iPhone Developers See Sales Slump After App Store Changes -- InformationWeek

iPhone Developers See Sales Slump After App Store Changes -- InformationWeek: "In July, Apple reported that the App Store was selling over 65,000 apps. And developers are submitting about 8,500 new or updated apps every week.

For Apple, which gets 30% of every app sold, more applications mean more revenue, assuming they're paid apps. But for developers, more applications mean more competition and more difficulty being noticed. It's a needle-in-a-haystack scenario with more hay being added daily.

iTunes 9 changed the way apps are presented, with a larger scrolling section for new and noteworthy apps and more prominent promotional spots on the App Store main page. This is likely to drive sales for apps that win, or buy, a place in these high-profile areas.

Likewise, the expansion of the top 100 list to 200 and the addition of a 'Top Grossing' list expands the potential spotlights that can shine on an app and lift it to prominence and profit. The 'Top Grossing' category addresses a long-standing concern about the pressure to make apps that are as cheap and disposable as ringtones. By providing marketing lift to the sort of higher-priced apps that are likely to come from larger development companies, the 'Top Grossing' category could become an avenue by which pricier, and ideally more professionally coded, apps see their popularity magnified."

Nokia's New Facebook World - Forbes.com

Nokia's New Facebook World - Forbes.com: "But now Nokia is eagerly expanding its network of friends too. Moissinac came to Nokia World in Stuttgart this year to announce several fresh ventures with Finnish handset maker Nokia, which has only recently started to open up to America's tech darlings. On the list: a Facebook application that allows users to update their location with their status, or 'lifecast,' as well as a version of Facebook 'Connect' for mobile apps that run on the Symbian platform, Nokia's own operating system.

The Facebook logo is also pretty visible on Nokia's latest handsets, including the flashy new X6 phone, Nokia's first product to use the iPhone's capacitive touch-screen technology. Facebook Mobile is front-loaded on the X6 home screen, an important step considering Nokia's own investments over the past two years in its Ovi-branded services for sharing information, media and contact details among friends.

Why did all this take so long? Moissinac says Nokia's frequent late-comer status is just a 'coincidence,' but he admits that developers including Electronic Arts ( ERTS - news - people ) asked Facebook to make the iPhone a priority when it came to applications.

The iPhone's uniform operating system and limited device range have actually excited developers more than Nokia's far wider 38% mobile handset market share. Even though Nokia has the volume, its Symbian platform and S60 user interface are not as versatile as other systems, while its huge range of handsets can become a monstrous task for developers to manage."

Facebook Begins Testing Mobile Payments for Virtual Currency with Zong

Facebook Begins Testing Mobile Payments for Virtual Currency with Zong: "Facebook Begins Testing Mobile Payments for Virtual Currency with Zong"

Interesting move from facebook.

Social Networks: Orange, Vodafone up the pace

Social Networks: Orange, Vodafone up the pace - FierceWireless:Europe: "The impact of social networking on mobile data traffic has triggered Orange and Vodafone to revamp their strategies in an effort to attract higher usage. While Vodafone's plans remain at the ‘well-sourced rumour' level, Orange has taken the lead by announcing Social Life, a social networking aggregation tool, that brings together activity on Facebook, MySpace and Bebo in one central interface, accessible via the Orange World portal.

According to Orange, the new platform allows users to upload photos, update their status, keep track of friends' status updates, etc., as well as sending and receiving messages. Social Life also claims to have SMS capabilities, allowing users to send and receive updates by text."

Venture Capital Backed Mobile App Startups Remain Predominantly Mobile OS Agnostic

Venture Capital Backed Mobile App Startups Remain Predominantly Mobile OS Agnostic | The ChubbyBrain Blog: "Are venture capital-backed mobile app companies developing their apps on a single mobile OS or are they developing them to work on multiple operating systems? A look at 2009’s venture capital funding activity in the mobile startup space shows that despite the $100 million plus already invested by venture capitalists in iPhone predicated startups, venture backed mobile startups are generally developing apps which work on multiple mobile operating systems vs those which are platform specific. By multi-platform, we mean their offerings work on two or more of the prominent mobile operating systems, e.g., the big six mobile OSs - Android, iPhone, Palm, RIM, Symbian and Windows. Because we were focused on US venture backed mobile startups, the Linux mobile OS which has 5.1% market share but which is heavily China and Japan oriented didn’t figure into the OSs we examined.

As the graph below illustrates, 67% of 2009’s venture-backed mobile app startups are developing their applications to work on multiple operating systems while 33% are developing for only a single platform, e.g., platform specific."