Topic: Apps
Apple has acquired Workflow, a powerful automation tool for iPad and iPhone – TechCrunch (Mar 22, 2017)
This is a fascinating acquisition in the context of Apple’s recent parting of ways with Sal Saghoian, who ran the Automator app for macOS. That departure had signaled to some people that Apple was abandoning automation as a feature, but this acquisition sends the opposite message. Perhaps more importantly, Workflow is much more user friendly approach to automation than Automator, and what I’d hope we’ll see here is that same approach applied to built-in automation across Apple’s product lines including the Mac. That would make automation a more mainstream proposition, which is an intriguing prospect. That Workflow will remain available in the App Store is interesting too – that’s obviously going to be reassuring to existing users, but there’s no guarantee that it will stay there when Apple is done integrating it into its platforms. Siri stayed available for a time too, but of course disappeared when Apple released its version.
via TechCrunch
Apple’s App Store Gets a Makeover – Bloomberg (Mar 21, 2017)
The headline makes it sound like there are changes coming to the App Store, but this story is really about all the changes that have already happened on the App Store since Phil Schiller took it over from Eddy Cue a little over a year ago. One of the notable things in the story is the impact that better analytics have had, and how that’s made it easier for more dynamic developers to update their apps more frequently in response to user behavior. More generally, though, the article suggests that big strides have been made in the way the App Store runs from a developer perspective, which is a story that hasn’t been told much. It’s been subtle, and if you’re just a user you might not be aware of most of these changes, but better experiences for developers make for better end user experiences too. I know there are still lots of developers, especially Mac-centric developers, who have complaints they feel have gone unheeded, but Apple has at least made some progress in fixing big pain points on the iOS side.
via Bloomberg
Apple could kill almost 200,000 apps with iOS 11, report says – Mashable (Mar 15, 2017)
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a claim like this – Apple has been hinting at dropping apps that haven’t made the switch to 64-bit from the App Store for quite some time. While it’s good to get some sense of how many apps might be affected – Sensor Tower says 8% or 187,000 apps – what’s missing from this analysis is whether any of those apps are actually ones people care about or use today. My guess is that there are very few apps in the App Store which haven’t been updated in years and still see significant usage – I can only think of one app I use today which would fall into this category, and that’s because it’s been superseded by a new version which dropped some features I use. So even though the number here sounds dramatic, my guess is that dropping these apps in iOS 11 – if that is indeed what’s going to happen – will have minimal negative impact on users, and potentially remove some dead wood from the App Store in the process.
via Mashable
Apple and SAP Enterprise Partnership Launching First App in March – Mac Rumors (Feb 27, 2017)
Apple and SAP today announced that the partnership they first unveiled last year is beginning to bear real fruit. Last year, they had announced plans for an SDK, a training academy, and some sample apps from SAP itself designed to show third party developers what could be done. All of those things have now made enough progress at this point to justify a second announcement about imminent launches and progress made since. Several of the elements of what the companies announced originally are going to be available in the next few weeks, and all that should help SAP’s enterprise customers and their partners develop better iOS apps that tap into the SAP back-end. This is part of Apple’s broader push into the enterprise over the last few years, something that’s critical for squeezing additional growth out of an increasingly saturated smartphone market in mature economies. But it’s also a good reminder that the announcements Apple makes in the enterprise space are very different from its usual product announcements – they’ll take at least months to come to fruition, and in many cases will take even longer after that to deliver really meaningful results – this is a long game.
via Mac Rumors
U.S. iPhone users are spending more on apps – Axios (Feb 22, 2017)
Here’s the second item on apps from Axios today. Whereas the first was about Pokemon Go, this one is about App Store performance in general, and shows that average spending on the App Store continues to rise in the US. That spending is dominated by games, a long-standing trend, and the game spending is likely in turn dominated by in-app purchases. For now, this is great for Apple and its partners: IAP is growing, and that in turn is driving App Store and Services segment growth, something that’s critical to Apple’s growth narrative. However, I continue to find the IAP model troubling – it exhibits characteristics of addiction and relies on a very small number of players paying huge amounts per month. That works as a business model, but it feels predatory and I’d love to see game developers come up and popularize new ways to pay for games – so far, we’ve seen one or two companies do this successfully including UsTwo’s Monument Valley, but Nintendo’s attempt to find a different model with Super Mario Run has been disappointing from a revenue perspective. Still lots of work to be done here.
via Axios
Pokémon Go is again Apple’s top-grossing app after releasing new characters – Axios (Feb 22, 2017)
This is one of two quick pieces from Axios on apps that I’m going to cover this morning. This one shows that Pokemon Go has had a little resurgence off the back of the new characters it released recently, making it a top app again on iOS. To my mind, that again reinforces the point that Nintendo has done far better with the app it only owns a minority share in than with the app it owns outright (Super Mario Run) and likely even makes more money from Pokemon Go despite that minority share. That’s something it’s going to have to think hard about as it prepares to launch additional mobile games in the coming months.
via Axios
Facebook is launching an app for Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV – Recode (Feb 14, 2017)
More news out of Recode’s Code Media conference today (after Apple’s last night). This one was actually reported by the Wall Street Journal a little while ago and I commented on it then. I’m still a little skeptical about this, but there weren’t many more details in the announcement, and so we’ll have to see what the app actually looks like and how it works – I do think there’s potential for Facebook to use some of its clever technology to present people with a better feed of relevant video, but I think that’s some way off still. Also worth noting: Facebook will have apps for Amazon and Apple TV boxes as well as Samsung smart TVs, but not for Android TV. And of course Twitter already has a TV app, mostly useful for its live video, though there as here the big questions remains whether the companies can actually sell enough ads around this video to make the effort worthwhile.
via Recode
Snapchat is Struggling On Android — The Information (Feb 14, 2017)
I’ve tweaked the headline here to reflect the content of the article: the point here that Snapchat doesn’t work as well on Android as on the iPhone, where it began and where most of its employees and many of its users are. This wasn’t an accident – Snap is open in its S-1 filing about the fact that it has prioritized iPhone until now, and that’s not an unusual strategy for developers pursuing the high end market. However, it works a lot better as a strategy for a news, video, photo filter, or other non-social app than it does for a social app – by definition, social apps need broad reach to create the kinds of network effects that make them successful. It’s not that Snapchat hasn’t had an Android app for a long time – it launched it in October 2012, when it still had a relatively tiny number of users – but that it’s rather neglected the Android app. It explicitly called out some bugs and underperformance as a reason for its lackluster user growth late last year in its IPO filing, but this Information piece argues that it’s not moving fast enough to improve the experience there. And yet it has to be good there if it’s to grow, especially outside the US and major European markets.
via The Information
Making More Outside The Mac App Store – Rogue Amoeba (Feb 10, 2017)
Some interesting data points here from Rogue Amoeba, one of the medium-sized Mac app developers which has recently pulled the last of its apps from the official Mac App Store, and has seen roughly similar unit sales and slightly higher total revenues as a result. Although the iOS App Store continues to be the only way to get apps onto an iPhone or iPad, that’s not the case with the Mac, and frustrations over sandboxing, limited business model options, and the lack of formal upgrade mechanisms among other things have driven a number of prominent developers to eschew the MAS for direct sales. It continues to be fascinating how Apple’s approach to the Mac App Store has been so much less successful, in part due to the longstanding existence of alternatives, but in part also due to Apple’s inflexibility and lack of support for key developer requests. For all Apple’s strength and success with developers broadly, its Mac developer story is a lot less compelling.
via Rogue Amoeba
With Chrome 57, Progressive Web Apps will appear in Android’s app drawer, settings, more – 9to5Google (Feb 4, 2017)
I saw the headline here and almost literally yawned – it doesn’t sound all that interesting on the face of it. But read the article and you’ll find that this is an important step in making Google’s Progressive Web Apps first class citizens within Android – a position they haven’t enjoyed until now. Progressive Web Apps behave like apps in many other respects, but didn’t appear in the app drawer or other locations within Android which display a grid or listing of all installed apps. Google is committed to its several web+app models such as Instant Apps and Progressive Web Apps, and this is another sign that it’s taking that effort seriously and removing friction and barriers to adoption. Though the piece acts as though Google’s motivation here is simply making apps easier to use, the other big motivator is obviously that Google’s financial interests are better served by app models that tie back to the web than by purely native apps.
via 9to5Google
Warning Signs Abound As Snap Barrels Toward IPO – BuzzFeed (Feb 1, 2017)
Yet more signs that Snapchat is suffering both as a result of Instagram’s recent feature additions and perhaps because of broader cloning of its feature set by local alternatives in Asia. We’ll hear from the horse’s mouth shortly how Snap sees these changes, and it’ll have to work hard to refute these negative signals about engagement and growth in its app when it releases its public IPO filing shortly. The narrative around Snap is quickly turning negative, and it’ll have to intervene quickly to reset it (if it’s able to do so).
via BuzzFeed
Pokémon GO Has Grossed $1 Billion Worldwide Since Launch – Sensor Tower (Jan 31, 2017)
I’m including this today mostly because it’s an interesting counterpoint to the Nintendo results and related data about Super Mario Run from earlier. There’s such an interesting juxtaposition between the $53 million Nintendo has generated from Super Mario Run so far, and this billion-dollar gross figure from Sensor Tower for Pokemon Go since it launched. On the one hand, Nintendo only owns a minority stake in Pokemon Go, but the game has probably still generated more revenue overall for Nintendo than Super Mario Run, which it owns outright. And of course Pokemon Go’s business model is much more along the lines of the fairly standard in-app purchase model. It’s still early days for Super Mario Run, but it’s interesting for Nintendo that the game which appears to have been a far bigger success on mobile is the one it doesn’t own outright, and which adopted the standard IAP model rather than something different.
via Sensor Tower
Android Instant Apps starts initial live testing – Android Developers Blog (Jan 23, 2017)
Google announced Instant Apps at I/O last year, and I wrote about them in the context of the overall evolution of apps in June here. This is one of many interesting experiments around how apps might evolve, and one that’s uniquely well-suited to Google’s natural bias towards the web and search. It previously tested app streaming back in 2015, and that is also live for some apps today – the two concepts are similar but slightly different. They’re both ways to use apps without downloading, but app streaming streams an image of the app running elsewhere, while Instant Apps downloads the app in the browser for temporary usage and then clears the content again once an interaction is complete. That’s a subtle difference, but both alternatives get at the same objective – making apps available without all the effort of a typical app install from within a search, ideal for a one-off use of an app, but obviously not a replacement for those apps used regularly.
via Android Instant Apps starts initial live testing | Android Developers Blog
GarageBand and Logic Pro X Music Apps Get Major Updates – Apple Press Release (Jan 18, 2017)
One of the criticisms of Apple which has become loudest lately is that it is increasingly ignoring the professional creatives who use Macs to do their work, and I’ve seen this not just in relation to Apple’s Mac lineup but also a supposed neglect of Apple’s pro apps. However, at the MacBook Pro launch event a couple of months ago, Apple provided a big update to Final Cut Pro, which I’m told by video pros is a big deal, and now we’re seeing a big update to another of Apple’s big creative apps, Logic Pro. While I think some of the Mac criticism is reasonable (though I still think we’ll see an update on the desktops soon), this stuff about the pro apps clearly isn’t true – Apple is still investing in a big way here.
via Apple – GarageBand and Logic Pro X Music Apps Get Major Updates
App downloads up 15 percent in 2016, revenue up 40 percent thanks to China – TechCrunch (Jan 17, 2017)
Two things are worth noting about all the data presented here: firstly, apps are still growing massively, putting the lie to the idea that native mobile apps are somehow dead, to be replaced by some combination of better web apps, bots, or something else. The number of apps being downloaded is growing rapidly each year rather than stagnating or slowing down. The second point is that there continues to be a massive disparity between usage and spending when it comes to Android and iOS. See the first and fourth charts in this article – the first shows massively more Android apps downloaded than iOS apps, while the fourth shows double the spending on those iOS apps relative to Android. It continues to be far more profitable for developers to make apps for iOS, even with a smaller user base and far fewer apps downloaded. That, in turn, seems likely to reinforce the pattern that the vasty majority of big new apps get launched on iOS first, and Android second (if ever). That continues to be one of Apple’s big ecosystem advantages.
via App downloads up 15 percent in 2016, revenue up 40 percent thanks to China | TechCrunch
U.S. appeals court revives antitrust lawsuit against Apple – Reuters (Jan 12, 2017)
This has always struck me as one of the more implausible legal challenges to Apple, and it fended off the first round through a technicality. Now, however, a higher court has overruled the technical objection and the case can proceed on its merits. I would still think it was a long shot that Apple could be successfully sued for monopolizing app storefronts for its own devices, but you never know. One more Apple lawsuit to keep an eye on.
via U.S. appeals court revives antitrust lawsuit against Apple | Reuters
Russia Requires Apple and Google to Remove LinkedIn From Local App Stores – The New York Times (Jan 6, 2017)
This comes hot on the heels of the Chinese New York Times app story earlier in the week, and there’s a danger of this becoming a trend. Apple and Google both tend to comply with local laws when it comes to this kind of thing, and that’s certainly a reasonable defense. But if oppressive regimes start to use the major app stores as a way to block content they don’t like, Apple and Google are going to find themselves on the receiving end of attacks from lots of civil liberties groups.
via Russia Requires Apple and Google to Remove LinkedIn From Local App Stores – The New York Times
Apple’s Search Ads Are Generating Conversion Rates Higher Than 50% | Adweek (Jan 5, 2017)
The numbers in this article, which appear to come straight from Apple, are fairly impressive – half of those who click on an ad in the App Store end up downloading the app. That’s measuring conversion rate differently from the usual method, which would be downloads / impressions, rather than clicks, but it’s still high. And the average cost is low too – 50 per click, and $1 per install, much lower than, say, Facebook. Advertising is never going to be a significant chunk of Apple’s revenue, but this could turn into a nice little revenue stream over time, and it has a lot in common with Google’s search advertising, combining timeliness and relevance.
via Apple’s Search Ads Are Generating Conversion Rates Higher Than 50% | Adweek
App Store Shatters Records on New Year’s Day – Apple (Jan 5, 2017)
These new numbers from Apple reinforce the sense that Service revenues, driven largely by the App Store, continue to be the company’s most consistent growth driver. Payments to developers were up 40% on 2015, for a total of $20 billion, while subscription billings alone were up 74% to $2.7 billion, or almost 10% of the total. That 40% year on year growth rate is fairly consistent over the past year or two, as the rise of IAP accelerated growth above levels in 2012-2013. All of this also reinforces Apple’s argument to Wall Street that Services will grow even as device sales falter.
via App Store Shatters Records on New Year’s Day | Business Wire
Why Super Mario’s Run Was Short – WSJ (Jan 2, 2017)
The headline is overstating things – it’s not like Super Mario Run is done. But there are some good numbers in here – notably that 3% of the estimated 90 million downloads have converted to being paying users. At $10, that’s actually pretty high, and Nintendo will do just fine if it can keep converting new users at that rate. However, the poor reviews – many driven by the IAP model – may prevent Nintendo from continuously filling its funnel. Definitely some lessons here for future Nintendo mobile games.
via Why Super Mario’s Run Was Short – WSJ