Opera on mobile data pricing – clarification

Miscellaneous No Responses »
Oct 312010

Our post on mobile data pricing as seen by Opera has caused lively debate in our readership – big thanks to each and everyone of you for the great feedback.

Thomas Ford from Opera has now sent us the following statement:

Clearly the U.S. was the toughest country to figure out exactly what number to use. There was a robust internal debate regarding the pricing with respect to tiered plans and unlimited plans. However, with tiered plans, Opera Mini will only save money if someone goes over their allotment. The real benefit of Opera Mini under those circumstances is more page loads under the plan. With unlimited plans, the primary benefit is speed. Almost all users with those plans won’t reach the level of usage to pay overage charges.

We decided to use pay-as-you-go rates for two reasons. First, it is the clearest in terms of pay-per-MB pricing when considering the issue with tiered plans and unlimited plans. Second, while smartphones dominate the top 10 handsets in the U.S., the so-called Long Tail has a notable impact.
Approximately 62% of our U.S. users use something other than an Apple, RIM or Android smartphone.

Globally, of course, these numbers are closer to what almost everyone pays. Metered plans are more prevalent in many countries, including most in the top 10.

I can but hope that this somehow clarifies the situation – please let us know if we can assist you further!

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 6:41 am

HP to sell Pre 2 directly

Palm News No Responses »
Oct 312010

If you currently feel like a Pre 2, you better book a flight to France – their carrier SFR currently is the only one to sell the device, with Verizon following suite sooner or later.

WebOSRoundup now claims that HP will sell the Pre 2 to consumers directly:

… Palm Pre 2 will be available to purchase (for consumers, not just developers) directly from HP – bypassing the carriers altogether.

…

To be honest: HP has a long experience selling devices directly to the consumer for two reasons: a) being that they often sold iPaqs along with notebooks etc, and b) being that carriers weren’t willing to touch the old iPaq smartphones with a 10-foot pole…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 12:09 am

Third-party app usage on a per-platform level

Miscellaneous No Responses »
Oct 302010

Don’t ask me why, but we have seen a nice bit of stats on the mobile market recently. The latest morsel hits us via a firm called Zokem, which has analyzed the time users spend with third-party apps.

From the four operating systems surveyed, BlackBerry users tend to spend the least time with third-party apps:
zokem 1 Third party app usage on a per platform level

When it comes to absolute time, Symbian trails the pack:
zokemt 2 Third party app usage on a per platform level

Thanks to Mobile Apps Briefing!

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 11:57 am

A new way for getting user feedback

Public Relations No Responses »
Oct 292010

The core issue faced by most developers is getting ideas for further application development – unhappy users tend to delete the app without much talking.

iPhone developer called SortaPrecision now does the following (pretty radical) move in order to get more feedback:

SortaPrecision Technologies, the developers of Monsters Love Gum for iPad, have announced “I’m a game developer” Contest. The rules are fairly simple. Play the game and suggest a new feature to improve gameplay. If the developers choose your idea you will receive a co-designer credit and 10% of all net sales for the title for a full month.

…

Even though this could be but a PR stunt, it is interesting nevertheless – let’s see how uptake will be in practice…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 10:29 am

Opera on mobile data pricing

Miscellaneous 4 Responses »
Oct 292010

When GPRS was first released, carriers charged insane prices for mobile data. This has changed since then – but mobile data still is pretty expensive in some countries.

This month’s State of the Mobile Web report (PDF) contains the following figure:
mobile data cost Opera on mobile data pricing

For me, the most surprising thing was the high price of data in the USA – anyone of you have an idea on why the situation is as it is?

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 6:17 am

Palm Pre 2 to hit Rogers

Palm News No Responses »
Oct 292010

When Palm announced the Pre 2, they mentioned but Verizon and SFR as partners.

MobileSyrup now showed the following image, which has since been pulled:
pre 2 rogers mobilesyrup Palm Pre 2 to hit Rogers

They claimed a release date of October 9th – let’s see how it all plays out…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 3:07 am

StyleTap on webOS 2.0

Palm News 1 Response »
Oct 262010

MotionApps recent squabble with Palm opens the door for a second Palm OS emulator which didn’t get too much press attention recently – I am talking about the boys at StyleTap’s.

Gregory Sokoloff, the founder of StyleTap, now got in touch with the following statement:

It seems to be an unfortunate turn of events for both MotionApps, their customers, and Palm itself.

As for StyleTap, we would consider a port to webOS 2.0 if it were to achieve great success in the marketplace. However, webOS 2.0 would compete for our attention with proven winners like Android that are more attractive at the moment.

We are considering some promotional programs that would give discounts to Classic customers who decide to switch from the Pre to a platform that StyleTap currently supports like the iPhone, Symbian or Windows Mobile. I’ll let you know when we have more details on this.

I guess you know who your friends are ;)

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 1:10 pm

webOS 2 ad hits YouTube

Palm News No Responses »
Oct 262010

When Sprint shipped the first-generation Pre, pundits criticized the (innovative but creepy) ads used during the initial launch phase.

Palm seems to have listened, and now has more conventional ads. The latest one can be seen below:

I have to admit that I liked the “crowd” ones better – which ad do you prefer?

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 6:58 am

Classic will not work on webOS 2.0

Palm News 1 Response »
Oct 262010

Palm OS applications could “run” on webOS devices using an emulator called Classic – it was sold by MotionApps for a decent price.

They now report that webOS 2.0 will break the emulator:

We are sad to announce that Palm has removed Classic’s ROM from the new webOS 2.0 device ROM which will result in Classic not working if utilized with Palm’s new webOS 2.0.

This is contrary to our agreement with Palm and was done without our approval or consent. Based on this action, MotionApps will immediately stop selling Classic. However, as a courtesy to our clients, we will continue to support existing Classic customers on webOS 1.x for the immediate future.

…

If you ask me, this probably has something to do with the licensing deal Palm and Access signed – things like that have happened a lot in the past.

There are two profiteers here: Aceeca and StyleTap (who might now rewarm their StyleTap emulator)…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 2:44 am

Samsung Galaxy Player – the return of the PDA

Hardware News 1 Response »
Oct 252010

In the last few years, industry pundits all over the world agreed on one thing: the stand-alone PDA is dead.

Samsung has shown itself to be good for surprises in the past. They now decided to rip the 3G radio out of a Galaxy S, thereby creating an Android 2.1-based “media player” which goes by the name Galaxy Player. Or, why not call it a PDA?

SamsungHub shares the video below, which shows the device in action:

Let’s see if this move motivates other manufacturers – after all, a PDA is little more than a smartphone sans 3G radio…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 7:11 am

Palm will not support Flash on Pixi / Pixi Plus

Palm News No Responses »
Oct 242010

iPhone heads are extremely unhappy due to the lack of Flash on their devices. webOS heads using a Palm Pre will be able to use Flash soon – unfortunately, Pixi heads will be left in the rain.

webosinternals states the following:
palm pixi flash Palm will not support Flash on Pixi / Pixi Plus

As the device processors are slightly different, I am not sure whether homebrew folks will be able to create a “port” of their own. Keep in mind that multimedia is one of the most assembler-code-heavy areas – and assembler code tends to be very close to the underlying CPU…

Nevertheless, stay tuned for further info as we get it…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 6:37 am

43% of UK smartphone owners won’t download further apps or games

Software News 2 Responses »
Oct 242010

Even though market analysis firms should be taken with a large grain of salt whereever possible, interesting bits of info can often be derived from their data.

Mobile Apps Briefing reports the following:

mobile users have the ability to download apps, only 39 percent of that number regularly do so. The survey, commissioned by telecoms infrastructure company OpenCloud, found that 38 percent of smartphone owners download free apps, while 50 percent had downloaded no apps at all in the last month.

According to the research, the “average” smartphone user has downloaded “only 14” apps, while one-fifth have downloaded none-at-all. In addition, a concerning 43 percent of smartphone users are not planning to download any more apps.

…

Even though no further data was given on why users are fed up with apps, I personally tend to agree with a statement made by a Great Ape Ltd. manager at an event many years ago.

He claimed that users become unhappy about low-quality apps, and then stop downloading new content altogether. Falling application prices lead to less developer time, well, you get the idea…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 2:12 am

Most mobile attackers sit in Italy

Security No Responses »
Oct 232010

Traditionally, mobile networks were relatively safe places. The low CPU power of mobile device made using them for botnet attacks impractical – that is, until tethering and 3G dongles came along.

Mobile Business Briefing now reports the following:

Content delivery platform company Akamai said that “more than half of the observed mobile attack traffic” recorded by its servers originated from three countries: Italy (25 percent), Brazil (18 percent) and Chile (7.5 percent).

…

Given that mobile phones have not been used for botnets so far, the conclusion we can draw here is that many Italians use wireless broadband…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 11:37 pm

Engadget on webOS 2 – the hardware is the issue

Palm News 3 Responses »
Oct 202010

Even though being large does not necessarily make you smart, large news sites tend to have a decisive influence on the market. Engadget is one such site, and has shown itself to be largely free of bias in the past.

Engadget now took a detailed overview of the system, and states the following:

Despite some issues, webOS 2.0 is probably neck and neck with iOS4 when it comes to polish and ease of use, and that’s a pretty huge thing for Palm. This isn’t just a good OS, it’s a great OS, and the updates in this version have made it even better. It’s obvious that when combined with even slightly better hardware, it’s also a fast experience that makes it easy to get real work done. And that’s the problem with webOS 2.0, really. Palm is still hampered by last-generation, underpowered hardware. The Pre 2 is nice, but it’s not cutting edge, and it doesn’t hold a candle to the iPhone 4 or G2

…

To be honest: I think that the iPhone 4 and the Pre are targeted at different demographics. Nevertheless, a better keyboard and a larger screen….

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 8:58 pm
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