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Content Tagged with Apple + Web2.0
Apple Is Flailing Badly At The Edges
My first computer, purchased by my parents after nearly a year of begging, was an Apple II+. That was 1982. I was a Windows user for the next 20 years, but went back to Mac when they switched to Intel chips a couple of years ago. Since then I’ve bought seven Macs for myself, as well as at least one of every iPod and both iPhones. A lot of these were test devices that I’ve passed on to friends and family.
My obvious enthusiasm for Apple products is fairly evident to readers of this blog. But recently I’ve had a string of bad apples come my way, so to speak. It’s time for Apple to stop screwing around and start paying attention to product quality.
I’ll excuse the one hour of battery life I seem to be able to get out of my iPhone. An arrangement of extra power cords (USB, car, wall) and external batteries gets me through the day. I’ll also excuse the fact that iTunes seems hell bent on not syncing applications from my desktop to my iPhone, and inexplicably removing apps from my phone without any notice. I love that damn phone, and it will take a lot more than lost apps and dropped calls to get it out of my hands.
But I don’t have the same blind dedication to other Apple products, and a string of costly problems has left me more than frustrated.
Mac Mini, Macbook Air, Macbook Pro and Macbook, All Failed
I was pretty excited about my Macbook Air, which packs a ton of hardware into a slim and elegant case. But it was unable to stay connected to Wifi for more than a minute or so, even on the brand new Apple Time Capsule router we’re using at the office. I took it into the Apple store - they kept it for a few days and said nothing was wrong. I argued with them and they did nothing. And since I waited more than two weeks after buying it to bring it back in, I couldn’t simply return it. That $1,800 piece of hardware has now been dismantled for parts for a project we’re working on here.
A high end black Macbook made it through one meeting before having some sort of hardware problem that shut it down for good. I still have a few days left to return it for a refund.
The one year old Mac Mini I was using to drive my living room television failed a month ago. It turned itself into a brick. Parts of it are on my coffee table.
My main travel computer, a seven month old Macbook Pro, had a keyboard failure two weeks ago. Apple repaired it and I’m using it now.
That leaves three other Macs in good working order. One is a Macbook pro that my dad now uses. The other two are iMacs that have never had any problems.
But having major issues with four out of seven computers is, um, unacceptable.
MobileMe Has Screwed Up My Work Ecosystem
I have Macs in my main office and my bedroom, as well as my travel computer. I have spent years getting .Mac, which syncs calendar, contact and email data across machines and in the cloud, working properly. It tended to break a lot, but if you kept the OS constantly up to date and were willing to tinker with it, it was a great way to keep synced across any number of computers. I didn’t really care which one I picked up to access email, write a post, etc.
Then came MobileMe and the Apple’s automatic transfer of .Mac customers over to that ridiculously broken new service. I had a suspicion it wouldn’t work at first given how touchy .Mac was, and so I didn’t touch anything on my old computers. But I have never gotten it working on the new Macs I purchased, and now .Mac has failed on all of the synced machines. No more calendar access, contacts syncing, etc.
Apple keeps giving customers free time on the service as a way to apologize for the problems. But that isn’t good enough. I’m not price sensitive to the $99/year they’re charging for the service. But I need it to work, and I need it to work right now.
The failed computers could just be a coincidence, although the wifi problem with the Macbook Air is well documented. The MobileMe debacle, though, is affecting everyone. Apple shouldn’t have merged the services, at least old .Mac customers wouldn’t be enraged today. They need to get their house in order or they risk alienating all these new customers they’ve added over the last few years. The new buyers aren’t Apple fanatics and won’t sit quietly as they try to access broken services via failing hardware.
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iPhone Microsites - Tutorials
Apple - Education - Podcasting in Education Video Series
podcasting: del.icio.us tag/podcasting
Web2.0
video
tools
apple
podcasting
teacher-resources
teacher-training
MobileMe Users Targeted in Phishing Scam
The MobileMe service from Apple has been presenting its users with problems since day one. First, it snuck quietly onto computers by being bundled with iTunes. We seemed to be the only people complaining about that. Several outages followed the launch of MobileMe and plenty of problems still plague users of the service. Some can argue that MobileMe hasn't been doing its job very well. Now, MobileMe users have something else worry about: phishing scams.
The Hunt Begins...
According to a recent post from Computer World, users are receiving a typical phishing email, only instead of being plagued with the numerous grammar hints, this email is well written.
"Welcome. We were unable to process your most recent payment. Did you recently change your bank, phone number or credit card?To ensure that your service is not interrupted, please update your billing information today by clicking here, After a few clicks, just verify the information you entered is correct."
While some may be able to avoid this problem, 100 - 200 .mac users were scammed in one day. Names, address, credit card numbers, passwords, and more were taken advantage of in these phishing attacks. Apparently the attackers have been very smart, effectively timing the attacks with the launch of the MobileMe service, where Apple forced some of the users of its older .Mac service to switch to the new MobileMe. In this respect, the phishing email could pass as a real email from Apple for some users.
What to Watch For
If you check your email in the future and happen to see the following email in your inbox, spam it and ignore it.
AppStore Developer TapTapTap Publishes Sales Figures
iPhone application development house taptaptap has published sales figures for the first month of sales for their two AppStore applications, bringing further insight into overall sales volume and figures for the online store. The two applications developed by the company are WhereTo, an application that provides a more general GPS interface to the iPhone with location-based services, and Tipulator, a simple tip calculator.
WhereTo retails for $2.99 in the store and 24,094 copies were sold in the first month - netting the company just over $50,000 in revenue after Apple took their cut (it currently ranks #69 on the top paid application list). Tipulator retails for 99 cents, and sold 3,168 copies which resulted in just over $2,200 of revenue (it is currently unranked). The table below outlines overall sales volumes and revenues for each application:
taptaptap AppStore sales and revenue numbers for US sales, month 1
| WhereTo | TipCalculator | |
| URL | AppStore | AppStore |
| Price | $2.99 | $0.99 |
| Number Sold | 24,094 | 3,168 |
| Gross Sales | $72,041.06 | $3,136.32 |
| Net Sales (after AppStore cut) | $50,597.40 | $2,217.60 |
| Total Gross | $75,177.38 | |
| Total Net | $52,815 |
The resulting net profit and sales figures are good for a small company that has developed one application that is relatively sophisticated, and another that is very straight forward and simple but yet still brings in $2,000 a month. There is definitely great revenue potential for developers of iPhone applications, as users of the AppStore and the iPhone in general are more likely to pay for applications. Integrating with iTunes makes the process simple for the user, but for the developer poses a challenge as all applications must be submitted to Apple and must meet their approval.
We should also note that while both of these applications have done well, their download figures unsurprisingly pale in comparison to those of Facebook and Tap Tap Revenge, both of which have over 1 million users. The real money in the App Store may well lie in monetizing these free applications, be it through integrated advertising or downloadable content (though it remains to be seen what restrictions Apple will place on this kind of strategy).
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iPhone Apps: One Month And 60 Million Downloads Later. But Not One Of Them Is A Killer App
Steve Jobs shared some stats on how the iPhone App store is doing one month after launch with the WSJ’s Nick Wingfield. There have already been 60 million downloads, the majority of them free. But paid downloads are doing just fine, pulling in $30 million in revenues in the first 30 days. The article does not reveal the total number of paid downloads, but given that apps range in price (mostly gravitating either to 99 cents or $9.99, but one briefly going as high as $999, before it was pulled down), it is safe to say that fewer than 30 million paid apps have been sold. One game alone, Sega’s $9.99 Super Monkey Ball, sold 300,000 copies (or $3 million worth). That one game alone accounted for 10 percent of all iPhone app sales.
Here are some stats culled from the WSJ article:
First Thirty Days: iPhone App Stats
Total Downloads: 60 Million
Total Revenues: $30 Million
Sales Going To App Developers: $21 Million
Sales Going To Top Ten Apps: $9 Million
Sales of Sega’s Super Monkey Ball: $3 Million
At the current rate, the App Store is on track to bring in annual sales of $360 million. Apple keeps about 30 percent to cover its costs (as it does with iTunes song sales), and the rest go to the developers who create the apps.
The question is how many apps can one person really manage before becoming overwhelmed. While the initial impulse is to download as many apps as possible to try them out, there is a limit to how many apps you can juggle on your iPhone. It is not much different than a PC. You have tons of apps, but how many do you actually use on a regular basis? For most people, that number is probably no more than ten apps, and on a daily basis, maybe 3 or 4 tops. Update: With an estimated three million 3G iPhones sold so far, and another six million first-gen iPhones, that averages just over six apps per phone (and that’s not even counting the iPod Touch).
For instance, of the 30 apps on my iPhone, I’ve used only about six more than once, and nearly all of those come with the device. By far, the app I use the most is Gmail, followed by Web browsing. Those two built-in apps account for about 90 percent of my usage and are the only apps I use on a daily basis. Those are followed by the camera (if you can call that an app), the calculator, and Maps. Of all the apps I’ve downloaded from the App store, only two of them are seeing regular usage, and both are games: Tap Tap Revenge and BeeCells (which my four-year-old plays more than I do—in fact, he think that’s what the iPhone is for).
And I’m not the only one who thinks that these apps are going to hit a saturation point real soon. And then it will become clear that the killer apps on the iPhone are the same as on your computer: email and the browser.
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The App Store: Soon To Be A Billion Dollar Marketplace?
Anyone who has the iPhone or iPod Touch can tell you that one of the best things about owning the device is the ability to add apps from iTunes App Store. Although many of the apps that we talk about here are the free ones like the social networking apps, the instant messaging apps, and the blogging apps, it's the paid apps that are making the store a financial success.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/The_App_Store_Soon_To_Be_A_Billion_Dollar_Marketplace';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'normal';According to today's Wall Street Journal, in the month since the Apple App Store opened, users have downloaded over 60 million programs for their iPhone or iPod Touch. Out of those that were downloaded, Apple sold an average of $1 million per day in paid applications, which brought in around $30 million over the course of the month.
If they stay the course, the App Store will make at least $360 million a year, but Steve Jobs isn't setting for that:
"This thing's going to crest a half a billion, soon," he told the WSJ reporter. "Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time."
However, it's worth noting that Apple won't be raking in those millions just for themselves - they only keep 30% of the proceeds, a good portion of which go to cover the costs of credit card transactions and help keep the App Store up-and-running. It's really the apps' creators who stand to gain, as they keep 70% of the proceeds.
What sort of paid apps are doing well? A quick glance at the App Store reveals that answer: games. Sega can back that up, too. They sold more than 300,000 copies of their Super Monkeyball game ($9.99) in only 20 days. According to Simon Jeffery, president of Sega's U.S. division: "It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform."
But with numbers like these, we would argue that the iPhone goes beyond just being a gaming platform - they're a computing platform now...and a profitable one at that.
Apple Considers Streaming Media from iTunes to iPhone
AppleInsider has posted details about a patent recently filed by Apple that describes technology for playing iTunes content from a desktop computer remotely on an iPhone or iPod touch.
The new software would load only meta data about songs, videos, and other media onto a handheld device. It would then allow users to stream this media from their desktop computers on demand and even let them organize their iTunes libraries remotely (by adding, deleting, and moving files around). The main benefits come from saving space on your handheld device, where disk storage is scarce, as well as saving the time it takes to synchronize.
There’s been no official word from Apple on when or whether it plans to release this technology (it files patents all the time that go nowhere). But such a development could be seen as one step towards a streaming music service like Rhapsody or Napster, which have operated in stark contrast to Apple’s download model. However, the patent does not suggest that Apple plans to stream data from its own servers - just consumers’ own desktop computers, where they keep the music they have downloaded.
Apple could also be understood to be taking on at least one facet of Microsoft Mesh, which promises to make consumers’ personal files available to them on whichever device they use. Of course, MobileMe already goes to show that Apple has data synchronization on its mind - but perhaps there’s a broader trend here as well.
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Poll: What Should Be Done About The "I Am Rich" App?
By now you've surely heard the story about the "I Am Rich" app that sold in Apple's iTunes store for the ridiculous price of $999.99 (U.S.). What you may not have heard was that there were eight people who actually bought the app - six in the U.S. and two Europeans. So far, there only appears to be one person who bought the app in error, if a certain screenshot circling the net is to be believed. But what about the other seven? Did they know what they were getting into? And, if so, was Apple right to remove the app from their store?
The App That Did Nothing
The "I Am Rich" app was not a scam. It did nothing and it clearly stated as such its description at the iTunes app store. The app simply displayed an image of a glowing red ruby that "always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were rich enough to afford this." When activated, the app displays a larger, glowing gem. According to the author, Armin Heinrich "it's a work of art with no hidden function at all."
But the clear description of its uselessness didn't convince at least one of the app's buyers not to purchase. Instead, he believed the app was a joke. According to a screenshot of an App Store review circling the net, a customer with the screen name of "Lee5279xx" complains that when he and some friends saw the app, they jokingly clicked "buy." Unfortunately, he had forgotten that his wife had "iclick" activated on the laptop, so he actually bought the app for $999. Of course, he immediately called Visa but they couldn't do anything until they talk to the vendor, and, at the time he wrote the complaint, Visa had not been able to reach either Armin Heinrich or Apple.
"I Am Rich" Gets Blacklisted
Now the I Am Rich app has been added to the mysterious Apple blacklist which also includes NullRiver's NetShare tethering application and a harmless movie listings app called BoxOffice. All three apps have been pulled from the store with no explanation as to why. Apparently, not even the developers know why, either. According to an interview with the LA Times, Heinrich states "I have no idea why they did it and am not aware of any violation of the rules to sell software on the App Store."
Obviously, the customer complaint may have something to do with its removal. But that's just one of the seven customers - who are these other customers and how do they feel? If they knew what they were doing and bought the app (yes perhaps as a joke, but knowingly so) and have no regrets, then what's the problem? Why remove the app from the store?
What To Do Now?
Assuming that the one customer complaint is real, (which seems likely), how should this problem be handled now? Should the developer have to refund the money? Technically, he did nothing wrong. His app performed as promised. Should Apple then be responsible? After all, aren't they the ones responsible for vetting the apps in advance? Perhaps they should have never let it into the store to begin with. Or should the customer just bite the bullet and pay up?
Let us know what you think in this poll:
Should "I Am Rich" App Customers Get Refunds?
( polls)
I Want My iPhone TV
The dog days of August lend themselves to kicking back and letting the world slide by. Since the advent of the Web 2.0 ecosystem, they’ve also been the province of a tech company version of the summer shows the networks play off - failed pilots, reality programming being tried out for the Big Show or another writer’s strike, and ratings stinkers that can be buried outside of Sweeps months.
But the DVR has changed everything, in the process eliminating the notion of special sweeps periods and the upfronts where the new season is hawked. Instead, every day is Premiere Month, with the quality of the audience becoming a function of its trackability. The more that you can see the gestures of the audience in real time, the less you need to attract their attention and the more you can market it to the advertisers. In that context, a show played back is no longer a second class citizen; instead the metadata about when you played it back and what was going on at that time form a more powerful indicator of intent, and the common signature of like-minded users a highly valued target.
In fact, television and music content have become more like software than they are different, and the release of the iPhone App Store is a significant new platform for the intersection of what formerly were seen as two different products.
What kinds of programming will emerge? Perhaps a kind of reality show with mobile devices, where contestants roam the real world and use their phones as transaction wands to indicate their interest (or lack of it) in products, events, personalities, and so on. Team behavior is aggregated and mined by matching demographic profiles with reactions to produce “answers” to questions about news of the day, topic swarms on Twitter or other social networks, the race for the White House.
In effect, a new hyper reality show becomes possible, where the App Store is the gateway for an Adsense-like version of Big Brother that leaves the house and breaks out into the virtual community. The device and bandwidth is subsidized by the show, so that Apple can turn on the video aspects of the phone to produce footage, and the community could even be encouraged to provide production support for cataloging and editing the show together via the app and the phone.
Read the full rant on TechCrunchIT
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The Global Reach Of The First Million 3G iPhones
Medialets has posted the results of a recent Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research report that details the breakdown of the first 1 million iPhone 3Gs sold worldwide.
Earlier this month Apple announced that it had reached the milestone in only three days, compared to 74 days for the original iPhone. Of course, the two figures are hardly comparable, as the the 3G version launched simultaneously worldwide in 21 countries - the original iPhone was exclusive to the US for months after its release.
Unsurprisingly, the report says the United States accounts for 60% of all units sold during the three day period, with a total of 600,000. Trailing by a factor of nearly ten fold is Japan, with 70,000 units sold. Japan’s finish in second place may well be a result of pent up demand, as the original iPhone was never officially sold there (even unlocked phones wouldn’t work, as the original iPhone doesn’t support UMTS).
The results for carrier distribution aren’t particularly surprising, either. AT&T leads by a wide margin because of its US sales. Despite selling the second highest number of phones, Japan’s carrier Softbank ranks behind T-Mobile and Orange, which both have customers in multiple European countries.
Above all, the figures reflect the explosive demand for the iPhone seen worldwide, and are especially impressive given the difficulties Apple had with activation in a number of countries. In the United States, the iPhone is still selling out at many stores in a manner of minutes. What remains to be seen is how long the public’s obsession with the iPhone will hold, and if Apple can reach its goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008.
For more details, check out the Medialets post.
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With MobileMe, Apple Bites Off More Than It Can Chew
When Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, introduced MobileMe onstage at the WWDC keynote in June, the audience was wowed into believing that the most stylish hardware and software company had transformed itself into a formidable Internet service provider right before its eyes.
MobileMe not only promised to be exceedingly functional - an “Exchange for the rest of us” that would synchronize our emails, contacts, calendar appointments and photos across devices using push technology - it was also exceedingly beautiful. By applying its legendary design expertise to the SproutCore JavaScript framework, Apple had created a browser-based hub that not only empowered consumers with device flexibility; it also raised the notion that Apple would become a major player in cloud computing, even if MobileMe was technically only an upgrade to the six-year-old .Mac service.
But alas, the transformation has proven itself to be more of a slog than Apple had hoped. After a false start, persistent outages, and all-around bugginess, Steve Jobs has admitted to employees in an internal email that “it was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” and “the MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services”. This is an atypical admission by a company known for its well-maintained image of impeccability. It also raises the question of whether Apple will be able to metamorphize as services and software move online around it.
Apple is certainly not without its previous Internet successes, namely the iTunes Store with its paid music and movie downloads. The store’s success appears to be why Eddy Cue, Apple’s VP of iTunes, has been put in charge of all Apple Internet services following the MobileMe mess. But it has yet to be seen whether Cue can translate his experience deploying an Web-connected desktop app within a proprietary framework (iTunes) into a more distributed, browser-based platform that competes with the likes of Live Mesh and SugarSync. And then there is the question of whether Google will ever add desktop syncing to its webtop services, competing even more directly with the MobileMe offering.
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Apple Pulls Another Innocuous iPhone App
Another day, another capricious decision by Apple to pull a fairly innocuous application. This time it’s BoxOffice, a diabolical system for finding and displaying local movie times. Quoth the developers at Metasyntactic:
Apple pulled the app yesterday without giving my any notification that they were doing it, or what their justification was for removing it.
I’ve tried to contact them about the issue, but it’s been a complete dead end. If anyone has a useful contact number for apple, please let me know.
I’m in regular contact with all my data providers, and none of them have had an issue with my app. Indeed, the response was the exact opposite. They like my app and have even asked if i would do custom application work for them in the future. Furthermore, all the data i use is licensed by the owners as ‘free for non commercial use’. i.e. precisely what BoxOffice is.
So i’m stuck here not knowing what has happened, or what i can do about it. If any of you have any ideas, please let me know. You can respond here, but i’d actually appreciate a reply at cyrusn@stwing.upenn.edu since i probably won’t check back here that often.
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Mossberg, Levy And Arrington Talk iPhone, Yahoo On Charlie Rose
Our own Michael Arrington joins Wired’s Steven Levy and the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg on last night’s Charlie Rose show. Most of the discussion was on the iPhone 3G and how Apple continues to turn the mobile world on its head. At the end of the discussion the trio also talk about Yahoo’s future.
This is Mike’s third appearance on the show this year. See his March and May conversations with Rose as well.
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Apple’s App Store: The New Walled Garden
One reason startups and developers are so excited about the iPhone is because they can create richer mobile applications for it and it promises to become a more open platform than the carrier-controlled home decks on most other cell phones. But don’t be so sure that they are not trading one walled garden for another. The home deck is being replaced by the iPhone App Store on iTunes. And Apple controls which apps get virtual shelf space in that store, and which ones get featured. There are only 700 or so apps in the App Store, but there are thousands that want to get in.
On a VC panel at MobileBeat a right now, Accel partner Richard Wong points out:
Apple is the new gatekeeper. It is a walled garden. Hopefully it is a more benevolent one [than the mobile carriers].
So far Apple is more benevolent than the carriers. It takes only 30 percent of paid apps, versus the 40 to 50 percent that carriers take for apps and services distributed through their phones. And Apple is taking almost nothing from ad-supported apps.
There are rumors of Apple blocking apps that compete with its core businesses and applications. Apple cannot play favorites if it wants to become the dominant mobile Web platform.
(Photo by Paul Englefield).
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Apple Seeing Red For iPhone Holiday Sales
Rumors have been propagating through several popular Mac blogs that Apple will be releasing a red iPhone 3G model for the holiday season. The release will be well-timed, considering the initial iPhone hype will start to slow, and people will be opening up their wallets more for the holiday season. (Photo via MacBlogz)
The red iPhone will presumably be sold as part of the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, a charitable organization that donates money to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. Apple has released several products for this campaign previously, including (PRODUCT) RED iTunes gift cards, a red 8GB iPod Nano, and a red 1GB iPod Shuffle.
Read more about (PRODUCT) RED and the iPhone 3G at CrunchGear, including an extensive review of the iPhone 3G .
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Apple Launching App Store Beta Program
Apple’s App Store has seen an unprecedented amount of success and exposure since its launch, with millions of total downloads and 909 applications already available. Unfortunately, Apple has been unable to keep up with the influx of submissions from developers (each app must be approved before it appears on the store), leaving many companies frustrated and confused as their apps sit in limbo.
Adding to the frustration has been the difficulty associated with testing an application. As Craig Hockenberry, one of the people behind the popular app Twitterific explains:
The big problem here is that the only way to install software on an iPhone or iPod touch is with the App Store. There are also no provisions for beta testing… The only way to “test” a fix is to release the changes to tens of thousands of users. It’s the developer equivalent of playing Russian roulette.”
Now we’re hearing from an app developer that Apple is finally going to start rolling out a new beta program in the next few days has released an Ad-Hoc program. Details are slim, but it seems like Apple is capping the total number of beta participants at 100 per app. In order to download a beta app, users will need to submit their iPhone’s UDIDs number to the developer, who will then need to flag its eligibility in the store itself. All betas will still be distributed through the App Store - you won’t be able to download one on an external site. The apps will be directly distributed by the developer.
It sounds like developers that haven’t had their apps approved yet will still be able to participate in the beta program. This should alleviate some of the developers’ anxiety (at least they’ll know their app will work once it goes live), but it still doesn’t address the the delays and lack of communication that many developers are complaining about.
Update: Our source was misinformed. This program, as a number of commentors have said, is Apple’s Ad-Hoc program that is already operational. Erica Sadun of TUAW writes:
Developers and users need not use the App Store for testing. Ad Hoc distribution goes directly between the developer and the user. The user needs to supply their iPhone’s unique device identifier. The developer then sends a specially compiled version of their app along with a mobile provisioning file. Users drop these into iTunes and they’re good to sync.
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CrunchGear’s Official iPhone 3G Review
Hype, hype, hype. Now that the iPhone 3G launch has blown over and I’ve been able to integrate the phone into my daily routine, I think we’re ready for an official CrunchGear review. Our advice? Wait. With 60% certainty I predict a minor hardware or, more likely, software update in the next month or so to improve the 3G’s thus far abysmal battery life.
The iPhone 3G is incrementally better than the 1st generation iPhone, which means that only die-hards and non-iPhone users should upgrade. Everything good about the iPhone is still here - the UI, the size and shape, the music player. To paraphrase Churchill: It has been said that iPhone is the worst mobile phone except for all the others that have been tried.
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Free Apps No Longer Dominating iPhone App Store.
When the iPhone App Store launched last Friday along with the new 3G iPhone, free apps made up 24 percent of the 552 apps available. In other words, the most popular price point was free. The rest of the apps ranged in price from 99 cents to $9.99 and even more. Instead of dictating a uniform price, as he did with music, Steve Jobs let the market decide what price apps should go for.
The market is already doing that sorting. According to Greg Yardley at Pinch Media, as of this morning there were 798 iPhone apps available through the App Store on iTunes, and only 20 percent (161 apps) are free. The most popular price point is now 99 cents, with 24 percent (188 apps). The second most popular is $9.99 with 12 percent (96 apps, including Enigmo, an addictive puzzle game, and the handy GuitarToolkit). See the price distribution chart above.
All the other price points are shifting to either 99 cents or $9.99, implying that the sweet spot is 99 cents for most apps just as it is for songs. But with the caveat that if your app is good enough people will be price insensitive. Below is the price distribution of iPhone apps the day of launch, for comparison purposes.
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Apple Sells One Million 3G iPhones First Weekend. Ten Million iPhone Apps Downloaded.
Despite a few hiccups and stores running out of inventory, Apple was able to sell one million 3G iPhones worldwide across 21 countries its first three days on sale. During that same time, owners of both the new and old iPhone were able to download 10 million apps from the newly launched App Store on iTunes, despite major problems with the iPhone 2.0 software update disabling many people’s phones temporarily on Friday.
That brings the total number of iPhones sold since the launch of the first generation phone to more than 7 million. Apple’s goal of reaching 10 million iPhones sold by the end of the year seems well within reach. In contrast, it took the first iPhone 74 days to reach one million sales, but it wasn’t sold in 21 countries. Apple watchers will be looking for clues about what portion of sales are in the U.S., versus in international markets.
The startup community will be more interested in the download numbers. The 10-million download figure includes both paid and free apps. Apple did not offer a breakdown, but it stands to reason that the free apps made up the vast majority of downloads.
But even if 10 percent were paid downloads, though, and assuming an average price of 4.99, that would be a $5 million weekend. Not a bad start. And it could have been more than that. Seven of the top ten paid apps, including Super Monkey Ball, Cro-Mag Rally, Tetris, and Band, are $9.99. (Coming in at No. 12 is another $9.99 game, Electronic Arts’ official Scrabble, which is also coming to Facebook).
Some of the apps seem to have been rushed out too early, with reports of some of them crashing. So the launch wasn’t perfect. But the demand for the new iPhone and all the apps made for it indicated by these early numbers support the notion that people desperately want the Web and better computing experiences on their phones. Of course, we knew that already.
Zimbra offers Open Source email server software and shared calendar for Linux and the Mac
Three People Who Don’t Have iPhones Talk About iPhones
Our own Erick Schonfeld took most of Friday off to stop by the Fox Business studios and have a five minute chat about the new iPhone 3G launch. Near the end of the clip the three realize that none of them are actually iPhone users (Erick is on a Blackberry for some reason), and anchor Liz Claman says “I’m not interested in one.” Luckily, anchor David Asman’s wife is an iPhone user, and she “loves it.”
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Is Apple Manufacturing a First-Day iPhone Shortage?
There’s nothing like scarcity to make you want something more. Apple understands this, which is why it tightly controls how many iPhones are available at any given time. Some anecdotal evidence is coming in that its partner AT&T is selling out of iPhones in some of its own stores before Apple stores.
By noon ET today, for instance, at least ten AT&T stores in New York City were sold out of iPhones. Our own CrunchGear editor John Biggs, was turned away from an AT&T store in Brooklyn after waiting in line for hours and was devastated (see his bitter-sweet video where he asks, “Am I a person, AT&T and Apple? What if I was pregnant?”).
None of this is too surprising since Apple stores are bigger and can carry more phones in stock. But is Apple artificially limiting how many phones each AT&T store can sell today? One angry reader, Mark Feldman, suggests as much, detailing his ordeal today at an AT&T store in Waltham, Massachusetts. Excerpt:
The manager got up in front of everybody and asked who was here for an iPhone. He then went on to explain that the store was only able to take orders for iPhones that would be delivered to the store in the next 5-7 days. They would take our money and when the iPhones came in we would get a call to come in and pick them up. If they were not picked up in a week, they would be shipped back and the charges reversed. He also said — and this was the kicker – that he had more iPhones in stock but he could not start selling them until Saturday morning due to his contract with Apple! And those would be on a first come, first served basis. In other words, Apple had manufactured a sell out of iPhones for the first day so as to generate “every store sold out of iPhones” [hype].
It’s one thing to actually sell out of your product. It’s another thing to manufacture a sell out of your product.
I am pissed at Apple for taking me for granted! I loved my iPhone and was willing to shell out several hundred dollars for a 3G on Day 1. I feel used. Like a chump who was turned away so Apple could get a nice sound byte on the news and the Blogs. I am so angry that I am planning to vote with my wallet… I am going to wait and buy the BlackBerry Bold which is coming out next month.
(You can read Feldman’s entire e-mail at CrunchGear).
The artificial shortage theory would hold more water if Apple’s own stores started “running out” of iPhones as well. An alternative theory, assuming that this hold-back policy is effective in other AT&T stores besides the one in Waltham, is that Apple wanted to drive more first-day customers to its own stores where it could control the launch better. The problem, though, wasn’t in the stores, it was when everyone tried to update their iPhone software at once, and found themselves holding a brick instead.
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iPhone 3G In The Flesh
While the US waits agonizingly for their 3G iPhones to arrive, some of us have been playing with our new toys :-) There's been a lot of excitement over the App Store today, and on first inspection there are some outstanding iPhone apps available. Right now the top 5 apps are: Sega's Super Monkey Ball, MLB.com At Bat, Enigmo, OmniFocus, and Cro-Mag Rally. No I've never heard of them either. I guess we will soon enough. See below for the RWW editor's first pics of his new unwrapped white 16GB iPhone...
Note: You can view an optimized version of ReadWriteWeb (as the above screenshot shows) on your iphone at: http://m.readwriteweb.com.
Update: Here's a shot of the old and new phone side by side, care of my friend Mark.
