Spotify announced that it has expanded compatibility for its Spotify Connect feature to allow users to play and control their tunes via Amazon’s Fire TV set-top box. Available only for Spotify Premium members, listeners can now use the Spotify app for mobile phones or tablets to connect their Spotify libraries with Amazon’s new set-top box. There are several new applications available to users thanks to the expansion. Say you have some friends over in your living room, you’re streaming some music with the service via your smartphone on your hi-fi sound system, and you realize you need to step outside away from the noise to make an important phone call. Instead of inconveniently having to switch to some other music source (iTunes, CD, vinyl, etc.) or nixing the tunes altogether to make the call, you can now simply alternate sources with Spotify Connect and push the music to the Fire TV.
With music streaming via Spotify Connect from your smartphone to the Amazon set-top box (and, in turn, its respective audio output system), you’re free to walk off with smartphone in-hand, make calls, use other smartphone apps, or even stroll right out of Wi-Fi range, all without causing a single break in the jams.
While the new feature is only available to Spotify’s Premium subscribers, the company is currently offering a 30-day free trial for Spotify Premium, in case you’ve got a Fire TV and want to give the new feature a try first without committing to $10 per month.
Aptoide is the largest independent Android App Stores ecosystem and allows partners to setup and manage their own Android store. As a partner you can upload, test and approve your apps. If you're an end-user we provide the Aptoide client App, giving you the opportunity to manage downloads, updates and access to stores.
Aptoide is a distributed marketplace for mobile applications which runs on the Android operating system. In Aptoide, unlike the default Google Play Store, there is not a unique and centralized store but each user manages their own store.
The Android application used to access the stores is open source, and there are several forks such as F-Droid and ApkTor. The communication between the client and servers is done using an open protocol based on XML.
The concept is inspired by the APT packaging manager, which can work with multiple sources (repositories). When the user wants a package, they use the client to search for sources where the application is stored.
Android Client
Aptoide client allows one to search, browse and install applications in the Android phone. Aptoide is available in 17 languages.
To install Aptoide the user has to retrieve the APK (installable file) from the official site or other source in the Internet. The installation is not available through Google Play store due to 4.5 Non-compete clause of Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement. This is the same clause that blocks Amazon Apps Store application to be available through Google Play. The installation of Aptoide requires you to allow the installation from "Unknown sources" in Android settings.
After the installation of Aptoide, the user can add stores (repositories). Besides the default store (Apps), many other are available from different stores. When a store is added using the URL of the store, Aptoide retrieves the list of the applications and stores it locally. The user can then browse in the applications or search in the Internet for other stores.
In June 2011, it was released Aptoide Uploader as a "sister" application from the same development team. Aptoide Uploader is an Android app that allows you to upload to an existent Aptoide store.
Aptoide uploader uses the available Aptoide Webservices to upload the application. The submitted APK file is kept in your store where you can manage.
For the user that wants to backup their apps to a private store, it is advisable to use Aptoide Apps Backup that keeps a record of the apps that are backed up. All the applications in stores are managed using a backoffice in Aptoide site.
Aptoide Apps Backup uses the webservices to upload the APK file to the store. To know what applications are already backed up, Aptoide Apps Backup uses the info.xml XML file available in the store.
Aptoide
Amazon says that its Appstore for Android is now available in 236 countries and territories following this recent expansion of 41 more regions. That said, not all apps within the Amazon Appstore catalog will be available in all regions due to local laws and restrictions on certain apps and content. However, for consumers, this will be another venue to purchase and download apps, which will be especially beneficial to BlackBerry customers who rely on Amazon's Appstore to deliver Android apps to their devices.
The Amazon Appstore is an app store for the Android operating system, operated by Amazon.com. It was opened on March 22, 2011 and was made available in nearly 200 countries. Developers are paid 70% of the list price of the app or in-app purchase.
On September 28, 2011, Amazon unveiled a new tablet, the Kindle Fire. This tablet, which is designed for media consumption in the Amazon ecosystem, relies solely on the Amazon Appstore for its marketplace, eschewing Google's Android Market (now called Google Play). Alongside the tablet was a new design for the Amazon Appstore designed to better integrate with the tablet's user interface.
The Amazon Appstore includes a "free app a day" feature. Every day, an application, frequently a game, is offered for free. On the launch day, this game was Angry Birds Rio (Ad-Free), in itself a promotional game. On The European launch day the free app was Angry Birds (Ad-Free). The Free App of the Day feature makes an exception to Amazon's 70% of list price term, giving the developer 0% of the list price during the feature day.
The store's "Test Drive" feature allows users to try an application in their web browser by launching a virtual copy of Android in the Amazon EC2 cloud for half an hour.
In May 2013, Amazon introduced Amazon Coins as a form of payment on the store.
On June 18, 2014, BlackBerry announced an official relationship with Amazon.com, which will see the upcoming 10.3 update offer official access to Amazon Appstore.
Here are some of the recently added regions:
Algeria, Djibouti, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Qatar, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Niger, Senegal, Turkmenistan, Bangladesh, Gambia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, United Arab Emirates, Brunei Darussalam, Guinea, Malaysia, Oman, Singapore, Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Maldives, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Chad, Jordan, Mali, Palestinian Territories, Tajikistan
Amazon Appstore
The app store ecosystem fails nearly everyone and certainly those who don't possess credit cards. neXva's founders saw the opportunity to shift the paradigm and create a new offering that fixes these problems and offers exciting new opportunities and access for mobile apps.
App stores for Mobile Operators
Mobile operators for the most part have been totally shut out of the app ecosystem. Long ago, many operators gave their app business away to the major OS providers. Unfortunately, this move really doesn't benefit anyone in the mobile app ecosystem except the OS provider themselves. Savvy operators have begun to recognize that it's time for them to take back control of their app store.
neXva has the solution with a fully hosted and managed cloud-based solution that gives the mobile operator a multi-OS app store and allows for a very high level of curation and localization of content. Carriers know that their customers rely on them as a "trusted advisor" to bring them not only a great network, but also content that is of value.
The neXva solution enables the carrier to personalize and localize the content in their store. In addition, each neXva store includes operator direct billing for their pre and post-paid customers – a tool that studies show dramatically increases customer take-up of premium apps.
neXva's branded and localized carrier app store helps create a higher level of stickiness and strengthened interaction with the operator's customer base.
App stores for OEMs and verticals
The flexibility of the neXva app store platform is perfectly suited for directed deployments.
OEMs, especially those targeting a specific demographic, can have an embedded and branded "on-device" app store that enables them to pre-load their app store and provide fresh, innovative and directed content through their store to their customers. neXva is presently working on a very interesting project around a custom designed tablet for students with an embedded app store of only educational apps.
Verticals are well suited to deploy their own app store. As the OS stores get larger and less user friendly, an opportunity exists for targeted verticals and affinity groups to create their own app stores. Because neXva's app store platform has the flexibility to include and exclude any number of apps, an affinity group can curate content that meets its members' needs and exclude all the clutter that exists in those other app stores. Think of it as offering a boutique store as opposed to the giant super center.
Outreach and Curation solutions
neXva has an in-house team that deals directly with thousands of app developers. Developers like this approach because our people are knowledgeable, helpful and reactive.
Developers are always looking for new ways to get their content in front of the right demographics. Because of neXva's unique approach of curated and localized app stores, we can bring new and exciting distribution opportunities to mobile app developers.
Along with the human touch, neXva has also created a number of tools that help developers get their content into the neXva catalogue and get their content noticed by customers who want it.
neXva works with OEMs, hardware suppliers, software houses and telecom operators with special needs to handle their developer outreach. This service includes sourcing and vetting content, conducting surveys or introducing developers to new technologies or funding possibilities.
Partners
MTN Group, Airtel, OpenMobile, Qelasy, appbackr
neXva
MOBANGO is the first Universal Mobile Community that allows cell phone users to publish, convert, and share with friends all kinds of user generated content -via the web and mobile devices- for personalizing and empowering the new cell phone's generation.
With MOBANGO, you have immediate access to thousands of personal files provided by MOBANGO users, across the World. You can publish, convert, and share Personal Content of all types for your cell phone - Videos, Photos, Ringtones, Applications, Games.
Upload your material from your PC and use MOBANGO to convert and adapt it for your cell phone: in few, easy, steps!
MOBANGO is your cell phone home on the web - dedicated to everyone who enjoys personalization and entertainment services for cell phones. Mobilize your files on MOBANGO and send them to virtually any cell phone in the World.
We aim to become the largest Mobile Web Community in the World, register now and reap the rewards of membership. Remember: on MOBANGO everything is FREE!
MOBANGO is a mobile social networking site, is a free portal that allows users to share mobile media with friends and family on the Internet and directly via WAP on their mobile phone anywhere in the world.
The service allows registered users to send messages, upload images, movies, ringtones, photos, wallpapers and applications. In addition, users are able convert ringtones, videos and photos to fit their cell. Uploaded files can be tagged, rated and organized in folders and are searchable. Mobile content can be shared with public, friends or even whole groups. Blog integration is available, as well as RSS feeds. MOBANGO supports the latest mobile handsets, as well as most of the mobile operators worldwide.
MOBANGO
GetJar operate one of the world’s largest free app stores with over 3 billion downloads to date. In 2011, GetJar was named as one of the ‘Ones To Watch’ by GigaOM Europe. GetJar is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Seattle and the UK.
GetJar is an independent mobile phone application store founded in Lithuania in 2004, with offices in Vilnius, Lithuania and San Mateo, California.
The company provides more than 350,000 mobile applications across major handset platforms including Java ME, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android, reaching more than 15 million consumers and has served over 2 billion downloads (2,370,554,782+ Total downloads to date 26 Jan 2012). GetJar allows software developers to upload their applications for free through a developer portal. About 300,000 software developers have used this service resulting in over 1.05 billion downloads. The rate is currently at 3 million downloads per day.
The company was founded by Ilja Laurs in 2004, who is currently its Executive Chairman. Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management are among the investors.
GetJar
Opera Mobile Store is one of the leading mobile app stores & digital application distribution platform for the developers of mobile apps in the world, it provides over 200,000 apps and games for more than 6,000 different mobile phone models across most platforms: Android, Java, Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and iOS.
The Opera Mobile Store is a platform-independent browser-based application store for mobile-phone owners and a digital application distribution platform for developers, owned and maintained by Opera Software ASA. Launched and powered by a third-party provider in March, 2011 the Opera Mobile Store was relaunched on a new platform, after acquisition of Handster, a mobile application store platform company, in January 2012. The service allows users to browse and download applications for over 3000 different mobile phone models on Android, Java, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, iOS, and Windows Mobile.
The Opera Mobile Store delivers more than 1 million app downloads a day and is accessible from any mobile phone via a visual bookmark with the OMS logo on Speed Dial or Start Page of Opera Mini or Opera Mobile browsers that run on more than 260 million devices worldwide. The store is also accessible from any other browser, including desktop versions, and on any operating system, from http://apps.opera.com/. The Opera Mobile Store then forwards the user to the country-specific store based on the location information provided by the mobile carrier or ISP.
Opera Mobile Store shortcut displaying on the Opera Mini start page
Over 86% applications for Android powered phones provided by the Opera Mobile Store are free of charge, others require payment. The average free-vs.-paid-apps ratio for all platforms is 70% and 30%, respectively. These applications are generally targeted on a particular category, including games, business applications, social-media apps, e-books, and others.
History
On March 8, 2011, Opera Software announced the launch of Opera Mobile Store powered by third-party provider. On September 19, 2011 Opera Software has acquired mobile application store platform company Handster Inc., which was leading independent applications store for Android market at this time.
Following the acquisition of Handster Opera Software made a major overhaul since the Opera Mobile Store launch. Opera Software announced a revamped Opera Mobile Store with improved distribution and monetization capabilities for developers, and better customization for white-label marketplaces at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 27, 2012. In July 2013, developers can now upload apps to both the Yandex. Store and the Opera Mobile Store simultaneously, as a result of agreements between the two companies.
Number of downloaded applications
As stated in the official Opera Software press-release, by February 27, 2012 Opera Mobile Store reached more than 30 million monthly app store visits and over 45 million monthly app downloads.
Number of apps in the store has tripled over the year 2013, while the number of monthly visitors to the Opera's app distribution platform grew to 75 million in October, 2013.
At the end of Q4 2013 Opera Software announced that it has reached a new milestone — 105 million monthly visitors. That is a 172 % increase in a year since the close of 2012. The top-three countries in 2013 based on the number of Opera Mobile Store users were India, the United States and Indonesia. By the beginning of 2014 Opera's app store started to offer more than 200,000 mobile apps and games across most mobile platforms, that is more than 5 times growth in 2 years.
Opera Mobile Store
Alternative app markets are becoming more and more popular. They are literally popping up right and left and there are now approximately 30 of them. Although most of these third party platforms cannot even be mentioned in the same article with the originals, there are a few markets that are definitely worth a mention.
Alternative to what?
But before we can talk about alternative markets we have to ask ourselves: alternative to what? Let’s take a quick look at the main market places.
The two biggest application market places are of course owned by Apple and Google. Apple’s App Store was established in July of 2008 and Google’s Android Market followed only three months later, in October of the same year. Now, three years later, the amount of available apps in the Android Market is estimated at 480,000, while the App Store’s estimate is 425,000.
Although some people would assume so, Apple and Google aren’t the only big companies with application market places. Some other markets worth mentioning are Nokia’s Ovi Store with over 83,000 available apps, RIM’s App World with over 37,000 available apps, Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace with almost 30,000 available apps and the App Catalog, co-owned by HP and Palm with a little over 7,000 available apps.
Open space vs. propriety
Going back to the two big markets, the real difference between Apple and Google is their approach to the device platform. While the App Store is based on propriety, the Android Market is based on open source. There is a big difference between open source and propriety: open source allows anyone who wants to do whatever they want with an open source platform, as opposed to propriety where they don’t.
Apple’s App store device platform is iOS which as mentioned is a propriety platform, while Google’s Android Market’s device platform is open source. In other words, what Apple is saying is that their platform is theirs and only theirs. While Google is saying that when users purchase a device, it’s theirs to do with it whatever they want.
And since Apple wants to approve every single app, there are so many alternative platforms for Android and not that many for Apple.
The Alternatives
One of the main alternative platforms is the Amazon Appstore which is based on the android device platform. Amazon Appstore is pretty new; it was established less than six months ago in March 2011, but already has 3,800 available apps. The Amazon Appstore has a big advantage: Amazon is a very big and profitable company with a great ability to move products. Therefore it is considered to be a serious competitor to the Android Market.
Another alternative market is GetJar. Established in 2004, this platform is actually one of the oldest platforms out there and has close to 70,000 available apps. GetJar has a free launching service and therefore is popular amongst users with web based apps. On the down side, it seems that GetJar is cluttered with too many shortcuts to mobile sites.
The next app market worth a mention is SlideMe. Established at April 2008, SlideMe has over 8,000 available apps. The big advantage of this platform is its straightforwardness and the categories which are very basic.Another alternative app market that is showing potential is the Opera Mobile App Store. Like Amazon’s platform, Opera was released in March of 2011. This alternative market offers an account based sales experience where you can register more than one device and you can keep track of your downloads.
As mentioned above, it is no surprise that most of these alternative app markets’ platform devices are android. There is a big competition in the app markets which is always good for the end consumer. Google making android an open source is what’s encouraging this competition. Thank you Android for letting us do whatever we want with your platform!
Useful Links
