Localytics hosted the latest MassMobile Mobile Developers Meetup on November 28th, inviting Boston-area developers and marketers to our new office for an evening of discussion and education on any and all mobile platforms. The discussion delved into new tools for all major mobile platforms and the future of HTML5.
Between multiple lawsuits and press comparisons to the newly-launched iPhone 5, Samsung’s Galaxy S3 is benefiting from being compared to Apple’s phones. Weekly new Galaxy handsets are growing quickly, punctuated by spikes following the Apple-Samsung verdict and the iPhone 5 announcement.
A new study by Localytics looks at mobile usage across all fifty states and finds that 70% of the most active iPhone states vote Democrat while 70% of the most active Android states lean Republican. With the Obama and Romney campaigns seeking every advantage, targeted smartphone advertising will be useful when trying to reach Democratic and Republican voters and volunteers in swing states, which cluster around the average iPhone and Android distribution.
In great news for the mobile app market, app retention rates are improving as app publishers shift from an early focus on “downloads” to more mature customer acquisition and retention models. The overall app industry improved retention rates 19% over the last year. App publishers for the iPhone and iPad saw the greatest success, with retention rates 52% higher than those on Android.
Android’s market fragmentation is often mentioned as a concern for mobile app developers, who worry that Android is fragmented across multiple handset makers, device form factors and OS builds. However, new data from Localytics suggests that developers shouldn’t be worried.
4G – the next generation of cellular data connection – is the future of mobile connectivity, and Android handset makers have been extremely aggressive in their adoption of the various new high-speed protocols. As Q3 2011 comes to an end, … Continue reading
Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, announced this morning, would make Google the #2 manufacturer of handsets for its widely used Android platform. Motorola currently has 29% of the Android market in the US, according to our mobile app … Continue reading
Apple and Google have traded jabs over who’s registering more users, but Android wins the upgrade race—at least when comparing two of the most popular phones, the Apple iPhone 3GS and the Motorola Droid. Two weeks into the upgrade cycle, almost twice as many Droid users had upgraded to Android 2.2 than iPhone 3GS users who upgraded to Apple iOS 4. The reason? iPhone upgrades require connecting your phone to your computer. Which raises another question, will Apple eventually offer over-the-air upgrades to iPhones and (especially) iPads?
Ever since Android devices have started to overtake the iPhone in terms of growth (and according to some reports, in terms of actual market share), I’ve been seeing a lot more companies take a serious look at both porting their existing apps to Android and developing new apps side-by-side for both platforms. I want to get straight to the point and demolish delusions you have that you can exactly port the UI for your current iPhone app screen for screen, rewrite in in Java, call it a day and expect rave reviews. Here’s why.
The Google phone is real. In the spirit of the holidays, Google said Saturday on its mobile blog that they’re “taking dogfooding to a whole new level” by first distributing the new phone to Googlers around the world. The phone, called the Nexus One, will be part of a “mobile lab” where Google employees will help test the latest technology.
