iPhone Cruncher

We’ve heard that analysts expect the iPhone 4 to continue to sell well right up to the launch of the iPhone 5, but a new survey suggests that a pretty large number of existing mobile users will go for the new device, too.

The survey comes from independent mobile ad network InMobi, which reports that 41 percent of current mobile users in the U.S., Canada and Mexico intend to switch to the iPhone 5, according to a story from PCWorld.

That’s a lot of users, and also a lot of users that want to either upgrade their iPhones or jump ship from another device. According to PCWorld’s story, the study reported that more than half of BlackBerry users questioned intend to switch to the iPhone 5, while 27 percent of Android users intend to switch. Meanwhile, just better than half of current iPhone owners – 51 percent – are upgrading to the iPhone 5, the survey finds. As PC World states, these figures suggest this could be Apple’s best iPhone launch ever, provided the survey turns out to be true.

Apple seems to think things will go well, anyway. The iPhone maker has reportedly ordered a huge number of the next version of its device: 26 million units, in fact, as DigiTimes reported earlier this month. Add to that another 30 million of the older models of the iPhone, that same report claimed.

There’s just one catch for Apple with InMobi’s survey, and that’s the fact that all this iPhone 5 interest is interest in a new iPhone 5. Rumors have been flying about two possible new iPhone models, and Apple could release both or either one. The first is the iPhone 5, which is reportedly a fully redesigned phone with a new look and better internal hardware than its predecessors. The second, not so much; dubbed the iPhone 4S, it would have some slightly better internal components, but it would basically be a slightly improved iPhone 4.

InMobi’s survey finds that interest is a lot lower

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Flurry Analytics published a study today that shows just how effective in-app advertising is as compared to television or Internet ads. While the reach of television and Internet advertising peak during specific parts of the day, ads found in apps for iOS and Android had a much more consistent reach from morning to evening.

You can see the large curves on the chart above presented in the television and Internet advertising study do not appear in the data for in-app advertising. Between the hours of 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., the audience share for ads on TV jumps from roughly 33 percent all the way up to around 63 percent. That’s a large amount of people to begin watching television in just a three-hour timeframe. From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., the audience share for ads on the Internet also increases quite a bit from about 22 percent to 40 percent.

There are no such jumps in usage for iOS and Android apps. From 7 in the morning all the way to 9 at night, the increase in advertising effectiveness is just 28 percent — specifically from 23 percent to 51 percent. Advertisers benefit greatly from this information, since they don’t need to worry as much about when during the day ads are displayed.

Here’s another interesting tidbit from Flurry:

To put the sheer size of the mobile application audience into perspective, consider that the American Idol finale, which airs once per season, reaches approximately 20 million viewers on that day.   Mobile apps already reach more than 20 million U.S. consumers per hour, from 7 am to 11 pm.  That’s already the equivalent of 17 American Idol finales each day, or more than 6,200 American Idol finales per year.

Apple launched iAd last year as part of iOS 4 to provide a better experience for both advertisers and consumers. Clearly it saw the untapped potential in mobile app advertising, and now so can we.

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SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A much-hyped $12 billion plan for Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn to produce iPads in Brazil is “in doubt” due to stagnant negotiations over tax breaks and Brazil’s own deep structural problems such as a lack of skilled labor, government sources tell Reuters.

The proposal to build Apple’s sleek tablet computers in Brazil was first announced in April by President Dilma Rousseff during an official visit to China. Senior officials hailed the deal as a sign of growing economic ties with Asia, and proof that Brazil was moving up the value-added manufacturing chain as its economy grows.

Yet the idea for a “Brazilian iPad” prompted immediate skepticism back home, where factories have struggled for years with high taxes, an overvalued currency and a lack of qualified workers due to poor education and a tight labor market.

The expected start date for production was first set for July, then delayed to November. Now, it is unclear whether the project will ever get off the ground, at least in the form that it was originally envisioned, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

“The talks have been very difficult, and the project for a Brazilian iPad is in doubt,” one official said. “(Foxconn) is making crazy demands” for tax breaks and other special treatment, the official added.

Several calls to a representative for Foxconn in Brazil were not immediately returned.

Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported on Thursday that funding for the Foxconn project from the BNDES state development bank — without which the initiative would likely collapse — was in danger of being withdrawn. A BNDES spokesperson told Reuters the bank had no comment.

If the project does fall through, it could become symbolic of Brazil’s struggle to meet high — and perhaps unrealistic — growth expectations this year. After expanding 7.5 percent last year, the economy is now forecast to grow just 3.5 percent in 2011, which could put it last in the BRICS group of large emerging markets, and near the bottom of Latin America.

The issues holding back the iPad — high taxes,

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I’ll give you a moment to look back at the title of this post to make sure you read it correctly.

Yes, you did. InMobi released a survey today indicating that out of all current mobile phone users residing in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, a full 41 percent are planning to buy the iPhone 5. Plus, over 50 percent will take the dive within the first six months of its release. It’s an understatement to call that a gigantic number of people, but we’ve seen it before.

Now let’s break down the data InMobi is reporting by handset/operating system. 51 percent of current iPhone owners plan on making the upgrade to the iPhone 5. Considering the large amount of iPhone users, Apple is going to have a lot of new customers already. 27 percent of Android owners will buy the iPhone 5, which is lower but still significant. And — here’s my favorite statistic — a full 52 percent of BlackBerry owners are planning to buy the iPhone 5. 2011 is not the year for RIM. 2012 doesn’t look too promising either.

But what happens if the iPhone 5 turns out to be a measly iPhone 4S? Instead of a major new release, it might be a small incremental upgrade. Well in this case, considerably fewer consumers are willing to make a purchase. Only 11 percent of current iPhone users would buy the iPhone 4S, 11 percent of Android users, and 28 percent of BlackBerry users. The latter means RIM is losing almost one-third of its customers regardless of what Apple announces on Tuesday.

Apple is already the most valuable

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US online retail giant Amazon launched a touchscreen tablet computer, the Kindle Fire, on Wednesday that costs $199, less than half the price of the cheapest iPad from market-leader Apple.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is taking on the untouchable iPad with a touch-screen tablet of its own.

The company on Wednesday introduced its entry in the rapidly expanding market for handheld computers — a device called Kindle Fire that connects to the Web, streams movies and TV, displays e-books and supports thousands of apps.

It’s half the size of an iPad and will be less than half the price when it goes on sale Nov. 15. Amazon is offering the Kindle Fire for $199. The bare-bones iPad sells for $499, the most expensive for $829.

Of course, competing with the iPad won’t be as easy as swiping a finger.

Analysts at one research firm, Gartner Inc., say three of every four tablets sold this year will be iPads. Apple sold almost 29 million of them from April 2010 through June of this year.

Amazon sells more than 1 million e-books, 100,000 movies and TV shows, and 17 million songs. It hopes it will succeed where other companies have failed because the tablet is designed to tap into Amazon’s massive storehouse of media content.

“The reason they haven’t been successful is because they made tablets. They didn’t make services,” CEO Jeff Bezos told The Associated Press in an interview.

Bezos unveiled the Kindle Fire at a New York media event that was stage-managed much the same way Apple choreographs its product launches. He walked a stage extolling the product while technology sites live-blogged the event.

The CEO also introduced three versions of its popular Kindle e-reader, all with black-and-white screens — a basic model for $79, a touch-screen version for $99 and a touch-screen with 3G wireless service for $149.

Those devices will further pressure competitors like Barnes Noble as they try to break Amazon’s dominance in electronic book sales.

The Kindle Fire’s size, with a screen that measures 7 inches diagonal, makes it a close match to Barnes Noble’s Nook Color tablet, which came out last year. But while Barnes Noble sees the Nook Color

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LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Boingo Wireless, Inc. (NASDAQ: WIFI), the Wi-Fi industry’s leading provider of software and services worldwide, announced today that it has released an international version of its popular Boingo Wi-Fi Credits app on the iTunes App Store.
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While we’re gearing up for the next iPhone introduction, T-Mobile just posted an open letter to customers which indicates that it won’t be getting the iPhone but that its current crop of high-end Android phones like the Amaze 4G and the Galaxy S II are just as good, if not better.

In the letter, T-Mobile says that there are already more than 1 million unlocked iPhone running on T-Mobile’s network which is pretty shocking when you consider that these Apple users are only getting EDGE speeds. Still, it is focusing on Android for the time being.

We’ve heard from many customers who love their T-Mobile service, but are disappointed that we don’t carry the iPhone. To these customers, first, thank you for your business. Please know that we think the iPhone is a great device and Apple knows that we’d like to add it to our line-up. Today, there are over a million T-Mobile customers using unlocked iPhones on our network. We are interested in offering all of our customers a no-compromise iPhone experience on our network.

That no-compromise approach may be tough for Apple to swallow because it would have to use the AWS bands to have a great T-Mobile experience but I don’t see Apple bending over backwards to support this for a carrier that may soon be swallowed by ATT. What do you think T-Mobile fans, are

About The Author

Marin Perez

Marin Perez has torture tested cell phones and smartphones for industry leaders like CNET and InformationWeek. He remembers when 4G was just a screen on PowerPoint presentations and is fascinated with the amount of innovation out there. Marin has spent a lot of time with BlackBerry and Android but he finally broke down a bought an iPhone to see what all the hype’s about. He also has too many tablets.

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The Financial Times might have pulled its primary app from the App Store, but the London-based paper has gone ahead and launched the new iPad app How To Spend It Magazine, which provides detailed information on luxury goods and lifestyle news.

Although the magazine will tell you what luxury goods you should drop your hard-earned cash on, you won’t have to shell out to purchase the app itself. The initial launch of the app takes several minutes to fully populate, but I found subsequent refreshes to work more quickly. There’s a lot of content to be found in this app, including myriad high-resolution images. In How To Spend It, users will gain access to more than 60 issues worth of archived material available in its searchable database. In addition, staff of the luxury-lifestyle mag will submit content updates on a daily basis. I’m particularly fond of the 600-plus-item Gift Guide that’s steadily growing. It offers items filterable by category or recipient.

I don’t love that How To Spend It only works in landscape mode, since I prefer my magazine apps to maintain more of a traditional orientation. The app is populated with ads, and it’s clear the stories have been divided into multiple pages to accommodate the ads, since there’s no other reason for the shorter pieces to require multiple swipes.

As for How To Spend It’s content, for U.S. readers, the app should serve more as an idea guide, rather than a shopping guide as prices are denoted in euros or pounds, and website links are typically UK specific. I’d expect some items to have overseas exclusivity, but I’d guess that a Google search would find many closer to home.

Download the free Appolicious iPhone app

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Well, it looks like Google has taken another bite out of Apple, with its recent hiring of a Facebook iPad developer Jeff Verkoeyen. This brings to question if this move is from the long delayed release of the Facebook iPad app, which all users have been waiting for seemingly forever.

It turns out that the major reason for Jeff Verkoeyen’s departure had to do with Facebook dragging its feet when it came to launching the popular app, though one might see why Facebook might want to hold off until Timeline went live. Verkoeyen was the lead engineer behind the Facebook iPad app, so this loss is a significant one. It’s understandable that a guy who had been working on this project for 8 solid months — sometimes as much as 80 hours a week to get the app done in time – would get fed up. Discussing his recent career change, Verkoeyen wrote on his blog:

First order of business, I want to make it publicly known that I have taken a job working at Google on their mobile team. I will be doing backend work which will be a refreshing change from the contract iOS development I’ve been doing for the past few years.

This shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise, as developers join up with different operating systems all the time. Remember when CyanogenMod founder Steve Kondik joined Samsung? We need to keep in mind that these guys are contractors (for the most part) trying to make a living. Honestly, if I were the lead dev for this app I would have been pissed too. Just think, the Facebook iPad app has been feature complete for months and it still hasn’t been released.

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About The Author

Charles West

Charles has been a cannibal of all things handheld and gadgety for years. Originally from Hartford, CT, where he resides, he longs for great beer and even better technology. He considers himself a music snob and sports fanatic who loves to hang out (rage) with friends and

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