Flurry projected that 73 percent of fourth quarter app starts will be by iOS developers compared to 27 percent for Android. That’s based on the first month of the fourth quarter. That would be slightly less than the 75 percent Apple had in the third quarter but on par with the second quarter when it also had 73 percent of app starts. Android actually had its best quarter in the first quarter, when it got 37 percent of app starts.

This data was pulled from new project starts in 2011, in which developers set up analytics for approximately 50,000 apps. Flurry said it’s used in about 25 percent of all iOS and Android apps.

On the revenue side, the comparison also favors iOS by a 3-1 ratio. Flurry found that for top apps running on both platforms, for every dollar generated on iOS, the same app will make 24 cents on Android. This is based on a sample of in-app purchases of top apps comprising millions of users on both platforms. Flurry said the big difference came down to the relatively lower penetration of Google Checkout. Compared to an iTunes account, which every iOS user needs to buy anything, not every Android user has a Google Checkout account, which adds an extra barrier to purchases of apps and in-app transactions.

Google has still a lot to crow about. As we’ve written, it’s hit 10 billion in Android app downloads and it appears to have pushed past iOS in the pace of recent downloads. Flurry estimates that 550,000 Android devices are now activated daily compared to an estimated 450,000 for iOS.

But the numbers show that it’s not just about device market share or the aggregate number of downloads. It’s about which users are more valuable to developers. There is still more of a culture of buying and spending money on iOS and that benefits Apple. Even Amazon with its Kindle Fire is proving to be a popular option for Android developers because those early tablet users appear to be open to buying a lot of things.

Google is working on this and its steps to integrate Google Checkout and Google Wallet are helpful. Also, moves to get new Android users to enter their credit card information when they set up their phone will be beneficial. And as the Android device market share continues to grow, developers can’t ignore the big opportunity there. But it looks like iOS is still very much their priority and despite the wishful thinking of Schmidt, it’s going to take a lot for Android to win the hearts of developers.

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Code in the beta software makes reference to an iPad 2.4, which follows the coding convention by which Apple refers to its products but isn’t yet represented by a shipping device. It could be the Sprint iPad some have suggested is on the way, says 9t05Mac, which also holds that if it is a dedicated Sprint device, it might support WiMAX. The code also references an iPad 3.3, which joins existing references to an iPad 3.1 and iPad 3.2, all of which are thought to refer to Apple’s next-gen tablet, reportedly planned for release early next year.

Other new products suggested in the code include a new Apple TV, referenced as J33, and a new iPhone, code-named iPhone 5.1. The iPhone 5 has been rumored for release next year, but the inclusion of it in Apple code means it’s almost definitely being tested internally with this latest software update.

Hints in the code are only one side of the iOS 5.1 coin. There are also a couple of relatively small but very practical changes in how the iPad manages network data and power for those who fear battery-busting drain from certain services. There is now a switch to control whether or not iTunes Match is allowed to use cellular data to do its download and streaming thing, which is a welcome addition for folks on a limited data plan.

There is also a new indicator for location services use. It’s an outlined version of the little purple arrow that appears next to items in your list of apps under the Location Services settings screen (or in your status bar) to show an app that is using a geofence. A geofence is what Reminders uses to make location-aware to-dos work, and it uses less power than an app that is currently actively using your location information. It makes the location services notification system slightly more complicated, but it should help users better predict how long their batteries will last as well as be more aware of exactly what data their phone is using at any given time.

Finally, there is a new voice dictation feature that developers will be able to take advantage of, which seems to allow them to code responses to recognized phrases. So, basically, it looks like apps might be able to have very basic and preprogrammed “conversations” with users under iOS 5.1, as long as everyone sticks to the script.

There doesn’t appear to be any reference to additional voice command options with Siri that would allow you to do things like turn off Wi-Fi, as was rumored for iOS 5.1 earlier in the month. Still, it’s early days yet for the beta, so we’re not counting anything out completely.

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The Tech Talk World Tour 2011 will take place in nine cities in seven countries, starting in November and ending in January. Anyone registered as an iOS developer through Apple’s official Developer Program can attend the events, but space is limited and priority will be given to developers who actually have an app listed for sale in the App Store. Interest will no doubt be high, considering how much more quickly Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference has sold out in recent years.

Developers who are interested can register via Apple’s official Tech Talk page at its developer site. The agenda for the one-day event has already been posted at the site, too, and is available for download as a PDF, too. Since the event is focused on iOS 5, topics include using iCloud storage, AirPlay, turn-based gaming in Game Center, and others related to feature additions made to the mobile OS in the new update.

Here’s a list of when and where the Tech Talks will take place:

• Berlin, Germany – Nov. 2, Maritim ProArte Hotel Berlin
• London, U.K. — Nov. 7, Kings Place
• Rome, Italy – Nov. 9, Rome Marriott Park Hotel
• Beijing, China – Dec. 5, Renaissance Beijing Capital Hotel
• Seoul, South Korea – Dec. 8, Kintex
• São Paolo, Brazil – Jan. 9, Sheraton São Paulo WTC
• New York City, New York — Jan. 13, Millennium Broadway Hotel Times Square
• Seattle, Washington – Jan. 18, Hilton Seattle Airport and Conference Center
• Austin, Texas – Jan. 23, Austin Convention Center

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Late last month, Facebook enacted a new spam control system to cut down on the rampant spam on the company’s application platform. But the company quickly came under fire when the new controls apparently cut out a number of legitimate applications. Disgruntled developers quickly took to Facebook’s message boards and the press to complain about the company’s lack of communication prior to the shut-downs.

It looks like Facebook heard those complaints loud and clear. On Thursday the company announced several changes to its application developer tools and its app spam control policy to give developers more insight into how their apps are being received by the larger community — before those complaints prompt spam control action. Facebook is now rolling out a “news feed” tab in its developer dashboard that shows the positive and negative feedback apps have received in an easy-to-read graph form.

In addition, Facebook said it has softened the way it responds to app complaints. Now, when Facebook receives excessive negative feedback on an app, it will first disable only the aspect of the app that is receiving the majority of complaints, rather than deleting the app entirely. For instance, Facebook engineer Mike Vernal wrote in a blog post announcing the changes: “If an app is generating a lot of negative feedback via chat messages, we will take action only on that app’s ability to publish to chat but otherwise leave the app intact.”

Facebook also says it will now disable, rather than delete, apps that receive negative feedback across multiple channels. Users will not be able to access an app in disabled mode, but developers will still be able to access, test, and edit it. Developers will be able to appeal when their apps are disabled entirely or in a granular fashion.

All in all, these are very smart moves for Facebook to make. The swift response to last month’s criticism shows that it is taking its developers seriously; as does Facebook’s willingness to be more transparent about how they are regulating the apps. After all, developer trust is key to any API strategy.

Here is a look at the new dashboard “news feed” feature:

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IMAP is designed to do one thing and do it well — deliver email despite the intermittent connections that were prevalent when it was developed. For that reason is baked into nearly every email client and mobile device. Email delivery is also one of the most thoroughly tested services on mobile devices, and is designed to operate as an always on, background service.

IMAP was designed at a time when mobile Internet apps did not exist, and when most Internet connections were dialup connections. As with mobile apps running on cellular networks, email clients of the time needed to make best use of the intermittent connection they had. Without going into too much detail, IMAP splits accessing an email account into several tasks:

1. Logging in and retrieving a list of folders (inbox, outbox, etc)
2. Retrieving a summary of messages within a folder, but not the messages themselves
3. Retrieving an individual message and/or attachments

This approach enables the mail client to quickly find out what’s in a mailbox, and then retrieve the messages needed, without retransmitting information that is not needed or that has been sent before. This maps nicely to what many mobile apps do, and can be optimized in the same way.

In this paradigm, an information service presents an IMAP interface that email clients can connect to. Let’s use an upcoming event notification service as an example, and walk through the steps an IMAP client would use to display continuously updated event information tied to your current location. The client would go through the following steps:

1. Login with the user’s credentials, request a list of folders. The server replies with a list of folders such as “San Francisco : Mission”, “San Francisco : Civic Center”, and so on.
2. The client subscribes to some of all of these folders, and fetches a list of message headers. The message headers contain basic information about upcoming events. IMAP’s server side search function will also be a useful way to fetch customized result sets.
3. The client fetches message bodies and attachments in the background, or when the
   user opens an item, depending on how the email client is configured.
4. When the user opens a message, he or she sees an HTML formatted email, with links,
   attachments, etc all preloaded, so there is usually no visible network delay because most of the message was preloaded in the background.

Why give IMAP a try?

Of course, you can do all of this with a native application that calls a web service in the background and selectively loads and caches information ahead of time. The problem is that it requires much more work on the part of the developer, and on some mobile platforms, background processes are tricky to manage (e.g. they’ll be shut down by the mobile OS to conserve memory or battery power), whereas using IMAP, one can simply subscribe to additional IMAP email account for the services the user is following. Most mobile email clients also notify the user of new or unread messages, and provide a simple notification mechanism, another bonus. Meanwhile, the service provider can track which users have read which messages, news items, etc.

Another advantage of using IMAP as a transport protocol, and using a built in IMAP agent on the phone, is it is already there, and is one of the core services on mobile devices. Your web app can behave like just another IMAP inbox the device can subscribe to, so it will be synced along with other mail accounts. Likewise, your users can subscribe using their phone’s built in mail client, or you can “skin” an existing client for look and feel, without forcing your developers to build the whole thing from scratch.

The missing piece.

Most of the pieces needed to do this are already available. The protocol is widely used and is built into nearly every mail app in some form. Only one piece is not widely available, an IMAP2HTTP utility that presents an IMAP interface to mobile apps, while communicating with an upstream web service via RESTful HTTP queries that are easy for web app developers to deal with.

Jesse Vincent’s Perl library, NET::IMAP::SERVER, enables web apps to serve data as IMAP mailboxes. In addition to libraries for popular programming languages, there is an opportunity for mobile development tools vendors, such as Titanium and PhoneGap to host IMAP-to-HTTP gateways that provide a solution for web app developers, much like the SMTP2WEB service enables web apps to process email. (Hint: it would also be nice if Google provided a similar handler for App Engine, much as it has done for inbound email processing and XMPP/Jabber messaging).

IMAP will primarily be useful for applications that continuously retrieve information, such as news readers, background search tools, and similar applications that can present information as a set of items in folders. It is a bit of a hack, but it’s a useful hack that can improve the user experience for many mobile applications. It won’t replace native apps, but will provide developers with a fast and inexpensive way to provide mobile access, and then make a decision about whether to invest in native apps further on in the product development cycle.

Brian McConnell is an entrepreneur, and the founder of the Worldwide Lexicon, an open source translation platform. Prior to founding WWL, he founded several telecom and mobile startups (where the balkanization of the mobile software industry was one of his biggest pet peeves).

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This is always the case with platforms – they focus on what is core, and over time what is core grows. The company announced that it does not want to see more development of apps that “mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience”. This was a stronger position than Twitter had taken previously, and showed that it plans to expand on these capabilities as part of its core business.

What it didn’t do well was communicate clearly, which created big opportunities for misinterpretations like “Twitter just told its third-party client application developer community that it is no longer wanted.” The communication from Twitter’s Ryan Sarver suggested that a large percentage of Twitter apps exist in the area it is identifying as core. But it’s not a large percentage. The broad majority of Twitter applications are not simple read-write clients, but analytics, brand management, social CRM, trending, sharing, and marketing apps.

What you need to plan for as a developer is that an API dependency is not the same as a dependency on a library. You’re depending on a service that can change, grow, shrink, or cease to exist. As a developer, if you don’t have a plan for this, you should. You’re getting tremendously more functionality than we ever got out of libraries – an entire service, with data, updates, users, and scalability that you don’t have to pay for. It makes sense that the risks are also larger and must be managed.

Twitter’s announcement highlights one of these risks: the Terms of Service (TOS) for an API. They don’t freeze in time like the license for a library. They can and will change to meet the needs of the business that provides them. Even in the library era, Microsoft provides a few examples of what a major platform provider with an expansionist philosophy could do:

1. Compete directly by selling similar software (Microsoft Office vs. Corel et al),
2. Compete indirectly by including similar software in the platform (Wolverine vs. third party TCP/IP stacks),
3. Compete based on TOS or legal action (barring third party developers from using “private Windows APIs” under trade secret law or code obfuscation).

We’ll see Twitter do all three over time as well – it has already done No. 1 (acquiring Tweetie and releasing iOS and Android clients) and just now No. 3 has been demonstrated again, just as it has been in the past with barring third-party advertising. The second item is probably not far behind – for example, it only makes sense to start offering analytics functions that currently come from some third-party services and apps in the Twitter API core in order to increase adoption of the Twitter platform for business and marketing apps. No doubt there are new ways to compete in the API economy that have yet to be cataloged.

Where there is cause for optimism is that single-function, single-API apps are becoming the historical part of the apps + APIs phase of this next Internet. They represented part of the first wave of API-based applications and helped us understand how to use APIs. By contrast, apps that do something useful for the user across a domain – such as messaging for consumers across their IM and social channels, such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Trillian – are real products that enable a whole use case. These create lasting value and a community of users around the app itself, which is good for both the developer and the API provider.

A narrow app like something that crawls Facebook and shows me what movies my friends recently watched is not a whole use case. One that combines it with Fandango for ticketing or Netflix for instant viewing, or IMDB to let me learn about the graph of actors, directors, and movies related to the movies my friends watched are whole use cases. These kinds of apps will also be more resilient to API changes because they are less dependent on any single one.

Twitter’s move simply exposes a facet of the API economy that has been true all along. We can expect to see more of this from more providers over the coming years, as the next Internet evolves and companies compete for monopoly positions in their domain. Hopefully the large API providers will learn from Twitter’s communication failure and not alienate their developer communities as they change.

And as always in software: caveat structor (developer beware) will apply.

Sam Ramji is Vice President of Strategy at Apigee, a company that manages APIs. Prior to Apigee, Ramji led open source strategy across Microsoft.

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APIs between services are the key, packaging up data generated by one web app and transferring it to another. In chats with entrepreneurs at South By Southwest, the API has become a basic building block, but what seems relatively unexplored is who has access to that building block and the capricious nature of the rules surrounding it. As Twitter showed those using its API last week when it gave notice to app developers that it doesn’t want new Twitter clients, sometimes applications might be building their services on a foundation of sand.

This weekend at SXSW, I had an entrepreneur named Damian Kimmelman, the founder of DueDil explain to me that he was using an API to gather some data from his friend’s company “because he liked their algorithms.” Unsaid was the fact that the guy providing the API was also his friend, but surely that ranked as well. Meanwhile in another conversation, Alex Housley, COO of Rummble Labs, which provides recommendations for businesses, is working with GNIP in part because it has access to Twitter’s firehouse of tweets from an API.

But as the Twitter example shows, there are issues associated with APIs that may mirror issues associated intellectual property licensing. Sam Ramji, of Apigee, which acts as a monitoring and quality assurance service for APIs, agrees. In a conversation at SXSW, he said the technology is there to share content, APIs, and whatever else someone wants, but the contracts and legal system will have to catch up. For example, do the clients using the Twitter API have any legal resource after the microblogging company changed the terms on them? Should they? In some areas, such as the ownership of movies for example, the contracts and business models are in place. But for APIs, the general consensus is that open APIs are good, and enticing developers to use them is only going to be good for those companies seeking to build a platform.

However, as those platforms seek to expand and monetize their user base and their existing data, and as we build out the federated software I described after hanging out at SXSW last year, the issue of API contracts or dependability will have to come to the fore in order to protect those building a business on top of such platforms as well as the users who come to depend on them. Are there people working on this, or are we still at the caveat emptor stage? I welcome any thoughts on this issue going forward.

Image courtesy of Flickr user the trial.

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Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch has, apparently, cancelled his incredible C4 conference. In a recent blog post, Rentzsh states…

C4 was my attempt to push on the Apple community from the bottom-up.
With that background in place, I hope you can understand how Section 3.3.1 has broken my sprit.

Section 3.3.1 that he is referring to is a change made to the iPhone Developers License Agreement, declaring that any app that runs on the iPhone needs to have been originally developed using the iPhone SDK and the Objective-C, C, or C++ programming languages. What that means for developers is that they are not allowed to use Adobe’s Flash CS5 or any other language or development environment to create their apps. What that means for Apple is that it keeps complete control over its platform. What that means for consumers is less choice, and fewer apps. Then again, considering the wealth of applications available on Windows, and the general level of quality of those applications, maybe it’s not all that bad after all.

The change to Section 3.3.1 happened several weeks ago, but Rentzsch has just posted his goodbye to C4. He didn’t take this decision lightly. Rentzsch is a leader in the developer community, to see his conference go is a huge loss. If he is right or wrong is up to him to decide, but I honestly hope that other developers do not follow his lead. Apple has built a brand on solid hardware and amazing applications, on the iPhone OS and Mac OS X. To see some of the best minds abandoning or taking away from the platform, if that is indeed what Rentzsch is doing, is worrying to say the least.

I hope that if any good can come out of the loss of C4, it will be for Apple to hear their wake up call, and realize that perhaps this time they’ve taken the change a little too far.

Image courtesy of Flickr user somegeekintn

The acquisition brings together two of the most significant developers in App Store history, both of which have built their considerable reputations exclusively through their efforts with the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s a step that represents a big milestone in the life of the App Store’s maturing ecosystem.

On the surface, it doesn’t appear at this point as though the merger will affect what most App Store users see. According to ngmoco’s CEO Neil Young:

Freeverse, much like us, is comprised of true game-makers. Now with our combined forces, their titles can reach more people and the talented folks at Freeverse can keep doing what they do best, which is making great games.

Freeverse won’t undergo any changes in terms of its name, branding or management now that its owned by ngmoco. All Freeverse games will likely now include Plus+ network features, which allow gamers to have a more social experience akin to an Xbox live for iPhone users. Freeverse was already a partner involved in that ngmoco-started endeavor, beginning with Flick Fishing.

Even if the effects of this acquisition aren’t immediately apparent or even visible to the average consumer, that doesn’t mean this doesn’t represent a significant change in how the App Store operates. Freeverse is just the beginning for ngmoco, and a way to diversify its brand. The maker of Eliminate Pro and Touch Pets Dogs has itself acknowledged a shift towards producing primarily free-to-play games in the press release announcing the acquisition, which depend on additional purchases of in-app content to generate revenue:

Last year ngmoco added top executives from the games, platform technology and web sectors and launched its leading player network, Plus+. The company shifted its production structures to build free-to-play games.

Now it can offer more traditional single-purchase games via Freeverse to get the best of both worlds while establishing strong, coherent brand identity. It will also quite easily be able to adopt and implement one model over the other if either one becomes much more obviously profitable or preferable to consumers.

Mergers and acquisitions will help smaller studios like ngmoco that made their name on the App Store go toe-to-toe with big production studios like EA Mobile and Gameloft, which were established players long before Apple’s mobile gaming device lineup ever existed. It’s good news for App Store shoppers, since ngmoco has been nothing but innovative to date and should now be better able to continue bringing quality titles to market.

But it’s also a sign that the tumultuous, super-heated forge that was the App Store in its inception is cooling, and that the landscape is taking on a much more static guise. A status quo is asserting itself, and with that, a definite aristocracy of content providers that will become harder and harder to knock off their perches. Games will become more less varied and surprising, but quality will improve.

I hesitate to comment on whether or not this is ultimately a good thing for iPhone users, but I think it is. As with any new market, the frontier days are fun, but maturity and establishment brings with it more focused efforts at improving quality and lowering cost for consumers. It’s time the App Store started getting much better at what it does well, even if some innovation is lost in the bargain.

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But as the Philosopher Jagger so wisely put it, “You can’t always get what you want.” And, as someone else once quipped, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join, ‘em.” To that end, Apple is advertising a job opening for a “Game/Media Software Engineer.” Based at its Cupertino hive mind headquarters, it’s a full-time position, and it sounds like Apple is taking it really very seriously;

The interactive media group is looking for a skilled software engineer who wants to work as part of a small highly motivated team to work on interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch.

OK, sounds like gaming, right? I mean, sure, it could be the start of iLife for iPhone, but I doubt that. I suspect this is more likely the beginning of some home-grown games. It has done it before (it’s just, no one cared).

The position on the team is to help design and implement interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch. The position also requires a creative thinker who can contribute and comment on the design process as well as being flexible enough to aid in all aspects of production such as asset management and able to work to a deadline.

Yeah, definitely sounds like gaming. What other medium is best described as “interactive multimedia?” (Don’t answer that, I know there are loads of genres, I’m just being glib, mmkay?)

The posting adds that applicants must have strong C / C++ / Objective-C skills, while an iPhone development background “is preferred.” In addition, Apple requires its shiny new game interactive multimedia code-monkey to have at least three years of videogame development experience, which includes having shipped “…at least one AAA title.”

So the question now is…why now? It was pretty obvious in the months following the launch of the App Store that games were the hot favorite of pretty much every iPhone/iPod touch owner. (Well, Games and Fart Apps. I once sat in a room drinking beer with some nerdy buddies and one of them started showing off his fart apps. No more than ten minutes later we had purchased and installed half a dozen such apps each. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Yes, I’m ashamed.)

Unlike Fart Apps, public demand for games has a habit of persisting. (Insert Fart-App-related “bad smell” joke here.) So, if Games are here to stay, might as well get in on it, right Apple? At the very least, there’s money to be made.

More Than Just the Money

Of course, there’s another possibility here. Much has been said of the rumored iTablet and the challenges of making iPhone OS applications “scalable” — that is, adapted to run on the tablet’s much larger, higher-resolution screen. Assuming the iTablet also takes advantage of a custom chip architecture (courtesy of Apple’s purchase of PA Semi) we have a unique hardware platform in the pipeline. And when Apple has something new to show-off, there’s a very strictly observed custom to keep in mind…

When Microsoft shows off a new technology, it traditionally does so with the help of a hardware partner. On stage during a keynote, Ozzie will say something like “We’ve worked closely with HP for ten thousand years and here’s their President of Keynote Demos to show off the new widget…” So then some exec in a shirt and tie comes on stage and fumbles around on a PC for 15 minutes talking about “platform integration” and “line-of-business opportunity” or, whatever.

When Apple shows off a new technology, it traditionally takes all the credit for it, from inception to execution and every step in between. After Steve wows us with a 50 foot tall, all-graphics slideshow, Scott Forstall introduces a jeans-and-tshirt-wearing execu-dude, “We are so proud of this amazing brilliant incredible new widget… so we gave it to EA’s developers to play with for only six seconds and they produced this new game they’re gonna demo now…”

Showmanship differences aside, the point here is that Microsoft never tells us how it should be done. Apple, on the other hand, always does.

So perhaps (in the context of taking advantage of the potential offered by an entirely new platform) this job posting makes perfect sense; whether it likes it or not, the iPhone/iPod touch have demonstrated that gaming is an important part of today’s mobile lifestyle. Making them work properly on the tablet will be a new challenge, and one Apple will be keen to demonstrate from day one. If it is going to stick to the Apple tradition of showing everyone “how it’s done,” it makes sense it will want to develop a demo in-house.

If you fancy applying, you can read the posting right here. I wonder if Joe Hewitt should consider applying, y’know, just for giggles?

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