Applications & Apps Business

Move Over Antennagate: Now We Have "AppGate"

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Researchers from Duke University, Penn State University and Intel Labs created a tool called Taintdroid to monitor smartphone applications and their behaviour.

The researchers looked at 30 randomly selected applications and found 66% used sensitive data suspiciously.

TaintDroid revealed 15 of 30 will send users' geographic location to remote advertisement servers. None of the fifteen applications mentions such data collection practice in the user license agreements, if present at all.

The study also found 7of the 30 send a unique phone (hardware) identifier, and, in some cases, the phone number and SIM card serial number to developers.

Go Taintdroid

Most Popular Paid Applications in Q3, Says Distimo

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Angry Birds

Distrimo reports the most popular paid applications in Q3 2010 were:

Go Distimo

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Amazon Enters the App Store Jungle

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It's a no-brainer: Amazon will open an Android app-store business. Press reports say the company has already sent welcome kits to tempt some developers.

Their main competition would be Google’s Android market (about 90,000 apps) and others such as AndSpot and SlideMe who already offer an independent Android app store.

Unlike Apple's App Store (with 250,000 apps), Google allows multiple app stores with Android OS. Independent app stores will compete against each other, using distinct search and user interfaces, greater availability, international appeal and better fiscal deals for developers.

Most app developers will sign up to any distribution channel that can increase the visibility (and sales!) of its apps.

Amazon is not yet revealing much, but (unlike many of the new independents) Amazon brings to the table a huge database of existing customers. It's instant success if Amazon controls this first part of its plan: woo the right developers, and control which apps join to ensure Amazon App Store comes out of the start-up box with an attractive offering.

According to reports, developers will have to pay $100 to sign up, just like the Apple app store requires. And they will want developers of paid apps to give Amazon customers the best deal possible. Like Wal-Mart squeezing hardware vendors, Amazon won't let their customers pay suppliers any sort of premium. It's a volume marketplace and the King of Volume wants low prices (or at least the same price as anywhere else, never higher.)

Amazon could bring value-added features already known to Amazon customers: recommendations, wish lists and deals.

You can bet your Kindle that Amazon will need deals with device makers to get its app store into smartphones, tablets and connected TVs.

This could also create a whole new era for smartphones: an era of bloatware like PCs that come bundled with multiple software trials as many emerging app stores "bribe" hardware vendors with promises, visibility, and...yes, even cash.

No one has yet mentioned Amazon Web Services who already offer a cluster computing service to provide high-performance applications for enterprises that don’t want to build their own. So Amazon's own infrastructure folks already know how to deliver apps via cloud. Not a mass market service but Amazon has B2B apps on one side– and a mass market business selling books, software and more on the other.

In between the two, Amazon should manage very well in the App Store business.

Go Amazon to Open App Store

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Ovi's Global Expansion in Numbers

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For developers creating apps for Ovi Store (taking a shot at that $10 million in prizes), take note: 70 developers have each passed 1 million or more downloads on Ovi Store. Herocraft, (of Farm Frenzy fame) has seen over 10 million downloads from Ovi Store and Offscreen (a range of touchscreen apps) has already seen more than 45 million downloads.

With the number of active Nokia service users now approaching 140 million users worldwide, Ovi says it is making good progress: more, 200,000 new users are signing up to Ovi daily and Ovi Store downloads are now topping 2.3 million per day (that’s 300k more than a couple of weeks ago).

Ovi is now available in 190 countries around the worlds. In India, China and Indonesia, more than 4.7 million people now subscribe to Ovi Life Tools. Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat now have more than 17 million users and Ovi Music packs 11 million tracks across 38 countries.

Go Ovi Global

What Are the Top Business Apps?

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According to GetApp and their September ranking, the Top 10 would be...

  1. NetSuite - Business Management Suite
  2. SurveyGizmo - Online Surveys
  3. WorkBooks - CRM
  4. Net Atlantic - Email Automation
  5. PipeJump - CRM
  6. HyperOffice - Collaboration
  7. WORKetc - CRM & Billing
  8. LiveBall - Website Optimization
  9. CompensationXL - HR & Compensation
  10. RevX Advanced Billing & Customer Care - Billing & Customer Care

You can see the next 10 on their list by using the link below.

The GetApp.com Top 20 Business Apps is based on a composite algorithm that incorporates several criteria, including listing popularity on GetApp.com, number of reviews and comments, social media presence such as Twitter and FaceBook followers, volume and quality of integration points, and input from analyst reports. The ranking is updated monthly.

OK, whenever you try to balance quantitative and qualitative factors, you do get a subjective result. But at least this is a list you can start from and decide for yourself.

Go GetApps Top 20 Business Apps