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TC50 DemoPit Company Row27 Launches iPhone App for University Sports Teams »
Everybody has a damn iPhone app nowadays, and why should NCAA programs be any different? Row27 Studios, a design firm that has 58 NCAA clients including the Cal Bears, UNC Tar Heels and Florida Gators, has begun to fill that void. They’ve created an iPhone app that is perfect for University sports programs, and provides them with a way of reaching their fans through the mobile device we all know and love (or not). They launched their first app for the Kansas University Jayhawks, and it boasts great features such as live scoring, RSS feeds of team news and a couple cool minigames to occupy you during half-time. The Kansas University app is just the first iteration of this platform, which can be re-purposed for any other NCAA sports program. According to Creative Director Jonathan Dusing, due to Row27’s close relationships with other NCAA sports teams, their iPhone app will probably soon be appear under many other college sports names. Perhaps even more interesting than the launch of the app is the fact that Row27 didn’t spend a dime of its own money on development. The app was built as a custom project for Kansas University and Row27 managed to keep the rights to re-purpose the same application for other college sports teams. Besides being a great way to run a business, it also means that no other sports team has to take the risk KU did when requesting development of the app. Granted, KU bit the bullet – but they also got the special attention of getting to decide all the features and the specifics of the app themselves. It’s a win-win. The app itself is pretty cool. Besides features that are available elsewhere such as live scoring and in-depth game-by-game statistics for all major sports, the app also has tons of additional features perfect for a University-specific sports application. For example, you can chat with other KU fans within the app – a great way to ask questions such as “What’s the best happy hour after the game” or “How do we make sure Cal doesn’t upset us during our game tomorrow?” Furthermore, it’s connected to KU’s news feeds so fans can get all of the sports news their hearts desire. But one of the real benefits is for fringe sports – if you’re interested in Volleyball, Soccer, Softball and Baseball, it can be hard to get real-time sports statistics at the collegiate level on mobile. Because this is a University-sanctioned application, Row27’s app can provide data that no other application can. They are integrated to the standard NCAA statistics management system ( Stat Crew ) so they can stream statistics for any game that have live statistics. It’ll be interesting to see if such turn-key branded applications do well on the App Store. With football season gone, it may be a while until the Kansas University app will do a couple thousand sales, but I have no doubt that you’ll soon see branded apps across most NCAA programs. It’s just a matter of time. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
T-Mobile somewhat confirms the Google Phone (Nexus One) and an early January launch »
An internal T-Mobile memo from 12/29, Google, with support from T-Mobile, is scheduled to launch a new Android device in early January. The Google Android phone will be sold solely by Google via the Web. That pretty much says it. Now, how about a confirmation on the $199 price rumor ? Crunch Network : TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
PSA: Some OLED screens don’t suck under direct sunlight anymore »
I loves me some AMOLED screens. They’re easier on the battery, easier on the eyes, and the colors tend to be so damned strong that they just about jump off the screen and punch you in the face. I mean, what’s not to love? Oh, that’s right – they tend to fail miserably as soon as you step outside. Mix one part direct sunlight with one part AMOLED screen, and you’ll find yourself with a completely illegible screen. At least, that used to be the case.. We’re not quite sure why they didn’t play this up with deafening fanfare, but it seems like Samsung has stealthily solved the direct sunlight dilemma. The guys over at OLED-Info pit the Samsung Omnia II’s OLED screen against the transflective LCD of the N900. While the LCD didn’t perform too poorly at all, the OLED screen absolutely demolishes it. See for yourself in the video below. [Via IntoMobile ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Flurry: App Store Sees Record Breaking Christmas, 50% Growth from November to December »
As predicted here on MobileCrunch earlier this month , Apple rocked it this holiday season, and the early numbers are showing it. According to Flurry, the biggest mobile app analytics company, iPod Touch download volume saw a nearly 1,000% jump in downloads on Christmas Day. Overall, the App Store saw a 51% increase in downloads from November to December (downloads only increased by 15% from October to November). Christmas also marked the first day that iPod Touch app downloads surpassed iPhone app downloads, which makes sense (the iPod Touch is a more common gift than an iPhone; more on that later). Furthermore, the Android Market saw a nice 20% bump in app sales as well, sparked primarily by an uptick in downloads from the Motorola Droid . The data uncovers some interesting phenomena. First, it seems like parents bought iPod touches in droves. Flurry cited previous data that teens and pre-teens tend to download far more apps than older iPod and iPhone owners. VP of Marketing Peter Farago also noted that the iPod touch has clearly become a major player for Apple in terms of app sales. Second, Christmas is a huge day for app sales and app developers should take note. Just as the major retailers gear up for the holiday season, perhaps mobile app developers should be considering similar pre-Christmas preparations. If you’re developing an app at the end of the year, make sure to get it out before Christmas. Finally, I would expect an extremely strong Q1 from Apple. The data indicates that iPod touch sales skyrocketed leading up to Christmas, and that Apple’s App Store sales also saw a similar bump. Also expect the relatively smaller increase in month-to-month growth for Android to improve the value of Apple’s stock. It seems like, for now, they are defending themselves well against the Android OS. We’ll see whether that holds true after the Google Phone hits the market . Santa delivered some good news for Motorola, too. The highest number of Android App Sales came from the Droid – in fact, 49% of all Android Apps sold on Christmas day came from that one handset. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to guess that the Droid is the best-selling Android-powered phone. That’s great news for Google, too, because it means that they are continuing to grow as a platform and that solid hardware (on the right network) can fuel that growth. That said, the App Store is still destroying Android. Despite a lot of momentum and buzz behind Google’s vaunted, developer-friendly mobile OS, it really isn’t holding a candle to the iPhone OS. App Store downloads are 13 times greater than the Android Market. Additionally, the fact that the already-mature App Store saw a 50% monthly growth rate versus the Android Market’s 20% is impressive. One would think that the App Store growth would plateau at some point, but it doesn’t show any signs of leveling off just yet. It’s important to remember that the data you’re seeing isn’t sales data, so of course many of the extrapolations are conjecture. It is plausible that the gap between the App Store and Android Market does not in any way relate to handset sales. Nonetheless, it is likely that the sale of the device would trend alongside app sales. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
“Duel” iPhone App Takes You Back to the Wild, Wild West. A Game that’s Untouchable like Eliot Ness. »
Alex Albrecht is on Wikipedia . Therefore, he is important. Not only that, but he also made a cool iPhone app that hit the store for just $1 . Cheap. Like all the other iPhone apps. Unlike most other $1 iPhone apps, this one is pretty fun. The concept is simple: Duel enables you to host a duel on your iPhones. (Don’t fret, parental-types; though this iPhone duel will pay homage to the duels of the Wild Wild West, it will differ in one major way: nobody’s gonna get shot.) Instead, should you lose, you will simply find your fellow dueler’s ugly mug laughing hysterically in your face. Here’s how you duel: All you need is two people with two iPhones. Both need to have the app (so you could argue this app really costs $2, which is still cheap). You connect your iPhones via Bluetooth, and then you raise your phones vertically. The timer on the phones counts down from 3. Once it hits zero, you turn your phones horizontally to shoot. First one to shoot wins. This is a freakin’ simple concept, but it is also brilliantly fun. I challenged my buddy to a game and felt like a real bad-ass when I beat him 4-2 in a best of 7 (yes, I am using MobileCrunch as a way to brag about my conquests). I think we would’ve kept playing if it weren’t for the fact that it was Christmas Eve and we were supposed to be hanging out with our families. Oops. Outside of this foray into iPhone app creation, Alexander Albrecht is an American television personality, actor and podcaster. He’s best known for co-hosting the former TechTV television program The Screen Savers, an hour-long computer and technology variety show, as well as the weekly Diggnation, and The Totally Rad Show. [Yes, this was lifted entirely from his Crunchbase entry . Sue me; it's the holidays.] You can buy Duel on the App Store here for $0.99 . P.S. If you didn’t get the headline, you need to listen to more Tupac . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Location-based mobile advertising platform AdLocal enters America with years of Japan Know-how »
Mobile advertising is poised to become a huge growth area, with research firm Kelsey Group seeing the market grow from just $160 million in 2008 to $3.1 billion in 2013. eMarketer projects mobile advertising spending in the US will balloon from $648 million in 2008 to over $3.3 billion in 2013. While some believe search will account for the biggest chunk of the market, others expect geo-aware advertising, another way of bringing “relevant” ads to users, to have a bright future, too. This is where AdLocal , a location-based, self-service mobile ad platform that (re-)launched yesterday, comes in. Offered by Sunnyvale-based Cirius Technologies USA , the platform has been around in Japan since 2006, currently commanding the largest share of location-based advertising in Japan’s $1 billion [PDF] mobile ad space. And now Cirius is ready to utilize the years of experience the company gained in the world’s most competitive mobile market in the US (AdLocal isn’t available outside America and Japan at this point). AdLocal allows advertisers to manage their campaigns and publishers to add their mobile sites or applications by themselves through a Web-based dashboard. By locating a mobile user’s physical location via GPS, cell identification and other methods, the mobile ad network can tell when a consumer is close to a specific business address and then serves up ads for that business in real-time.
iPhone Now The Most Popular Phone In The US »
Ranking cell phone companies is a tough thing to do. Some of these companies have a bunch of popular handsets, whilst others have just one or two yet manage to sell as many or more. Rank the companies by cumulative sales across all of their lines and the results will swing one way; rank them model-by-model, and they might look completely different. Such is the case with the iPhone, according to the latest numbers from The Nielsen Company. While RIM’s marketshare with their BlackBerry line is still nearly double that of Apple’s , the iPhone has now surpassed everything else to become the most popular phone in the US. The iPhone’s lead is fairly tight, coming in at 4.0% of all mobile phone owners while the BlackBerry 8300 series follows closely behind at 3.7%. The rest of the list is made up primarily of feature phones, outside of appearances by the BlackBerry Storm and the BlackBerry 8100 series in 7th and 10th respectively. As the iPhone 3GS doesn’t make an individual appearance on the list, we’re assuming that they’ve combined the 3G and 3GS into one product line. A few more interesting tidbits gleaned from the Nielsen report: The most popular reason people pick pre-paid phones isn’t because the lack of contract — that’s actually #4 — but because the plans are more straightforward. It’s followed by “No monthly bills” and “Emergency use only”. 21% of households now use mobile phones only, with no land line to call their own. This is up from 15% in 2006 15% of households now own at least one smartphone Crunch Network : TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
The App Store Forgets It’s Not The Android Market, Temporarily Sells NES Emulator »
As stringent (and arguably overzealous) as Apple’s App review policy is, things still slip through the cracks from time to time. I mean, who can forget the infamous baby shaking simulator slip-up? The latest bit of contraband to hit the App Store isn’t nearly as offensive – that is, unless you’re Nintendo. Earlier today, an application called “Nescaline” popped up on the App Store. Everything about the application, from the name, to the copyrighted icon, to the very functionality of the application rang of something that Apple would generally deny without batting an eye.. and yet, there it was – for all of one day, at least. You see, Nescaline is an emulator of 1985’s living room king, the Nintendo Entertainment System. By duplicating the functionality of the system’s hardware in software form, Nescaline would allow you to play NES games on your iPhone. You’re stuck with slightly frustrating touchscreen controls instead of the sharp-cornered, palm-destroying original controller – but hey, it was old school gaming on the go. It’s worth noting that Nescaline didn’t include any copyrighted games out of the box, instead providing just a handful of community-made home brew games. However, if the user just so happened to know the URL of another ROM — be it another home brew game or an unlicensed copy of Super Mario — Nescaline would download the ROM to its internal library. The legality of applications of this sort are endlessly debated, and remain in a bit of a legal gray area. Apple avoids any potential copyright battles by banning “executable code”, a term just vague enough to work wherever its convenient. They’ve thus far denied all emulator submissions, including those that had their licensing in order . If you want an emulator on the iPhone, you’ll have to jailbreak first. Apple’s negative stance on emulators is something that fans of Android love to poke fun at, considering that emulators are amongst the most popular on Google’s platform. While Google’s not about to come out and officially support console emulation, the only apps they won’t sell are those that are malicious, explicitly illegal, or adult in nature – none of which fits the bill for most emulators. Nescaline went up on the App Store early this morning, and was pulled by the end of the night. Assuming that this was an accident and not some App Store reviewer’s way of resigning, we’re left wondering: how’d this happen? The app’s description clearly explains everything – and even if they didn’t read a word of that, the app’s icon was a friggin’ Super Mario mushroom. Maybe the “Approve” and “Deny” buttons are just right next to each other. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Video: Apple’s “12 Apps Of Christmas” iPhone commercial »
Apple just pushed out a new, Holiday-themed commercial. Playing on the classic “12 Days of Christmas” song, they rattle off a different type of application for each of 12 days. They make no mention of baby shaking applications , which isn’t too surprising – “baby shaking” has way too many syllables to fit the tune. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
App Store Champ Smule Raises Another $8 Million »
When you’re running on a hot streak of smash hits, it’s not too tough to find investors. Such is the case for Smule, the developers behind I Am T-Pain , Ocarina , Leaf Trombone , and a handful of other App Store success stories. Today, Smule is announcing that they’ve secured an $8 million dollar round of Series C funding. That’s an absolutely massive pot for a development house focused solely on the iPhone, and it more than doubles Smule’s total funding thus far. This latest round of funding was lead by Shasta Ventures , and backed by Bessemer Venture Partners and Granite Ventures . Both of the latter companies had invested in Smule before; Bessemer fueled Smule’s $1.6 million seed round, and joined Granite Ventures and Maple Investments for their $3.9 million Series B. All in all, Smule’s total funding to date is coming in at around $13.5 million. All the fledgling entrepreneurs out there fighting for funding might want to plug their ears at this point; turns out, Smule wasn’t exactly looking to vie for backing right now. Jeff Smith, CEO and co-founder of Smule, on the topic: “Candidly we were not planning on raising capital at this stage of our business plan. Yet as we got to know the partnership at Shasta, we found they had a similar perspective on the importance of innovation, and a robust understanding of the new consumer market realities. We are therefore excited to have them join us on our mission to redefine the mobile social experience.” So, what is Smule planning to do with the new-found cash? Make more iPhone apps, of course. It’ll also go toward expanding the “Smule Sonic Network” which serves as the backbone for their applications. Crunch Network : TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies