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When Will Windows Phone 7 Apps Surpass Blackberry?

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Microsoft has released stats regarding the size of their app store for Windows Phone 7, and the news of it should make RIM tremble.

Windows Phone Marketplace currently offers more than 9,000 quality apps and games and enjoys a base of over 32,000 registered developers, delivering an average of 100 new apps every day. The Windows Phone Developer Tools have now been downloaded more than one million times, and we recently announced an update to let developers take advantage of OS updates such as the addition of copy and paste functionality. (Windows Phone Developer Blog)

Note: Emphasis mine.

Currently Blackberry App World sits at 22,885 apps (including a few test apps) which is a decent number considering how much attention iOS and Android receive from developers.

However if Microsoft’s app store continues to grow at its current momentum of 3,000 new apps every month, we could witness Windows Phone 7 stealing the bronze away from Blackberry in about 6 months (if not sooner).

With iOS and Android app stores widening their respective leads and Microsoft attempting to sprint ahead of them from behind, RIM’s only hope for relevancy may lie with Android Market (a decision that could starve out their native app store).

Originally posted on March 9, 2011 @ 1:02 pm

Samsung To Symbian Devs: Have You Heard Of Bada?

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Samsung is apparently taking advantage of Symbian chaos that ensued after Nokia ditched Symbian for Windows Phone 7.

Although known mostly for their Android devices, Samsung is apparently trying to introduce Symbian developers to their home brew OS known as Bada.

“If you are a Symbian developer unhappy about Nokia’s recent announcements, and are hence looking for a new platform to showcase your talents, we say ‘Hello!’ and ‘welcome to bada (operating system),’ said a newsletter posted by a Samsung developer on the Internet and quoted in online media.

“If you’re new to the bada development, or are moving your app from Symbian, we’d like to welcome you.” (Reuters)

Apparently Bada has many similarities to Symbian which Samsung hopes will attract disgruntled Symbian developers in order to boost their native mobile OS.

While the mobile OS looks mature (at least upon Samsung’s Wave smartphones), it’s uncertain whether Symbian developers will embrace Bada over Android, or even iOS (both which support tablets).

Samsung has designed Bada to court low to mid range devices, although with Apple moving into that space, Samsung may have to find a way to win over Symbian developers before Steve Jobs does.

(Hat tip: Mobile Burn)

Originally posted on March 10, 2011 @ 2:27 pm

Blackberry To Developers: Need Analytics With That App?

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In a bid to help make the lives of Blackberry developers easier, RIM has released their Blackberry Analytics SDK which should provide greater insight regarding the usage of apps by Blackberry addicts.

Some very good information can be tracked such as the number of times the application opens, closes, the number of screen views, carriers, device models as well as usage time. […]

Many other events in your application can be captured as well (including custom events), and there are built-in reports for Media playback, Product Views and more. Once configured, data will be captured automatically and aggregated in the dashboard view or reports. It can also be exported to CSV or Web Service. (Blackberry Developer’s Blog)

The SDK is currently in beta, which means that developers will probably encounter a few bugs after installing Blackberry Analytics within their app.

While it’s great to see RIM releasing an official analytics tool, it’s also makes one wonder whether or not Blackberry will be courting Android Market in the future (note: RIM has confirmed that they are embracing Android apps upon the Playbook).

As far as the developer community goes, RIM has a long ways to go in order to appease their current stock of developers (let a lone woo new ones)

Hopefully the company can stabilize their analytics tool (among other features) in order to keep developers from defecting towards iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7.

Originally posted on February 28, 2011 @ 1:23 pm

Nokia Sells Off Qt, Keeps Symbian Hope Alive

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After embracing Windows Phone 7 to the shock of everyone, Nokia has now sold off Qt which might be good news for Symbian and MeeGo fans.

Digia has reached an agreement with Nokia to acquire the relevant licenses for Nokia’s Qt software group. […]

“We are excited to extend our Qt business to serve our new customers. Building on our in-depth Qt expertise and experience from demanding mission critical solutions, we will offer world-class commercial licensing and support services to Qt Commercial customers,” said Digia SVP Harri Paani in a statement.

“We also look forward to driving further the evolution of Qt by bringing in new features and services.” (Know Your Mobile)

While it seems puzzling why anyone would want to own Qt (especially with Android dominating the globe), acquiring the “dying” platform is a wise move by Digia as it will enable them to gain a foot hold in the OS mobile wars without building something from scratch (think Samsung’s Bada).

Despite the sale (or rather the sale of the right to license the platform), Nokia is retaining their copyright’s to the platform, which might signal that they are not entirely wagering their existence upon Windows Phone 7.

Originally posted on March 8, 2011 @ 3:29 pm

Facebook, Bing! Making Social Search A Reality?

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Instead of mimicking Google’s insta-search (which would probably be a huge engineering challenge in of itself), Microsoft has decided to “out Google” Google by leverage the one asset the search giant has been unable to obtain.

A few months ago, we announced an exciting partnership with Facebook to make search more social. As part of that work, we introduced Liked Results, which promotes links your friends have publicly liked or shared via Facebook. Today we are extending Liked Results to annotate any of the URLs returned by our algorithmic search results to all users in the US.

If your friends have publicly liked or shared any of the algorithmic search results shown on Bing, we will now surface them right below the result. (Bing! Community Blog)

Combined with the partnership with Twitter, Bing! is as close to a social search engine as we will probably see in the next few years (provided Facebook doesn’t launch their own competing engine).

Unfortunately once again this is only available for American users, although hopefully the company will consider expanding this feature to the rest of the planet as Facebook’s user base extends beyond the shores of the US.

While their rival Google can rely upon its superior resources (not to mention tapping into Twitter as well), the search giant’s lack of a decent social graph could prove to be a major hurdle down the road as users rely more upon social friends than sophisticated machines to filter their search queries.

(hat tip: Mashable)

Originally posted on February 24, 2011 @ 8:12 pm