What you would do is take one of your Apple IDs — the single username to manage all your Apple accounts — associate it with a single iTunes account and a credit card, and assign it to all of your iOS devices.  From here on out, you can continue to make all of your family’s purchases for all of their devices from that one iTunes account.

However, there’s one exception: iCloud. It may seem like you would want a separate iCloud account for each device because each iCloud account comes with a mere 5 GB of free storage.  This hardly seems enough to back up even one 64 GB iPhone 4S or iPad.  Each member of your family may own multiple Apple devices and want to have all of their data equally accessible from each device. But having a separate account for each device does not make much sense either.

So what can an Apple ID do?

Some of the confusion over how to handle multiple Apple IDs comes from not knowing exactly what is possible.  For instance, every Apple ID is not automatically enrolled with all of Apple’s services.  You can create your AppleID and enroll it in each Apple service individually as you need to.  You do this by logging into that service with your Apple ID.  Additionally, each device can utilize multiple Apple IDs at the same time.  Some of Apple’s services can be configured once per device, others multiple times per device.  For example, each device can only be backed up to one iCloud account whereas each device can have multiple iCloud email accounts configured.

It can be hard to figure out how to do this. Some Apple IDs are set in the device settings, other are set separately per an individual app setting.  The chart below illustrates how many Apple IDs you can have associated with each device, and where the ID associated with that service is configured:

We’ve narrowed down your options and here are some suggestions for best organizing your family’s devices and Apple accounts:

One iTunes Apple ID for apps and media

Using the chart above as a sort of Apple ID map, you can plan which services you want to use, and just how you want to configure them on each family member’s device.  To start, take one Apple ID and associate it with an iTunes account for all of the app and media purchases your family makes. This is the account that is linked to a credit card.  With each Apple device, the purchased apps, music, books, magazines, TV Shows and movies account will be accessible by all of the devices registered with this account.

Keep in mind that the rules are changing.  Whe the iPad first came out, it used to be that you could authorize up to five OS X computers with the same iTunes account.  And in turn each OS X computer could sync its locally stored library of purchased apps and media (via a USB cable) to an unlimited number of  iOS devices.  With Apple moving away from physical access, cable-based direct syncing and online music storage in the cloud through add on services like iTunes Match, the opportunity exists for more than a household of devices being configured to access a single iTunes account’s media files.

This now means that a single account that access its music via the cloud can only have up to 10 devices and computers combined.  Ten sounds like a lot for an individual, but not a family. Think of a family of four having a Mac, an iPhone and an iPad each.  That’s 12 computers and devices, not including any Apple TVs and additional iPods scattered throughout the house.

One primary iCloud Apple ID on each device

The Apple ID that you use to create your iTunes account does not need to have an iCloud account associated with it.  In fact you do not need an iCloud account in order to use your iOS or OS X device.  But to take full advantage of all of the iCloud based features of iOS 5 listed in the above chart, you will need an iCloud account.  For some of these features there can be only one iCloud setting per device.

When configuring your family’s Apple devices, these settings are part of each device’s primary iCloud account.  While each device can have multiple iCloud accounts associated with it, only one of these iCloud accounts can enable a select set of features.  These features include Bookmarks, Photo Stream, Documents & Data and Storage & Backup.

Unfortunately, since these features are configured only via the iCloud settings on the device, they must all be associated with the same iCloud account.  This fact is really disappointing since it would be nice to configure all of your family’s devices on one iCloud account for iCloud Backup, and a separate one for app-based Documents & Data.  This would allow a user to have to pay once for additional storage on that one shared family-sized backup iCloud account.

One Apple ID to keep track of all of your family’s devices

With your family’s iTunes purchases under control, and the core features of iCloud storage taken care of, there is one particular feature of iOS 5 that can be set separately from a device’s primary iCloud account.  When it comes to locating each of your family’s devices, do not rely solely on the Find My Friends app to locate their position.  Create a common family iCloud account and configure each device to use this account in the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings.  In fact, you can even create this iCloud account without creating a new Apple email address.  This family iCloud account’s sole purpose will be to keep track of all of your Apple devices.

Configuring each device in such a manner does not interfere with the use of a different app, Find My Friends. You only need to have one account on the device enable the Find my iPhone service.  Then the Find My Friends app will use that enabled service to share your location with whatever account is used to log on with the app.  That means each family member can still individually manage who knows their whereabouts via the Find My Friends app.

Multiple secondary iCloud Apple IDs on each device

Most of the iOS features that require an iCloud account have been taken care of, except the ones that really matter most.  At this point you can decide if you want a me.com email address or not.  Each family member can create their own account (or accounts) for Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Notes.

When it comes to mail, not every third-party service out there supports all of these features.  Hotmail, for instance, will support Reminders, but not Notes.  Some Microsoft Exchange Servers will support Reminders, some Notes and some both Reminders and Notes.  If you happen to configure your Google Mail as an Exchange service, you will not get Reminders or Notes.  Yahoo on the other hand actually supports them all and AOL, well, just Notes.  So be sure to pick a mail provider that will support all of the services you need.

Several independent Apple IDs for everything else

So what’s left?  Quite a bit actually.  FaceTime, GameCenter, Messaging, HomeSharing and even the Apple Store app.  The default account used by each of these independent apps is the Apple ID configured to be used with the iTunes account on a particular device.  But you can use any Apple ID you like.

These apps support features that are independent from both the iTunes account as well as the iCloud account that are configured on the device.  They are managed separately, configured in separate settings and even stored in separate apps.  You can sign out of each of these particular features and sign back in using a different Apple ID.  And this will have no effect on the aforementioned iTunes and iCloud account settings on the device.

A good strategy

The idea here is that you can use multiple Apple IDs on each device, and at the same time each Apple ID does not need to be enrolled in every Apple product, feature and service.  Decide what products and services you want to use first and determine how each device will be used.  If you don’t, before you know it you could end up with a real rats nest of accounts.

Do consider using one master family account on all devices to manage iTunes purchases, and use that same shared account to track the location of all of your devices.  As an added bonus, you could use the calendar, contacts and reminders with this shared family iCloud account as well.  Once you have each device configured with these basics, let each family member decide which third-party email service they want.  This may well be the best strategy to employ, until Apple sees fit to enable multiple users per device.

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While it might seem like overkill to dissect reports about the size of a still-unreleased-and-unannounced phone’s screen, when it comes to the iPhone, the screen is kind of a big deal, especially to all the developers behind iOS apps. The screen size determines the most important things: The layout, appearance and user interaction elements of an app. As a handful of high-profile iOS app makers told me recently, they have faith in Apple not doing something crazy or drastic that would upset the established development process.

9to5Mac’s report on Tuesday seems to give added foundation to that faith. Though the report concerns a test device and not a finished product, the scenario laid out is one that would be most amenable to developers and iPhone buyers. Here’s what they learned about the prototype:

Both of these phones sport a new, larger display that is 3.95 inches diagonally.  Apple will not just increase the size of the display and leave the current resolution, but will actually be adding pixels to the display. The new iPhone display resolution will be 640 x 1136.  That’s an extra 176 pixels longer of a display.  The screen will be the same 1.94 inches wide, but will grow to 3.45 inches tall. This new resolution is very close to a 16:9 screen ratio, so this means that 16:9 videos can play full screen at their native aspect ratio.

We’ve also heard that Apple will be taking full advantage of their new pixels. Apple is currently testing builds of iOS 6 that are custom-built to the new iPhone’s display. These builds include a tweaked home screen with a fifth row of icons (besides the stationary app dock) and extended application user interfaces that offer views of more content. Apple is able to pull this off with the same sharpness as the current iPhone Retina Display because of the additional pixels.

Though it’s likely we won’t see a new iPhone until the fall, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference takes place in June. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple chooses to preview the next version of its mobile software, iOS 6, at that event, and if by doing that they’ll end up spilling the beans on the screen-size changes months before the new device is ready.

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The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News reported separately last week that Apple will introduce a screen of “at least 4 inches diagonal” or “bigger than 3.5 inches,” the current screen size. What’s not clear is how Apple would go about this and satisfy both users — who may enjoy a larger screen but also want to keep the Retina display quality — and its army of third-party developers — who don’t want to have to develop for a wide variety of different screen sizes.

There are several theories out there as to how Apple could build a larger-screen iPhone. They include scaling up the screen and just dropping the pixel density a bit; changing the aspect ratio, increasing the screen height, and keeping the pixel density the same; increasing the width and the height; or going bigger than 4 inches and using a standard 16:9 resolution. Rene Ritchie at iMore has a good explanation of how Apple could get there.

But what do the developers who will have to deal with the implications of a larger screen think? I talked to a few iOS app makers, and interestingly, many of them are not convinced Apple would actually “pull an Android,” as one developer put it, and make it more complicated to design for a bunch of different screen sizes (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4/4S and something new).

Sam Shank, the CEO of Hotel Tonight, a hotel-finding app for iOS and Android, said if Apple does change the screen size, he believes the phone itself would become slightly wider but not much taller. But he doesn’t believe Apple would mess with either the aspect ratio or pixel density.

“Changing the aspect ratio would be a lot of work for development teams. We found that maybe 50 percent of iOS development is [spent] in layout,” he said in an interview on Friday. “If we had to do two versions of that, the current aspect ratio and a new aspect ratio, and had to lay it out again, that would add considerably to our development time.”

Lenny Rachitsky, the CEO of Localmind, a social discovery app for both iOS and Android, said he doesn’t see Apple creating fragmentation problems for its developers. “We haven’t put a lot of thought into it yet, partly because we assume Apple isn’t going to pull an Android and fragment the device market unnecessarily. If they do, they must have a really good reason to do it, and we’re confident they’ll provide tools to make it easy to migrate. The last thing they want to do is put more friction in front of developers.”

Localmind’s lead iOS developer, Nelson Gauthier, sounded equally confident that Apple would make any transition, if needed, smooth. “Apple often changes the requirements for iOS applications but they usually give developers fair warning and decent tools to accommodate new devices. The transition to Retina display and iPad were both relatively straightforward,” he said.

Gauthier said in an e-mail:

A bigger display could mean a few things. It could mean that the display has a higher resolution while retaining the same aspect ratio. The new display might be a different shape. Finally, the display might simply grow while retaining the old resolution. But changing the resolution or aspect of the display need not have an effect on user interface elements, just their layout. Bars and controls could stay the same size while content areas expand to fill the additional screen real estate.

Apple might help developers transition between form factors by providing a system that would automatically adjust layouts for new resolutions and display aspects. Last year at WWDC, they revealed a component for Mac OS X called Cocoa Auto-Layout that allows developers to define layouts using fairly simple, freeform constraints. A system like this could also work on iOS.

Massive Damage Inc., which makes location-based iOS games, is also betting against major changes for developers. As CEO Ken Seto points out, there are already two resolutions many developers have to worry about for iPhone games: standard resolution for older iPhones and Retina for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

“I can’t quite imagine how they will introduce yet another retina resolution standard. Overall, I think if Apple does increase the screen size, they will be careful to not introduce too much fragmentation. They will likely keep the aspect ratio the same so developers won’t have [to] refactor their UI,” he said. “I have a feeling a bigger iPhone will automatically scale up existing retina resolutions as the screen would likely only get a little bit bigger.”

But the feeling that any changes would be negative isn’t necessarily universal. Donnie Dinch, the co-founder of iOS last-minute ticketing app WillCall, said because of the content of his company’s app, a screen size change may not have a huge impact for it, especially if Apple went the route of simply making the screen taller.

“It doesn’t really matter how tall it is for us, it’s probably a bigger deal for games . . . I think that a lot of the things we do is just list screens [of ticket information], so having a taller screen makes sense,” he said.

But lowering the pixel density to accommodate a larger screen? The screen is the most important part of the iPhone, said Dinch: “If they augment that in any way negatively, that would be insane.”

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You could say I was shocked, stunned and horrified. To clear a few things up: No, as I told my inquiring editor, tequila shots were not involved. Yes, I realize it’s just a phone. But I don’t make a habit out of carelessly destroying expensive things — especially when I’m so close to the end of my AT&T two-year contract and looking forward to a no-penalty upgrade to a new phone circa, say, October.

I’ll jump forward to the end: this is a happy story. I walked out of the Apple Store in Center City Philadelphia at 7 p.m. the following day with a brand new iPhone 4. But the journey was very impressive considering the level of service I received for a product that is not a refrigerator or pricey household appliance. Remember, we’re talking about a phone. (Note: I did not disclose my profession to the Apple Store staff for obvious reasons. Nor do I think every customer does or would have the same experience I did — your mileage at the Genius Bar may vary.)

Apple is famous for customer satisfaction — it scores tops among cell phone owners and computer owners, according to the American Customer Service Index. It’s probably no coincidence that high customer satisfaction scores – and offering professional and prompt technical help goes a long way towards ensuring satisfaction — are happening at the same time as the historic expansion of Apple’s business and the ascendance of its stock price.

After my Genius Bar appointment, Apple sent me its standard follow-up customer survey asking me about my experience. And since I write about Apple, I figured I’d share my answers here, in survey form. I was asked to rate my satisfaction with various aspects of Apple’s service on a scale of very dissatisfied to very satisfied.

Overall, how satisfied were you with your in-store repair experience?

Very satisfied. The morning after the fateful accident, I walked into the Center City store without an appointment. I was immediately greeted and told to come back for the next available time slot at the Genius Bar in 20 minutes. When I returned, I waited about a minute and 30 seconds before my designated Genius, Dan, walked up.

That wait was the only thing about my experience that was short — but we’ll get to that in a minute. Despite a somewhat complicated situation due to a failed iCloud backup, I was consistently updated on what was going on with my device. And the employees acted like they cared about solving my problem. Customer service isn’t necessarily the most rewarding job, so it’s gratifying when an employee understands that your presence means there is a problem and that getting it fixed is important. (Apple has just over 34,000 retail employees, with about 100 assigned to each store. Horace Dediu at Asymco calculated that Apple retail sales employees make from $9 to $15 per hour, but Genius Bar workers can make up to $30 per hour.)

Overall, how would you rate the professionalism and technical ability of the store employees responsible for your repair?

Very satisfied. This was somewhat of an emergency situation for me — it’s hard to get work done as a reporter when your only phone is unusable for calls or apps you might be writing about. The Apple Store employees made me feel like getting a new iPhone right away was a priority for them.

They also were very straightforward with me. They made sure I knew what my options were from the start: I could use my AT&T upgrade for a new iPhone 4S, which would start my two-year contract over again (no thanks), purchase a new iPhone 4S off contract for $500 (eek); or, if I left my broken device with Apple, they’d replace my same model with a new iPhone 4 for $149. I chose the latter.

They also let me know that this is fairly routine. Dropping a phone three stories? Not weird at all — they’ve seen and heard worse. The phone’s screen had a lot of scary-looking shards of glass sticking up from it, and when I apologized for its state, my designated Genius shrugged: “I have chefs’ fingers. I deal with cracked screens like this all the time.”

How many times were you contacted about the state of your repair?

At least 10 times, and I hadn’t even left the store. While my new phone was re-syncing Dan would attend to his other Genius Bar appointments, but he’d continually pop back over to update me on the status of my phone. This went a long way toward making me feel like the situation was resolvable and that they cared about getting me a satisfactory outcome.

Once your repaired product was returned to you, what happened?

This actually wasn’t a simple get-a-replacement-phone-and-resync-it-with-my-latest-iCloud-backup situation. Turns out, after 25 minutes of syncing my new phone, none of my roughly 3,000 photos copied over. This was, you might say, problematic. After some troubleshooting, Dan said iCloud was the culprit: my last iCloud backup had failed. He said I should bring my computer that my phone was synced with in and he’d try again, and made me another appointment later that day.

When I returned with my MacBook Air and my new iPhone, he battled further issues: iPhoto kept crashing, and the latest iTunes backup wouldn’t sync. He tried a few different approaches, and finally ended up finding a solution. This troubleshooting took almost an hour, again, thanks to the sheer number of photos I had on my device. Then once he figured out the fix, it was a least another 45 minutes of syncing.

From the start of the discussion, how long was your interaction at the Genius Bar?

Over the course of two different appointments, I spent just under four hours getting in-person tech support from the Apple Store. While that might sound excruciating, Dan was seriously heroic, never got flustered, and even took time to discuss one of my favorite topics while we were waiting: where to procure Philly’s best pizza. (Osteria on North Broad Street, if you’re wondering.) As someone who works from home or remote locations regularly, it wasn’t really a problem to be nearby the Apple Store all day. But that might be harder for people who have to report to offices.

Plus, when his shift ended at 6 p.m., he found another Genius to check in on me while we waited for my syncing to finish so they’d be sure my problem was entirely fixed before I left the store.

In the end, yes, it took a while, and iCloud has some serious issues to work out. But I left with a new phone, only $160 and some change poorer. And, perhaps more importantly, a lot of customer goodwill — an asset that even the most valuable company in the world can’t put a price on.

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I should have bought the 32 GB iPhone, I thought to myself as I tried to update GarageBand on my iPhone. I don’t have enough space to download the update, the dialog box tells me.

For those of us that tend to fill our phones to the brim with apps and media, this is a familiar scenario. However, there’s a neat trick to make it easier to temporarily reclaim space on your iOS device. In short, simply delete music on your device until you have enough room, and then resync (wirelessly, of course) with iTunes when you don’t need the extra space anymore. All of the music you deleted will be right back where it was.

Deleting music is easy. In the Music app, you swipe across the title of an artist/song/album, then hit the delete button that appears. By deleting all the albums by Modest Mouse on my phone, I was able to save about 600 MB of space, which was enough to download the GarageBand update. A quick resync later, and my music was back.

If you have any more tips on saving space in iOS, tell us about them in the comments.

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What should be noted by both the makers and buyers of all kinds of mobile phones is just how hard it is to make a smartphone that people enjoy owning, as compared to basic calling and texting devices.

The ACSI gets its results from calling consumers at home and asking them a variety of questions about any mobile phone they’ve purchased in the last two years. The main points the survey covers are customization — how well does a product suit the owner’s individual needs — and reliability — how often something goes wrong while using the product.

David Van Amburg, managing director of the ACSI, said adding smartphones to the mix this year revealed that customers who just buy plain old feature phones for calling and texting are generally happier with the product than their smartphone-owning counterparts. He said in an interview:

On one hand, smartphones have more features and have more to them, so you’d think that would be a better experience. But that’s as along as everything’s working correctly. When you add more layers of complexity, you create more opportunities for things to go wrong. For a basic phone for calling, the only thing [that generally goes wrong] is dropped calls or lack of signal. You add texting, there’s another layer, but … When you add in data you add in how fast is the download and upload speed. There are many more issues.

While smartphones score better in the ACSI in terms of customization, their reliability marks can drag them down. Many more things can go awry with a smartphone compared to a feature phone besides data or signal issues common to all phones: apps can be wonky, syncing content can be confusing, mapping or navigation can be hard to use, etc.

That is why smartphones overall score somewhat lower than basic phones, according to Van Amburg. “So when you look at our data, it makes Apple’s ability to be as high as they are that much more impressive,” he said.

After Apple, the leader among all mobile phones with 83, comes HTC, LG and Nokia tied with a score of 75, Motorola and “others” both coming in with 73, Samsung with 71 and RIM with 69.

The comparisons are not entirely parallel: Apple and RIM only make smartphones. The rest dabble in a mix of both feature and smartphones. But as smartphones continue to outgrow feature phones in popularity, the need to continually improve and upgrade the product and customer experience for these almost indispensible devices should be very apparent to these manufacturers.

And how do they improve their customer satisfaction rating? The obvious ways: make more reliable products that are easy to use and that people feel are representative of their needs. But that’s harder to do for some than others, says Van Amburg.

“It’s easier to move the needle from 65 to 70 than 85 to 90,” he said. “If you’re RIM, the ability to move from 69 to 74, that shouldn’t be that difficult for them with product improvements and so on. But it’s more challenging for Apple.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user Ron Bennetts

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1. Time in words — Qlocktwo

It is a very minimal clock for iPhone and iPad. It costs 99 cents but I like the idea of the simple black screen telling me what time it is. Built by creative design agency Biegert & Funk, who have also created similar watches and clocks. Download from the iTunes store. (via Ultralink)

2. Uniqlo Wake Up

It is so wonderful and delightful and meets my very simple requirement from an app: high emotional quotient. It is bright, cheery and it comes with alarm tones that mimic the weather, time and day of the week. It is intelligent and fun. It works both on Android and iOS and is free, thanks to Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing brand, whose clothes I will never fit into. As an aside, this is a perfect brand extension vehicle and what brand-advertising should be in the future.

The alarm music, which is automatically created based on the weather, time, and day of the week, was co-written by 51st annual Grammy nominee Cornelius (Keigo Oyamada) and Yoko Kanno, who is active in songwriting across a wide range of genres including video games and anime (COWBOY BEBOP, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Macross). The app allows users to share a record of their awakening – specifically, the time, weather, and temperature at the moment they stopped the alarm – via social media (Facebook, Twitter, RenRen, Weibo). In addition, the “wake up records” shared by users around the world are displayed in a part of the app entitled WORLD WAKE UP.

3. Doubletwist Alarm Clock

Doubletwist Alarm Clock has to be by far the most stunning of all time-watching apps on the market. In fact it is so good that I would consider switching to Android just for this app, for it is not available on iOS. The details on this app are meticulous and the design is what Steve Jobs himself would have approved. Not a surprise, considering its creator Sebastiaan de With once worked for Apple. The app which displays time in two modes – flip and analog comes with features such as recurring alarms, multiple alarms and using library to set songs for wake-up sounds. The app costs $0.99 but is worth every penny! (Also, check out this interview with him to better understand his design philosophy.)

And as a bonus, check out this Habitco Day Maker project on Kickstarter.

With Day Maker, a bedside morning station/iPhone charger, you can add a little extra ‘Pop’ to your day when it’s time to rise and shine. And if you’re not quite ready to face the day, snooze on effortlessly by pushing your iPhone back into its slot. With Day Maker, waking on a schedule has never been easier or more fun. Or relaxing. Using Day Maker is a pleasure because it works exactly as you would imagine, just like a toaster. Once you set your iPhone’s timer, simply load it into an open slot, press down gently, and you’re ready to go. And for a little added fun, we’ve even added a pull tab on the back, so you can set and pop multiple iPhones all at once.

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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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The way Kickstarter works is simple. Enterprising individuals come up with a project idea and identify a target funding amount that is required to take their idea to market.  There are certain guidelines that a project must meet.  Once accepted, the project is run as an all or nothing proposition: Either the project raises all of the funding necessary to make the product, or it gets nothing.

The idea is that the only thing that has been holding these visionaries back has been coming up with the capital to fund their project.  You may have already heard of The Elevation Dock for the iPhone or the LunaTik Watchband for the iPod nano or even the Pebble E-Paper Watch, but here are seven equally great product concepts for iOS products that you may also be interested in supporting.

Galileo: Your iOS in Motion: Most docks are stationary and at their best can be adjusted manually to change the display angle of your iOS device.  The Galileo is a remote-controlled robotic dock that can be adjusted 360 degrees as it pans and tilts to point in any direction you desire.  Meant to control the direction that the camera is pointing, it adds the ability to use your iOS device like an expensive conference room video camera, giving your audience more control of what they are looking at during a video call.  It can also be used as a decent baby monitor while away from  home. (Kickstarter Link)

CloudFTP: Wirelessly share USB storage: One of the fully funded projects on Kickstarter, the CloudFTP can be used as a means of sharing your USB drive with any number of iOS devices.  Being fully funded means you can actually purchase the shipping product directly from the company.  It has an internal rechargeable battery that can be used to power the external USB drive, it creates its own Wi-Fi network for situations were none exist, and you can use it to attach to any sort of mass storage compliant device.  It can even be configured to backup your USB device to iCloud, DropBox and even Box.net. (Kickstarter Link)

Slingshot: Stabilizes smartphone video: Even though the iPhone 4S includes better image stabilization than its predecessors, we could all stand to hold our cameras a little steadier. The Slingshot does just that.  Working with a variety of different sized smartphones, the slingshot is designed to hold the iPhone in landscape mode which is perfect for shooting video.  Not only does it help stabilize shooting video on the go, it can also be used as a tabletop tripod and will allow you to mount the iPhone on almost any tripod. (Kickstarter Link)

CordCruncher: Retractable headphone cord: There are many solutions out there that will help you manage the cord of your iOS headset.  The trouble with most of them is that you have to be disciplined to use them as they take time to wind the cord around some sort of spool.  With the CordCruncher, the time required to wrap up your cord is minimized.  It has an elastic sleeve that can stretch to the full length of the cord, and retracts easily to scrunch the cord up inside.  It is a cord management solution that we could all use. (Kickstarter Link)

Brydge + iPad: Do more: For those among us that feel that the iPad is the perfect platform for a more traditional laptop form factor, the Brydge strives to mimic the look and feel of a MacBook.  More than just an aluminum case, the unique hinge is what sets this keyboard case apart from the rest of the available keyboard cases for the iPad.  (Kickstarter Link)

Day Maker: the Charging iPhone Alarm Toaster: Combining an alarm clock with a bedside charging station, the Day Maker is an interesting twist on just how one can converge the concept of a toaster with modern technology.  Popping up a ready-to-go, fully charged iPhone first thing every morning, the Day Maker allows you to snooze by resting the iPhone back into its charging position.  (Kickstarter Link)

JuiceTank: The first ever iPhone case and charger in one: There is one thing worse than realizing that you need to charge your iPhone: realizing you need to charge your iPhone and you’re without a charging cable.  The JuiceTank is an iPhone case with a concealed wall plug built in.  Also sporting a passthrough micro USB charging interface, you will never be without a charger again.  (Kickstarter Link)

Keep in mind that Kickstarter is not an online store, and you are not exactly placing an order for an established product.  If a project does not reach its funding goals, no money exchanges hands and you don’t get the product.  What you are doing is voicing your support for innovation by helping fund the launch of a new product or idea.  And with a little luck, you will be among the first to sample some great new innovative products.  Take a look for yourself and see if there are any new ideas you find worthy of your backing.

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