A recent report from Canalys highlighted the extreme concentration of income distribution across the iOS and Android stores in the US. The top 25 publishers make 50% of the revenues. 24 out of 25 of those are games publishers (the 1 exception is the Pandora music streaming service). During the first 20 days of November these 25 publishers made $60m from paid downloads and in-app purchases in the US alone. Is there still room left for smaller publishers? How can smaller companies succeed?

The latest trend in app development is targeting companion screens, as a way to bridge a multi-screen experience. Guest author Peggy Allbright investigates the future of app development on companion screens -and TV apps in particular – and discusses how TV advertising has found a whole new screen to engage users on.

The game of ecosystems is in full bloom, with each player attempting to draw as many developers as possible around their platform. As we finally see some signs of consolidation, VisionMobile Senior Analyst Andreas Pappas, talks about the rules of engagement and identifies the winners and losers in this game of ecosystems in 2012.

How do various forms of fragmentation of the potential audience impact the development economics? The answers will vary significantly depending on the specifics of each app but some general issues are worthy of consideration by everyone.As we pointed out recently, Android is now way ahead of iOS in terms of share of new device sales […]

MoPub, a real-time bidding exchange for mobile advertising, recently published a report on their marketplace for the third quarter which shows some strong trends. The effective cost per thousand impressions (eCPM) was steady or rising across platforms through the last quarter. Android eCPM was rising much faster than for iOS. This is in sharp contrast […]

App revenues for iOS Android has long since passed iOS in terms of sales, installed base and even app downloads, while total number of apps available is now about level. Despite this app revenues for iOS developers have remained consistently higher. Is that about to change? Looking at the recent device sales figures it seems […]

There’s a lot of buzz about Lean Startups in the software community in general and amongst mobile developers in particular. How lean a startup can be is strongly influenced by the tools and processes available on their chosen platform. Which platforms enable the leanest product development processes? How and why does lean framework matter? Why […]

Bryson Meunier from Search Engine Land compiled a list of the 100 most searched for keywords in both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, for new apps. The data was gathered in June using Google’s keyword tool, so it isn’t exactly perfect, but it’s good enough to have a discussion about what works and […]

It goes without saying that people like to try things before buying them. Take magazines for example. No-one expects you to buy a year subscription to The Economist just so you can read it. You can check out a couple of their articles for free on their website, you might even buy an issue from […]

Microsoft is set to unveil its next generation mobile operating system, Windows Phone 8, on October 29th in San Francisco. There’s a slight problem though. Most developers don’t have access to the Windows Phone SDK. Microsoft is providing key partners with a beta of their SDK so they can have apps in the Windows Phone […]