MobileCrunch |  |
- Off The Couch: Explorence Wants To Turn Your Outdoor Activities Into Interactive Video Games (Invites)
- Turning The iPhone Into A 350x Medical Microscope For Under $50
- Swype CEO Mike McSherry Explains His $100 Million Deal With Nuance
- Minecraft Pocket Edition Plays Nice With More Android Phones
- Dell Bows Out Of Windows Phone Market (For Now, At Least)
- RadioShack’s Trade-In Program May Just Get You A Free iPhone 4S
- The Ultimate Fanboy Mashup: Apple’s Siri Meets Portal’s GLaDOS
- A Peek At Postmates — The Uber For The Courier Industry
- Want To See The Next Version Of Android? A Bevy Of Ice Cream Sandwich Screenshots Leaks
- Nook Color Gets Its First Dedicated Twitter App
- Travel Much? The Unlocked iPhone 4S Will Be Available In November
- ZipPay To Launch New Mobile Payments Service Cheaper Than Square
- Sprint’s New 4G LTE Network Will Cover 260 Markets By 2013
- Mobile App Downloads To Reach 98 Billion By 2015
- Samsung And Google Postpone Nexus Galaxy Launch Hours After A Leaked Demo Video Drops
| Posted: 07 Oct 2011 06:40 PM PDT  Some startups and apps (like Joypad and Brass Monkey to name a few) are turning your iPhones into customizable game controllers, while Wii and Kinect have turned you into the controller with their motion-sensing consoles. You’ve heard it hundreds of times, but smartphone technology is advancing at an astonishing rate. Five years ago, video recording was still a novelty. Now, our phones can understand human speech, make reservations, and tell us our new shirt makes us look fat. Mobile gaming has evolved rapidly over the last few years as well, but most serious gaming is still done via the browser or home console etc., and all gamers could stand to take their gaming out of doors. Riding the crest of smartphone innovation, and conceived as a way to get gamers off their couches, a new startup is opening its private beta today called Explorence, which is developing outdoor mobile games for Android — and soon for iOS. What does that mean? Simply put, through its mobile apps, Explorence plans to transform your outdoor recreational activities into interactive video games. The startup wants to turn your jogs into “The Amazing Race” and your bike rides into Mario Kart. Users create their own courses and experiences to compete against friends asynchronously. Explorence augments these outdoor activities with music, check points, leaderboards, rewards, as well as “fail conditions” to create an immersive gaming experience for your outdoor recreatin’. For example, DASH!, the startup’s first title created using its technology, enables users to create, participate, and wager in races of any kind (asynchronously). First, a user creates a race via GPS by walking the course with smartphone or selecting start and finish areas. Users can then select how much virtual currency they want to wager on the race — at which point anyone who selects that race on the app gets to compete in that race, at the time or in the future. Once you’re ready to go, the app will begin a countdown to start, a gun goes off, and you run your race (phone in pocket is probably a good idea). There’s musical accompaniment and sound effects udring your race, and once you cross the finish line you’ve created, the phone stops the clock and automatically enters your time onto its virtual leaderboard so you can see how you did compared to your friends. The racers earn coins for participating (and more for victory), which will later be redeemable for game enhancements and real world goods. DASH! works with any racing discipline: driving, cycling, running, snowboarding, etc. For the past 2 months, the Explorence team have been testing these time-shifted races, and its small set of users are already averaging 3.9 sessions (races or races created) per day. For gamers who love the outdoors, it seems to have the potential to become pretty addicting. The key to Explorence’s technology and user experience lies in how the team has been able to use GPS, smartphone sensors, etc. to tweak geofencing around a particular point. For example, Explorence has two more titles in the pipeline, one of which will bring its technology to extreme sports — so that snowboarders for example will be able to put their phones in their pockets and go into the park to hit jumps and tricks. The apps will then measure distance, the amount of rotations, etc., giving them points and a soundtrack all the while. There are already some augmented reality first person shooter (FPS) games out there, which essentially turn your smartphone into gun and let you blast away at your friends. The technology is still developing, to be sure, but we’re clearly at a point now where the functionality is ready to go mainstream. Whether users are ready to adopt — that’s another story. The Explorence team, which consists of Mike Suprovici, Bill Gleim, and Mark Thompson, are graduates of the San Diego Founder Institute. Today, DASH! is available in private beta on Android (and will be launching on both iOS and Android later this year), and Explorence is offering 500 invites for its beta, which readers can take advantage of by going to the startup’s website and entering “TechCrunch” into the “Access Code” field. Check it out and let us know what you think. Company: Explorence Website: explorence.com Explorence makes outdoor video games. We turn your phone into a Wii and you into the controller.
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| Turning The iPhone Into A 350x Medical Microscope For Under $50 Posted: 07 Oct 2011 03:17 PM PDT  Using the iPhone (or any mobile smartphone or tablet device, really) for medical purposes isn’t a new thing, but it’s nice to see the applications people cook up. Just recently at Disrupt we saw Smartheart, and apps like Skin Scan are decentralizing some simple self-monitoring tasks like melanoma detection. We’ve also seen lots of physical additions to the iPhone camera. You can get wide-angle lenses, telephotos, and even a 12x microscope lens. But a team of researchers at UC Davis has one-upped the competition by making the iPhone into a 350x microscope for very little money. Now you’ll be able to send people Instagrams of your blood cells. It should be said right off the bat that this isn’t something that only the iPhone can do. But it’s the go-to device for proof of concept stuff like this for obvious reasons. The technique can be generalized to other devices later. The project is actually quite a simple little hack. They use a 1mm ball lens and attach it to the outside of the iPhone lens array with a rubber sheet and some tape. The little lens technically only offers 5x magnification, but the way it focuses creates a tiny in-focus area that can resolve details down to about 1.5 microns. The field of view is very small and there’s distortion to deal with, but by combining the in-focus areas of several pictures you can get a clear enough image to identify cell types, make counts, or even take spectroscopic readings. Take a look at these images: the ones on the top were taken with a full-on commercial medical microscope, the ones on the bottom are from the iPhone setup: There’s obviously a major difference in quality, but the difference in price is even greater, and high-quality microscopes aren’t very mobile. Essentially it’s one more step towards a tricorder. With a general-purpose CPU, modular inputs, and a versatile imaging unit, the smartphone is useful for far more than calling friends and playing Angry Birds. It may not be a mobile clinic, but in areas where money and electricity are hard to come by, an iPhone could be a valuable diagnostic tool. Extending the “senses” of our devices via cheap components and elbow grease could seriously empower decentralized medical care. You can read the whole paper here. Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation.
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| Swype CEO Mike McSherry Explains His $100 Million Deal With Nuance Posted: 07 Oct 2011 02:55 PM PDT  Last night, Michael broke the news that TechCrunch50 alum Swype was acquired for $100 million by speech technology company Nuance. The exact number was $102.5 million and, I’ve learned, it was all cash (split between $77.5 million up front and another $25 million in 18 months—call that a retention bonus for the Swype team). So what does Nuance, which is known primarily for its speech recognition software engine, want with a gesture-based text entry technology like Swype? (Instead of tapping in letters on a touch keyboard, you swipe between them without lifting your finger). Earlier today, I spoke with Swype CEO Mike McSherry, who explained the thinking behind the deal. “The broadest vision,” says McSherry, “is we want to be the input for every single stream. You talk to your refrigerator and in-car navigation, you want your language models to follow you around.” When he puts it that way, Swype seems like a much more strategic acquisition for NUance than one which simply fills a hole. Nuance owns key pieces of technology for entering information onto mobile phones via both voice and touch (including the T9 text prediction algorithm used on most feature phones). In fact, Swype co-founder and CTO Cliff Kushler was also the inventor of T9. The t( offices are five blocks away from Swype’s in Seattle. The two code-bases will be merged, but the Swype brand will grow larger in importance. Nuance is thinking beyond the input technologies people interact with on their mobile devices to tying them together in the cloud. So it doesn’t matter whether you use voice or Swype, Nuance will “share language models on the backend” and personalize each experience to an individual’s frequency of use and language patterns. So if your mobile phone learns how you spell your friend Sergey’s name and later you use voice recognition to send Sergey a text message, it will have a better chance of knowing that you mean Sergey and not Sergei. Yes, Nuance is powering the new Siri Assistant in Apple’s upcoming iPhone 4S with its voice recognition technology. So does that mean that Swype could be coming to the iPHone as well? “I’d love to be able to see that,” says McSherry, adding, “There are certainly lots of requests to see Swype on the iPhone.” Maybe Nuance can help with the negotiations. As of now, Swype is on 19 million phones overall, including 9 of the top 11 phone manufacturers. It is especially big on Android. Bringing it to the iPhone would be a very popular move all around. Here’s a demo video from a couple years ago comparing Swype (on a Windows phone) to tapping on an iPhone keyboard. Swype creates text input technology for screens. The patented interface enables users to create words with one continuous finger motion across an on-screen keyboard. This approach provides a faster and easier way to write. Swype delivers single-tap, multi-tap, predictive and “swype” motions for both stylus and finger based input. In addition, the application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more. Seattle based Swype... Nuance Communications, Inc. provides speech, imaging and keypad solutions for businesses, organizations and consumers worldwide. The company’s solutions are used every day by people and businesses for tasks and services, such as requesting account information from a phone-based self-service solution, dictating records, searching the mobile Web by voice, entering a destination into a navigation system, or working with PDF documents. The company, through the acquisition of Philips Speech Recognition Systems GMBH (PSRS), provides speech recognition solutions for the European...
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| Minecraft Pocket Edition Plays Nice With More Android Phones Posted: 07 Oct 2011 02:18 PM PDT  Welp, I suppose it’s about time to kiss my weekend goodbye. It was a bumpy ride there for a while, but Minecraft Pocket Edition has finally gone live in the Android Market with support for (nearly) all devices. That’s right, you no longer need to have an Xperia Play to partake in a rousing session of world-building. Any Android device running 2.1 or later is welcome to join the fun, but only after you shell out the requisite $6.99 True Minecraft addicts have already whipped out their wallets, but keep this in mind before you buy. This is Minecraft Pocket Edition — it plays more like the creative Classic mode rather than the fan-favorite Survival mode. That means no zombies, no creepers, and no harvesting blocks. Instead, you’ve got an infinite amount of materials to bring to life whatever crazy, horrifying things are bouncing around in your heads right now. If you’re new to Minecraft, and want to see what all the fuss is about, there’s also a free demo version to mess around with. Fair warning: it’s pretty addictive, so I hope you’re not in desperate need of $7. On a very personal sidenote, I’d like to thank the game’s developers for having the foresight to release it on a Friday afternoon. Any earlier than that, and who knows what would’ve happened to people’s productivity?
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| Dell Bows Out Of Windows Phone Market (For Now, At Least) Posted: 07 Oct 2011 01:29 PM PDT  Dell was never a major player when it came to their Windows Phones selection (which, if memory serves, consisted of one device), but now it seems like they may not be a player at all. Sources have confirmed to WPCentral that Dell has decided to sit out of the Windows Phone race for at least the next year. The news of Dell’s hiatus doesn’t come as a huge shock, as the company has been keeping suspiciously quiet on the Windows Phone front for months now. Their saving grace could have been the mysterious “Wrigley” handset, a rumored successor to their ill-fated Venue Pro. Alas, poor Wrigley would never see the light of day, and it looks like Dell’s Mango ambitions may have died with it. Frankly, it’s a bit of a shame. I’ve always been a sucker for a portrait slider, and the Venue Pro was nothing if not that. In fairness, it was a brick of a phone, and it suffered from more than its fair share of quality control issues. Still, less competition is almost always a bad thing — now there’s one less company to keep the big guys on their toes. Dell hasn’t said that they would ditch Windows Phone completely, so there’s still hope for an WP8/Apollo device, but that’s an awfully long time for Dell devotees to hold their collective breaths.
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| RadioShack’s Trade-In Program May Just Get You A Free iPhone 4S Posted: 07 Oct 2011 01:10 PM PDT  RadioShack has a trade-in program for used gadgets that (circumstances permitting) may just save you quite a bit on an iPhone 4S. Even better, if you trade in a undamaged 32GB iPhone 4 (scratch free, no battery issues, etc.), you’ll get enough store credit back from RadioShack to purchase a 16GB iPhone 4S and still have money to burn. Well, not burn so much as spend on accessories or other RadioShack goodies, but you get the point. Here’s how it works: Take your functional smartphone (which doesn’t have to be an iPhone by the way) into a RadioShack and have a store rep appraise it. They’ll tell you just how much it’s worth, which you can use as credit on your next purchase. Since I assume many of you are looking into getting the iPhone 4S, timing really couldn’t be any better. The Trade-In and Save deal only lasts through October 31, reports TechnoBuffalo. As far as Apple products go, the savings are pretty amazing. Check it out: RadioShack isn’t allowing for iPhone 4S pre-order online — you’ll have to visit a store to do so. However, you’re going to have to visit a store to get your old device appraised anyway, so you might as well take care of that pre-order and see if someone will hint at the trade-in value of your old phone for you. Then when you head back to RadioShack to pick it up, you can trade in your old device and possibly get a really sweet deal on a brand new iPhone 4S. If your old device is unfortunately too banged up to get you any store credit, RadioShack will recycle it for you for free. You won’t be walking away with any extra dough, but at least you’ll be saving the planet. No RadioShack nearby? Wal-Mart and Target have similar programs in place. Company: RadioShack Website: radioshack.com RadioShack sell the products and accessories that people want. For those on the go, RadioShack simplifies life with one of the largest selections in innovative products in wireless phones, GPS receivers, digital music players and laptop computers. For home enjoyment, RadioShack delivers the latest in entertainment products, from digital cameras to large screen TVs and gaming.
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| The Ultimate Fanboy Mashup: Apple’s Siri Meets Portal’s GLaDOS Posted: 07 Oct 2011 12:46 PM PDT  Oh, be still my beating heart. Boiling down two fanboy-filled worlds into an amalgamation of concentrated glory, a Comments about the meaningless of one’s activities? Check. Weight insults? Check. The only thing missing is the false promise of cake and a controversial crack about whether or not the end-user is an orphan. (Oh, and for those unfamiliar with the Portal world: yes, she’s this mean to everyone.) Sadly, such a mashup lives on only in cleverly edited videos (and that special place my consciousness goes to after I’ve drifted off to sleep) for now. While customizable voices are undoubtedly on every iPhone 4S buyer’s Nerdgasm trigger list, it’d be markedly un-Apple-like for Apple to implement any time soon (not to mention incredibly formidable to implement at all, given the complexity of Siri’s speech engine.) Some day!
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| A Peek At Postmates — The Uber For The Courier Industry Posted: 07 Oct 2011 12:28 PM PDT Postmates, the so-called Uber for the courier industry, debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this September. The service aims to transform this niche industry by offering an on-demand delivery service that connects local couriers and bike messengers to anyone who needs a package sent (anything from a toaster to a stuffed elephant) within the confines of their city. Postmates is speedy, and it’s cheap. (Check out our initial coverage of the startup here.) The service also offers a same-day shipping API for brick-and-mortar retailers, so that for less than $20, retailers will enable local customers to order goods online and have them shipped the same day. And not only the same day, but Postmates Founder Bastian Lehmann tells me that the average delivery time is 37 minutes. (The startup has already facilitated 600+ deliveries.) And couriers and bike messengers are going to love this because, according to Lehmann, they spend the majority of their day in down-time, waiting for the next call. Couriers are, by and large, independent contractors — unlike most cabbies — so Postmates gives them the ability to deliver far more packages than they would under normal circumstances. That means more income, happier couriers, faster delivery times, and thus happier customers. I sat down with Postmates Co-founders Bastian Lehmann and Sean Plaice to ask them a few questions about Postmates, how it works for messengers and end users, and whether or not they’re disgruntled former FedEx employees. Postmates is up and running with 50+ merchants in San Francisco, and the team plans to begin rolling out in other cities over the next year. Check out the demo and let us know what you think. Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I was slouching. Postmates is an on demand delivery service that connects couriers & bike messengers within a city to anyone who needs to ship anything, from a birthday card to a fridge. Postmates was a Battlefield Finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.
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| Want To See The Next Version Of Android? A Bevy Of Ice Cream Sandwich Screenshots Leaks Posted: 07 Oct 2011 11:10 AM PDT  Oh, what’s that Google/Samsung? You’ve canceled next week’s Ice Cream Sandwich/Nexus Prime event? That’s cool. I mean, sure: pretty much all of the tech press has non-refundable plane tickets and hotel rooms already… but hey: at least we all get to work from San Diego for a few days now! Regardless, most of what they would’ve announced is leaking out now anyway. The latest leak to spring up: a series of beautiful screenshots capturing Ice Cream Sandwich in full detail.
As you might’ve expected from the constant chatter that Ice Cream Sandwich would bring the overhauled look and feel of Honeycomb’s tablet interface to phones, Ice Cream Sandwich… looks like Honeycomb running on a smaller screen. And it looks crazy beautiful. What do you think? Do you prefer the original, vanilla Android, or the new, Tron-tastic look of ICS? Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....
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| Nook Color Gets Its First Dedicated Twitter App Posted: 07 Oct 2011 10:46 AM PDT  The Nook Color is getting its first dedicated Twitter application today, an app called Tweek built by the boutique software consultancy DIG based in Tampa. To be clear, this isn’t the first app on the Nook Color to support Twitter. There’s already Seesmic, for example, which provides access to Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and more. Celebrity Tweets, meanwhile, aggregates the musings from over 300 celebs. However, Tweek is the first dedicated Twitter app designed just for the Nook Color. It does Twitter, just Twitter and nothing but Twitter. The app includes the standard features you would expect in a Twitter client, such as the ability to post updates, view and respond to @ replies, read and write direct messages and follow Twitter trends. There’s a “refresh” button at the top to update the stream, and next to each Twitter status update, “Reply” and “RT” buttons are provided. The app’s color scheme is a dark black and gray, which hopefully you’re into, because there isn’t a way to customize the UI at this time. At 99 cents, Tweek fills a void for Nook Color users who wanted a basic standalone Twitter app for their e-reader. You can grab a copy here on the B&N website or on your device itself.
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| Travel Much? The Unlocked iPhone 4S Will Be Available In November Posted: 07 Oct 2011 08:41 AM PDT  Even with that far-reaching tinge of disappointment over a lack of an iPhone 5, iPhone 4S orders are still expected to be pretty high. However, Apple is only currently selling locked models of its new flagship for Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. But according to a line on the Apple website, an unlocked version of the phone will be available in November. If you travel often for work or pleasure, the unlocked model is certainly the way to go. It will work on AT&T’s network here in the States, as well as T-Mobile’s (at EDGE speeds), but once you venture abroad you’ll be able to tap into carriers that support GSM/UMTS networks. So you may be wondering why an unlocked phone that ships with both CDMA and GSM radios won’t be available for CDMA networks. We were wondering the same thing, and truth be told there really isn’t a good answer. Apple simply says that “you can activate and use it on the supported GSM wireless network of your choice,” and that “the unlocked iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S will not work with CDMA-based carriers such as Verizon Wireless or Sprint.” That suggests that its CDMA capabilities have been disabled. But wait — there’s still a silver lining. After speaking with a Verizon representative, we’ve learned that there may be a loophole. You can save yourself quite a bit of cash by going ahead and purchasing the Verizon iPhone 4S (locked) for the subsidized price. If you wait 60 days, Verizon will activate the GSM capability. Easy as that. The worst part of the unlocked model is pricing. While you can get the locked 4S from your select carriers for between $200 and $400, unlocked versions will be going for full retail price. The 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models will be priced at $649, $749 and $849 respectively. But hey — at least you’ll be contract free.
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| ZipPay To Launch New Mobile Payments Service Cheaper Than Square Posted: 07 Oct 2011 08:15 AM PDT  The easiest way to describe stealthy mobile payments startup ZipPay is to say it’s like Square and Venmo had a baby, and this was the result. Like Square, the startup aims to address the needs of individuals and small business owners who can’t afford the high fees associated with having their own merchant accounts by allowing them to accept credit card payments using their phone. Meanwhile, like Venmo, the solution will also provide a way to perform person-to-person payments. But there are some key differences. For starters, unlike Square, ZipPay won’t use a dongle. It also promises rates lower than Square’s 2.75% per swipe. How this will be done, however, is still unclear. Instead of dongles that attach to the phone’s headphone jack, as is the case with Square, ZipPay will offer a mobile wallet solution that uses some undisclosed patent-pending technology. To load cards into the wallet, ZipPay is leveraging Card.io, the new software development kit (SDK) for mobile developers that uses a combination of computer vision and machine intelligence to “read” a card held up to the mobile phone’s camera. This technology allows faster entry of credit card information into a mobile application, when compared with manually typing in numbers on a small keyboard. Unlike Square’s wallet-like Card Case, which provides digital “tabs” for local merchants, ZipPay’s wallet supports all major credit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. Store cards, discount cards and membership cards will be supported in the future. The card data is stored directly on the device in an encrypted format, however, this is not an NFC-enabled mobile wallet system. There’s a mandatory 4-digit PIN code for the ZipPay app, but how the card data is sent between the customer and the merchant or two ZipPay users remains a mystery. Company CEO Ryan Stevens says he isn’t ready to reveal this part of the system for competitive reasons, but it’s possible that the app somehow uses smartphone sensors to connect the two devices, each which need to run the ZipPay app. Perhaps something like Bump? On the merchant’s side, like Square, ZipPay will allow for expedited sign-up, so new users can start accepting credit cards immediately. The company runs a basic background check on the spot, and if there aren’t any obvious red flags, the account is approved. Merchants can charge up to $1,000 that first day (the same as Square’s manual entry/card not present limit). Later on, when the full background check goes through, the limit is dropped. ZipPay has a banking partner on the backend (unnamed for now) and payments are deposited into merchant’s accounts within 1 to 3 days, implying an ACH system is involved. The second part of the ZipPay system is the feature which involves peer-to-peer payments, something very much like the startup Venmo. In this case, both people would need to have the ZipPay app on their devices and then, again using the undisclosed technology, payments can be instantly sent between the devices. Because the company is not ready to detail its technology, it’s hard to compare what it’s offering with Square, PayPal, Google Wallet or others. We do know it’s not NFC and there’s no dongle, but that’s about it. We also know that it plans to take a portion of the processing fees, like Square, and the app will also include “a small ad,” which may be how it plans to undercut Square. Security is also a big question here, considering that encrypted data stored on the device may still be vulnerable if the device is compromised by a virus or malware, for example. Also, in NFC’s case, each contactless card stored on the device generates a cryptogram to exclusively identify each transaction. No two cards share the same key and the key is never transmitted. How will ZipPay’s system work? Is it storing full mag stripe data on the device? What level and type of encryption is involved? What’s being done to protect the data on both ends? During transmission? The company says it stores no credit card data on its own servers, only the technology used to decrypt the data on your device. Using an online dashboard, lost or stolen phones can be immediately disabled from making payments, but that does not guarantee that the credit card data couldn’t somehow be extracted from the device before you realize your phone is gone. Until the system launches into beta, many of these questions may remain unanswered. ZipPay will offer iPhone and Android apps, starting with the iOS version, launching in Q1 2012. It’s accepting beta sign-ups now.
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| Sprint’s New 4G LTE Network Will Cover 260 Markets By 2013 Posted: 07 Oct 2011 07:19 AM PDT  Sprint has today announced its plans for a forthcoming 4G LTE network, which should cover 120 different U.S. markets by the end of next year. By 2013, the company expects that over 260 markets will benefit from LTE coverage. The “aggressive rollout” should begin on the 1900MHz spectrum, and Sprint hopes to launch on the 800MHz spectrum in the future. Sprint also hopes to build out their LTE network using LightSquared’s 1600 MHz spectrum, although the deal is still awaiting FCC approval. Sprint will continue selling WiMAX compatible phones throughout the next year, along with 15 new LTE-capable devices, CNET reports. Sprint’s VP of Product Development, Fared Adib has (unfortunately) declined to reveal any shiny new LTE devices today, but he did hint that a variety of handsets, modems, and tablets are currently in the works. The very first Sprint LTE device is expected to appear around mid-summer 2012. The news has to be a bit of a blow for everyone who jumped on Sprint’s WiMax bandwagon, but CEO Dan Hesse has indicated that support for WiMax devices won’t just disappear. While Sprint has been depending on Clearwire for its WiMAX network, the LTE roll-out is in Sprint’s court. As we mentioned earlier, Sprint wants to consolidate its network sites, bringing the total from 60,000 to 40,000 using multi-mode network sites, which combine multiple 3G and 4G transmitters into a single unit. Hardware partners Samsung, Ericsson, and Alcatel-Lucent have been developing their multi-mode stations, the deployment of which has already begun. Sprint is bullish on the positive effects that the LTE rollout will have for their customers. They claim that the 3G-to-4G transition will be as close to seamless as they can manage, and that all Sprint customers will benefit least a little from the network overhaul. Sprint shares have gone up since the announcement. Developing…
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| Mobile App Downloads To Reach 98 Billion By 2015 Posted: 07 Oct 2011 06:43 AM PDT  According to new research from Berg Insight, the number of mobile application downloads will reach 98 billion by 2015. The number will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 56.6% between 2010 and 2015, the analyst firm reports. App store revenue will also grow, to reach € 8.8 billion in 2015, or $11.8 billion in U.S. dollars. Last year, revenues from paid apps, in-app purchases and subscription services reached € 1.6 billion, or $2.15 billion U.S. This direct app store revenue will grow 40.7% from 2010 to 2015 before reaching $11.8 billion U.S. Not surprisingly, Apple’s iOS was found to be the leader in direct monetization of mobile applications, and Berg predicts that will continue to be the case through 2015. It also predicts that Android will be #2 and Windows Phone will be #3 in terms of direct monetization. More difficult will be how that revenue will be generated. Senior Analyst Johan Svanberg says that even though download numbers are increasing, most apps are free. That means free-to-download monetization strategies like in-app advertising and in-app purchasing, for example, will be increasingly important. This is especially true in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, which will account for over 40% of all app downloads by 2015. Svanberg downplayed the effect of HTML5 advances during this time frame, too, saying that they’ll “eventually” be relevant alternatives to native apps, but for the next five years, the mobile app is here to stay. However, Web apps and native apps aren’t mutually exclusive, he notes, and developers looking to maximize reach should also build for the Web.
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| Samsung And Google Postpone Nexus Galaxy Launch Hours After A Leaked Demo Video Drops Posted: 07 Oct 2011 05:36 AM PDT  Oh well. Where’s that iPhone 4S pre-order link? Samsung and Google decided that “it is just not the right time to announce a new product” and postponed the scheduled Nexus Galaxy/Prime and Ice Cream Sandwich debut. The two companies were supposed use the CTIA stage next Tuesday to unveil the next-gen superphone and Google’s latest Android incarnation. But that’s not going to happen per a joint statement released this morning.
This takes the event off the books for next Tuesday, October 11th. The mobile world was expecting the big unveiling of the Nexus Galaxy (or Prime, if previous rumors are believed). Details leaked yesterday concerning the so-called superphone that places a 1.2GHz CPU, backed by 1GB of RAM at the core. The phone is said to include an NFC chip, 32GB of storage and a 5MP camera with a 1080p recording mode. Of course none of this was confirmed. Next Tuesday was going to be a big day for mobile nerds. Eric Schmidt previously stated that Google would launch Ice Cream Sandwich by November. Hopefully Google stays true to its word and the Nexus Galaxy/Prime event will be back on the books sometime this month. But fear not. A leaked demo video hit the interwebs today that might satisfy your Ice Cream Sandwich craving. It’s hard to tell if this is the real release or just a clever Android 2.x launcher, but we’re leaning more towards the former. The video doesn’t have any glaring goofs or obvious flaws. The OS shown is silky smooth, the animations are right, and there’s certainly a Honeycomb feel throughout the whole thing. If that video is indeed Ice Cream Sandwich, current Android owners might want to hold off jumping on the 4S bandwagon. A beast is nearly upon us.
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