The latest from TechCrunch
- The App Store Now Counts 4,870 iPad Apps
- IMVU's Virtual Cash Cow: Doubling Revenues, Focused On Gaming (Video)
- The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man
| The App Store Now Counts 4,870 iPad Apps | Top |
| App store analytics startup Distimo has taken a deep look at Apple’s App Store today. The number of iPad apps are growing rapidly since the release of the device nearly a month ago, with the App Store now counting 4,870 iPad apps. That’s a 32.7% increase in apps over the past two weeks. To break down the stat further, there are now 3,437 iPad-specific apps, with 1,433 universal apps that work on both the iPad and iPhone. You can download the report here. Unsurprisingly, the largest application category on the iPad is Games with 1,577 titles (32%), followed by Entertainment and Books with 455 and 396 titles, respectively. From the launch of the iPad, gaming apps dominated the iPad App Store. In terms of pricing, the iPad is still seeing the majority of its nearly 5000 apps as paid offerings. Of the 186,414 applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone, 73% are paid, while 80% of the 4,870 applications in the Apple App Store for iPad are paid. An application in the Apple App Store for iPhone costs $3.82 on average, as opposed to $4.67 in the Apple App Store for iPad. In fact, on the Apple App Store for iPad, Medical and Finance applications are the most expensive at $42.11 and $18.48 on average, respectively. This is significantly more than the average price for applications in these categories on the Apple App Store for iPhone ($10.74 and $5.74). Steve Jobs wrote in a post yesterday that there are now 200,000 apps in the app store, but Distimo evaluated these numbers as of April 26, which could account for the discrepancy in the number of total apps. Of course, we expect the app store to continue to grow steadily as developers flock to the platform. In fact, there are still any major apps missing from the iPad, such as those for Facebook and Foursquare. CrunchBase Information iPad App Store Distimo Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| IMVU's Virtual Cash Cow: Doubling Revenues, Focused On Gaming (Video) | Top |
| Just three years ago, IMVU was burning cash at a rate of half a million per month and still not profitable. The 3D virtual world, where souped-up avatars run amok, was gaining users but not on a path to sustainability. Fast forward to 2010, IMVU is increasing its staff by 50% (going from 60 to 90 employees) and is on track to double sales this year. Currently, the company is at an annual revenue run rate of $40 million — and according to CEO Cary Rosenzweig the Palo Alto based company should hit a $60 million annual revenue run rate by the end of this year. For the last two years, revenues have roughly doubled from $11 million in 2008 to $25 million in 2009 and now $40-plus million in 2010. That’s a lot of real world dough for a company whose fortune is based on virtual currency and an endless factory of avatar accessories. The key in 2007, Rosenzweig says, was a basic two-prong strategy: simplify the service and concentrate on creating new payment options. “Before, a lot of the activity was both on the IMVU website and then we had a downloaded client and our users had to go back and forth. And especially for someone who’s new, just coming in, they were a little bit confused, in fact many of them weren’t even sure that they could buy virtual goods. The second thing is we had a lot of users who had money in their pockets and they wanted to buy virtual goods but we weren’t providing mechanisms to do it. Because at that time we offered credit cards and Pay Pal.”(See Video Above) IMVU started selling pre-paid cards at outlets like Target and Wal-Mart and offering SMS payments abroad. The payments change alone, according to Rosenzweig, has accounted for roughly 30% of all growth. Like its closest competitor, Second Life, IMVU is a 3D world where avatars congregate, chat in a variety of settings and make new connections. The company makes the bulk of its profits from users buying credits for IMVU’s virtual catalog, a digital warehouse of some 4 million items including pet dragons, clothes, and new eyebrows. A normal payment is $19.95 for 20,000 credits— to give you an idea of how far that goes in IMVU land: something described as a vampire corset outfit will run you 699 credits. In recent years, many virtual worlds have receded (like There.com, which hit the deadpool March 2010 and shares a mutual co-founder with IMVU, Will Harvey), overshadowed by traditional social networks and bogged down by the recession. However, strangely, both Second Life and IMVU have thrived this past year, Second Life logged a record first quarter with user-to-user transactions up 30% to $160 million. Looking ahead, IMVU’s CEO says the next stage of growth will be driven by three catalysts: the company’s expansion into several new languages, the debut of a Mac product (and possibly an iPad client) later this year and a shift to gaming that will be tied to a more aggressive Facebook campaign. IMVU has been late to Zuckerberg’s party— the company’s only footprint on the site is a relatively young profile page. Rosenzweig says the gaming component is critical to the long term strategy. He estimates that the domestic virtual world market is worth roughly in the hundreds of millions, becoming a real player in gaming unlocks a multi-billion dollar market. Gaming and by extension Facebook are also critical to fostering user loyalty, which has been one of IMVU’s weaknesses. As of today, the company has 2 million active users, just 4% of its 50 million registered users. CrunchBase Information IMVU Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man | Top |
| There are few people who know the ins and outs of the web as well as Joe Hewitt . For the past decade, he’s had his hands deep in everything from Netscape, to AOL, to Firefox, to Facebook (where he currently works). Hewitt also knows a thing or two about the iPhone. He’s the one who first built Facebook’s excellent iPhone web app (before there were native apps on the iPhone), and then the native app — which is one of the best apps on the platform. So when he rants about something (as he does from time-to-time ), people listen. And today he went on one such rant. Following Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ post about Flash this morning , Hewitt went on Twitter and started going off with some of this thoughts. I asked Hewitt if I could recap them; his response, “ sure, why not .” Hewitt, some may recall, quit iPhone development over his distaste for some App Store policies. Today, seeing a wave of anti-Flash talk on Twitter spurred by Jobs’ post, Hewitt started out : Redirect your hatred of Flash to the W3C, whose embarrassingly slow pace forced devs to use a plugin because the standards were so weak. Also, I am looking at you, developers who bitch whenever a browser offers “non-standard” but innovative APIs. Browser makers need to go nuts with non-standard APIs and let the W3C standardize later. Waiting for the committee to innovate is suicide. So basically, Hewitt’s take is that Flash (and all plug-ins) only exists because the W3C (the governing body for web standards) is too slow to formalize and approve innovative new technologies. He urges browser-makers to break away from the W3C constraints and start going crazy with new APIs. He then comes in defense of Microsoft, the company that once all-but destroyed (through what just about everyone including the U.S. government thinks were unsavory means) the company Hewitt started his career at (Netscape). 10 years ago we bullied Microsoft into stopping innovation on IE so the W3C could take over. How’d that work out? For those too young to remember, IE was innovating like crazy from 4.0 -6.0, right up until the DOJ and web standards commies intervened. @jeff_lamarche Oh c’mon. Aside from ActiveX, Microsoft moved the web forward faster from 96-00 than any other browser maker has. I don’t know why MS abandoned IE, but I do know that web developers were begging them to stop innovating and just follow the committee. Hewitt’s take here is that the antitrust action against Microsoft halted innovation in Internet Explorer. In 1996, when Hewitt says IE innovation really started, that browser didn’t even have 10% share of the market, while Netscape had nearly 90%. As an underdog, IE had to innovate. Until, of course, they took over the web, and then Microsoft inexplicably all-but abandoned the product. Hewitt then turns to the rise of the app stores (including, yes, the App Store). Why are app stores threatening the web and luring developers like me away from it? “Evil” proprietary tech is blowing the web away. I want desperately to be a web developer again, but if I have to wait until 2020 for browsers to do what Cocoa can do in 2010, I won’t wait. The “‘Evil’ proprietary tech is blowing the web away” quote is pretty compelling (I’m still kicking myself for not using it in the headline). Again, Hewitt’s point here is that the web is nowhere near where non-web technologies like Cocoa are — and won’t be for a decade. @KuraFire Did Microsoft patent their non-standard html/javascript/css extensions, preventing other browsers from implementing them? @johnfoliot True, they [w3c] don’t dictate, but developers shame others who use non-standard APIs. That’s the problem. He wonders here why some of Microsoft’s standards weren’t adopted by the W3C? Then blames the web developers for shaming other developers who use tech not sanctioned by the governing body. I am ranting because I want to drop Cocoa and go back to the web, but I am upset about how much power I have to give up to do that. How it should go: browsers innovate differently, users pick the best one, later W3C standardizes what users chose, losing browsers conform. The core of Hewitt’s argument. Web technologies aren’t moving fast enough, and why should he have to use a less powerful language to conform to web standards? Again, he hopes that browsers will start to innovate and force the W3C to conform to them. @joseph_wanja I love what Cocoa can do, I just don’t like C-based languages for UI programming. The reason why Hewitt doesn’t just stick with Cocoa if he finds it superior to web-based languages. @eston Users might be aware of their choices if more developers wrote browser-specific sites. Developers really pick the winner. An urging for developers to take action to reverse the trend. @JamesWatch IE6 was fucking amazing in 2000. It’s not fair to compare it to modern browsers. A word of caution for those who bash IE6 — remember what it was like when it came out. @joseph_wanja unfortunately I would recommend Cocoa [rather than web languages] at this point. Wish I didn’t have to say that. Cocoa, while not perfect, is better than web languages. @michaelvillar So launch a different browser. Not a big deal. Know what is a big deal? Having to buy a different phone for each app store. An interesting point. Hewitt is saying that while it may seem like a hassle to have the web coded for different browsers, it’s much more of a hassle to have apps coded for different phones. @jjathman I’m not justifying ActiveX, but the html/css/javascript side of IE which at one time was state of the art. Again, more defense of IE back in the day. From here, Hewitt goes into a series of thoughts on web vs. native apps. @ppk Yes, exactly. I’d rather developers had forced users to launch different browsers instead of making watered down x-browser sites. @ppk That’s sort of what is happening with mobile web vs. native mobile apps, except app stores don’t extend the browser, they replace it. @slauriat “best viewed in X” was not as bad as “buy another phone”, which is what we got for letting the web go to shit so apps could rise. @ppk As someone who has tried to do both cutting edge native and web iPhone apps, iPhone Safari is a joke compared to iPhone Cocoa. App stores replace the web, simply because their languages are better, in Hewitt’s mind. And it’s our own fault for letting the web go to shit, and letting this happen. His last tweet is particularly powerful: Hewitt does have a lot of experience on both sides, and considers iPhone Safari to be a “joke” compared to what you can do natively. This is a sentiment a lot of developers whisper about, but seldom say publicly. Finally, Hewitt qualifies some of his statements a bit. I’ve been hard on Flash, but we should all thank Macromedia/Adobe for 10 years of picking up the slack of the W3C, Microsoft, and Mozilla. And really, how screwed would we be if the WebKit team weren’t so god damn competent? Ok, signing off now, thanks for listening. :) Fair enough, plenty of juicy post-worthy comments for one day. CrunchBase Information Apple Microsoft App Store Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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