Magic from Apple

Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and other famous people from Apple often call their products ‘magic’ and in some respects they are right. In many cases Apple is ahead of the market for years, it manages to create really incredible devices that change the world — isn’t it magic?

Do you need examples? Here you are. Let’s remember iPad — What’s this? What for? Who needs this ‘iPod on steroids’? And it turned out we need it! Step by step this strange toy is being transformed into an extremely convenient and user friendly tool for professionals and can be a gaming console, an internet tablet, an e-book and many other things as well.  The fantasy of iPad app developers is not limited and it means that iPads opportunities also. Isn’t it magic?

Or let’s take, for example, iPhone. Look at the market of smartphones today: Android, webOS, Windows Phone, many various sensor devices, Nokia smartphones based on Microsoft OS — they are the result of releasing the first Apple phone in 2007. Without it today the market of would be completely different. Isn’t it magic?

Last year Apple presented MacBook Air of the second generation and this year Intel has introduced the concept of ultrabooks which are Windows analogues of that very ‘air’ macbook. Plagiarism? Piracy? No, that’s the natural development of the market when consumers win and the Apple magic was the impulse for this development.

Thus, every software development company tries to conquer this magic and design and develop something new, exciting and magical.

Android has defeated Apple in the fight for the U.S. market

According to NPD Group iPhone OS was bypassed by Android OS in the United States in the first quarter of 2010. So, Google has 28% of the market, it puts them on the second place behind Research in Motion (36%), Apple is on third place with 21%.

According to the same research agency, this success of Android is connected with its close cooperation with mobile operators. For example, Verizon offers phones based on Android, as well as Blackberry offers its program “buy one get one free.” But in any case the only operator offering Apple phones, AT&T, is still the leader, owning 32% of the market. It followed by Verizon, actively gaining momentum and managing 30% of the U.S. market.

It is quite possible that Apple will regain its position after the release of the next-generation iPhone, which is expected this summer. But remember the fundamental difference between Android and iPhone, the latter don’t share its OS with third companies, establishing its rules for iPhone apps developers and alone collecting the cream from sales. By contrast Google is on a completely different way, giving its OS to everyone and allowing others make flourishing business from Android apps developments. Besides the exclusive contract between Apple and AT&T was signed for 5 years, which means that all this time Google will make a profit not only on the devices manufacturers, but also on active ads of mobile operators.

The other side of the coin is that Apple has never aspired to be the first. We don’t think that Steve Jobs cannot sleep because his company is somewhere on the third place.

iAd from Apple: ads in mobile apps

This month Apple has introduced its new mobile advertising system iAd. It differs from competitors (for example, Google’s AdMob), because iAd integrated directly into iPhone OS. Moreover, these ads will be stored on Apple servers.

Advertisements will be interactive and will look like small applications. It is already known that some of them will be created using HTML5 technology. According to this new business model, iPhone apps developers will receive only 60% of proceeds from the iAd advertising.

The iAd system was announced by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. According to his words, the average user works with iPhone mobile apps about half an hour a day. So, demonstrating new ads every three minutes the company will get about a billion hits a day.

Also Steve Jobs stressed that Apple is not going to focus on the quantity of advertising, on the contrary it will intend to raise its quality making from ads a new source of positive emotions.

The iAd platform will be integrated directly into the operating system, and will run ads within applications. Apple engineers want to change the approach to development of the most commercials: it is proposed to use not only text and image links, but multimedia applications that will be embedded into other applications ( such as games, readers, RSS-clients etc.). The platform will make its debut this summer.

Read also: Mobile Application Development: Boom in the IT World