Trends and Tips
Five reasons mobile advertising is the best way to monetize apps
If you consider yourself even remotely geeky, chances are you, or some of your friends, have considered the idea of developing a mobile app. All the wild success stories we are fed daily about developers like Rovio (Angry Birds), Zeptolab (Cut the Rope), and Outfit7 (Talking Pets), have us dreaming of achieving similar success.
Research
comScore: Android Keeps Gobbling Up Smartphone Share, Now 40 Percent
When it comes to smartphones in the U.S., Android and Apple keep growing at the expense of other mobile platforms like RIM, Windows Phone, and Nokia’s Symbian. The latest mobile subscriber numbers are out from comScore. Android leads the pack with 40 percent market share of U.S. smartphone subscribers as of June, 2011, up 5.4 percent from March, 2011.
Lookout Report: Android Malware Has Increased Significantly Over Past 6 Months
Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphones, is releasing the results of its Mobile Threat Report. The report is based on threat and security data from Lookout’s Mobile Threat Network, which includes data collected from more than 700 thousand apps and 10 million devices worldwide. You can access the full report here.
Technology
Prepare to be spammed on a new level with push notification advertising
Over the past four years, mobile application support has grown from a mere handful of games and applications to just short of one million applications, accumulatively. A large portion of said applications are paid, meaning the end user must make a one-time payment and the application is theirs for life. The remaining applications are free – some are entirely free (no ads) and others are ad-supported. With the immense growth of the availability of applications, the advertising, too, has evolved.
Brands
HTML5 Ad Builder Sprout Acquired By InMobi
Sprout, a company that offers an easy-to-use platform for building HTML5-based ads, has been acquired by mobile ad network operator InMobi. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Sprout had raised a total of $10 million from Global Venture Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, Global Venture Capital, and Mitch Kapor.
More Mobile Ad Deals: Augme Acquires Hipcricket for $44.5 Million
Mobile marketing service, Augme Technologies, today announced that it will be acquiring Hipcricket, a mobile marketing and advertising platform for $44.5 million — $6 million of which is in cash and $38.5 million in common stock. Hipcricket’s shareholders must approve the acquisition before it can be finalized, yet with the transaction also calling for a 12-month earn-out payment of an additional $27.5 million, it seems likely that the deal will be approved. Augme will take on all of Hipcricket’s 50-plus employees, but the mobile ad firm will continue to operate out of its offices in Kirkland, Washington.
How “create your own mobile social network” tool Motribe grew to 1.5 million users in 10 months
South African mobile social networking platform Motribe launched about a year ago but already it has more than 1.5 million users. Founded by Nic Haralambous and Vincent Maher, the platform is like Ning for mobile and aims to empower brands to set up mobile web communities. In regions such as Africa, South East Asia and South America where the mobile web is a big part of how people interact with the Internet, sites like Motribe are bound to thrive. We caught up with the platform’s co-founders to learn more about the service’s relatively fast growth.