looking to launch products in the Asian marketplace.

The event — taking place next Wednesday February 29 – March 2 at Matrix @ Biopolis in Singapore — will gather an audience of technology press, venture and angel investors, buyers, entrepreneurs, corporate and business development professionals, and other tech professionals.

Our own Matt Marshall, Editor-in-Chief at VentureBeat & Executive Producer for DEMO, will be helping emcee the event.

Over 30 companies will launch at DEMO Asia, each hand-selected by our partner team in Singapore. They’ll each have six minutes on the DEMO stage to demonstrate how their product will change the world, and vie for the coveted DEMOguru Awards and the People’s Choice Award. Another 20+ innovators will be presenting their prototypes in the Alpha Pitch segment, where they’ll have just 90 seconds to pitch.

Judging the pitches will be an accomplished group of DEMO Sages, including the following:

  • Zane Adam, Senior Director, Azure Asia, Microsoft
  • Michel Birnbaum, General Partner, iGlobe Partners
  • Simone Brunozzi, Technology Evangelist, Amazon Web Services, APAC
  • Michelle Guthrie, JAPAC Dir. of Strategic Business Development, Google
  • Rebeca Hwang, Co-founder, Younoodle
  • Arnon Kohavi, Founder, Yarden VC
  • Dr. Gopi Kurup, CEO, Telekom Malaysia Research & Development
  • Vinnie Lauria, Co-Founder, Lefora
  • Jessica Tan, Managing Director, Microsoft Singapore
  • Chris Shipley, Founder, Guidewire Group

In addition to the pitches and networking events, there will one-on-one chat sessions and focus events. These sessions will feature high-level speakers hailing from the consumer technology, social media, digital and mobile technologies and life/bio-science industries. Speakers include:

  • Jeff Clavier, Founder, SoftTech VC
  • Adeo Ressi, CEO, Founder Institute
  • Robert Kim, Director Consumer Infocomm, IDA Singapore
  • Dr Ni Zhengdong, Founder, Zero2IPO
  • Marc van der Chijs, Co-Founder, Tudou.com
  • Michael Yap, Exec. Director, Interactive & Digital Media Program Office, Singapore.

DEMO Asia is the latest addition to the DEMO family which has earned a reputation throughout the last 20 years for consistently identifying new innovations that are most likely to disrupt the markets they serve and change the way we use technology.

The event is right around the corner, and tickets are limited. You can grab yours here.

Source: V.B

Apple Acquires Chomp

With the countdown underway to 25 billion total app downloads, there’s no disputing the success of Apple’s App Store. We live in a world of hyperbole, but Apple’s entry into this space really has changed the entire mobile world. But the App Store is far from perfect. And with its immense scale, a few problems have been revealed. The biggest one is app discovery. There are now over 500,000 apps — how do you find anything?

Right now, it’s hard and getting harder by the day. The strong get stronger while new apps often have trouble breaking in. But with an acquisition that Apple has just made, they hope to change that. Apple has bought the app search and discovery platform Chomp, we’ve learned.

We first covered Chomp in November 2009 to announce their seed funding. Since then, they’ve grown their scope to include not only iPhone apps, but Android apps as well. In fact, Chomp currently has a deal with Verizon to power all of their Android-based app searches. That relationship, obviously, is going to get a bit awkward with this acquisition.

My understanding is that such deals will remain intact for now but are likely to end once the Chomp team and product fully transitions over to Apple. The same is likely true for Chomp’s stand-alone products.

I haven’t been able to learn the exact terms of the deal, but I hear that all the investors should be very pleased with the outcome. This is not a cheap “acqui-hire”, Apple has bought the Chomp team and technology and plans to use both to completely revamp App Store search and recommendations, I hear. And they clearly have the money to do it: Apple has nearly $100 billion in cash (and cash equivalents) in the bank now coming off their monster quarter.

Chomp had raised a little over $2.5 million over two rounds of funding. The company has 20-some employees all of whom should be heading over to Apple.

Chomp CEO and co-founder Ben Keighran wrote a guest post for TechCrunch a year ago entitled: For Mobile Apps, It’s 1996 All Over Again. His company was obviously a big bet in that direction. And it just paid off big time.

Source:techcrunch

Chinese mobile subscribers grew to 987.58 million in January 2012

 

China is already the biggest mobile market in the world, and it’s only getting bigger, as the country’s three state-owned telecom companies revealed a 1.2 percent increase in subscribers in January. In total China’s mobile subscriber base grew to 987.58 million in January, though only a small percentage of those are 3G subscribers. The world’s largest provider, China Mobile, grew by 5.87 million in January to reach 655.44 million subscribers — over six times as many customers as Verizon in the US, which hit 108.7 million subscribers at the end of 2011. And there’s even more room for China Mobile to grow: only 53.94 million of its customers are on 3G. It’s the same for number two carrier China Unicom, which has 202.89 total subs but only 43.07 on 3G, and for number three China Telecom, which rounded out the list with 129.25 million subscribers overall, 38.7 million of which are on 3G. But with the popularity of 3G devices in China those numbers will only continue to grow — the January launch of the iPhone 4S was so popular massive crowds postponed the launch at stores in Beijing and Shanghai.

Source: verge

Samsung spins off struggling LCD business

Samsung on Monday announced that it will spin off its LCD display panel manufacturing business. Tentatively named Samsung Display Co., Ltd., the new company will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics and it will launch with approximately $6.6 billion in initial capital when it officially breaks off from Samsung-proper on April 1st, 2012. ”This split LCD business is the speed of your business can be secured to the diverse needs of Customers.Therefore were able to respond quickly,” said Donggun Park, EVP of Samsung’s LCD business, in a statement. “Business competitiveness to our customers advanced products and a step I will try to provide technology and services.”

Source: BGR

Apple counts down to 25 billion App Store downloads

 

Apple on Friday initiated a countdown to 25 billion iTunes App Store downloads. The running total currently sits just under 24.3 billion downloads and Apple is offering a prize to the user who downloads the 25 billionth application. “As of today, nearly 25 billion apps have been downloaded worldwide. Which is almost as amazing as the apps themselves. So we want to say thanks,” Apple wrote on its website. “Download the 25 billionth app, and you could win a US$10,000 App Store Gift Card. Just visit the App Store and download your best app yet.” Apple’s iOS App Store opened its doors in July 2008 alongside the launch of the iPhone 3G, and the company would later launch the Mac App Store in October 2010.

 

Source: BGR

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