If Google had its way, everyone in the world would be on the Internet, using Google services. To bring that goal to fruition, Google is reportedly working to build cellular networks in Africa and Southeast Asia to help bring hundreds of millions of people online for the first time.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is in talks with countries like Kenya and South Africa to fund and deploy cellular networks in those countries, using wireless spectrum reserved for television broadcasts. 

Bone deep in Google’s business strategy is that the more people that use the Web, the more Google benefits. That is why the company is testing its Google Fiber high-speed Internet access in various locations in the United States and why it bid in U.S. wireless spectrum auctions in 2007 and 2008. Google has long been planning to enter the cellular service market and there is no better testing ground than those portions of the planet that still lack Internet access.

Owning The Plumbing

Google’s play is to not only own what you do on the Internet, but the pipes you use to access it. 

Google would provide much of the critical infrastructure, such as the base stations and processors involved in building the networks, the Wall Street Journal reports. It could also employ “high-altitude platforms” – blimps and balloons – that could broadcast cellular signals for hundreds of miles. Google could also build out the network using satellites, a technique that a many remote areas use to quickly add telecommunications services. 

If Google can get the populations of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia on the Internet, it can then sell low-cost Android devices into those regions through its manufacturing partners like Samsung, LG, ZTE, HTC and Huawei. Once those eyeballs are online, Google hopes to find ways to make money from them with its advertising and search products.

Google could also push various Android services to these newly connected Internet users. The Android Google Play app store is able to accept payments in 134 countries - giving the company the ability to sell apps, books, music and video to a large portion of the world’s population. 

In the end, this is a pure volume move for Google: get more people the capability to get online, give them a portal to do so (smartphones) and get them using Google. 

Google and Microsoft are finally shaking hands and agreeing to work together over Microsoft's controversial YouTube app for Windows Phone devices.

"Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube’s API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time," Microsoft and YouTube said in a joint statement sent to ReadWrite. 

Microsoft will take down the current YouTube app from the Windows Phone Marketplace and replace it with the version that Google and Microsoft will build together, based on YouTube's application programming interfaces, the established way third-party apps access YouTube content.

Microsoft had originally built its own YouTube app for Windows Phone that had violated YouTube's terms of service by stripping pre-rolled adds from the video content and allowing users to download videos. Last week, YouTube sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter warning that the Windows Phone app was a violation of the video website's terms of service. 

It's widely rumored that Apple's new iOS 7, to be unveiled at WWDC next month, will ditch the company's ill-fated love affair with "heavy textures," also known as skeuomorphic design, for a more flattened take on the user interface. A new report from 9to5mac on Friday suggests that this new flat design will also incorporate lots of black and white, though it's unclear just how far this simplified color scheme will permeate the new OS.

(See also: iOS Users Beg Apple: Set Our iPhones & iPads Free!)

Other updates will reportedly include changes to the longstanding lock screen, new widgets in the notification center and an overall uniformity in design and color among all native Apple apps. 

SimplyZesty, a digital agency specializing in design as well as mobile and social strategy, made headlines earlier this month with its mock-up of what iOS 7 might look like. Many point out that the mock-up looks a bit like Windows Phone, and that its unlikely Apple would ever take its UI in this direction. But it sure gives us a good start when thinking about flat design.

Image courtesy of SimplyZesty's mock-up. 

This post is the third in the ReadWrite series Making Android Pay, focusing on the opportunities and challenges that mobile developers face trying to make money from Android Apps.

In the waning hours of the Google I/O developers conference last week, an Android developer stood at a microphone to ask a very pertinent question: “If I am in the top 2% of Android apps on Google Play, how much money am I really making? $30 a month? $3,000? $300,000?”

The two poor Google product managers on stage couldn't or wouldn't give him an answer. They declined to cite revenue of other Android apps on Google Play’s top lists. They refused to share a general number of how much successful Android apps earn. The two Googlers, Ibrahim Elbouchikhi (product manager of Google Play Commerce) and Bob Meese (Google Play games business development), had highlighted earlier in their session that average revenue per user had more than doubled in Google Play in 2012.

But the developer in the audience was essentially saying was that twice zero was still zero.

To The Winners Go The Spoils

Unless your apps are massively popular on Google Play, it is very difficult to make a good living with Android app development. Developers building apps for Apple’s iOS still make more money than those building for Android, and Apple’s download rate is considerably higher (50 billion for iOS against 48 billion for Android) despite Apple’s considerably smaller installed base).

During their session, Elbouchikhi and Meese gave developers several tips on how to make money from Android. The focus was on two specific topics: games and the top lists in Google Play. 

Essentially, Google is saying that you need to hit the top lists on Google Play to even have a chance at making a decent living. (Getting there is difficult, of course, but developers "get a lot of sales [just] from being on the top sellers list.") The top lists are almost all games - and almost all monetized via in-app purchases. Look at the top grossing apps in Google Play. Of the top 25 grossing apps currently in Google Play, 24 of them are games. The only exception is Pandora, which brings in most of its money from its subscription service.

Top grossing Android apps on May 21, 2013

The domination of games is not unique to Google Play. The Apple App Store's top grossing and paid sections are also filled with games. Smartphones and tablets are great for gamers, especially casual gamers. This has led us to believe that there is a coming golden age for game developers. 

Non-game developers may be in a bit of trouble though. Yet there are things that developers can do to entice their audience to pay up. The idea is to first acquire users (through a variety of means), retain them by delivering excellent apps and customer service and then turn them into passionate users. It is only then that you can ask them to pay you for your product.

5 Keys To Android App Success

Elbouchikhi and Meese highlighted five important aspects of Android that make it easier to monetize an app:

1. Tablets pull in 70% more revenue than smartphones: It helps to create a version of your app optimized for the tablet form factor, which Google made easier to beginning with Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich.
2. Employ in-app purchasing systems: In-app revenue increased seven-fold in 2012. While the "freemium" model can be manipulative, it does help developers make money from their users. Once you have created a relationship with a user, you can then hit them up for the "upgrade" (usually in games) or the subscription model (like Pandora). You'll have to deal with any ethical dilemma concerning in-app sales on your own.
3. Subscriptions work: Android has seen 200% app subscriber revenue growth in recent quarters. This approach can work for app developers focused on businesses and enterprises, media publications or music services. Some games employ subscription models but most go for the in-app purchase freemium model. (Meese noted that almost all of the top apps are free-to-play. "The barrier to success for a paid title is very high.") 
4. Better ratings means more revenue: Google has done significant work to help developers get better ratings for their apps. That entails standardizing design principles for Android, working to minimize fragmentation and performance issues and letting developers reply to users who have rated their app. This critical, because the higher the rating, the more money the app earns. According to Google, apps that earn a 4- or 5-star rating average almost 29 times more revenue than do lower rated apps.
5. Go global: Google realizes that most of its subscriber base is not in the United States or even in Western Europe. This is why it released its transcription service in the Google Play Developer Console at I/O last week.

"I think we are at the beginning of that and we will see that beginning to happen next as people get used to the process and developers get creative in figuring out how to build those passionate users and when the right time is to ask for payment," said Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play. "And also what are the types of things that people are willing to pay for. There are things that people are not willing to pay for and some things that they are."

Top photo by Nick Statt: Google's Ellie Powers introduces new Google Play Developer Console features at I/O 2013.

If you haven't heard, we're in the midst of a rampant and sometimes violent iPhone crime wave. In San Francisco, smartphone theft accounts for nearly half of all robberies in the city. Most of these are iPhones. In New York City, there were more than 11,000 thefts of Apple products - mostly iPhones - in just the first eight months of last year. This represented a 40% rise over 2011, far higher than the rise in other crimes. 

Blow Up Your iPhone

Fortunately, I have a modest proposal for a simple and definitive solution to this problem: iPhones rigged to burst into flames or even explode. You steal my iPhone, it catches fire or blows up in your hand. 

So go on, punk. Steal my iPhone. Let's see how many fingers you have come morning. Once word gets around, this problem will self correct in very short order. What better iPhone theft deterrent could there be than a city filled with petty criminals - all with stumps where a hand used to be? 

Reasonably Priced Protection

The cost would be quite reasonable. Lithium ion batteries are already prone to radical overheating. If a flaming iphone that melts the thief's fingers isn't a strong enough deterrent, gunpowder is cheap, and could easily be engineered into the iPhone 6. Meanwhile, exploding cases could be built to retrofit older models. Look at it this way, what's another $50 or so for the privilege of having a true remote wipe feature?

True, the theft victim is still out an iPhone, but that was a foregone conclusion anyway. Within moments the thief had likely placed an "almost new" iPhone listing on eBay. But the former owner can focus instead on the joy of knowing that the criminal paid an even higher price for that no longer-working iPhone. 

Help From Carriers And Smartphone Vendors?

Besides, as noted, once flaming iPhones become the standard, thefts will likely taper off very quickly. In the meantime, perhaps the mobile carriers would be willing to thank us for our help in stopping crime. No, they probably won't let you out of your contract - they're not crazy - but they might offer heroic vigilantes (nee victims) a free replacement device. 

I wouldn't look to Apple for help, though. Despite the iPhone crime wave, the company has done precious little to protect the products so far, and that's not likely to change. After all, Apple actually benefits every time an iPhone is stolen - mostly likely the vic buys a replacement device at the full, non-subsidized price. What? Is Apple supposed to not sell you another iPhone?

My proposal has wider benefits as well. No doubt there would also be a radical drop in pickpocketing and other two-handed crimes. And wouldn't it be useful to have immediate, obvious evidence of who the thieves are? The police could quickly shift their focus to fighting more important crimes.

Countering Objections

Now, some of you may object that flaming iPhones are dangerous. That the punishment doesn't fit the crime. That innocent people could get hurt.

Sure, fires are hard to control. But isn't that the point here?

And sure, losing a few fingers may seem harsh (it'll be hard to use a touch screen even on a legitimately purchased device), but anyone who's ever had an iPhone stolen probably wished for even worse things to happen to the thief. 

Finally, if bystanders don't want to get hurt, they can just avoid standing by iPhone thieves. And just like gun owners are encouraged to lock up their firearms so kids don't get their hands on them, a little care should keep most of the little ones from using Mommy's iPhone to play games without telling her about it. If not, they'll figure it out when little Johnny down the street has to learn to bat left-handed at stickball.

In the end, what's a little collateral damage compared to making sure my iPhone is safe? Heck, if this takes off, you can bet that Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and the rest won't be far behind. Pretty soon the entire smartphone market will be exploding. That's a good thing, right?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

You probably already knew this, but a new report from Forrester wants to emphasize this seemingly obvious point: Tablets are not simply larger touchscreen smartphones. There are significant difference in where people use them, how they use them and for how long - all of which have big implications for app developers, marketers, tablet makers and a lot of other folks.

As the table market continues its white-hot growth - nearly 50 million tablets were sold last quarter alone - these differences will force  both innovation and disruption in publishing, advertising, retail, gaming and work, as people optimize apps, media and services specifically for tablet use.

Tablet Usage: The Little Differences 

The majority of tablet users use their gadgets primarily in the living room and bedroom of their homes. This is true even for tablets with cellular connectivity, not just Wi-Fi. 

Even outside the home, Forrester's data reveal that tablet usage is concentrated in "fixed" locations. These include coffee shops, airports and hotels.

Whereas smartphones are highly personal devices, used mostly "on-the-go" and in short "snackable" sessions, tablets are more likely to be shared with others inside the home. Tablets are also used for longer stretches of time. 

Forrester's data also show that tablet users are wealthier and better educated than typical smartphone users. In addition, tablet users are more likely to discuss their opinions of products on social media and other online services.

Forrester's research also reveals the versatility of these devices. Reading, email, watching video, playing games and taking pictures are all common activities. Across their 15 primary activity categories, browsing the web was most common - undertaken by 68% of individuals polled in Forrester's survey - and note-taking was least common, though still undertaken by a respectable 26% of respondents. At present, there is no one specific task driving people to purchase a tablet.

Though the market is relatively new, the report also suggests that users will embrace tablets for controlling numerous home-based technologies - such as entertainment systems, energy monitoring and more. 

Tablets As Second Screens

Tablets are preferred over smartphones as the "second screen" - i.e., as something else to look at while the TV is on. And it turns out that people also use tablets and smartphones differently as second screens. 

According to Forrester's data, web browsing, product research and watching videos online are all more likely to be tablet-based second-screen activities. Social networking and chatting while watching television, however, are the province of the smartphone.

This raises an intriguing possibility: Tablets might actually have a big impact television advertising. As a second screen, tablets offer advertisers new possibilities for integrating their marketing efforts across seemingly disparate media. Some app makers are already jumping on this bandwagon.

For instance, Shazam just updated its "what's that song" app to tag and identify live TV events by "listening" to them. On one hand, that lets the app provide more information about the show or sports game you're watching, including links to related information. On the other, though, the app will also tag the commercials, potentially opening up a new way for advertisers to reach you through the tablet as well as the big screen.

It's not all about play, either. The Forrester study found the people actually report using tablets for "work" surprisingly often. A full 58% of surveyed users report spending an average of 2.5 hours per day on their tablets for work from home. There is, of course, a possibility of responder bias; some people might be inclined to say they're working on their tablets even if they're not.

Assuming those numbers are solid, though, that finding could provide an opening for makers of apps and even tablet hardware focused on personal productivity. Wait, did someone just say... Microsoft?

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) polices are increasingly popular as a way for companies to let workers use the hardware they like best and are most productive with. But according to a new study from Cisco, that not be the best way to think about BYOD.

Implement a strong BYOD policy, Cisco says, and your organization could save $1,300 per year per mobile user. Users meanwhile, report that they are happier and more productive - even though they may end up paying more out of their own pockets!

(See also Worried Workers: BYOD Or You're SOL [Infographic])

Happier, More Productive, But Poorer?

The survey, released Wednesday by Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) consulting unit, polled 2,415 users in six countries to determine the effects of letting employees bring their own devices into the office. The results indicate that employees around the world were very interested in BYOD, and they were even willing to pay for it: On average, workers said they would spend $965 out of pocket for their own devices and another $734 annually for the data plans to go with them.

Here's why: Workers with their own devices said they were happier and (more objectively) reported significant productivity gains. In the U.S., BYOD participants saved 81 minutes of time per week - just over 70 hours a year.

Not every country noted such productivity increases, and use of employee devices also had negative effects, such as increased administration, downtime and distractions that dragged the overall efficiency down, explained Jeff Loucks, senior manager at IBSG. 

Most of the devices in question were phones: 81% of device bringers reported they uses smartphones, 56% brought tablets and 37% brought their own laptops. On average, each of the estimated 198 million BYOD users around the world had 1.7 devices, said Loucks.

BYOD Keeps Growing

The number of BYOD users is expected to swell to 406 million by 2016. Even though the U.S. leads in BYOD use right now, by 2016, China alone is expected to have 166 million alone, compared to the 106 million in the U.S. and 76 million in India.

Companies fared best, Cisco discovered, when they implemented a strategic BYOD plan, rather than stick than just trying to keep up with devices coming into the organization. Such reactive policies tend to make users figure everything out for themselves, often working with an IT department that only grudgingly allows such devices into the organization.

Want to realize those promised cost benefits? Get ahead of users with a proactive BYOD policy that enables employees to quickly access corporate tools and data, perhaps featuring a self-service help system. Such policies also help organizations keep better security on corporate data.

(See also ReadWrite Survey Results: What A Typical BYOD Program Really Looks Like.)

Be Careful What You Wish For - BYOD Edition

As much as workers seem willing to pay their own way to get the devices they want without their employers' interference (only 30% said they would be willing to work with corporate-provisioned devices - often called Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled, or COPE), it's hard to shake the feeling that even though employees are more satisfied and productive, there's something unsettling if they end up footing the bill for this innovation. 

(See also Forget Bring Your Own Device - Try Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled.)

It's not an idle question: A recent Gartner survey of CIOs found that 38% said their companies planned stop providing employees with devices by 2016. Gartner also expects that nearly 50% of employers will demand employees provide their own devices for work purposes - out of pocket - by 2017.

Companies are increasingly willing to explore BYOD policies - but it seems that the reasons may not be entirely altruistic. Letting employees use the tools they prefer is clearly a good idea, but making them pay for the privilege doesn't seem right. 

Despite Google Android's long market-share rise against Apple iOS, developers continued to stick with iOS as their first deployment target. While Android offered superior volume, that volume was fragmented between different versions of the OS and disparate hardware. Meanwhile, Apple offered better development tools plus clearer, more profitable revenue options. Even open-source developers tended to congregate on highly proprietary iOS.

Something changed in 2012, however, and Android-related open-source development exploded.

This makes sense, given the target audience for mobile applications: consumers. Even though open source now permeates server-side computing, and drives industry trends like cloud computing and Big Data, it has had a negligible impact on the desktop, where mainstream users don't want access to source code and simply want polished products that work. Hence, despite the impressive efforts to clone Microsoft Office with OpenOffice and now LibreOffice, the world still happily gives Microsoft billions of dollars of Office profit each quarter. 

It's easier to stay on that beaten path.

Hence, while I don't expect open-source developer affinity for Android to squash iOS anytime soon, it's still a troubling sign for Apple. Even on the desktop, many mainstream applications are open source, including Adium (IM client for the Mac), VLC Media Player, Handbrake, and more. And if Android is the place open-source developers target for their innovations, we're likely to see the next Big Data-like trend emerge on Android, not on iOS, just as Linux is the home of cloud computing and Big Data on the server.

Open-source developers matter. And, apparently, they matter most to Android. 

What has Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood and his team been up to since selling the email-app maker to Dropbox for a reported $100 million in March?

Mostly working on new versions of the product - like an iPad version of the app, which is coming out Thursday morning on Apple's App Store.

Like the original iPhone version, which attracted a million users at breakneck speed, Mailbox for iPad lets you swipe messages off to the right or left to handle them. A short swipe to the right archives them, while a long swipe deletes them; a short swipe to the left "snoozes" messages for later reading, while a long swipe puts them in folders based on actions: "to read," "to buy," or "to watch."

Mailbox for iPad doesn't change that basic concept for email handling, but it does add a column to let you read messages alongside a list of messages in your inbox.

Resisting Design Temptation

ReadWrite sat down recently with Underwood to talk about the challenges of rethinking an app originally meant for smartphones for tablets. Underwood, a former designer at Ideo, had lots of thoughts.

"[Tablets] are these weird hybrid devices that sit in between," said Underwood. "They're part luxury mobile phone, and they're part makeshift desktop experience."

That made it harder, not easier, he said.

"Constraint is the friend of design," Underwood said. "It's easier for us to create a simple mail experience [for the phone]. We have to resist the temptation to take all these pixels and put in all these bells and whistles."

That echoes comments recently made by Luke Wroblewski, creator of a polling app called Polar. For Polar's Web version, Wroblewski left the center of the screen largely blank, rather than alter the app's core function—because filling up pixels didn't add to the user's experience.

Dropbox founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi have given the Mailbox team permission to ignore suggestions from their new colleagues for cool new features, Underwood said. When Underwood showed Houston and Ferdowsi mockups of all the design suggestions and asked what the Mailbox team should work on, Houston told him, "That's something you have to answer. What's best for the customer?"

Putting Gmail On Notice

What would be really exciting, though, is an Android version. Underwood acknowledged that Mailbox was working on Android next, but didn't reveal any specific plans for the product.

(See also How Google Is Wooing Developers To Make Apps For Android First.)

Anyone familiar with Android, though, can see clearly where Mailbox is headed - and why it would be a killer app, challenging Google's Gmail on its own turf.

That's because Android's notification system is superior to the notification functions built into Apple's iOS mobile operating system in a key way: Developers, if they choose, can add functional features to the notifications that drop down on the screen, allowing users to take actions without having to launch into the app.

For Mailbox, that would likely mean that its swipe-right-or-left convention for email handling could be ported into notifications, allowing users to swiftly handle emails as they come in without leaving the task they're working on. (I suggested this to Underwood, but he declined to comment on the notion.)

Dealing with email purely through notifications is not something that Mailbox could do today on Apple's iPhone or iPad. But it's such a logical extension of the email app's design brilliance, it's unimaginable that Underwood and team aren't thinking about it.

Photo by TechCrunch

This post is the second in the ReadWrite series Making Android Pay, in which we explore the opportunities and challenges mobile developers face trying to make money from Android apps.

How do you get mobile developers to love you? Give them free tools and pad their wallets. 

One of the big themes for Google last week at its I/O developers conference was helping developers make more money creating apps for Android. That included a variety of tools to help them engage with their users and process transactions as well as optimization tips to monetize Android.

Monetization is a big challenge for Android developers. Developers who make Android apps earn a fraction of what they make from Apple's iOS, which paid developers nearly $1 billion alone in January this year and $8 billion total as of February. Android developers can only dream of such riches. 

(See also How Google Is Wooing Developers to Make Apps For Android First.)

Yet there is hope. Google's VP of Android product management Hugo Barra told I/O attendees last week that Google had paid more to Android developers in the past 4 months than the previous 12 months before that combined. This increase has been driven by a renewed focus by Google to give developers more tools to make money, culminating in a slurry of announcements to the Google Play Developer Console last week.

"Everything from the analytics integration we have shown to you could imagine other things that Google could put together," said Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play in an interview with ReadWrite.

Powers continued:

I think that is sort of the next thing. They want to have deeper insights. They want to know exactly what they should work on. And I think [with] the things that we are doing we can continue enhancing them. Developers always want more stuff. They are always really hungry and we are hearing from more and more developers. They are saying they want to invest more because you [Google] give us such great data we are able to use that to understand our users better and invest more in the Android platform.

New Tools In The Google Play Developer Console

Specifically, Google issued six new features to Google Play to help Android developers optimize towards monetization:

1. App translation service: The ability to translate an app into a different language directly from Google Play Developer Console. This is an agency approach (human, not machine) that Google purposefully chose because it found the human touch of translations provided better results on the local level.
2. Revenue graphs: A new tab in the Developer Console gives developers a summary of their app global app revenue over time.
3. Alpha and beta testing and staged rollouts: Perhaps the biggest announcement for Android developers last week, beta and staged rollouts are unique to Android. This should encourage developers to take bigger risks knowing that they will not be rolling out a bug-laden app to 100% of its users.
4. Optimization tips: Based on analytics from Google Play, optimization tips will point developers towards market segments that could benefit them, like launching in a new country or developing specifically for tablets, which make 1.7-times more revenue per user than do Android smartphones.
5. Google Analytics: Mobile data on usage, time spent and a variety of cohorts as Google Analytics for Mobile is integrated straight into the Developer Console.
6. Referral tracking: Where are your installs coming from? Did getting written about by the major tech publications give you a bump? How about that in-app advertising? Referral tracking will tell you.

More Ways To Pay: Simplifying The Billing Infrastructure

Overlooked in the improvements made to the Google Play Developer Console were several infrastructure tweaks to the way Google processes payments for developers. The purchase flow (from app discovery to payment) has been simplified with the new user interface in Google Play, making it easier for users to pay in a variety of ways. Those include expanded gift cards and pre-paid options (which Google announced at I/O 2012 and has been improving on ever since). 

Google is working hard to get Android users to overcome their relative reluctance to paid purchases by promoting gift cards and other pre-paid mechanisms - like Google Play promotional credits with mobile device purchases. While Google acknowledged at I/O that "the barriers to success for a paid title is very high," making a purchase with a free credit seems to help encourage users to keep buying even when the credits run out. 

(See also Google Is Making Life Easier For Android Developers.)

The company is also boosting options for direct-carrier billing in markets around the world. One reason for the success of Apple's App Store is that the company already has every user's credit card number. Because Google doesn't make or sell Android devices, it may not necessarily have that information. In developing markets, especially, credit cards are either non-existent or not popular. Direct-carrier billing gives Google a popular, easy-to-use payment method almost everywhere. About 50% of Android's daily active users now have access to direct-carrier billing, the company said.

"We went from having 20 countries or so that could pay to what is it? 130 or so," Powers said. "So that is amazing. I think with a lot of developers they are only thinking about people in their own countries but it turns out that there are billions of people in the world... So helping developers reach into new markets really helps there too."

From a developer's perspective, of course, it doesn't really matter what option a user pays with - as long as they pay. Google takes care of the entire payments infrastructure on the backend - the developer doesn't even need to know what option was used. The ongoing problem, of course, is that even with the improvements, Google Play still can't match the ease of use of the App Store, which licenses Amazon's 1-Click payment patent. Even as Android eclipses Apple's iOS in many ways, playing catch-up in this area is likely to be an ongoing effort for Google.

Top image by Nick Statt: Google's Android head Sundar Pichai announces 900 million Android installations at I/O 2013.

Smartphone manufacturer HTC is in disarray. According to a report from The Verge, the company is hemorrhaging executives from its Seattle-based office amid poor sales, internal turmoil and controversy. Within the last several months, HTC has lost its chief produdct officer Kouji Kodera, VP of global communications Jason Gordon and product strategy manager Eric Lin among several others. 

In a classic "the sky is falling" scenario, everybody is blaming everybody else. Many in HTC blame Facebook for the problems selling the HTC First - "The Facebook Phone" - while others blame erratic snap decisions from CEO and co-founder Peter Chou. 

To all my friends still at @htc - just quit. leave now. it’s tough to do, but you’ll be so much happier, I swear.

— eric L (@ericlin) May 20, 2013

See Also:

• HTC's Financial Woes Put Pressure On Microsoft & Facebook
• HTC's New Smartphones Are Great - Let's Hope The Company Survives
• HTC's Problems Go Way Beyond Marketing
• HTC Earnings Reveal New Foray Into Emerging Markets

The debate about app design largely centers around screen size.

What if designers worried about digit size instead?

Luke Wroblewski, a respected designer who sold a company to Twitter and more recently founded Polar, an app maker, thinks it's time to reconsider mobile design principles. Instead of worrying about questions like whether to upsize smartphone apps for tablets, designers should start by asking how their users will physically interact with their devices when using an app.

The technical term for this is input type—keyboard versus touchscreen, one-handed or two-handed interactions, and the like. This requires designers to think about how a device is held, which fingers are used, and how the app in question can optimize the experience for users' dexterity. 

The Beginning: Start With Responsive Design

For a smartphone, the primary input type has become a single hand with a single finger, typically the thumb. For tablets, it's two hands with two inputs, typically both thumbs. And for desktops, it's still restricted largely to the mouse, trackpad, and keyboard, but can branch out in rare circumstances, in the case of devices like the Chromebook Pixel or Microsoft Surface to touchscreen inputs as well. 

Wroblewski's Polar makes an iOS app that lets users poll friends on any topic and then build communities around these topics. Just last week, Polar launched a desktop Web client that is designed to match not just the look but the functionality of the mobile app versions and the input types taken into account with each one. As you change the size of your window, the app morphs from the desktop version to the tablet/touchscreen computer version, and then down to its smartphone version.

If you resize ReadWrite in a browser window, you'll see a similar transformation. This is known as responsive design, and it's an increasingly popular approach to Web design. Last week, at its I/O conference, Google unveiled tools that promise to make it much easier to build responsive websites.

That way, Polar not only looks the same in-app for the iPhone and iPad as it does on the mobile Web, but it adapts for pretty much every platform for optimal use. It's not about scaling the layout of interface objects up and down; it's about scaling the whole experience up or down. 

Next: Think About How We Hold Our Devices

But responsive design has largely been limited to these screen-size adjustments. Input type may be an even more important concept because it factors in both the physical limitations of the device from a display and functionality standpoint as well as how those limitations translate to our physical interactions with the devices. 

Wroblewski detailed the input-type approach to design in a blog post on May 13 that covered the app's new Web client, which lets users quickly scroll through and vote on topic pages related to everything from Star Wars and Game of Thrones to Web design and photography.

"Topic pages on Polar were designed to adapt to not only different screen sizes but to different input types as well," Wroblewski writes. "The end result is a Web interface that aims to fit into the reality of Web use today. In particular, the human ergonomics of how people interact with different devices ..."

It turns out that thinking about ergonomics on mobile devices and adapting design accordingly is not a widely used approach. Steven Hoober, who Wroblewski cites as his primary source for input-type research, published a report earlier this year on UXmatters, "How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?" that collected two months of observations on how more than 1,300 people used their mobile devices. 

Hoober's report aimed to dispel the myth that designers should follow a "best practices" approach to app design that relies on assumptions that cast the widest net. Instead, Hoober advises that the approach should be far more customized, taking into account the constantly changing nature of mobile use that is contingent on factors like device type and screen size as well as physical location, be it standing or sitting on a bus or in a cafe. 

"The way in which users hold their phone is not a static state," Hoober writes. "Users change the way they’re holding their phone very often—sometimes every few seconds."

While Hoober did verify the assumption that majority of smartphone use is done one-handed with the thumb—49% of the time—he also discovered that designing from that standpoint alone could lead users to alter their behavior and thus deemphasize the very reasons underlying the approach.

"What if a user sees buttons at the top, so switches to cradling his phone to more easily reach all functionality on the screen—or just prefers holding it that way all the time?" he explains.  

Comfort-First Approach

Wroblewski stresses that Polar was designed primarily to be "comfortable to use," incorporating the ideas behind Hoober's findings into the app's design to cover the best input types for every device.  

For instance, Polar's smartphone app contains no left-hand column because users wouldn't typically be able to access it comfortably using one hand and one finger. It does support keyboard use in the event someone is using a large-screen phone-tablet hybrid, also known as a phablet, that's more typically held with two hands.

By contrast, when using Polar on a full tablet, a browsing column is present to take advantage of two-handed use. That's placed strategically on the left edge, with voting options on the right to take advantage of quick thumb access to the left and right sides of the screen. 

The desktop version of Polar mostly matches the mobile app experience. The main difference: When Polar detects a large enough screen, it adds keyboard support.

This type of comfort-first approach has its downsides.

"Looking at the Polar interface on a laptop can be a bit disconcerting because we’ve essentially left the middle of the page 'blank,'" Wroblewski says. This runs contrary to the fill-'et-up instincts of most Web designers, but it's the only way Polar could create something that easily scales down both aesthetically and functionally from a 27-inch monitor to a 4-inch smartphone screen. 

While these methods are very much experimental, they showcase the implementation of a much more sophisticated approach for thinking about mobile app design. We know that the diversity of devices is only increasing. With responsive design, we've scrapped a one-size-fits-all approach to screen size. The next step is to discard one-swipe-fits-all thinking about how we interact with those screens.

Photo by Intel Free Press

This post is the first in the ReadWrite series Making Android Pay, in which we'll explore the opportunities and challenges mobile developers face in trying to make money from Android apps.

In December 2011, Google chairman Eric Schmidt predicted that mobile developers would be building apps for Android first instead of iOS by the middle of 2012. That obviously hasn’t happened. But Google has doubled down on its push for more Android-first apps, largely by making it easier for developers to make money from them.

"It has taken a long time, it is slower than we like, but we are getting there,” Ibrahim Elbouchikhi, a product manager for Google Play Commerce, said during Google I/O last week. 

Up to now, the main sticking point for many app creators has been simple: money. Make that, at least for most Android developers, the lack thereof. Until recently, Google just didn't offer tools that would let developers fully exploit the global Android ecosystem for their own financial advantage.

Developers: Show Us The Money

There's also the fact that, until Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and 4.1 Jelly Bean, Android apps just weren't as good as iOS counterparts. Google first had to give Android feature parity with the iPhone and iPad before it could begin optimizing the ecosystem for money-making.

"Last year was sort of about reaching feature parity with, let’s say, other competitive platforms, where this year it has been all about going up to the next level. Innovating, doing things that are different," Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play, said in an interview with ReadWrite. "Like now we have the beta testing feature unique to our platform and other sources of analytics coming together."

Google VP of Android Hugo Barra announces new tools at I/O 2013

Such bullishness hasn't yet dispelled doubts remain even among some of Android’s stoutest supporters, including some developers at I/O last week. One grilled Elbouchikhi about how much he could expect to make from a bona fide hit app. There's no easy answer to that question — let's just say that lots of variables are involved in that particular equation — but it's also a sign of just how heavily that question weighs on the minds of developers.

In this series, we'll take a close look at the new tools Google has rolled out to lure developers away from Apple and get them to develop for Android first. Let's just say that the thickness of developer wallets seems to be front and center in Google's thinking.

Aww, What A Cute Widdle Android Baby

Google still thinks of Android as a very young, even though it has been on the market for nearly five years and in development since 2005. "I feel like Android is a baby," said David Burke, engineering director for Android at an I/O session. "I think there is so much more we can do."

If Android itself is a baby, that makes the developer tools and monetization techniques Google has been pushing nearly newborn. The Google Play Developer Console — a suite of tools for publishing and distributing Android apps — was announced at I/O 2012. and the company has only been working on solving developers' biggest issues for about a year and a half.

Google realizes it still has developer issues with Android, from app discovery to user retention to the fundamental act of getting developers paid. But if we learned anything at I/O last week, it is that Google is aware of these problems and working hard to address them. In fact, almost every Android announcement at I/O last week was aimed at boosting Android's standing among developers by addressing its perceived shortcomings vis-a-vis iOS. 

Will that make Android No. 1 in the hearts of mobile developers? We'll see.

"We are still very new. My mother still hasn’t figured out why people would want to buy apps. But most people have. I think there are a lot more business models that are going to develop in the future," Powers said.

What will it take for you to build for Android first? Let us know in the comments. 

Next: New tools in Google Play for getting you paid.

Top image: The Google Android team onstage for a fireside chat at I/O 2013. All photos by Nick Statt for ReadWrite

Browser maker Opera just released a new version for Android with a slew of new features, an upgraded design and better performance. And, for the first time for Opera, it is not running on its own Presto rendering engine.

Opera for Android is running WebKit.

In February, Opera said that it was ditching Presto in favor of WebKit, the open source browser engine that powers the likes of Apple's Safari browser and Google Chrome. The release of the new Opera for Android is the first "final" (gold version, not in a beta stage) release of Opera running WebKit, according to Falguni Bhuta from the Opera communications team.

Opera's decision caused a bit of a hullabaloo among the browser community. Mozilla's Robert O’Callahan said at the time that it was, "a sad day for the Web." O'Callahan and other browser enthusiasts lamented the loss of Presto, as it was one of only a small handful of browser rendering engines available to developers. Including WebKit, the others are Mozilla's Gecko and Microsoft's Trident for Internet Explorer.

New Features Come To Opera

Rounding up the new features for Opera, users will find some interesting capabilities:

Discover - A new feature to Opera for Android, "Discover" helps users find new articles with just a swipe from the homescreen. Opera has selected relevant global and regional news sources to give users a way to find what it going on around them.

Off-Road mode - Opera Mini has long been known for its compression technology that helps users minimize how much cellular data their browser is using. This often helps when you are having trouble getting a data connection or are roaming and is new to the full Android version of Opera. 

Combined address and search bar - Basically, Opera just created its own "omnibox" that allows you to type in website URLs or search from the same field.

Tabbed browsing - Not specifically new in the final Opera for Android version, but the UI has changed a bit from the last version and offers private browsing.

History - Easier to find your browser history. Swipe to the right to access content from the left of the homescreen.

Save for later - Allows you to download a complete webpage so as to read it later or while offline. Goes well with the "Off-Road" mode when you just want to be able to load an article or a website for later review but know that you are not going to have access to cellular data or Wi-Fi. 

Customizable navigation bar - Top or bottom, put the navigation bar where you want it.

New Speed Dial - Opera's "Speed Dial" feature now syncs with bookmarks to provide easier access to frequently visited websites from Opera's homescreen.

The new version of Opera can be found for free in Google Play.

If you like using online tools to hunt and gather your food, take note: Seamless and GrubHub, two of the better-known players in the mobile food-delivery business, announced today that they will be merging their services.

GrubHub, which is privately owned, features the most restaurants of the two services, claiming 20,000 eateries in their online ordering network, compared to Seamless' 12,000. Seamless users, then, are going to get the better end of the deal right away, with the inclusion of GrubHub's additional dining options. GrubHub users should benefit from Seamless overall service, which is generally held in higher regard.

The consolidation might help both vendors overall, with one less mobile ordering service for restaurant owners to have to work with to get customer orders coming in.

This is a big bite of business: in 2012, the two organizations sent approximately $875 million in gross food sales to local takeout restaurants, resulting in combined revenue well in excess of $100 million, today's press release indicated.

No terms of the deal between privately held GrubHub and the public Seamless company were revealed, though Fortune Senior Editor Dan Primack tweeted this morning that "Seamless investors will hold majority stake in combined co w/ GrubHub."

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Meet Jolla, the smartphone that almost never came to be.

When Nokia decided to jump off its burning platform a few years ago and go with Windows Phone, there were no people more disappointed with the decision than the hundreds of engineers that had been working on the company’s own mobile operating system, MeeGo.

These were developers that had put in countless hours to make MeeGo the platform of the future and the initial results were intriguing. The Nokia N9 was a beautiful phone (its core design would eventually be the basis of the first Nokia Windows Phone, the Lumia 800) with interesting functionality that, at the time, bested Android in utility. When Nokia scrapped MeeGo, these developers were out of a job and, worse, had the rug pulled out from under a beloved project.

So, they banded together to keep the project going. And the result is Jolla, a smartphone from Finland running an operating system called Sailfish, born on the legacy of MeeGo.

What Is Jolla?

Pronounced “yo-la,” Jolla as a company is the continuation of the “Mer” project. The Mer project was initially a fork from the Linux-based MeeGo designed to bring as much of the old Maemo operating system (MeeGo was formed as a conglomeration between two operating systems, Maemo and Moblin) to Nokia’s hardware as possible. Mer was eventually suspended when most of the development resources started going to MeeGo.

When Nokia dropped support for MeeGo, the Mer project was resurrected. It was intended to provide a new environment for the many developers and engineers who had worked on the open-source project, from Nokia or elsewhere. MeeGo itself morphed when it was began being supported by the likes of the Linux Foundation (backed by Intel and Samsung among others) and became Tizen. 

These old Maemo engineers just won’t admit defeat to their original dream and just realize that MeeGo/Maemo is, for all intents and purposes, dead. So now we have Jolla and a prototype smartphone searching for an audience.

The Jolla Smartphone

The first Jolla smartphone is a 4.5-inch, dual-core, 4G LTE enabled device with 16GB of internal storage and a replaceable battery. It runs the gesture-based Sailfish OS which, presumably, will operate a lot like the old Nokia N9 based on MeeGo Harmattan. 

Jolla is now available for pre-order and will be shipped first to European countries. The price tag is a reasonable €399 and Jolla expects to begin shipping by the end of 2013. Basically, Jolla is now asking people to support the project through pre-orders in a very Kickstarter-like fashion, imploring the community to get behind the project, or “The Tribe,” as Jolla co-founder Marc Dillon describes it. 

Based on Linux, Sailfish OS will be compliant with Android apps. This will allow Sailfish OS developers (the very small handful that currently exist) to port Android apps to Jolla, much in the same way that BlackBerry developers can port Android package files (APKs) to BlackBerry 10. 

The Drawback Of Open Source Democratization

Developers often complain that Android is a fragmented ecosystem. Too many different CPUs on different screen sizes from different manufacturers to make sense of it all. Yet, if you compare Android to what happened to the MeeGo community, Google’s mobile operating system seems tame.

Android always had a champion in Google to keep it on point. This contrasts with the Maemo/Moblin/MeeGo/Tizen/Jolla community that has had so many competing interests and egos that development has never really produced anything tangible other than a few interesting prototypes (like the Nokia N9 and now Jolla).

The Jolla group is essentially the most disillusioned of them all. Some have also called them the most creative and innovative while also being the most stubborn and arrogant. And now this team, finally, has what it wants – its own company and smartphone.

Since at least the 1990s, when personal computers first became commonplace, public policy experts have worried the ill effects of a Digital Divide. That is, a learning, socialization and economic gap across socio-economic status, race and gender caused by unequal access to computing resources.

No need. The Digital Divide has now been bridged by smartphones - the most advanced personal computing devices ever. While personal computers were disproportionally used by the rich, the white and the male, smartphones are more likely to be used by Blacks and Hispanics than Whites, and by girls as equally as boys.

Whites Trail In Smartphone Ownership

According to a Pew research survey conducted last year, 49% of Hispanics and 47% of Blacks own a smartphone, compared to only 42% of Whites. The survey also revealed than men and women were about evenly split (46% to 45%, respectively) in smartphone ownership, as were suburban and urban residents (49% to 48%, respectively).

Only The Income Gap Remains

Mobile computing is a fast-moving revolution that is spreading online access to all who welcome it. In fact, the majority of adult Americans and more than a third of teens now own a smartphone. That said, household income remains a differentiator - there is still a clear gap in smartphone ownership between rich and poor.

Expect this too to disappear very soon as prices continue to fall.

Android smartphones and the latest Nokia Asha devices, for example, are available for less than $100 (no contract needed) all around the world. In the U.S., many smartphones now come free with a carrier voice and data plan. Prices for devices and services will almost certainly continue to drop.

In an interview with Bloomberg last month, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen noted that "$50 Android smartphones" would be available this year.  Carriers that demand fees that millions cannot afford are likely to be routed around - by Google fiber as likely as legislation. Fewer and fewer people, particularly in the United States and other rich countries, will be denied always-on, any-place connectivity to the global Web.

The Smartphone Is The Computer

Naysayers like to retort that smartphones don't fully erase the Digital Divide because, even more than tablets,they are primarily "consumption" devices. While "real" computers, the argument goes, can be used to create things and do real work, smartphones are all about downloading content and chatting on Facebook. 

Work is changing, however, in many cases to take advantage of the spread of smartphones.  Such changes may, in fact, disproportionately favor minorities. A separate Pew study last year revealed that Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to use their mobile devices for a wider range of activities than do Whites. 

(See also Teenagers & Smartphones: How They're Already Changing The World.)

Further, some have called the notion that smartphones are not designed for "real work" an elitist view: 

To discount identity performance, socialization and other activities on social media as not productive, not educational, not meaningful, pure entertainment and a waste of time offensively reduces less privileged folks as “an other,” less worthy and less human.

Productivity Divide?

If smartphones connect an increasing number of Americans to knowledge resources, job opportunities and cultural amenities, are they  delivering a clear and calculable economic benefit equivalent to that provided by PCs? 

It seems that economic analysis has simply not yet caught up with the impact smartphones are having on work and the economy. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that already today's smartphones possess the computing power of a "desktop" in 2005 and that "at heart [smartphones] are like all computers before them. They are efficiency engines, a means of saving time, bridging distance, reducing cost."

Nonetheless, the Journal acknowledges that proving smartphones' aggregate economic value remains difficult: 

Yet there's something bizarre going on. Even as an estimated 130 million smartphones roam the U.S. streets, economists can't quite find them.

Still, as the Journal also states: "Can you find an area of life and business not being affected by the devices?" 

Global Phenomenon

The situation may be even clearer overseas. Already, 89% of the developing world has a mobile device. It's a solid assumption that these mobile phone users will soon transition to smartphones. Indeed, smartphone sales now eclipse traditional mobile phone sales. According to the International Telecommunication Union, "mobile broadband" subscriptions have grown from 278 million in 2007 - when the iPhone was first introduced - to 2.1 billion this year.

These numbers continue to grow - and researchers say the trend is already making a big difference:

• Bridging The Digital Divide In Developing Nations Through Mobile Phone Transaction Systems - University of West Georgia
• Mobile Finance Options Changing Lives In Developing Countries - Bankless Times
• Mobile Technology's Role In Combating Global Poverty And Enabling Entrepreneurship - Brookings Institution
• Alleviating Poverty: Mobile Communications, Microfinance And Small Business Development Around The World - Brookings Institution

As smartphones continue to spread to every demographic group in every corner of the world, there's just no more room for the Digital Divide. That's a big deal, and likely to bring significant economic, social and cultural effects over the coming months, years and decades.

(See also The Numbers Are Clear: Mobile is Taking Over the World.) 

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

I'm a devoted Pathhole—a hardcore user of mobile social network Path. For all that I make fun of Path's twee, artisanal, and bespoke nature—on a recent visit to its lovely office in San Francisco, I was tempted to ask CEO Dave Morin if his software engineers were cruelty-free—I have a soft spot for the service that brings me updates from a small circle of friends, which I then festoon with emoticons.

If anything might convert me into a Glasshole, the name I've adopted for the ostentatious neophiles who have started sporting Glass, Google's Internet-enabled camera-and-display headset, it might well be Path.

Path CTO Nathan Folkman demonstrates Google Glass.

Morin and Path CTO Nathan Folkman recently showed me a version of Path for Google Glass. (Google recently signaled that Path would be one of the first Glass apps available.) It turns out that two key features of Path make it perfectly suited for Glass—in a way that larger social networks like Google+ and Facebook may never catch up to.

I've formed this opinion based on brief experiences with both Glass and the Glass version of Path, so take them with a grain of salt. But even those glimpses suggest an uncanny fit between software and hardware.

Small Screen, Meet Tight Friends

The first advantage Path has is its insistence that you limit your friends to a tight list of 150. I find this kind of in-or-out listmaking agonizing. It reminds me of when my husband and I invited people to our wedding reception, which, now that I think about it, had a headcount of about 150. But now that I've put in the work, I find my Path friends really are the ones I like to hear from frequently throughout the day.

Contrast that to Google's built-in Glass sharing options, which require you to go to a website to set up a limited number of contacts in advance. 

This Android tablet is mirroring what Path CTO Nathan Folkman sees on his Google Glass heads-up display.

The second is Path's stripped-down simplicity. Originally designed for mobile, it's actually even more effective on Glass. In my experience, people typically share short updates about where they are or what they're doing—things that are too mundane for Twitter, too intimate for Facebook. In form, tone, and length, they're just right for Glass's screen, floating just above your right eye.

Google+ updates, which you can of course get on Glass, are often too long for the Glass interface. And the thought of getting my Facebook News Feed—an option now that Facebook has a Glass app—through Glass seems overwhelming.

But Where Is The Money?

There are perpetual questions about how Path will find enough users and make money. Glass will not answer those. Folkman, Path's CTO, estimates that some 300 Glass testers have downloaded the Glass version of Path. (Google hasn't given out numbers, but that's likely a large portion of the Glass population.)

For what it's worth, Morin tells me the company has been making progress on the business front. It has likely crossed 13 million registered users, and its main source of income—charging users for custom icons they can include in messages—has drawn both derision and dollars. Little-noticed deals with the likes of Sprint and Kyocera suggest that the company may find ways of making money from partnerships with wireless carriers and handset makers, too.

An update from a friend's check-in at Google I/O displays on Path CTO Nathan Folkman's Glass display.

Folkman says the Glass effort, on which he's spent about 20 percent of his time recently, has helped him think about constructing an application programming interface for partners, and also designing Path notifications for smart watches and other lightweight, small-screen devices.

So if we are at the brink of a revolution in mobile computing where we trade smartphones for wearable devices, Path's experimentation may pay off—if not for the San Francisco-based startup, then for others who take careful note of its innovations.

Photo by Owen Thomas for ReadWrite

The universe of apps for Google Glass, initially limited to the New York Times and the social network Path, is expanding rapidly. Google on Thursday announced several more entries to its Glassware stable: Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Tumblr, CNN news updates, Elle fashion features and a Glass-only game called Ice Breaker.

Look for more Glass apps to surface as the augmented reality goggles move closer to a public rollout later this year.