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Apple: 100 Million Downloads From Mac App Store To Date

Posted: 12 Dec 2011 05:36 AM PST

mac app store

Apple this morning announced that there are now over half a million applications available in the App Store, and that over 100 million of apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store in less than a year after its launch.

When the Mac App Store opened for business on January 6, 2011, there were only 1,000 apps available from the store.

Press release:

CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apple® today announced that over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac® App Store™ in less than one year. With thousands of free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the App Store experience to the Mac so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes® account, and download and install them in just one step. Apple revolutionized the app industry with the App Store, which now has more than 500,000 apps and where customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps and continue to download more than 1 billion apps per month.

"In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world."

"With Autodesk products in both the App Store and Mac App Store, we can reach hundreds of millions of Apple users around the world," said Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Platform Solutions and Emerging Business at Autodesk. "With our free AutoCAD WS and the more powerful professional drafting tools of AutoCAD LT, we're using the Mac App Store to deliver new products and reach a growing base of new Mac customers."

"The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle," said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. "Offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition."

"In less than one year we've shifted the distribution of djay for Mac exclusively to the Mac App Store," said Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim. "With just a few clicks, djay for Mac is available to customers in 123 countries worldwide. We could never have that reach through traditional channels."

The Mac App Store offers thousands of apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what's hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews. The Mac App Store is included with Mac OS® X Lion and is available as a software update for any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard®. For more information visit, www.apple.com/mac/app-store.

Mac developers set the prices for their apps, keep 70 percent of the sales revenue, are not charged for free apps and do not have to pay hosting, marketing or credit card fees. To find out more about developing for the Mac App Store visit, developer.apple.com/programs/mac.

EMIRAI: Mitsubishi Shows Futuristic Car Interface (Video)

Posted: 12 Dec 2011 05:02 AM PST

emirai feat

At the Tokyo Motor Show 2011, Mitsubishi took the wraps off EMIRAI, a near-future concept that will become reality in about 10 years (if the company is to be believed). The core element is a large-sized, curved dashboard that combines rear-projection to display various operations with touch control support.

The steering wheel features shape-changing buttons that only raise when the system expects the driver to push them. Cars equipped with EMIRAI identify drivers and keep track of their facial temperature and heart rate. Passengers sitting in the rear can kill time by using naked-eye 3D screens that are built into seats.

This video, shot by Diginfo TV, provides more insight:

‘Small Cell’ Maker ip.access Raises $15M From Intel, Qualcomm And Others

Posted: 12 Dec 2011 03:32 AM PST

ipaccess

Cambridge, UK-based ip.access, which offers femtocell and picocell solutions to mobile operators worldwide, has raised $15 million in new funding from some of its previous investors.

The financing round comes from Intel Capital, Cisco, Qualcomm, Amadeus Capital Partners, Rothschild & Cie Gestion, Scottish Equity Partners and TE Connectivity.

ip.access CEO Simon Brown says the capital will be used for the development and deployment of coverage and network capacity-boosting small cell products as the global rollout of high-speed 3G and LTE networks continues. Says Brown:

"Everything we are doing and developing at the moment is geared towards making it easier and more cost effective for operators to add coverage and capacity to their networks where it is needed most – in homes, in offices and in busy public locations”.

Duly noted, and investors seem to like that pitch, too.

Gadgets Week in Review: New Toys

Posted: 12 Dec 2011 01:00 AM PST

The $99 TouchPad Sale Overwhelms Ebay As Consumers Snatch Up The Discontinued Tablet

Posted: 11 Dec 2011 06:34 PM PST

newpalm-2118

And like that they’re gone. $99 TouchPads hit ebay right on schedule and were gone within minutes. But that’s to be expected, really. It’s not often that a solid piece of hardware like the TouchPad is available for so cheap. And thanks to HP’s recent moves, the tablet’s operating system, webOS, will be around at least in some capacity for as long as there’s a demand (and developers).

The sale started at 7pm EST on HP’s ebay store like the memo we leaked indicated. Both the 16GB and 32GB models were available for $99 and $149, respectively. I watched the 16GB model disappear from ebay within 10 minutes. As of this post’s writing, 2 hours after the sale began, only one SKU of the $150 32GB TouchPads are still available although those will likely be gone soon as well. But good luck as ebay is still flaky hours after the sale started. Twitter and forums sites quickly relayed the troubles of many buyers shortly after 7. Ebay was crashing. PayPal was lagging. The whole thing was a mess. For a short moment in time, HP’s tablet was anything but an unwanted iPad clone.

Some what surprisingly, consumers could buy more than two TouchPads. The original memo indicated only two SKUs, which as interpreted as two TouchPads per person. But there were several SKUs for each the 16GB and 32GB. Some buyers likely took advantage of this and bought up a gaggle of TouchPads.

This land rush of sorts reaffirms that consumers overwhelming want a tablet but are seemingly turned off by the current prices. The iPad dominates the $499 and higher price point and Apple has encountered little trouble selling units even at that price. Competitors have not been so lucky for a number or reasons. However, instead of fighting the iPad directly with competitive hardware, Amazon and Barnes & Noble are undercutting the current champion with low-cost hardware and a curated (some would say walled) user experience. It’s working.

The $199 Kindle Fire was the top seller on Amazon for weeks before it was even released. Likewise, B&N managed to ship more than a million Nook Tablets in just a month. Consumers want a low-cost tablet device — something Arrington and others tried to produce starting in 2008.

Tonight’s fire sale might be the last HP webOS hardware the world sees for a while. But webOS isn’t dead. HP stated last week that there will be new hardware in 2013. As for the operating system itself, HP is releasing it under an open source license, effectively releasing a domesticated animal into the wild. But for a very short time that puppy was loved. Unfortunately, it’s owner (Palm) didn’t have the room to let it grow so the dog was sold to HP who, as it turns out, didn’t have the patiences or the time for proper development — you know, metaphorically. But now that webOS is open, or will be shortly, the TouchPad has a real shot at living a full life.