Netizen: iOS

Showing posts with label iOS. Show all posts

Saturday, January 05, 2013

Android Has Moved On

Android came before the iOS, although the iOS, upon launch, was better than the Android experience. But all that is past tense. Android is securely in the lead now. And the number of apps on the Android platform is a key indicator that is the case.

Google Play will hit a million apps in June (probably sooner than the iOS app store)

Google Play now has 800,000 apps and is growing faster than the iOS app store...... Google Play was growing revenues twice as fast as Apple’s app store. And with the fact that while it took eight months for Google Play to go from 200,000 to 400,000 apps, it took only slightly longer to get from 400,000 to its current 800,000 — meaning that Google is almost maintaining its rate of growth despite the massive increase in absolute numbers.

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Tablets Have Their Limitations

Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

When the iPad first came out I did not think it was a laptop substitute at all.

iPad
The iPad
Da iPad
Finally The iPad Has Competition

I still feel the tablet is not a laptop substitute. The Chromebook is.

The Seven Incher

Difference Engine: Smaller still is smarter

Last year, your correspondent was one of the millions who hoped an iPad would meet all his online needs. He was thrilled with everything about the device except its size. After a month of ownership, he went back to taking a laptop on his travels. The iPad has since been relegated to doing casual duty in the living room...... one cannot help but think that the late Steve Jobs—had he ever been persuaded (doubtful) to bless a four-fifths-sized iPad—would not have allowed the Mini out of the door in its present state. Nor, for that matter, would he have permitted a half-baked product like Apple Maps to see the light of day. Perhaps there is some truth in the claim that, in the absence of Jobs, Apple is now more interested in litigation than innovation. If so, it is a sad day for all who have championed the company for its creativity and pursuit of excellence. ..... In the meantime, the Nexus 7—with its flawless multitasking, top-notch notification scheme and more than adequate apps—will do just nicely, thank you.

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Google Beating Apple On Software

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Hardware is not far. I think Google's Motorola unit is about to create magic. And if Google is to outperform Apple on all the core software, what is to say the Google operating system is not also better?

Google Is Attacking Apple From The Inside Out—And It's Working

Over the past six months, Google has begun to systematically replace core, Apple-made iOS apps with Google-made iOS apps.

In July, Google launched Chrome for iPhone—a Safari replacement.

Then, in October came Google Search—which included a voice search feature to compete with Siri.

In December, Google launched Google Maps to replace Apple Maps, and a much-improved Gmail to replace Apple's core Mail app.

It also put out a new YouTube app, to replace the one that Apple removed during its last iOS upgrade.

Google doesn't plan to stop there.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Platform Agnostic Is The Way To Go

Fred Wilson (Photo credit: Lachlan Hardy)

Fred Wilson has revisited his blog post Mobile First, Web Second that was inspired by a blog post of mine.

I think Mobile First, Web Second made perfect sense at the time, but that was an aggression needed to balance out the over emphasis on the Old Web we had seen to that point.

But the truth is it is not web first or mobile first. It is neither. It is user first. And the best applications going forward will be platform agnostic. As long as you use it, it does not matter what platform you use it on. And your behavior, your interactions will be collected in the Big Data world to glean insights on you - not necessarily to serve ads in sneaky ways - that can have huge commercial values. LinkedIn is a great example on that monetization strategy. LinkedIn does not make money because you visit it several times a day. You don't. How many times are you going to look at your own resume? Unless you are unemployed and are anal about that condition.

Mobile First, Web Second - Fred Wilson's most popular and most quoted blog post of 2010 - was right on for 2010. But with hindsight we have to see it was there to counterbalance Web And Web Alone, the thesis that had been ruling the space for more than a decade to that point, more like a decade and a half.

The app of today and tomorrow has to exist on all platforms - the laptop, the tablet, the smartphone - and more platforms than are in vogue today. Think wristwatch, think TV screen, think movie screen. Think platforms made possible by the gesture - NUI, Natural User Interface - going mainstream.

It is not about the platform, it is about the user.

Vibhu Norby misses the point. Although what he has said are points worth considering by those who are thinking monetization in the short run.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Facebook's Sad IPO's Wide Toll

I think Facebook's sad IPO was a wakeup call to many. The mobile trend is unmistakable. But I don't think it is wise to write off the web. Mobile is hottest, true, but the best applications will be platform agnostic.

Fred Wilson: What Has Changed

VC funding of consumer web and mobile companies is down 42% in this first nine months of 2012 (vs the first nine months of 2011). ..... google, facebook/instagram, amazon, microsoft, apple, twitter, ebay, yahoo, AOL, craigslist, wordpress, linkedin together make up a huge amount of the time spent online, particularly in the english speaking world ..... tumblr and pinterest have risen a lot in the past couple years ..... the consumer is moving from desktop/web to mobile/app ..... most new consumer internet startups need to build for iOS, Android, and web at the same time ..... distribution is much harder on mobile than web and we see a lot of mobile first startups getting stuck in the transition from successful product to large user base. strong product market fit is no longer enough to get to a large user base. you need to master the "download app, use app, keep using app, put it on your home screen" flow and that is a hard one to master. ...... We are small on purpose ... We want to invest in a tiny slice of the early stage ecosystem where our thesis collides with great teams and unique and differentiated products. ...... we are seeing fundraising challenges everywhere, even in our very best portfolio companies .... it is a tougher time for early stage consumer internet companies than I have seen since the 2001-2004 time frame. And I think we are still in the early innings of this more challenging environment. ..... the wind that has been at our back for 7-8 years in consumer internet is no longer there

Wall Street Journal: VCs Still Chasing Web Companies, But With Less Cash

Overall the amount invested in consumer information services was off 42% in the first nine months as the difficulties of newly public Internet companies such as Facebook and Zynga cast doubt on the business models and valuations of social media companies.

Dave McClure: What Hasn’t Changed: The Internet Keeps Getting Bigger.

most VCs switching from consumer to enterprise are clueless about why they’re doing so ..... The number of recent internet services that have grown from nothing to hundreds of millions of users is frankly rather astonishing – Pinterest, Instagram, Groupon, Zynga – all of these took less than a few years to get to hundreds of millions of users and in some cases billions of revenue. ..... what we are seeing with the smarter funds – they’re waiting until Series A or B when companies have clear traction before they jump in, when they may require larger amounts of capital to finance growth. ...... many companies can get to break-even without raising big rounds of venture capital, and may simply choose to operate on their own cashflow, or perhaps debt-based financing. ..... monetization keeps getting better and better, and exits are getting earlier and more often. ..... as online payments and monetization improves, again we will see less need for venture capital to finance customer acquisition for successful internet businesses. ..... There will be thousands of small wins, but larger funds can’t handle the scale required to do so many small investments. Maybe we need something like the SBA small business loan equivalent, but on the the equity side

Om Malik: Who Says Startups Are Easy?

The economics of attention is much more ruthless and unforgiving than the real economic underpinning of a product. Just as it is hard for a movie to recover from a bad opening weekend, today’s “apps” lose if they don’t make a good first impression.