Apple announced earlier this week that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. “Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months — this is
like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” the press release attributes to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
“The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an
experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and
we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon." Apple last announced these types of figures on November 4, 2009, when it said that "well over" 2 billion apps had been sold sold and that over 100,000 apps were available for sale in the App Store; it was September 28, 2009 when Apple first announced that it crossed the 2 billion app mark. iLounge does some math and notes that because it took under 100 days to have another billion apps downloaded, that means that apps are being downloaded at a rate of around 10 million per day. Wow! Dan Moren of Macworld suggests one reason for the recent surge in app downloads: the holiday season. A lot of people received an iPhone or iPod touch in December, and a lot of those folks downloaded a bunch of apps. For the first time ever in a press release on App Store sales, Apple did not announce the number of apps in the App Store, presumably because they are waiting to cross some major threshold such as 150,000 apps before releasing an updated number. Other interesting news from the past week:
- John Martellaro of The Mac Observer looks at some of the different ways that people can spin numbers relating to iPhone market share.
- Speaking of Martellaro, he worked at Apple from 2000 to 2005, which included a few years as a senior marketing manager, and he notes in another Mac Observer article how Apple selectively leaks information to the press when it wants to get a story out there without making an official statement.
- If you use an iPhone 3GS, you should start to get faster AT&T data rates in 2010. The iPhone 3GS is capable of supporting 7.2Mbps 3G, twice the speed of AT&T's standard 3.6Mbps 3G. Engadget reports that AT&T announced this week that all of its cell sites in the U.S. have now been upgraded to support 7.2Mbps HSPA 3G. Unfortunately, that is only part of the puzzle; AT&T must also upgrade its back end hardware before the new speeds will be seen by consumers, but this has already started in some cities (such as Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami) and hopefully will be finished across the country by the end of 2010. If you live in one of these cities and start to see increased speed on your iPhone, I'd love to hear from you. AppleInsider has a lot more details on this story.
- I have never used my iPhone for instant messaging, but if you want to do so and are trying to pick the best app, AppAdvice has a nice guide to the available apps along with a helpful comparative chart.
- Following up on my post from earlier this week on law firms developing iPhone apps, I recently learned that Arnold & Porter has an iPhone app. It isn't an app related to the firm as a whole, but instead is just a mobile version of their Consumer Advertising Law Blog. I'm not a big fan of apps dedicated to a single blog -- why not just use a single news reader app on your iPhone to aggregate all of the blogs that you read? I use NetNewsWire for the purpose -- but on the other hand, it is an example of a law firm offering an iPhone app that is truly useful to potential clients instead of just a big advertisement for a law firm. Click here for Consumer Advertising Law Blog (free):
- In the 1940s, Seagram's ran a line of advertisements about "Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow," featuring predictions of the technological advancements of the future. These ads are fascinating today since many of the predictions came true, although not quite as was originally predicted. Harry McCracken has a great set of slides from these ads on his Technologizer site.
- Attorney Finis Price of TechnoEsq.com discusses BeenVerified, a service accessible from an iPhone that can provide background checks on people.
- The latest serious competitor to the iPhone is the Nexus One from Google. David Pogue of the New York Times has a good analysis of the Nexus One and how it compares to the iPhone. Gizmodo has a nice chart comparing some aspects the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, Motorola Droid and the Nexus One, although as the author admits at the end the iPhone's interface makes it great and you can't really sum that up in a chart. (Gizmodo link thanks to FutureLawyer.) Note that Palm just announced a new version of the Pre, the Pre Plus, which will have 16 GB (like the iPhone 3GS) and which, unlike the iPhone, will run on Verizon.
- Trying to figure out who is stealing the pens from your office? Macworld discusses Security Cam, a $1 app that takes iPhone photos at a predetermined frequency, or whenever noise is detected, or both. Just aim your iPhone to the right spot and leave it running to help you catch the thief. Unless, of course, the thief just steals the iPhone instead of the pens.
- Apple recently purchased Quattro, a company that sells ads on mobile phones. The New York Times has more details.
- Also in the New York Times, Roy Furchgott writes about his 14 favorite apps of 2009. Only two of those (Dragon Dictation and DirecTV) would make my list, but I love to hear which apps others find the most compelling.
- And finally, when I saw this earlier this week I knew that I would just have to make it the end of my Friday post. And I wasn't the only one to have the thought; several of you wrote to make the same suggestion. A company called Parrot is making a product called AR.Drone, which is a small quadricopter (a helicopter with four rotors) that you can control with your iPhone. An ad-hoc Wi-Fi connection lets your iPhone fly the aircraft, so you want to keep the unit no more than 50 meters from your iPhone, although if it loses a connection it will automatically land itself. Engadget explains that it uses two cameras to help it fly "(one forward facing, one facing down running at 60 fps that allows stability in light wind)" and also has "two ultrasonic transmitters for vertical stability, a three-axis accelerometer, and a two-axis gyroscope paired with a single-axis yaw precision gyroscope for good measure." Words can't really describe it sufficiently; just watch the video. It comes out later in 2010. No price announced yet, but I presume that it will cost more than an iPhone.