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BlackBerry Tour Sales Nothing To Sneeze At

Analysts are estimating that Verizon sold between 275,000 to 300,000 BlackBerry Tour units in the first 24 hours of release.  It is unknown how many units Sprint sold, but as they released in the same week, it is safe to say Research In Motion (RIM) had a very good week.  While it is estimated that Apple and AT&T sold around one million iPhone 3G S in the first 24 hour period, the numbers for the Tour are very similar to those of the first iPhone released back in June 2007.

So the question now becomes why the BlackBerry App World doesn't seem to be taking off.  Admittedly BlackBerry units are not a "sexy" as the iPhone, but with the numbers the Tour sold, it seems like a woefully under served market at this time.  True these phones have a reputation for being more about business than the iPhone (i.e. fart apps need not apply), that doesn't mean people don't want more productivity apps, some more streaming music and even some games would be nice, but alas the market just doesn't seem to be cropping up.  The first developer to come up with a "must have" app for the BlackBerry could probably retire a very rich person.

Verizon Fires First Shot In Ending Cell Phone Exclusivity

We reported last week that 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. While no movement has been made on this as of yet, it seems Verizon took it at least partially to heart by announcing that they would end exclusivity on its phones after a period of six months.

Before everyone whoops and hollers about how this will change the cell phone market, and mean that many more handsets app developers can hope to get their work on to, there is a rather hefty caveat attached to it. The catch is that the phones will become available to carriers who 500,000 or less subscribers to their service. In other words it will only apply to the companies you've never heard of and don't have an account with to begin with.

While it isn't a huge start to the hopeful end of phone exclusivity, it certainly is a nice step in the right direction.

Palm: webOS Dev Program Fully Opens

The flood gates are about to open on the webOS app front as the software development kit (SDK) has finally been released.

Well, okay, maybe it won't be a flood quite yet, but it is going to build up momentum between now and the fall according to a post earlier today by Nate D'Amico here on SiliconANGLE.  He brought up reviews of developers that have looked at the kit and it sounds like the early days of the Apple iPhone SDK, so it appears that it does have room for growth, but isn't a total slouch either.

The interesting part will be to see what sort of apps appear the most on the Pre.  The iPhone App Store has been a bit all over the place direction wise with everything from simple games to hard working productivity apps, so it will be intriguing to see what the WebOS crowd is most interested in, or will it be more of the hodge podge feeling we've come to know and expect from other application stores out there.

Google Files For A Patent For A New Form Of Mobile Advertising

While it isn't clear as of yet if Google will be opening this up to third-party applications, the Big G has filed for a patent to work with Google Voice that could open up some interesting avenues for application developers.

The premise is that Google will bring an AdWords style system for advertisers that will let them run ads while people are waiting for various things to happen during Google Voice operations.  Advertisers will be able to bid for placements just as they do now on the Web version of the Google advertising platform, and companies can lock down the spots that relate to when people call their stores, help lines and so on.  (i.e. if you call a Sprint store, you'll hear Sprint ads)

If they were to open this up to publishers/app developers it could bring an entire new revenue stream to any of the VoIP applications out there such as Fring.  While it sounds like it might be difficult to implement into other types of apps, but don't put it paste Google to come up with some sort of solution.

Quattro Launches An SDK To Make Android Ad Integration Easier

Quattro, one of the leading mobile advertising platforms, has launched a new SDK that will allow developers to easily integrate ads from the platform into their Android applications.

According to Quattro's information, there were good reasons for them to have gone this route:

• The average G1 user has downloaded more than 40 applications from the Android market virtual storefront (Source: Google)
• 80% of G1 users download at least one application per week (Source:T-Mobile)
• 35% percent of Android users can be defined as “heavy users,” using applications more than 50 times per month (Source: Flurry)

Considering other studies have shown that iPhone users tend to download tons of apps, but rarely use, it sounds like the number of potential ad impressions with Android runs much higher.  With approxiametly 20 more Android powered phones slated for future release, the potential ad revenue could be quite high if the users continue at these rates.  Personally I would say the average will drop as the current users are mainly early adopters who tend to be more open to playing around with their devices.  As the platform expands more into the mainstream the number should drop as the common phone users isn't as prone to downloading numerous applications, but the number should still run fairly high.

Millenial Media Is The Biggest Mobile Advertising Platform You'e Never Heard Of

Our own Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins wrote up a piece on Millennial Media this week about how they are one of the biggest advertising platforms out there for mobile applications, yet it seems like no one has heard of them.

Mark goes into a lot of details about how people somehow have gotten the idea that AdMob is the big player in the field, but it can be pretty much summed up in one section of how this is incorrect:

According to Nielsen’s mobile reach numbers, the mobile web extends to 59.8 million users, and Millennial’s network extends to 44.2 million sets of those eyeballs, by far making them the gorilla in the room.

The entire piece is quite interesting and gives you far more details about how you should at least know who the company is.

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