Week of July 6th Mobile App News
July 13, 2009
Filed Under: in AT&T, Mobile, News, Palm Pre, iPhone
Author: Sean P. Aune
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General Mobile News
Watch out cell phone companies, the government has its eye on you
The Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Justice Department are both preparing to look at exclusive handset deals with carriers, and to try to determine if these arrangements violate anti-trust laws. This of course does not mean every phone would work on every network if these deals were ended, but it would certainly cause more competition amongst carriers to get as many users as possible.
This could be a windfall for app developers on every phone platform. Imagine if the iPhone was released from the shackles of AT&T and how many more potential customers your apps could have. I am personally a perfect example of what is missing from the equation for all parties involved. I refuse to ever work with AT&T again due to numerous problems in the past, and so there is no iPhone for me. Say if it was to be released from its current deal, think of how many people like myself would suddenly be purchasing an iPhone, and in turn, how many more app sales that could mean for a developer. This is a win-win situationfor everyone but the phone companies.
iPhone App News
Have $145,000 to blow on a whim?
Have you ever wondered what it would cost to buy every iPhone application? Okay, I can't say it ever crossed my mind, but the folks over at Busted Loop took it upon themselves to just figure this answer out. Using the number of apps available as of July 6th, which was a staggering 55,732 of them, the cost would come out to $144,326.06. Including free apps, that breaks down to an average of $2.59 per app. If you disregard the free ones, the average cost moves up to $3.34 as there are only 12,538 freebies.
The surprising bit of info was that the most prolific app creator was Iceberg Reader (iTunes link) which has released 1,206 of them. They are stand-alone book applications that vary wildly in pricing, but you have to wonder how long they can continue with this formula when there are other options out there like the Amazon Kindle app. Why fill your iPhone or iPod Touch with dozens of stand alone applications when you can cram them all in to one?
Mobile Ad News
How are you tracking interactions?
Xtract has been around for a while now, but it is getting some attention again thanks to MobiAdNews. The company uses social interaction, personal behavior and demographic data to form what the company refers to as "3D user profile" of who is clicking on your ads. The whole goal is to help you with tracking your current campaigns, assisting in targeting your viral campaigns and the ability to track billions of interactions at a time.
The question here is it may be useful to you, but how do consumers feel about this much data being tracked about them? Do they want complete profiles created about them, even if they are anonymous? 
Palm Pre Application News
How to get homebrew going on your Pre
How To: Install Homebrew Apps Without Rooting over at PreCentral.net talks about a post in their forums that tells you how to install them via USB connected to a Windows XP system. The cat and mouse game between Palm and the homebrew application community continues to move forward. Palm recently shut a hole that allowed people to simply email themselves an application and run it from there to install it. The existence of this guide just demonstrates how the homebrew communities are not known for just giving up after such a minor set back.
This happens all too often where manufacturers go after the passionate fans who build applications for a device. It has happened for years in the video game market, and as phones get more powerful it is happening there also. The real question is why do they go after them? Isn't it better to have a passionate and dedicated fan base? These people spend hours working on these apps, and if they can get them to work they will turn in to a rabid promotional machine for your brand. They will never replace the official apps, so just don't worry about them.
Why should only Sprint have all of the Pre love?
Palm Pre Hacked to Work on Verizon was a title of an article here on Silicon Angle, and it is just more evidence of how fast this fan base is growing. As Mark pointed out, the data portion isn't working quite yet, but the hacker expected to have that working soon.
Why does it almost seem that users are putting more effort in to the Pre than the company is? There are already more homebrew applications than there are official applications (31 homebrew to the 30 official ones as of this writing). Come on, Palm, this is the device that is meant to save the company, get with the programming!
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