Why even the best iOS app developers struggle to set the right price
Small app studio Impending is struggling with one of the most essential questions about today’s App Store: what to charge for a new app in the age of free-to-play apps. Read more »
FreedomPop to start selling smartphones and launch yet another VoIP service
photo: Flickr / frankh
If FreedomPop can get this VoIP service off the ground it could become the first all-IP mobile operator, but the feisty MVNO has promised to launch voice in the past and failed to deliver. Read more »
FreedomPop goes national with a Sprint-powered mobile hotspot
FreedomPop is tapping into Sprint’s CDMA network to expand its footprint beyond Clearwire’s 80-city footprint. The new 3G service is just a prelude to FreedomPop’s planned support for LTE later this year. Read more »
Enterprise 2.0: The science of inside sales
photo: dotshock/Shutterstock
With downloadable apps taking over the enterprise, how do startups reach enterprise decision makers and purchasing managers? The answer: Your inside sales force. Read more »
FreedomPop lets customers rollover unused megabytes each month – for a fee
photo: Shutterstock / yanugkelid
Mobile data MVNO FreedomPop is exploring the notion of a broadband piggy bank, which stores your unused data every month. It’s a concept ideal for the casual user of mobile broadband. Read more »
FreedomPop’s iPhone sleeve shipments held up awaiting FCC approval
Still waiting on that FreedomPop iPhone sleeve you ordered last summer? Well, you’ll have to wait at least a few more weeks. The devices are delayed at customs while the FCC goes through its certification process. Read more »
FreedomPop, textPlus team up to offer freemium voice, SMS service
FreedomPop and textPlus have matching philosophies: Give a baseline service away for free and upsell additional megabytes and minutes. Later this quarter FreedomPop will incorporate textPlus’s IP messaging and VoIP services into its mobile broadband service. Read more »
FreedomPop brings its freemium 4G model to the home
photo: Shutterstock / alexmillos
The mobile virtual network operator plans to take the “M” out of MVNO. Using Clearwire’s WiMAX network, FreedomPop will start selling in January a residential broadband service with the same incentives as its mobile service, including 1 GB a month of free data. Read more »
What makes a free trial work (or not)
photo: Flickr / Alan O'Rourke
Do limited time try-before-buying offers work for tech vendors? That’s the question Totango addressed in new research that shows that companies can boost their conversion rate simply by paying attention to the people who sign up and — shocker — communicating with them. Read more »
FreedomPop’s freemium 4G data service goes live
photo: Flickr / frankh
After much hype and anticipation, MVNO FreedomPop is officially launched, offering 500 MB of free data to anyone willing to fork over a deposit for one of its 4G modems. The iPhone and iPod Touch sleeves aren’t available yet, but they’ll arrive in the coming weeks. Read more »
EA seeks gaming ubiquity across models and platforms
Electronic Arts has survived in the cut-throat gaming business since 1982. And it plans to keep its console games alive while diverting resources to the fast growing mobile and social gaming world, company senior vice president Nick Earl said today. Read more »
9 in 10 app downloads are free as in-app purchase takes off
photo: Restaurant Story
Gartner said that 89 percent of app downloads in 2012 are expected to be free and that number will only go up. But in-app purchase is rising as a monetization tool and will be present in 30 percent of apps by 2016. Read more »
FreedomPop has a new plan: Turn the iPod touch into an iPhone
Free data, a 4G sleeve that wraps around the iPod touch, and a VoIP client — FreedomPop now has all of the pieces for a full-fledged mobile service though its technically just a data-only mobile virtual network operator. Read more »
Freemium has run its course
Freemium can only offer the hope that customers will fall in love with your product and be willing to pay for it later. This is a scattershot approach to monetization. Rags Srinivasan argues that it’s time to take a deliberate and more targeted approach. Read more »
FreedomPop starts taking orders for 4G iPhone sleeve
Though FreedomPop remains mysterious on the exact timing , its “free” mobile broadband service seems to be nearing a launch date. It has started selling its WiMAX iPhone sleeve online and also revealed it won’t deliver as much free data to customers as it originally advertised. Read more »
Enterprise 2.0: Freemium first, enterprise second (Part 1 of 3)
Enterprise 2.0 is one of the best opportunities in the technology market. And forward-looking companies are realizing that they need to attract the user, not the IT department. Scott Irwin of Rembrandt Venture Partners breaks down the key components to an effective freemium go-to-market effort. Read more »
Cloud storage wars continue as Egnyte woos Box users
In a bid to build market share, Egynte is offering “paying” Box customers free storage for the rest of the year. Box claims 10 million customers, but it’s unclear how many of them actually pay for their service. Read more »
FreedomPop’s plan to become the anti-carrier
FreedomPop is even more ambitious than we had imagined. It’s not just giving away gobs of free data; it plans to create the carrier equivalent of Web startup and in the process turn 4G capacity into a currency that can be earned and traded. Read more »
FreedomPop extends the Web’s freemium model to mobile data
photo: Flickr / frankh
FreedomPop plans to give away mobile data access to most of its customers for free, charging only premium users a monthly fee. If can it can make the math work, it could potentially shake up the wireless market, extending mobile data to broad swathes of the population. Read more »
SocialFolders plugs into Evernote to be your social media diary
SocialFolders, a freemium application that launched last month to let you store and manage any file created on the social web, rolled out an integration with Evernote on Tuesday that lets users drag-and-drop content such as Tweets, Facebook updates, Instagram photos into their Evernote accounts. Read more »
How to make freemium work for you
photo: Flickr / frankh
The freemium business model propelled the phenomenal growth of Dropbox and Evernote, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Future Simple’s Uzi Shmilovici helps you decide if freemium is a good fit for your company and, if it is, how to make it work for you. Read more »
Subscriber Content
NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mobile in-game purchases to hit $4.8B by 2016
All that virtual currency sold in mobile games is anything but virtual in terms of revenue. Juniper Research, in a new mobile games report, said revenues from mobile in-game purchases totaled $2.1 billion in 2011 and are expected to grow to $4.8 billion by 2016. Read more »
Apple in-app subscriptions are now open to games, too
Apple will be letting game publishers use in-app subscriptions, too, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Big Fish Games is the first publisher to use the feature and will allow users to access dozens of its titles for a recurring fee of $6.99 per month. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Why Shazam’s free iOS app has unlimited music tags
Shazam, a popular music tagging mobile app, announced on Thursday that it would remove the five-song limit from the free version of its iOS software. Why? More tagging leads to more sharing, more Apple iAd impressions and more revenue-generating music purchases from partners. Read more »
The App Store hurtles toward a freemium-focused future
If you’re looking for the key to making money on the App Store for Apple’s iOS devices, a new report from Distimo suggests that in-app purchases are what you should be watching. In-app purchases now account for 72 percent of App Store revenue. Read more »
How Android app growth will mean payoff for devs
Android app downloads are expected to overtake iPhone apps this year for the first time, according to research firm Ovum, and will nearly double iPhone downloads by 2016. The growth in Android app downloads could have big implications for freemium app developers. Read more »
Please Stay Calm thinks location is key to mobile MMOs
New iPhone MMORPG Please Stay Calm takes a lot of what makes freemium gaming titles successful on the App Store, and adds in a dash of zombies, and a heaping helping of location services. It’s social survival horror in your backyard — and it’s pretty awesome. Read more »
DoubleRecall turns paywalls into advertising dollars
Start-up DoubleRecall is turning paywalls into branding opportunities that give consumers access to premium content on websites and mobile apps if they type out a few words from a sponsor message. The model boosts brand recognition, drives higher revenue for publishers and gives users free content. Read more »
Tapjoy helps 10,000 apps go freemium
The money in mobile apps is increasingly tilting toward freemium apps and that is helping companies like Tapjoy, which said it now has 10,000 apps that are using its monetization and distribution platform. The company is also delivering more than 1 million ad completions every day. Read more »
Like casinos, mobile game devs want “big fish”
Mobile in-app purchases have eclipsed paid downloads as a revenue driver for mobile developers. But how much is that worth? Flurry said the average in-app game transaction is worth $14, which speaks to the importance of reeling in what casino’s call whales, or big spenders. Read more »
LongTail Video goes freemium with Bits on the Run
LongTail Video has launched a new freemium model for online video distribution that aims to further commoditize the white-label video platform market. With the cost of bits falling, the startup hopes to control more video distribution, which will let it cash in on more advertising. Read more »
Freemium titles generate two-thirds of App Store gaming revenues
Free-to-play games, which monetize through in-app purchases, now account for 65 percent of revenue among the top 100 games in the App Store, overtaking paid downloads, which were the most successful revenue model six months ago. It’s another sign that freemium rules for many developers. Read more »
Camera+ Developer Provides Inside Look at App Store Success
iPhone photography app Camera+ recently crossed the 2 million copies sold mark. Developer taptaptap shared some info regarding the app’s success to date, and also provided us an inside look into how the studio minimizes its funding requirements while also maximizing its development investment. Read more »
Developers See Dollars In Android Improvements
Getting paid on Android has been a touchy subject for developers, who have had trouble turning their apps into big money makers. But now Google has rolled out a new web store for Android Market and in-app purchases for apps that developers are hoping will kick-start revenues. Read more »
PopCap Learns to Roll With The Freemium Market
PopCap’s string of success building top-notch video games like Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled has won it a reputation for making premium titles. But as the gaming industry moves to become more social and emphasize cheaper games and in-app purchases, PopCap is learning to evolve with it. Read more »
Alternative Payment Services Ride the Freemium App Boom
The news that Tapjoy, formerly Offerpal, raised $21 million in funding last week shows there is a big opportunity to be had by helping the freemium model expand on mobile. It’s a lesson that W3i, a desktop application marketing company, is looking to exploit. Read more »
IPhone In-App Purchases Almost Equal To Download Revenue
App analytics firm Distimo reported that 49 percent of the revenue on iPhone apps came from in-app purchases in both free and paid apps. The news underscores the importance of in-app payments and the emergence of the freemium model as a revenue driver for app makers. Read more »
Developers — Don’t Bet on Mobile Ad Revenue to Pay the Bills
Don’t expect the ad revenue in mobile games to be the major driver of revenue. While ad revenue in mobile games is expected to rise from $87 million in 2010 to $894 million in 2015, it will still be dwarfed by download and in-app purchase revenues. Read more »
