iOS App price drop, music and hardware to follow ?
Posted Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 11:42 pm by Jason Cartwright
Today Apple made an important adjustment to the price of iOS apps in the App Store. The cheapest apps that typically go for US$0.99 have translated to A$1.19 since the App Store launched three years ago. The new price lowest price for apps is $0.99, equalling that of the United States.
With the strength of the Aussie dollar this price adjustment have been called for by many. Some explaining the price differential away with the 10% GST in Australia. If the GST was indeed contributing, then today’s price adjustment become all the more intriguing.
The Australian dollar today closed at 1.0757 vs the greenback. Given this difference is less than 10%, does this mean Apple are taking the hit of a few cents per transaction to deliver iOS apps at that golden sub-dollar price ? It is important to note that the prices of iOS Apps in Australia aren’t at a 1-1 parity with the US across the price spectrum. Lifehacker has a great table on the price changes.
Could it be that this price adjustment is the beginning of an Apple-wide eradication of the Australian tech tax ? First Apps, then music, even hardware could potentially be realigned to current price indexes. While gadget lovers would love to have the exchange rate price conversion be live, the reality is that Apple, and others, lock in a conversion rate at a specific point in time.
As far as Apple price adjustments go, they are quite rare. In the three years since the App Store launched iOS applications into the world, this is the first price change. Music prices were altered last year, however that change was related to record label deals rather than exchange rates.
The timing of the change is interesting, close to the launch of OSX Lion (before the end of the month) and the rumoured Macbook Air refresh. A narrowing or eradication of the hardware price differences between Australia and the US would put an end to enthusiasts importing their Apple products for cheaper than buying locally.
The response on twitter drew comparisons between the new low price A$0.99 for Angry Birds on iOS and A$4.00 for the same game on Windows Phone 7.
More @ TUAW
Samsung SMART TV’s, claims world-first HDTV app store
Posted Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 1:52 pm by Jason Cartwright
Today Samsung announced a brand new line-up of HDTV’s in Australia. Branded as SMART TV’s, this generation come equipped with what Samsung say is the worlds-first HDTV app store. Obviously it’s completely unlike an electronics manufacturer to get a little creative with the truth to sell products, but the reality is widgets (also known as apps), have been available on TVs for a couple of years now. The most successful being Yahoo’s widget platform which made its way to TV’s by Samsung, Visio, Sony and a number of others.
In November last year, Yahoo announced that developers could charge between $0.99 and $99.00 for a widget or application. So with that small detail aside lets take a look at what on offer with the latest generation of Sammys.
Samsung’s SMART TV will feature a connected TV experience with links to social media services like Facebook, Twitter and Skype that can be used concurrently next to your favourite show. Some of the applications to be released ‘soon’ include BigPond AFL Game Analyser, BigPond Movies, NineMSN and ABC iVew.
Also built right in is a Web Browser which runs a full version of flash (version not detailed). Along with Skype support, there’s also Google Talk support to really get those discussions cranking with friends and family (assuming they also have a Samsung SMART TV).
There’s also built-in WiFi with DLNA support, so streaming content from your home network to the big screen is a cinch. The Smart Hub also allows users to get personalised movie recommendations based on the content you watch.. awesome.
Taking a leaf from Boxee’s remote control, Samsung’s SMART TV comes with a traditional remote on one side, but flip it over and you’ll have a full QWERTY keyboard to input text.
While Samsung announced SMART TVs in January at CES2011, today’s announcement confirms Australian availability. Its actually great to see the headline for a TV release not be 3D related, instead being a line-item feature.
For more information about Samsung SMART TVs, visit http://samsung.com/au/tv.
Amazon releasing interesting Appstore for Android
Posted Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 9:17 pm by James MurphyAmazon is preparing to release its new app market for Android – but there’s a difference. The Appstore will let you buy apps before you even own an Android device, enabling you to stock up on apps you know you’ll need and then install them when you receive your device. Not sure whether there’s a huge market for this kind of thing, but it’s kinda cool nonetheless. This concept follows a similar strategy that Amazon uses for its Kindle line, which also offers pre-purchasing.
Amazon’s power in the retail market alone makes this a viable concept and may pose a slight thread to the official Android Market. It’ll be interesting to see how many Android users opt for the Amazon Appstore even if they already have an Android device, or are expecting one in the near future.
Read more about it @ allthingsd.com
Apple’s App Store launches with 1000+ apps
Posted Friday, January 7, 2011 at 6:30 am by Jason Cartwright
You can’t fight success. Apple made the App Store famous on iOS and now that success is coming to MacOS. The MacOS App Store is a dedicated application and works essentially the same as what we’ve come to expect. The only real difference between the two app stores is that the MacOS App Store focuses on desktop software, rather than mobile.
The same standard interface is there, as well as application updates, even in-app purchases. The real benefit to consumers is that it puts an end to hunting the web for the best Mac software. There’s also searching, ratings, comments, categories and charts, all designed to make discovery as simple as possible.
The benefit to developers is pretty straight forward, putting your application in front of millions of eye balls can do wonderful things to sales figures and ultimately your bottom line. Apple take the now standard 30% for hosting, promotion and managing the financial transactions.
More @ Apple’s MacOS App Store
iPad App Store pushed internationally
Posted Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 8:44 pm by Jason CartwrightGreat news early iPad owners, you can now sign in and download apps using your regular (country of residence) iTunes account. Apple have lifted the restriction that required you to have a US account before using the App Store on the iPad.
Those selling US iTunes gift cards on eBay, your market just dried up,
7 A-list apps that are not on the iPad
Posted Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 10:15 pm by Jason Cartwright
The iPad may be here, but not all the apps are. After having an iPad for over a month, I’m incredibly surprised at the amount of high profile web-orientated companies that don’t yet have iPad applications. Apple has now sold over a million iPads and with an international launch only a few weeks away, that number is about to grow dramatically. That begs the question – why isn’t developing an iPad application a high priority for these companies ?
1. Facebook – Probably the most downloaded iPhone app, Facebook are still to release an official iPad application. Surprising seem almost all of the 1 million+ iPad owners would be on Facebook. I realise they have 450+ million users to look after worldwide, but Facebook isn’t a small company any more. Surely they can build out a mobile development team to ensure they stay front and centre of social networks.
If your thinking the larger version of Safari Mobile is an adequate solution, it’s not. Due to Apple’s device limitations, images can only be transferred to web services via an app. The browse dialog in-browser is simply disabled. Furthermore, there are some pop-up lists, like group members, that aren’t scrollable in mobile Safari.
2. Digg – Since the release of Digg’s iPhone app, I’ve Dugg more stories than ever before due to its simplicity and convenience. I’m sure this is a common theme amongst Digg’s users, I want that same convenience from the iPad.
3 Foursquare – In my opinion Foursquare dropped the ball here, beaten to the punch by their smaller competitor – Gowalla. The experience of location-based services has never been better than on the iPad. The large screen offers the ability to display what really is a mass of information in a sensible layout. I’m sure it’s in development, but even the 3G (inc GPS) version of the iPad has launched now and still nothing.
4. Skype – Instant messaging and voice conversations may not be all that Skype can offer on other devices, yet the iPad’s growing audience is something Skype shouldn’t ignore. The promise of Skype is to allow people to communicate wherever they are with whoever, using whatever they want. The iPad is proving to be a successful new device, one that people want to use to communicate. Right now I’m using IM+ to tap into my Skype account (amongst others) for Skype IM. This really should be available via an official application.
5. Flickr – If you search for Flickr in the iPad App Store, you will find a number of results. Most of these are designed to take your flickr images and turn your iPad into an expensive digital photo frame. Lets get this straight, this is very different to having a dedicated, Flickr designed and built application. There’s an awful lot of content and functionality on the worlds largest photo sharing site and a well made Flickr iPad application could make accessing that so much easier.
Again, applications are needed for photo uploads to web services, so if you have your favourite photos synced to your iPad and decide you want to share them on flickr, that process should be easy. Flickr, get to work on building an app that lets users checkout photostreams, sets, collections and that awesome camera finder.
6. Revision 3 – Take a look at the user experience of ABC app, imagine that applied to the IPTV content delivered by Revision3. Enough said.
7. Slingbox Player – One of the primary uses for the iPad is to display video content. Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox, already made an (expensive) iPhone app, but watching TV on your iPad anywhere in your house is a much more compelling proposition. Taking that further, there’s potential to watch video content from your home while your travel with your iPad to anywhere in the world. Using an iPad case with a stand, you could place the iPad on a table and watch just like a small TV with one great advantage over a laptop – battery life. Also for us multi-taskers, we could take the iPad for watching video content whilst being productive on our laptops.
All of these companies would have at least had the conversation about wether to create an iPad app, so I encourage you to write to them and express your need. Hearing from consumers could be just the tipping point to make them invest the resources required to build an iPad app.
