Month: October 2012

Fashion Tech: how retailers are accelerating the app phenomenon

[Did you ever think that your mobile can be your remote control for shopping? It’s getting there. Guest author Zabetta Camilleri reviews how mobile apps are changing Fashion Retailing with brands such as Burberry, Forever21, Shopkick, Shopstyle, SalesGossip, Chanel,Tommy Hilfiger & Clotheshorse leading the way in mobile app innovation.]

There’s no doubt ‘Fashion Tech’ has become the latest buzzword in retail. The innovation we’ve seen in the Mobile apps space has already disrupted the age-old industry of fashion retail. Now we are witnessing some important trends that will continue to change the way we shop for fashion online as well as on the high street. Continue reading Fashion Tech: how retailers are accelerating the app phenomenon

Sneak preview: Developer Economics 2013

[With only one week left till the end of our Developer Economics 2013 survey, Andreas Pappas offers a sneak preview into some preliminary results.]

Developer Economics 2013 - Developer Nation

With less than a week to go and over 2,000 developers responding so far, this has been one of our most successful developer surveys to date. It is also our largest project so far, involving the whole team at VisionMobile, 6 sponsors and 26 media and regional partners worldwide. But we don’t want to stop here; we want to push the limits even further and with your help we can achieve this. So, if you’re a developer, take the survey – if not, please help us spread the word far and wide!

Continue reading Sneak preview: Developer Economics 2013

The Mobile Industry in Numbers

Presenting our latest infographic – The Mobile Industry in Numbers – the H1 2012 edition of the 100 Million Club, the watchlist of the top mobile platforms and handset manufacturers. This infographic will give you some insights into the mobile market and help put things into perspective.

Here are some of the insights from the infographic:
– Smartphone sales penetration continues to accelerate, growing from nearly 30% in Q3 2011 to nearly 40% in Q2 2012
– Nearly 2 out of every 3 smartphones shipped in H1 2012 were Android devices
– Despite low device sales, the Windows platform already has over 100K available apps in Windows Marketplace
– Although Symbian is obsolete, it still has a sizable installed base – larger than bada and Windows Phone combined
– In the handset market, Apple and Samsung account for 63% of revenues and over 98% of the profits, depriving other vendors of oxygen and therefore the ability to invest in handset differentiation and marketing
– In the smartphone market, Apple and Samsung claim more than half of total shipments. Nokia is shipping more Symbian handsets than WP handsets and their smartphone share has fallen to 7%, down from 16% in H2 2011

The need to unbundle voice – challenging century-old assumptions about telephony

[Telephony is up for a big shake-up, as Internet telephony companies like Skype and voice application platforms like Twilio are challenging century-old assumptions about how people speak with each other remotely. VisionMobile analyst Stijn Schuermans sheds light on this new wave of voice innovation and why telcos need to unbundle voice from their network if they want to be able to compete with their OTT counterparts.]

Back in February, we published a blog post Paul Golding, heralding the end of the golden era for telcos due to the increasing competition from OTT voice solutions. At around the same time, we published a Mobile Insider paper, “The Future of Voice”, in which we added to Paul’s “notes from the field”, as he called them, with systematic economic analysis. Voice innovation and the disruption of telcos is indeed as relevant now as it was then. Voice could become as important to ecosystem differentiation as location is. Continue reading The need to unbundle voice – challenging century-old assumptions about telephony

Ambient intelligence: how well does your phone know you?

[Did you ever wish that your handset understood you better and you didn’t have to tap, type & scroll to tell it what you want it to do? Well, that moment may not be too far away. VisionMobile Senior Analyst Andreas Pappas discusses the future of ambient intelligence and the way handset evolution has brought us closer to that vision.]

“PlaceMe” is not an app; not in the traditional sense. You don’t really interact with it and you don’t tell it what to do. It will sit there quietly, in the background, observing you, learning about your daily routine and keeping a record of everywhere you’ve been. Continue reading Ambient intelligence: how well does your phone know you?

Developer Economics 2013 Online Survey Launched

Our latest Developer Economics online survey has launched. This time we’re benchmarking the building blocks of the app economy, from analytic tools to voice APIs.

Join us in Developer Economics 2013, take our online survey, have your say on your favourite tools and win prizes, including an iPhone 5 and a Samsung Galaxy SIII. The survey will soon be available in Chinese, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Korean. Also, our respondents receive a free, 3-month subscription to a crash reporting tool for their apps, courtesy of our friends at Bugsense!

Developer Economics 2013 is sponsored by AT&T, Mozilla, Nokia, BrightCove, BlackBerry and Telefonica.

Developer Economics 2013: Best practices for app development & marketing

[As we launch the Developer Economics 2013 online survey, Senior Analyst Andreas Pappas introduces Developer Economics 2013, the fourth in our series of developer research reports. This time we’re benchmarking the building blocks of the app economy, from analytics tools to voice APIs. Join us in Developer Economics 2013, take our online survey and win great prizes.]

Developer Economics 2013

Back in June 2012 we launched Developer Economics 2012, the third in our series of reports that focused on app ecosystems, developer segmentation, platform economics and global app trade routes.

Continue reading Developer Economics 2013: Best practices for app development & marketing