Android is truly a worldwide platform. If you are a developer trying to make money with Android apps, that global presence could be your biggest asset - or a tremendous headache.

The smartphone installed base in the United States is near 224 million, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry. Android's slice of U.S. smartphones, depending on what stats you trust, lies somewhere between 40% - 50%, or about 90 -110 million devices. Throughout the world, Android devices have been activated 900 million times, according to Google's Android head Sundar Pichai, speaking at the Google I/O developers conference keynote address earlier this month. 

It's Not About The U.S.

Hence, if your Android development and distribution strategy is centered in the United States, you are leaving out most of your potential customers.

Google realizes this and has worked to give Android developers more tools and tips to be able to hit the international market. “One thing we heard very clearly from Android developers was that they want to take advantage of the international footprint,” said Purnima Kochikar, director of Google Play apps and games, in an interview with ReadWrite.

When Google updated its developer tools in its Google Play Developer Console at Google I/O, it gave particular weight to international distribution. Included was the ability to translate your app to a variety of languages, analytics by region and optimization tips based on that data. For instance, Google might recognize that your app is doing well in Central America and recommend that you translate it into Spanish.

The Android Google Play app store is now available in 134 countries where Google can process payments. Kochikar said that Google wants to provide the type of infrastructure for Android app development where it becomes an egalitarian platform where, “with one click you can present your app to the entire world.” 

Think Globally, Act Locally

Mobile developers often have a "rip it and ship it" type of mentality. Get the app done, make sure it works and get it out the door. That type of mentality can work for some (Facebook, for instance), but loses the nuance and thoughtfulness that can be the difference between just another app and a successful mobile business.

Different countries have different behaviors when it comes to smartphone behavior. For instance, did you know countries around the equator are really, really big into gaming? Or that the Japanese really like productivity apps (and karaoke)? “Ecosystems are built locally,” Kochikar said. “The ecosystem is locally relevant content distributed on a global scale.”

Flurry has highlighted some of the differences in behavior in varying geographical regions. It separates the world into six categories, based on 20,000 apps in the 30 heaviest app-using countries:

1. Mobile Pioneers (U.S, United Kingdom, Singapore etc.) with the highest app usage
2. Connected Asia (Hong Kong, South Korea)
3. China
4. Japan
5. Equatorial Pacific (Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam etc.)
6. Lumbering Giants - countries with the potential to be heavy mobile users but for one reason or another have not kept pace with mobile adoption in other countries (Brazil, France, Russia, Spain, Turkey etc.)

Be Local And Contextually Relevant

Flurry's analysis doesn't dig very deep, but it reveals some interesting trends. When it comes to games, the Equatorial Pacific Region leads in terms of adoption rate, while the Japanese tend not to be big gamers. 

The Chinese and Lumbering Giant countries tend to be heavy into entertainment apps. Sometimes, smartphones and tablets are the only place where users in those countries can get foreign entertainment or a wide selection of music.

The idea is to make your app contextually relevant to the locations where it is available. That is why Google chose an agency-based (human, not machine) model for its new app translation service in the Google Play Developer Console. It is also why Google has redone the backend payment system for Google Play to allow for direct-carrier billing and gift cards along with the standard credit card payments. Different countries have different standards of payment and Google is trying to accomodate that with as little pain to the app publisher as possible.

"If you think about where the next million apps are coming from, they are probably not going to be made in the U.S. They are probably going to be made by developers in Brazil, Russia, India et cetera," said Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play. "Those folks may have a very different set of users but some of them may go global. So having to understand what is happening globally is really important."

See also:

• 5 Tips To Topping The Charts On Google Play
• Checking Out The New Tools In Google Play
• How Google Is Wooing Developers To Make Apps For Android First
• Google Is Making Life Easier For Android Developers

Top image courtesy Flurry.

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.

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.

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

Instead of focusing on a new version of Android specifically to kick off the keynote at Google I/O this morning, Google focused on new tools and services that will make developers' lives easier. Google VP of Android product management Hugo Barra announced a variety of new services for Google Play, location and gaming. 

Android Studio

The biggest new feature for developers is Android Studio, a dedicated Google-made integrated development environment (IDE) custom-made to simplify the process of building, testing and deploying Android apps. In particular, with Studio, Google aims to solve one of the longest running and bigger problem for Android developers: fragmentation.

Developers often cite the variety of screen sizes and different Android versions as one of their biggest headaches. With Android Studio, developers can render their apps in real time across any type of screen size that Android supports. Studio can also help translate apps into different languages straight from the console.

Maps & Location

Google also announced new ways for developers to tap features of Google Maps in their apps. The new Google Maps API version 2 aims to make it easier for developers to add Google Maps straight into their apps while also improving the speed with which maps render.

Google said it's also been working to improve the battery drain that turning on smartphone location services can cause. The company claimed that Android location services will use less than 1% of a device's battery per hour. If that holds up in the real world, it would represent a major improvement over the current location performance on Android.

Google also announced three new application programming interfaces —i.e., hooks for developers to use Google services in their apps — for Android location:

• Fused Location Provider -- location is faster to acquire, more accurate, low power location mode that uses less than 1% of battery per hour.
• Geofencing -- Can have up to 100 geofences active per app. 
• Activity Recognition -- Help users track their physical activity. Machine learning classifiers to help people "quantify" themselves. 

Google Cloud Messaging

Google said its Cloud Messaging service is delivering 200,000 push messages every second. That is 17 billion messages a day. Google claims to have 60 milliseconds latency, half of what it was when Cloud Messaging was announced last year.

Among the new features in Google Cloud Messaging are Persistent Connection and Upstream Messaging (from the app to your server, GCM does all the client side functions for you). Cloud Messaging will also be able to synchronize notifications between Android devices so you can send a message to a user's tablet or Android smartphone in one shot. 

Gaming

Google is putting a major focus on Android games at I/O this week and announced a variety of new APIs for Android games. None of these are especially groundbreaking, although they really make Android gaming perform a lot like Apple's iOS Game Center.

• Cloud Save: The ability to save game play to the cloud and play among multiple devices. 
• Achievements: The ability to earn badges based on performance.
• Leaderboards: The ability to have a leader board among your friends on a specific app. Instead of having to raise the global rankings, play against your friends.

The one mild stroke of genius here is that Google is rolling these APIs to both iOS and the Web, meaning that it can extend its gaming experience outside of Android. 

Google Play Developer Console

The Google Play Developer Console was announced at I/O 2012. The goal is to help developers manage and monetize their apps. Five new features were announced for the developer console:

• Optimization Tips: Analyzes app and how it is doing in the Play Store and gives you tips to get it to perform better.
• App Translation Service: Allows you to get professional translations from the developer console. Russian!
• Usage Metrics: Google analytics metrics directly in the Google Play Developer Console.
• Revenue Graphs: Simple tool as a tab in the dev console to see how much money you are making.
• Beta testing and staged rollouts: Three tabs, alpha testing, beta testing and production. Can use Google+ and Communities to get beta testers. Can manage the rollout in one go. That is huge so you don't push out bugs to thousands or millions of users.

The biggest announcement here is the beta testing and staged rollouts. This is something that iOS developers have been asking from Apple for a while.

What are the biggest new features in building for Android? What are you most excited by? Is it the Android Studio that helps you render from a dedicated IDE? Or the beta testing and stage rollouts? Let us know in the comments. 

Lead image by Nick Statt for ReadWrite

Developers tend to be a whiny lot. 

Yet, it can be hard to keep track of the ever-evolving Android platform. Since 2008, there have been 39 updates to Android among nine major system versions. From Cupcake version 1.5 to Jelly bean version 4.2.2, there have been thousands of design changes, feature additions, security updates and general improvements to Android. Only the most dedicated of developers can tell you precisely what is different in each version of Android. Add all of the major and minor tweaks Google has added to Android with devices from the likes of Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG and others and it becomes a complicated environment in which to build an app.

Boston-based mobile cloud services company Kinvey understands developers’ pain. It has created a handy infographic that maps the major changes to Android from inception to the latest build and even speculates on what might be coming next with the so-called Android 5.0, Key Lime Pie, which Google will likely announce at its I/O developers conference in May. Some highlights:

Android 1.0 – Inception

• Google Maps, Search & Talk
• Camera Support
• Custom notifications and wallpapers

• Widget support
• Copy & paste in the browser
• Auto-rotate

• Quick search box
• New framework APIs
• Text-to-speech engine

• Turn-by-turn navigation
• Bluetooth 2.1
• Live wallpapers

• Wi-Fi hotspot functionality
• Adobe Flash support
• Dedicated shortcuts on the homescreen

Android 2.3 – Gingerbread

• Near Field Communications (NFC)
• Video chat in Google Talk
• Extra Large screen sizes supported (for Google TV)

• Dedicated tablet support
• Virtual and holographic user interface
• New Action Bar

• Google Chrome for Android browser
• Swipe to dismiss notifications
• Resizable Widgets

• Google Now
• Project Butter improves user experience
• Google Cloud Messaging

Check out the infographic from Kinvey below. What do you think has been the best improvement to Android since Cupcake? Let us know in the comments. 

(See also Facebook's Zuckerberg: We're Not Going To Build A Phone.) 

On Thursday, just two months later, Facebook is widely expected to announce an Android device in partnership with HTC at an event at its Menlo Park headquarters. The phone - yes, the Facebook phone - is expected to run a modified but not fully skinned version of Android, retooled to revolve around the little blue "f" that has come so far. At least that what the leaks seem to reveal.  If we're getting into semantics, you could say Facebook isn't building the Facebook phone - HTC is. 

So, How Did We Get Here?

Want to review the many times Zuck has denied rumors of an official Facebook phone? Here's a refresher:

November 3, 2010:

• "First of all, we're not a hardware company. Second of all, our goal is not to sell anything physical; our goal is to make it so that everything can be social."
• "It would be pretty silly for us to go after a strategy that focused on selling a small number of phones. We don't sell hardware. That's just not what we do." 

September 11th, 2012:

• “That’s always been the wrong strategy for us,” he explained. “It’s a juicy thing to say we’re building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us.”

January 30, 2013:

• "People keep on asking if we're going to build a phone," said Zuckerberg. "We're not going to build a phone."

In retrospect, it seems the denials around "building" a phone seems to have left the door open for hardware partners. It's not like we thought Hacker Way was going to turn into Foxconn or anything, but assuming Thursday's event turns out as expected, that Zuck sure is one literal fellow.

But What About The Other Four Facebook Phones?

The real funny thing? If Facebook launches a phone, it won't be the first Facebook phone at all - it'll be the fifth. 

Facebook Phones 1 and 2: Back in Februrary 2011 at Mobile World Congress, HTC unveiled a pair of phones with a curious twist: a physical button dedicated to launching the Android Facebook app. The HTC Status (a.k.a. the ChaCha) and the HTC Salsa were mid-range devices with largely unimpressive specs.

Facebook Phones 3 and 4: That April, a company called INQ announced the INQ Cloud Touch and the INQ Cloud Q - two semi-smartphones that would run a version of Android 2.2 interwoven with Facebook's Social Graph API. The Cloud Touch made it to shelves in the UK; INQ abandoned plans to manufacture the Cloud Q early in 2012.

Of all of the "Facebook phones" to date, the HTC Status enjoyed the most success, but that's not saying much. I reviewed it at the time - It was well built, with a funny little curve to the casing, social widgets everywhere and a tiny blue Facebook button on the bottom right. There was something likable about the Status - it was a playful little device, thoughtfully designed - but who was it for?

The Status went on sale - and then went on sale again - and ultimately just sort of faded away. Now you can get one for a penny on Amazon.

A New Mobile Era For Facebook?

But times have changed and the stakes have gotten a lot higher. After some major mobile fumbles (its slowness to the iPad, building in HTML5, etc.), Facebook now calls itself a mobile company, and really wants to mean it. 

In September of 2011, Facebook's Android app had 66 million monthly active users. By November 2012, that number had tripled. Facebook consumers one quarter of the total time people spend on mobile apps. In the fourth quarter of 2012, 23% of Facebook's total ad revenue was pumped into its coffers via mobile - up from 0%.

Facebook obviously gets the importance of mobile now. But it's still not clear why a new Facebook phone is a good idea. The company is as cozy as can be on Android and iOS already, and Facebook would be lucky to sell even "a small number" of these new phones, just as Zuck warned back in 2010. Even if the new Facebook software presented unique monetization opportunities, the revenue would barely be a drop in Facebook's ever-growing bucket.

So why bother? I guess we'll find out on Thursday. 

All photos by Taylor Hatmaker.

The booming mobile applications market is a hot topic right now at many a water cooler in Silicon Valley and beyond. I've toiled in the mobile market since 2007 and in those  years I've witnessed more than my fair share of changes - some entirely predictable - others not so much. Relying on the wisdom that comes with a decade-plus in the business, I'd like to offer a few educated guesses as to what's next in enterprise mobile apps.

A Mobile Crystal Ball

Here are seven predictions for the mobile apps market in the coming year:

1. Mobile Tools For Salespeople. Mobile devices are the business tool of choice for most salespeople. As a result, there will be even more new apps that cater to these often-mobile employees. Look for apps that allow salespeople to more effectively pitch prospective clients, make presentations to existing ones and update opportunities, all while they’re away from the office. 

2. Enterprise Platform Vendors Continue To Stumble. Enterprise software giants SAP and Oracle stumbled in 2012 with application-development platforms that were intimidating and offered limited cross-platform support. Expect the next few months to be no different: customers will continue to avoid single-vendor solutions in favor of a more open approach. In mobile, that means apps able to connect into heterogeneous environments will be clear winners.

3. iOS And Android Dominate. Last year marked the advent of BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone, two new competitors in the mobile operating system market. But both BlackBerry 10 and Microsoft’s Windows Phone may be too late to pose legitimate threats to Google and Apple's mobile operating systems. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are far more mature and entrenched platforms that offer developers a flexible framework. And they have proven security measures. They are simply too good for developers and users to ignore.

4. New Leaders For Mobile Projects. Sales-and-marketing department heads and business unit managers are mobile’s advocates within the enterprise. Increasingly, they hold the purse strings for new mobile initiatives. If and when these new initiatives spread across the enterprises, budgetary control may return to the information technology department. At least for now, any new mobile apps should be designed for the non-techie audience.

5. Security Remains A Bottleneck. Allowing employees to bring their own devices (BYOD) is a trend that will continue to gain strength in 2013. But security continues to be a serious concern. App makers that offer compelling security features in their products will find a receptive audience among enterprises transitioning to BYOD.

6. Employee Expectations For IT Service Continue To Rise. Employees want the gear they use at work to be as powerful and easy to use as the stuff they have at home. Enterprises that don’t offer employees decent tools they will be at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring and retaining talent. 

7. Mobile Security Vendors Will Overlap. Selecting a mobile device management (MDM) system was often the first step businesses took toward implementing a mobile strategy. MDM is becoming a commodity as app developers and platform providers incorporate it into their menu of services.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Virtual currency is nothing new in the app world. Many game developers already employ it within their own apps to make in-app purchases and upgrade to new features. Facebook also employs its own virtual currency, Facebook Credits, which can be used in apps (like buying new features in a Farmville-style game) or other features on the social platform. 

Developers that want to be able to use Amazon Coins for their titles in the Appstore need to have their apps submitted to Amazon by April 25. 

Amazon said that it will give away tens of millions of Amazon Coins to consumers upon launch. Users will be able to purchase more Coins through Amazon's purchasing system. 

Building An Economy

Amazon Coins is yet another avenue that the e-commerce company is moving horizontally through the app economy. The company continues to push out new developer tools and services (to varying degrees of adoption and success) over the last year to drum up more publisher interest in the Appstore. It released a maps plugin late in 2012 along with in-app purchasing from PCs and Web-based games, Game Circle and Connect and A/B testing. 

In many ways, Amazon’s expansion of its developer tools, monetization and feature functions is similar to what BlackBerry and Microsoft have tried to do with the BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone platforms. These three companies are chasing Apple and Google when it comes to the volume and quality of apps available in their app stores and are doing everything they can to get more publishers to their platforms. 

The Kindle Fire is the dominant Android tablet in the U.S. with near 33% of the market compared to Samsung Tabs/Notes and Nexus 7. Amazon has not released any specific sales numbers for the Fire series but corollary evidence from analytics services like Localytics shows that it is doing moderately well. 

Developers: are you going to employ Amazon Coins in your apps? What do you think of Amazon’s mobile developer services? Does it make you more interested in developing for the Kindle Fire? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy Shutterstock.

INTERESTING M&A. Twitter buys Crashlytics. This may signal Twitter pushing out its own mobile/devices SDK. techmeme.com/130128/p54#a13…

— Spencer Chen (@spencerchen) January 28, 2013

Was This A Man-quisition?

The service, which debuted in late 2011, has quickly become known as a useful tool for app developers looking for a streamlined method to find the root cause of product bugs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it could represent a major payday for co-founders Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang. It's not yet clear if Twitter is interested in the Crashlytics product line, or just its engineering talent in an acquihire.

"With us, developers gain instant visibility into the precise line of code that caused a crash, enabling them to more easily fix issues," Seibert and Chang wrote in their announcement Monday. "Since our iOS launch, we’ve had the privilege of working with thousands of incredible app developers, from those building independent passion-projects to many of the top iOS apps available today – Twitter, Vine, Yelp, Kayak, TaskRabbit, and Waze."

Now What?

Coming on the heels of the Vine acquisition, it's likely that this will be the newest addition to the Twitter family continuing to operate as a third-party service, post-purchase.

In their post, Seibert and Chang wrote "much will remain the same. Development of Crashlytics will continue unabated and we remain dedicated to working with all of our customers – current and new, big and small – to deliver the key app performance insights they need."

So why did Twitter make the deal? "It seems like a strategy to grow the mobile team," says Jad Meouchy, a mobile app developer in Los Angeles, and co-founder of Osurv, a custom mobile survey app. "It looks like a straight talent acquisition."  But Meouchy also calls Crashlytics a strong and mature mobile additive that gives Twitter "the people they need to start making their own mobile apps."

Spencer Chen, the senior director of business development at Appcelerator agrees that this is a strategic move by Twitter to expand their offerings. 

"I believe Twitter is going to take the extension of their service onto mobile and devices very seriously by coming out with their version of a mobile SDK (software development kit), which will include key features that every developer wants, crash test reporting via Crashlytics," he said. "Right now Twitter pushes everything out via their APIs, which is all backend services. If they had a real mobile SDK, then they can really optimize development productivity and mobile performance by having certain capabilities into the third mobile (and) device apps itself."

With Vine, Twitter's planted its flag in the ground to announce its plans to conquer mobile social video. Could Monday's Crashlytics move be the beginning of a new era for Twitter mobile app development? And a tool to help address problems with Vine?

We'll know soon enough.

Photo courtesy of Twitter.

Developers prevent this type of digital eavesdropping by implementing a cryptographic protocol called a secure sockets layer of protection. But researchers from the Leibniz University in Hanover and Philipps University of Hamburg found is that many Android developers do a miserable job implementing secure sockets layer.

Using a self-built tool for identifying exploitable secure-sockets-layer, or SSL, bugs, the researchers analyzed 13,500 popular free apps on Google Play and found 1,074 vulnerable to man0in-the-middle attacks. The researchers examined 100 apps manually and found 41 with the same flaws.

The cumulative installed base of all vulnerable apps ranged from 39.5 million to 185 million devices, according to data the researchers gathered from Google Play.

"The actual number is likely to be larger, since alternative app markets for Android also contribute to the install base," the researchers said in an overview of their findings.

So what?

So what were the researchers able to do with the security hole? Quite a bit.

From the 41 apps analyzed manually, the researchers captured credit-account numbers, bank account information, and logons and passwords for a bunch of sites, including American Express, Diners Club, PayPal, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live ID and Box.

The researchers also were able to disable anti-virus apps, and remotely inject and execute code.

For a hacker to do the same in the real world would not be easy, but it is possible. Man-in-the-middle attacks typically occur over compromised public Wi-Fi networks. In response, companies often set up virtual private networks for mobile employees to use when accessing corporate networks over the Internet.

No surprise

Security experts were not surprised by the findings. Mobile-app development is immature, so mistakes in implementing something as complicated as a security protocol are expected. The same problems with secure sockets layer are found in site development, which has been around for 20 years.

With mobile apps, problems arise when the rush to get products to market lead to mistakes. Or the developer may not know how to properly secure a product, said Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser for anti-virus vendor Sophos. Secure sockets layer is a fragile, multi-part technology and if any one piece is not set right, nothing works.

Carelessness also plays a part. Developers sometimes skip implementing secure-sockets-layer rules in beta versions of an app, and never go back when the app becomes generally available, Wisniewski said.

"Most developers don't really understand how SSL actually works," he said. "They just know that they're suppose to use it."

Fixing the problem

For a long time, experts have said that the biggest problem with Android apps is the lack of oversight. In many markets, apps go on sale before they are properly vetted, which leaves users at risk of downloading spyware, trojans and seriously flawed products.

Google Play is one of the most trusted Android markets. To combat malware, Google uses an automated system to examine each app. Nevertheless, as the latest research shows, the bar for quality remains too low, and much more needs to be done to protect users.