iPhone users don’t like clicking ads
According to one study, mobile users in general, and iPhone owners in particular, don’t like clicking on ads inside of their mobile applications.
According to Chitika, an Internet advertising company, and not one that does any form of specilization in mobile advertising, mobile users only had a click-thru rate of .48% compared to a rate of .83% for Web users. This was measured over 92 million impression, of which only 1.3 million, or 1.5%, of those came from mobile devices. The ads that were displayed in exactly the same format as those displayed on the normal web sites, which leads one to believe, though it is never made clear, that these ads were only shown inside of the web browsers on the devices.
Considering that Chitika serves ads to a reported 55,000 sites for a combined ad impressions of 2 billion a month, these numbers do seem pretty far off the mark from everything else that has been reported about mobile advertising. If you just go back and look at Millennial Media’s engagement report for July, which was collected by Nielsen, the numbers are so radically different that you question if the same thing was being measured.
You can look at some of the Chitika graphs below, but our feeling is you need to take this analysis of mobile advertising with a grain of salt.
iTunes App Store redesign causes app sales slump
While consumers may be loving the new version of iTunes, app developers are less than thrilled with it when they see their sales slumping.
Information Week is reporting that after the release of iTunes 9, and major changes to how the App Store is layed out in its default fashion, app developers were seeing a rapid decline in sales. One of the biggest complaints was that the default layout no longer supported sub-categories, something the games category has relied on extensively. Numerous developers relied on the Top Apps lists for their sub-categories for a large portin of their marketing inside the over-crowded store, and, in turn, their sales.
While Apple has been making some steps it seems to relate a bit more to their developers, this latest move shows a considerable lack of listening to the developers as to what works for them. This sounds like something that could be easily repaired in iTunes 9.1 with a simple software update, but if Apple will do that is a totally different matter.
Palm unleashes its second webOS device, the Pixi
Palm has finally gotten around to releasing a second device using its newly minted webOS platform, but was Pixi really the best name for it?
Our own Nate D’Amico brought you the details on the Palm Pixi earlier this week, and while it looks like it’ll be a nice phone, and a boon to webOS app developers, that name is just enough to drive you insane. The physical device is thinner, sleek, has a touch screen and a full QWERTY keyboard, but it is lacking the Wi-Fi capabilities of the Pre, and it also has a 2 megapixel camera as opposed to the 3 megapixel the Pre has.
The Pixi is expected to have a price of around $100 (presumably with a two-year contract, natch), and go on sale sometime before the holiday shopping season kicks into high gear with Sprint as the mobile partner again. The question will of course be if the market really needs this phone. Are people clamoring for the Pre, but just not willing to spend $149 on it? For the Wi-Fi capability alone I would be willing to plop down the extra $50 on the Pre if I was in the market for a Palm device.
Motorola CLIQ is Android-based, but you’d never know it by the UI
Google Android is showing up in more and more devices, but the CLIQ is the first to change the UI (User Interface) enough that the operating system isn’t even recognizable.
Called MOTOBLUR, the new Android UI is all about integrating your social networking deeply into the overall phone experience. Messages, no matter their source, will all be delivered in the same spot so the user doesn’t have to go around hunting on all of the different networks to see them.
The CLIQ (known as the Dext outside of the USA, and available sometime in 2010) will be released by T-Mobile in the 4th quarter of this year. The handset will include 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 5 megapixel camera, 24 fps video recording, 3.5 mm audio jack, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Android 1.5 and more.
While nothing specific is mentioned about the phone being able to run all of the standard Android apps, it is doubtful that MOTOBLUR will change the basic functionality of Android to the point that you couldn’t. Seeing as T-Mobile seems to have an undying love affair with Android at the moment, it is fairly sure they wouldn’t have jumped on board with this unit if wasn’t capable of doing everything all of the other Android handsets can.
Are the iPhone and iPod Touch actually pocket computers?
At this weeks iPod event, Apple said a lot of things about the iPod Touch, but the main emphasis seemed to be that it isn’t just a music player.
It seems that Apple is having a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to the iPod Touch, and, by extension, the iPhone. At first the iPhone was not just a phone, but "the best iPod ever." Then the iPod Touch was "the funnest iPod ever." Well, now it seems that both devices are pocket computers … but then the iPod Touch is also a gaming device … is anyone else confused yet?
Steve Jobs said that part of the reason that the iPod Touch didn’t get a camera in the latest refresh was due to it being focused on a gaming device at the moment. (Funny how IFixIt found a spot in the 3rd gen iPod Touch teardown then for a camera)
So, where should app developers be focusing right now? Your guess is as good as ours. Should you be doing more utility apps? Should you be doing more games? Or will it all be pointless and you will get lost in the newly redesigned App Store? Who knows, but we do think Apple needs to sort out the identity crisis it is having with these devices.App S
[Editor’s Note and Disclosure: Millennial Media is a sponsor of SiliconANGLE –spa]
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