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• Opera Mini’s not-so-mini conquest of the mobile platform

  September 08, 2010No comments

  Last May, a month or so after it was released on Appstore, Opera Mini for iPhone already registered 2.6 million downloads. While many downloaded the app mostly to test it, a substantial number were persuaded to keep using it.

  For those who don’t know, Opera Mini is the mobile version of the PC web browser, Opera. This application, supported by the partnership of Google and Opera software, runs in JavaME technology which processes and compresses web pages before it loads in the mobile phone. Which is basically the reason why Opera Mini loads in less time than the iPhone native Safari.

  Safari, was designed for the Mac OS and is the default web browser of iPhone. Before Opera Mini was given that go signal, Safari was the only mobile browser that would and could work on iPhone.

  In tests conducted on both Safari and Opera Mini, it was found out that the latter could certainly give Safari serious competition:

  • It loads pages at around 15 seconds faster than Safari. Since it compresses data from the server, Opera Mini loads a webpage within seconds — even if the page if full of images and other flash elements.
  • It has speed dials. Just like the PC version, there are little thumbnails on Opera Mini’s default page which allow users to save frequently-visited web pages, making it easier to go back to them as soon as the browser loads up.
  • It has tabbed browsing. Users may open up other tabs to load other pages –all in one Opera Mini window. The number of tabs doesn’t affect the loading time of other pages.
  • It offers easy navigation. Users may pinch in to zoom out, or pinch out to zoom in. They may also double tap to extremely zoom in and zoom out, and pan through the page by sliding a finger over the screen.

  As of the end of July, Opera Mini was recorded to have already viewed one billion pages. Because of excellent branding and marketing strategies, such as including it as a pre-installed app in various mobile devices, it has reached a broad range of users around the world.

  Because of this success, particularly with iPhone users, Opera Mini 5.1 for Android has also been recently made available. It won’t hurt to try this app. After all, it’s FREE.  And you can always go back to Safari if you want to.

  

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• Casual games are most downloaded iPhone apps

  August 10, 2010No comments

  Apple’s iPhone has clearly surpassed all other mobile phone brands in total number of applications available to users.  The iPhone has 150,000 apps, compared to Google Android’s 20,000 and Blackberry’s 5,000.  These apps are used to view books, news, and movie clips; play games and music; and access online tools and utilities, including GPS navigation, as well as social networks.

  Statistics show that more or less 2 billion iPhone apps have been downloaded since the beginning of the year. Here are the 10 most downloaded apps from Apple App Store as of June 2010, courtesy of mobile app analytics company Distimo:

  Rank	App	Publisher	Category	Price
  1	Angry Birds	Clickgamer.com	Games	$0.99
  2	Doodle Jump: Be warned-insanely addictive!	Lima Sky	Games	$0.99
  3	Fruit Ninja Halfbrick	Studios	Games	$0.99
  4	BATTLESHIP	Electronic	Games	$2.99
  5	FIFA World Cup™	Electronic Arts	Games	$4.99
  6	FatBooth	PiVi & Co	Entertainment	$0.99
  7	TETRIS®	Electronic Arts	Games	$4.99
  8	Pocket God	Bolt Creative	Entertainment	$0.99
  9	Skee-Ball	Freeverse, Inc.	Games	$0.99
  10	Guitar Hero	Activision Publishing, Inc.	Games	$2.99

  Fifty-eight percent of all iPhone apps in the App Store are games, listed by rank as follows:   casual games (15%), action games (11%) and Arcade (11%).  The average price of a paid game in App Store is $2.24, much cheaper compared with Blackberry games ($4.60) and Windows Mobile games ($4.90).  It is a bit higher than Android games though ($2.08).

  Casual games have become more popular in recent years due to the mobile device revolution, particularly with the appearance of the iPhone series. Top-sellers “Angry Birds” and “Doodle Jump” are casual games as casual games can be.  Angry Birds is a clever game where you fire birds at little pigs through a slingshot, while Doodle Jump’s goal is to guide a four-legged creature called “Doodle the Doodler” through a series of platforms without falling. There are also hundreds of free casual game apps on the App Store. These apps get their revenues through in-game advertisements or when users decide to upgrade to full version.

  Personally, I feel that casual gaming is the way to go in iPhone entertainment.  It’s pretty obvious that iPhone owners prefer light games that don’t take up much time and effort.  So, with the iPhone dominating the smartphone industry, it goes without saying that that casual gaming will maintain its popularity too.

  

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