Neilsen survey says, that “U.S. Parents Say Almost A Third of the Apps on Their Phone Were Downloaded by Their Children”:

I get asked alot why I carry a PalmPre?

1. Small, light weight – fits in almost any pocket – including dress shirt pocket without causing undo sag. I am tired of carrying around bricks. It is less than half the weight of an iPhone.
2. Full qwerty keyboard. I have big hands and it is very tough for me to type on a virtual keyboard like the iPhones. The real kb is mandatory.
3. WiFi Hotspot. This just works excellent and I don’t have to carry another device with me for usage with XoomPad, laptop, netbook, wifes ipad…etc. I only using about 100meg of data a month, so getting a mifi, just doesn’t make sense.
4. WebOS. Quite friendly and full featured. The phone OS is solid and no major problems.
5. Replaceable battery. Battery life is short with the PalmPre, but having a battery small enough to fit in my wallet, means never being without power. I have 4 batteries I keep charged and in my laptop bag too.
6. Touchstone inductive charging. No more messing with cords or plugging in. Just set it on the magnetic charger and go. I have one near my bed, at my dresser, and at my office. I’d like to get one for my car too. I can’t ever see buying a phone you have to plugin again.
7. Verizon. I have never dropped a call that I can blame on my end. Also, Verizon’s 3g/evdo is quite zippy.
8. USB Drive: When plugged in via USB, the phone shows up as a USB drive on a windows desktop. Drag your pics right off your phone.
9. Cost: the Pre was almost free with a two year contract on Verizon.

I have thought alot about getting the new Palm/HP Veer. I love the idea of getting even a smaller phone. However, it is now known that Verizon has nixed the hotspot on the newer modles (unless you want to pay like $110 a month for the data contract). That is a deal breaker for me. I will replace my used Pre with an Android when my contract is due in November.

Downsides:

• Plastic Case: Rather cheapo case that has two cracks on the back cover already. This is my 2nd one after the first one’s speaker broke. The slider is slowly wearing out and starting to stick.
• The “button”: There is a touch type button on the front that you swipe left-or-right on. This button is often non-responsive or very slow. Worse than having one.
• HP now owns Palm: Nuff said. (not an HP fan)

Intel to get into making tablet based chips:

Regarding the emerging tablet market, Otellini said that Intel will have “quite a bit of tablet demonstrations” at Computex running MeeGo, Windows, and Android operating systems. “We’re heads down on a number of designs on tablets on all three of those operating systems,” he added. Regarding Android, Intel’s fifth CEO said, “We’ve received Android code – the Honeycomb version of Android source code – from Google, and we’re actively doing the port on that, and expect to be able to ramp those machines over the course of this year for a number of customers.”

Via Engadget

So on one hand, we have the internet where websites live and breath by traffic provided by the Google Algo.

Then we have the growth of App Space – where apps live and breath by the by the Apple AppStore algo.

More and more eyeballs are spending time in AppSpace. AppSpace is growing. I predict AppSpace will outgrow the internet – eventually.

So, it is time to open “The Second Front” – The AppSpace algo. We ? now have word, that Apple has updated the AppSpace algo last week.

“We’ve been noticing changes in the Top Free rankings for at least three days now,” said Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, which serves 80,000 applications with its analytics product. “From our point of view, Apple is absolutely considering more than just downloads, which we believe is the right direction to measure true popularity of an app.” Other pay-per-install networks tell us they’ve been detecting these changes too.

This is so Deja Vu Florida Update as Apple is going after those that game the system:

This has allowed an entire cottage industry to flourish. Networks like Flurry, Tapjoy and W3i allow developers to pay for downloads, which bump their apps into the top of the charts where they can get even more downloads from having the extra visibility. If they’re good, they stick at the top of the charts. If they’re bad, they fall quickly.

My presentation at SFIMA last night.

In PDF format: http://www.pubcon.com/t/sfima-brett-tabke-april-14-2011.pdf

New survey out of tablet computer owners (iPads). Completed by Google’s AdMob advertising group:

•69% said they use their tablet more frequently on weekdays relative to weekends

•Tablets are used more during the night according to 62% of respondents

• 28% of respondents said that the tablet is their primary computer

Tablet prices are tanking in the wake of the IPAD2 release.

$129 at TigerDirect for a 7.1inch android 2.2 tablet.

Or $349 for a 10.1 incher.

I think we will see the sub $100 tablet within 2 years. That means they will become ubiquitous around our houses. They may even start to sell them in 2-3 packs for families.

Some think that the tablets will play out like the phones with a iPad vs Android battle. While that is certain to happen, the iPad has several things going for it, that the Android tablets don’t have:

• iPhone success was chained to the carrier distribution model
• iPads can be sold anywhere without being lashed to a wireless plan
• iPads have a strong 12-36month lead on the Androids
• Apple is showing that they are willing to cut pricess to maintain market share

Once we do hit the sub $100 barrier, the real problem becomes keeping our data in sync. HP has show a WebOS (palm) that transfer data quickly between devices. That type of sync system is going to be needed for all tablets. Apple is quickly develping AirPlay as a means of sharing data.

Today, Gartner put out a very short sighted post about iOS.

Despite mounting competition from other operating systems (OSs), Apple’s iOS will continue to own the majority of the worldwide media tablet through 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Due to the success of Apple’s iPad, iOS will account for 69 percent of media tablet OSs in 2011, and represent 47 percent of the media tablet market in 2015.

What happens as Pad prices fallout? Today, Tiger direct is selling a 10.1 inch Android pad for $299 and a 7.1inch pad for $129. That’s right – we are getting close to the sub-one hundred dollar range. If they can sell and make a profit off it right now at those prices, imagine what the price is going to be when they are selling 30-100million of those over the next few years! Given the current state of demand, I expect leading edge pad prices to drop below $100 within 24 months.

I expect the same process to happen with iOS vs Android that happened with Linux vs Windows NetBooks.  Just as Microsoft was forced to essentially give away WinXP to netbook makers in order to compete with linux based netbooks – a similar situation is going to play out on Pads. As Pad hardware becomes cheaper and cheaper, then the total cost of ownership is going to shift from the hardward to the software. Clearly, the open source Android is going to be able to trump the proprietary and relatively expensive to make iOS on a cost-per-cost basis. Apple will have to get aggressive at price cutting.

Scarcity Marketing is hot in the conference world. I have to laugh every time I hear a conference claiming “50 slots left for conference xyz”. Any conference – especially an older established conference – that uses this tactic, should be called out for poor conference planning. There is no excuse for it – other than poor conference management. If they can’t plan any better than that, shouldn’t their content be suspect as well?

We have found a left over box of  the famed 2003 Tie-Dye WebmasterWorld T-Shirts:

http://www.pubcon.com/blog/5000403.htm