mobile apps

App developers praise Apple's iOS for its strong market share and revenue stream, but a huge number see Android as the platform with the most diverse potential over the long haul.

Among the more than 2,000 developers surveyed this past month by IDC and Appcelerator, 72 percent said Android is best positioned to power a larger and greater variety of devices in the future, compared with 25 percent who said the same about Apple. As a result, 59 percent of the app developers favor Android's long-term outlook versus 35 percent for iOS, according to the "Appcelerator … Read more

Nokia is dangling a new incentive to try to win over more app developers: a total of $10 million in cash and prizes.

Together with AT&T, the mobile phone maker announced today the "2010 Calling All Developers: North America" contest, which will challenge developers from around the world to create apps for North American Nokia consumers.

Any app submitted by participating developers will be available in Nokia's Ovi Store, where it will be judged by both Nokia and AT&T. But consumers will also play a part in picking a winner, as apps that … Read more

Though more mobile apps are finding their way onto cell phones, their owners aren't all necessarily using them.

Among the 2,252 U.S. adults surveyed for a new Pew Internet study, 1,917 said they use cell phones. Out of those people, 35 percent have mobile apps on their devices. However, only 24 percent of the 1,917 said they actually use those apps, and 11 percent were in the dark, not even knowing if their phones had any apps.

Released Tuesday, the "Rise of Apps Culture" study was based on phone interviews of people ages … Read more

Starbucks Card Mobile App means BlackBerry owners can carry around one less plastic loyalty card in their wallets. Log in with your Starbucks Card username and password, or register a new account, and you'll be able to manage multiple prepaid cards from your smartphone.

Better yet, when credit threatens to dip below your latte threshold, you can top up your Starbucks Card by charging your credit card. The app lets you reload value from $10 to $100 (in $5 increments), and can also set up autocharging so you're never without a means to your caffeine buzz.

The app'… Read more

Among the more than 145 million users of Twitter, a growing number are accessing the microblogging service through mobile apps.

The number of mobile users on Twitter has grown 62 percent since mid-April, according to a Thursday blog post from CEO Evan Williams.

Among newbies to the site, 16 percent of them tap into their first tweet via the mobile Web. That's up from 5 percent before the company launched its rebranded Twitter app for the iPhone a few months ago.

In his blog, Williams also revealed why Twitter bought the app formerly known as Tweetie and reintroduced it … Read more

Papaya is best known for its mobile social platform dubbed PapayaMobile, which offers a variety of features from gaming to chat to photo sharing. Unlike many others in the space, PapayaMobile recently elected to abandon support for the iPhone OS in favor of focusing all of its efforts on Android apps. The benefit of this is the open-source nature of the Google platform, which means that SDK developers can create their own programs to run in the Papaya interface. This functionality makes the service perfectly suited to its newest offering: Android App of the Day.

Android App of the Day, … Read more

Nokia announced Friday that it will acquire Motally, a small, privately held mobile analytics firm in San Francisco.

Staffed by a team of only eight people, Motally offers mobile app developers a service for tracking the usage of their software. The goal is to help developers enhance and optimize their apps by understanding how people use them.

Looking to support developers selling apps through Nokia's Ovi Store, Motally's service will be adapted to work with Symbian, MeeGo, Qt, and Java, said Nokia. But support will continue for Motally's current customers.

"The acquisition underpins Nokia's drive … Read more

In years of economic downturn, there are still a handful of sectors that manage to remain profitable, and the health and fitness industry is one of them. Mobile apps are also enjoying quite a bit of popularity at the moment, thanks in part to the fact that so many of them are affordable. Combine the two and you get something along the lines of MyFitnessPal, a free Webware service that offers companion apps for the iPhone and Android devices (BlackBerry coming soon).

As the name suggests, MyFitnessPal is a community-oriented site designed to help you lose weight and track fitness … Read more

Sam's Club is hoping that free Wi-Fi access will be one way to lure more buyers into its stores, especially those who are shopping for Wi-Fi TVs.

The warehouse membership club owned by Wal-Mart announced Tuesday that it plans to upgrade its more than 500 U.S. stores with Wi-Fi by November.

Provided by AT&T, the free Wi-Fi will enable shoppers to try out the full features of Wi-Fi-enabled TVs. Customers will be able to check out Facebook, Pandora, and other online services on TVs in the store to get a better sense of how they might … Read more