The Chinese smartphone market is huge — as of November there were 118 million 3G smartphone owners counted  — and this study, which surveyed 600 people, is admittedly a small but telling portion of that.

From Guohe’s findings we’ve compiled some instructive tips for app makers interested in making money in the world’s fastest growing mobile market. What’s interesting is how similarly useful they are for app makers targeting buyers in established markets, like the U.S. and Europe too:

• Don’t believe the current conventional wisdom. Though there’s an impression that Chinese consumers just don’t like to pay for apps, that’s changing. The study found that almost two-thirds of iPhone users, or 62 percent, have purchased at least one app for their device. Seventeen percent have purchased more than 11 apps. A big part of this shift in buying behavior has to do with Apple’s decision to start taking local currency payments last fall through the iTunes store instead of requiring credit cards that processed U.S. dollars, says Guohe.
• Target iOS devices for paid apps. If you’re looking to make money on paid apps and weighing Android over iPhone, iPhone owners in China are more likely to buy apps. Guohe found that just 23 percent of Android device owners had purchased at least one app, compared to iPhone’s 62 percent. This is similar to the dynamics the larger mobile market. Piper Jaffray calculated in November that of the 6.8 billion Android apps downloaded, just 1.3 percent, or 90 million, were paid for.
• Target Android for ad-supported apps. Android growth in China has been huge and it is a good platform to reach the largest group of people. In fact, more than half (54 percent) of those surveyed for this study carried an Android smartphone. So, even if you want to distribute your app for free, an ad-based model will work in this market. “The opportunities sit on a data-driven approach to target the right audience from millions,” Guohe says. Of the Android owners polled, 63 percent said they’d prefer free apps with embedded ads, versus 13 percent who said they’d prefer ad-free apps they’d have to pay for. Again, this is very similar to download patterns in the U.S. and the larger Android market as a whole.
• Plan ahead to make tablet apps too. Research firm Canalys ranks China as the second-largest market for tablets. The iPad in particular is doing well among the affluent in China, and for current iPhone app makers thinking about also marketing iPad apps, this is a great demographic to target, since members are more likely to purchase apps. According to Guohe:

“In our own research, we found that iPhone users are almost 2 times more likely than Android users to buy an iPad. The synergy of using the same system cross mobile phone and tablet is truly valuable for some of the heavy users. In that sense, the emergence of well-designed and reasonably priced Android tablets (e.g. Kindle fire in US market) could motivate these Android phone users to jump on the tablet bandwagon too.”

These statistics should be encouraging for app makers interested in selling apps in the China market. And while clearly the above chart shows that far more smartphones owners’ incomes lay on the lower end of the scale, that’s changing pretty rapidly. As the middle class there continues to grow, more people’s ability or desire to pay for things like apps will too.

Thumbnail courtesy of Tracy O/Flickr

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Chomp.com before the acqusition:

Chomp.com today:

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Samsung CEO Choi-Gee-sung and Apple CEO Tim Cook will meet for settlement talks before U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero in San Francisco, as ordered on Monday by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh.

There’s no guarantee of a settlement, and they have three months to arrange the meeting, but this is the first time in the series of patent disputes between the companies that such high-level settlement talks have been ordered by the court.

Samsung and Apple do billions of dollars of business with each other, and Apple is Samsung’s largest customer for components for its iPhone and iPad. But Apple has taken exception to the similarity of Samsung’s smartphones and tablets to its own mobile devices and has accused Samsung of “slavishly copying” its devices. The resulting series of lawsuits have bounced from courtrooms in the U.S. to Europe.

For Steve Jobs, this legal battle against Samsung and others was a proxy in his defensive attack against Android — which he believed to be a direct rip-off of iOS. But since succeeding Jobs as CEO, it’s not clear Cook feels the same way about destroying Android or those who use it.

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In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek Wednesday, Page says that with Apple the “Android differences were actually for show” and that Steve Jobs and company created the feud between the two companies for their own benefit. Page said:

I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.

History shows that Google is not at all above exploiting the perceived battle between Apple and itself over iOS and Android for its own gain. The most obvious example is VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra’s speech at Google I/O in May 2010. At the time, Android was not yet the hit it is today, and Apple’s iPhone, iPad and mobile OS were runaway successes. Here’s what Gundotra said to the gathering of developers that day about why Google made Android:

If we did not act, we faced a draconian future. Where one man, one company, one carrier was the future.

That was Google using the idea of a philosophical battle over the future of mobile technology with Apple and Jobs — and AT&T, which at the time had a monopoly on the iPhone in the U.S. — to motivate developers. When Eric Schmidt was Google’s CEO, he answered numerous questions about Android’s approach by emphasizing the “open” nature of Android as opposed to the “closed” approach favored by Apple: clearly presenting Android as “not Apple.”  This all served Google’s interests pretty well: Android now runs on more than half of smartphones.

Jobs was certainly not above the same tactics. In early 2010, Jobs spoke about Google and Android to Apple employees, reportedly saying:

“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,” Mr. Jobs told Apple employees during an all-hands meeting shortly after the public introduction of the iPad in January, according to two employees who were there and heard the presentation. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

So, yes, Page is correct that Apple did use the feud to fire up its own troops and to rally its own developers — but it’s disingenuous to say Apple is the only one that got mileage out of  it.

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The study shows that in the U.S. 71 percent of iPhones and 32 percent of Android phones connect to Wi-Fi and cell networks. In the U.K., the divide was a little narrower: 87 percent of iPhones and 57 percent of Android phones connect to both types of networks.

ComScore points to increasingly scarce spectrum and, of course, carriers moving away from unlimited data plans as reasons for this behavior:

“The scarcity of unlimited data plans and higher incidence of smartphone pre-paid contracts with a pay-as-you-go data model likely contributes to data offloading among users wanting to economize their mobile usage. In addition, the current lack of high-speed data networks in the U.K. might also lead users to seek out higher bandwidth capacity on Wi-Fi networks. In the U.S., the increased availability of LTE, 4G and other high-speed data networks currently make it less necessary for smartphone users to offload, but it’s also possible that the diminishing availability of unlimited cellular data plans will eventually push more usage to Wi-Fi.”

Wi-Fi’s popularity among mobile devices isn’t limited to iPhones: Tablet users are overwhelmingly in favor of Wi-Fi use too. Two weeks ago mobile analyst Chetan Sharma released a report noting that in 2011, more than 90 percent of tablets in the U.S. connected to Wi-Fi instead of mobile broadband. While sales of tablets shot up last year, the percentage of 3G- and 4G-capable tablets stayed relatively low. And it’s safe to assume that the iPad is what we’re talking about when it comes to tablets: It accounted for roughly two-thirds of all tablets sold in the U.S. in 2011.

So while iPhone users are relying heavily on Wi-Fi, so are iPad users. It’s not clear what exactly accounts for the difference in behavior between iOS and Android users — it could be something as simple as that Wi-Fi is just easier to set up on iOS devices.

But it also may have something to do with the amount of content users are downloading. And with the new iPad, it’s likely that this reliance on Wi-Fi will only increase. Its shiny new high-definition display makes watching videos on it easier on the eyes than ever — and that can eat through monthly data plans pretty quickly.

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Before sharing my impressions, let me emphasize that they are just that: my impressions. We all work differently, have varying expectations from our very personal mobile devices, and have unique needs. So although I am mentioning Android tablets, my intent isn’t to start another futile “iPad vs. the others” war. I’m lucky in that I can offer perspective by using an iPad and the others, so take from this what you will and buy what works best for you.

It’s like the old iPad, only better

There is little external difference between the new iPad and prior models; most people would be hard pressed to pick them apart in a lineup. Sure, the most recent iPad is slightly thicker and heavier, but neither is a detriment to the overall experience. You can still tote the iPad and carry much less weight around when compared to a laptop, for example. I still believe that for me, a larger tablet is less portable than a 7-inch slate. I generally take my Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablet everywhere, while the iPad is mainly used at home.

As an HDTV owner since 2001, I am all about high-resolution displays, and the new 2048 x 1536 screen on the new iPad doesn’t disappoint. If I had to pick, I would say it’s the device’s best hardware feature by far. I may place a higher emphasis on displays than most, but my thought is: This is what you look at for every iPad activity, and it’s also your entire interface for interaction with the device.

The screen is awesome, but the Web isn’t ready for it

Text is supremely clear, making Web pages really pop; the browser is fast to render and navigate. I’m also loving the screen for my Kindle books. Low-resolution images on the Web look terrible, however, and this affects some apps too. I was browsing homes on Zillow last night and all the pictures of properties looked like a pixellated CompuServe page from the early 1990s. (That means poor if you are too young to know what our old dial-up Web was like!)

That will change over time, but for now, the new Retina display shines a spotlight on these low-quality images. I am also not thrilled by 1080p videos; sure, they look great, but they have black bands above and below the picture. I actually get nearly the same size and perceived quality with a 720p movie on my 7.7-inch tablet and its 1280 x 720 resolution.

Apps that can take advantage of the new iPad are excellent

I have a mix of apps on the iPad, some that are optimized for the Retina display and many that aren’t. The former are fantastic, and the latter aren’t a problem. Real Racing 2, for example, was quickly optimized and you can immediately see the extra detail in the vehicles: improved reflections and shadowing, which make the game more realistic. And the new quad-core GPU in Apple’s A5X chip powers the graphics handily.

Older apps benefit from the chip too and are pixel-doubled to fit the full iPad display. They are not as clear as software built specifically for the Retina display, but they appear at least as good, if not a little better than on older iPads. That’s important, because there are relatively few apps specifically made for the new iPad’s display. Instead of scaling up low-resolution phone apps, which is what Android tablets initially did, Apple is scaling up tablet apps. That means all the controls, text, images and such fit the screen and are rendered in the proper size. The same apps work across all iPad models as a result.

Finally: a usable camera in a tablet

Most people suggest that using a tablet to take pictures simply isn’t done because it looks silly to hold up a giant viewfinder. There’s merit to the argument, but I would suggest an additional reason: No tablet camera has been good enough to bother using over a smartphone camera. Unless you have an iPhone 4S, the new iPad’s camera is good enough. Why? It’s the same hardware found in the iPhone 4, which is the most used camera on photo-sharing site Flickr. I haven’t taken a bad shot yet with the iPad. Here’s a recent example:

I will take things a step further: By pairing this camera with a super high-resolution display and improved — or in the case of iPhoto, new — imaging software, I think more people will turn to their iPad for stills and 1080p video. Add in the connectivity of Wi-Fi or LTE and the new iPad truly is a portable video studio. Will folks with a DSLR or professional photographers dump their cameras for iPads? Nope, but most people buying an iPad will be more than happy with the camera’s capabilities.

Minor gripes and overblown issues

Since this meme has been hitting the rounds of late, let me assure you: Yes, the iPad can run warm. That’s not surprising, considering it has the Retina display and essentially the same computer chip as last year with added quad-core graphics. Apple didn’t do a major chip redesign on next-generation ARM architecture, so it shouldn’t surprise that the chip can run hotter, especially when gaming in high-def or better. And the new display requires far more power to backlight: 7 watts at full brightness vs. 2.7 watts on the older iPad. More power usage generally means a warmer environment. But while the heat difference is noticeable, I haven’t found it to be an issue.

I would have liked to have seen a higher-resolution front-facing camera in the new iPad, but hey, Apple has to leave something to improve for next time, right? The FaceTime experience is generally no different as a result. Also slightly disappointing to me — although iPad LTE owners are surely happy — is that there is no battery-life improvement on the Wi-Fi model, even though the battery capacity of Apple’s tablet is 70 percent greater. Again, it comes down to the display, which uses up the juice. Still, I can use the iPad all day as a primary device and easily make it through the day on a single charge, so battery life isn’t an issue.

The real difference between the iPad and “the others”

Again, I’m not trying to start a platform fight here, but it’s worth mentioning that you give something up when deciding between buying an iPad or an Android tablet — or a Kindle Fire, for that matter. But you gain something at the same time, and perhaps this will help people decide which tablet is best for them. I am intentionally omitting any jailbreak, rooting or custom ROM arguments, because if you know about them, you already know which tablet platform is best for you.

With iOS, you give up the ability to have total control over your device. Apple’s iOS software sets the limits of what you can and can’t do. The iTunes App Store is the app gatekeeper: If an app you want isn’t there, you can’t get it. And if you want the ability to use a storage card, you have to buy Apple’s camera kit accessory. In return, you get synergy: well-designed hardware that works extremely well with its specific software and a wide media ecosystem to boot.

On the Android side, you generally have total control to make your device look the way you want and run the apps you want. You can even have intelligent apps control your hardware so that when you leave your home, the Wi-Fi radio is disabled to save juice, for example. Apps come from Google’s store, but a developer could also post their software installation on the Web and you can use it. You also have a vast range of hardware to choose from. The downside is that all of this freedom and choice can be maddening for software developers and for carriers to keep the devices up to date. And you’re also giving up personal information with integrated Google services for its ad business.

Amazon’s Kindle is more like the Apple approach but built on Google’s software. There is a clean, simple interface that focuses on the primary activities Amazon can offer: Web browsing, e-books, music, videos, curated software and Amazon’s own storefront. You have less control, but for a low starting price, you are giving some of that up for an integrated experience. If you use Amazon’s Silk browser, you’re turning over your surfing habits to Amazon instead of Google.

Is the new iPad “the best” tablet?

Which is best? That’s a personal decision. I have used devices across all platforms, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. For most, however, the iPad is the closest to that, given its leading sales figures. And ultimately, you have to make a decision on which platform you want to use first. Interestingly, I have been running the developer preview of Mac OS X 10.8 for the past two months on my MacBook Air, and because of that, I’m turning more and more toward the iPhone and new iPad.

Integration of notes, reminders and notifications — all features that started on iOS — are now part of the desktop experience. I’m finding that to be a huge benefit as the iOS/OS X environments keep these data points in sync for me, and I think others will feel the same way after Apple releases OS X Mountain Lion this summer. Between that and the impressive new hardware, the company is sure to generate even more record sales for its new iPad, which offers a great tablet experience for the broadest range of activities in exchange for Apple’s constraints.

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It’s not just Apple’s mobile software that has been caught with this loophole, but Google’s Android apps too — the Times followed up last week on its iOS story with another demonstration showing that Android apps could also access the user’s photos unbeknownst to them. Schumer wants the FTC to set its sights on Google in this case too.

Saying what most logical people are thinking, Schumer writes: “These uses go well beyond what a reasonable user understands himself to be consenting to when he allows an app to access data on the phone for purposes of the app’s functionality.”

He adds:

Smartphone makers should be required to put in place safety measures to ensure third party applications are not able to violate a user’s personal privacy by stealing photographs or data that the user did not consciously decide to make public … When someone takes a private photo, on a private cell phone, it should remain just that: private.

It’s good to know our elected officials are paying attention. Though this call for investigation could fall into the category of “too little, too late” since Apple is rumored to be working on a fix.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment, and it has not said anything publicly despite the brouhaha that’s broken out over the photo libraries — though it would be just like Apple to not say a word, and just issue a fix.

Google also appears to know this is a problem and has made noises that it’s time to think about an update.

Photo from Sen. Schumer’s official Flickr feed.

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Credit: Priceonomics

Priceonomics, which keeps track of the resale value of items like cars, bikes and gadgets, published a report Wednesday that shows how the value of iPhones, Android devices and BlackBerrys hold up over time. Short answer: iPhones, even years-old models, retain their value the longest, which means iPhone owners can recoup the most money when they go to resell their phones.

Here’s the method they  used:

We measure depreciation by comparing a phone’s current used price to its new price (without a contract) the day it was released. We examined all iPhone models and the 70 most popular Androids and 30 most popular BlackBerry models. We split phones into five different cohorts (newly released, 1, 2, 3, and 4 year-old phones). We then calculated which phones had the best resale by cohort, as well as which platforms in aggregate tended to retain their value the most.

The highest quality phones should have the best resale values over time and crappier phones should depreciate the fastest. The evidence is clear – the winner is the iPhone.

After crunching the data they came up with a series of charts, like one that shows that after owning a smartphone for 18 months, iPhone owners can resell theirs for 53 percent of the original price, Android owners for 42 percent and BlackBerry owners for 41 percent of the original price.

That part won’t be news to people who make a habit of reselling their old iPhone before or right after buying a new one a new one. There are sites like Gazelle.com, eBay and NextWorth.com that regularly buy used iPhones, BlackBerrys and Android phones in order to resell them. The iPhone is always the easiest to resell and will go for a decently high price if you time it right.

But all is not lost for penny-pinching Android owners. One caveat to the data that Priceonomics found is that less expensive Android phones sold by prepaid operators do hold their value much better than their pricier Google-powered brethren, probably because those phones are highly subsidized by the operators. Specifically, the Motorola Triumph, HTC Wildfire and Samsung Exhibit 4G on average keep up to 86 percent of the original value.

Be sure to check out the original post for more interesting data.

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Seventy-four percent of survey respondents said they were “Very Satisfied” with the iPad in an earlier November survey, while only 54 percent said they were “Very Satisfied” with the Kindle Fire in the January survey. The average of Very Satisfied customers for all other tablet devices combined was 49 percent. Why the 20-point gap between the iPad and Fire? It came down to what many users seemed to feel were missing features, according to ChangeWave.

The major dislikes that survey respondents listed for the Kindle Fire included the lack of a hardware volume button, the absence of a camera, short battery life, a lack of cellular connectivity and the size of the Fire’s app library. Cost and screen were favorite features among Kindle Fire owners.

Apple’s focus on user experience seems clearly to be better at winning the admiration of users post-purchase, while Amazon’s focus on offering a low-cost device seems to ultimately leave customers feeling like there’s something missing. That strategy appears to have worked well in the short term. One analyst said earlier this week that Amazon may have shipped as many as 6 million Fires during the last quarter of 2011. But long-term, Apple may have been right when it suggested in December that strong Kindle tablet sales might eventually help boost iPad demand.

Consider that the features tablet users indicated a desire for in expressing their dissatisfaction with the Kindle Fire are all features the iPad currently offers; there’s a clear path of where to get what they want out of a tablet already in place. And if Apple does decide to keep the iPad 2 around as a lower-cost offering when it unveils the iPad 3, the Fire’s No. 1 selling feature won’t seem nearly as much of a marked advantage.

On the flip side, Amazon could also address those deficiencies in future iterations of the Kindle Fire, should it find cost-effective ways of doing so. But Apple will continue to push the experiential envelope at the same time, and so far whatever it provides seems to set the standard in terms of tablet buyer expectations. Pleased customers are loyal customers — as ChangeWave says, it’s found that satisfaction is highly linked to future sales, so Apple’s big lead here is definitely a key measure of success.

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Like the iPhone SJ concept before it, De Rosa’s iWatch 2 (which is itself a refresh of an older iWatch design) looks like something that you could easily imagine gracing the desk of Apple design guru Jony Ive at this very moment: It has the aluminum and glass appeal of the iPhone 4 and 4S, along with an on-screen UI that looks convincingly iOS inspired.

De Rosa says the watch’s imaginary specs include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the latter to provide a steady feed of data from a connected iPhone or iPad, along with a standalone RSS reader and front-facing camera. He also adds an LCD projector to the list, because why not?

While I don’t expect to see anything quite so feature-rich come out of Cupertino, I do think De Rosa is on the right track; an Apple-created connected watch would no doubt have similar good looks, a minimum of buttons and the ability to connect to iOS devices to grab and display information feeds. But Apple also is notorious for keeping its product lines tight, so such a device, which would admittedly probably have limited appeal initially (will iPhone buyers really want to spend an additional $200+ for what’s essentially a secondary display?) likely isn’t a top priority.

Regardless of what Apple actually has planned in the way of wearable wrist-top computing, I still want this concept to fly out of my dreams and on to my wrist. What about you?

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