In the wake of Nokia acquiring Motally, they have announced a transition plan for existing customers.

What they have essentially said is that they will stop collection of data on October 1st, and will release an export tool at the the end of September.

They will also keep the API alive for a while, and the site up until December 31st for reporting purposes.

Over the next few weeks, we will be developing some tools to help Motally users transition over to AppClix easily.  When they release the export tool, we will jump on it to create a simple account creation process.

Stay tuned for more details as we have them.

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A colleague sent me a link to this posting on the Localytics blog this morning. Apparently they have a bat and are swinging it at the bee hive that is Apple as well.

I think it is safe to say at this point that third party analytics providers need to stop playing with the data they are storing.

For the first in a series of reports, Localytics mined its iPhone analytics data for the US and Canada over the past two months to understand iPhone mobile app usage by day of the week and hour of the day. To adjust for differences in overall usage, the total sessions per hour were normalized as a percentage of the busiest hour for each day of the week. Comparisons were made between devices, application categories, days of the week and hours of the day.

They even go as far as to say they “mined its iPhone Analytics Data”. Ruh Roh! I assume they have no big brands as customers since they would not be too happy with that.

iPhone Still More Personal than Professional

iPhone app usage on weekends and weekdays is both different in usage patterns and overall scale. iPhone users generate 7% more traffic on the weekend than the average weekday. Saturday traffic ramps quickly from a morning low at 6:00 am to over 90% of peak usage by 11:00 am—and stays near the peak for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

By comparison, weekday app usage is more concentrated in the evening with a slow ramp during the working day and a peak at 9:00 pm EST, when East Coast users are at home and West Coast users are commuting home.

And how about this one where they reveal that Blackberry has higher enterprise users during workday than iPhone?

Apple is sharpening its focus on businesses with new enterprise features in iPhone OS 4, but BlackBerry usage of mobile apps is still more concentrated and higher during the workday than iPhone. Localytics also reports that BlackBerry app usage on the weekend is statistically identical to workweek usage. In contrast, iPhone owners use mobile apps more frequently on the weekend with the greatest difference at 2:00 pm EST when weekend usage is 40% higher than the same time Monday through Friday.

In the second study of hourly app usage, Localytics mined its mobile analytics data from millions of phones in the US and Canada over two months for iPhone and BlackBerry application usage. The mobile analytics data were summarized by day of the week and hour of the day. To adjust for differences in absolute usage, the total average sessions per hour for Monday through Friday and the weekend were normalized as a percentage of the busiest hour for each.

And there is that word MINED again…

And then in a more recent posting they go as far as to say:

Localytics Has Always Put Privacy First

Really???

As for Distimo, I love this comment on thenextweb.com:

Distimo makes its money from the people who can afford it: operators and handset manufacturers.  By providing analysis to developers, the company is also gathering information that’s invaluable to the companies with fatter wallets.

Distimo Provides Insight & Analysis Across Top App Stores

iPad applications close in on 5,000 after first month

Keep sharing that great info boys!

Analytics are for the App Developers. NOT for the industry and non-affiliated marketers to use to sell other products and services.

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I’ve been saying it all along. If Flurry would have just kept their mouths shut, all would be fine. I knew that opening their mouths about the iPad was what pissed off Apple. What kind of idiot grabs a baseball and starts swinging it at hornets nest??

“We’re seeing  about 50 iPads and they are all coming from Cupertino, CA… Blah.. Blah.. Blah…” –

Jeez, what were they thinking letting Apple and everyone know publicly that they are combing other app developers data and that Apple is testing iPhone apps on iPads.

Blame Flurry, Jobs said at D8 on Tuesday night. That’s the analytics company that sent Apple (AAPL) “through the roof” when its software helped it peer into Apple’s iPad testing operations in January. So now, Jobs says, he’s cutting out Flurry and everyone who wants to track his customers’ gadgets by transmitting device-specific information. (Jobs was responding, by the way, to a question from First Round Capital’s Chris Fralic, a Flurry investor. Ouch.)

Take a look at the speech: http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/d8-video-steve-jobs-explains-his-iads-restrictions-and-blames-flurry/

Well here we are, and now that Pinch and Flurry are one company, they are both screwed!

So here’s my question. Can developers built their own analytics? Can developers track how their apps are used?

Of course they can!

While Apple can easily block the ability to identify what kind of phone it is, they can’t, nor do they want to, block tracking how the apps are used.

While Apple can block third party analytics providers from sticking their nose in app developers data, they can’t, nor do they want, to block app developers from understanding who their users are.

Is it really that big of a deal if we don’t know what type of phone it is, or what version they are on? That’s what Apple is concerned about. That and developers / providers opening their BIG FAT MOUTHS and sharing information.

As we all know, Apple’s always had a non-disclosure with their beta software, etc… and it’s always been honored by developers.

So what’s the answer??

is the answer!

While I continue to be pissed at Flurry, I plan to write them a public thank you letter next. By pissing off Apple, they have opened the market and forced developers to install their own Analytics, Reporting and App Tracking!

And we have it!

We have created stand-alone versions of the AppClix software. It comes in 3 versions from single server personal to multi-server enterprise.

Simply install AppClix on your own server (or rent a turn-key one from us) and go! Connect your apps. You have control and only you have access, and your data is not being mined or looked at by third party reporting companies.

And here’s the kicker! We are developing interfaces so you don’t have to change ANY code in your applications. Simple replace the Flurry, PinchMedia, Localytics (and others coming soon) library with one single line of code and you are GOOD TO GO! You can be up and changed over in days.

And you can even IMPORT your existing data using the PinchMedia API or Flurry & Localytics exports.

So bring it on! Our AppClix free trial will be ready next week and we plan to work over the weekend to get the finishing touched on the installed.

Come and Get It!!!

Visit our site for more info and pricing. We will be offering a migration special shortly.

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When developing AppClix, we decided in advance that the only way to really understand the needs of the users would be to actually create mobile applications and put them up for sale in the app store.

Through another company of mine, we created 4 iPhone apps. During the development, we learned all about iPhone app analytics and how our competitors work. We saw was was missing from existing solutions, and what was frustrating us.

When we put the apps in the iPhone app store on iTunes, we instantly saw what sales and marketing information was needed that was also not available easily in a single reporting solution.

Each of our apps has both AppClix, as well as one competitor installed for direct comparison of data.

We are in the process of doing specific posts outlining our experience with each of the apps and competitors that can be found at the links below. We also evaluated a few others and are waiting on app store approval.

• Asteroid Runner – AppClix and Flurry Comparison
• Doodle Copter – AppClix and Pinch Media Comparison

In this post we will discuss things that are not specific to one provider.

The first issue we found right from the start is that it can be extremely uncomfortable compiling a third party dependency into our applications. As many of us know from the AppLoop experience, companies go out of business. We have also found out through our experience that there can be serious delays in data reporting by some providers.

Well what do we do then? One of our apps that uses Pinch Media has not had data refreshed in over 11 days. Well our solution to this issue for those larger developers that want their own solution with NO DEPENDENCY on anyone else is a turnkey user installed, or cloud hosted system. More on this later.

Right away while evaluating all the solutions, we noticed that the dashboard presentation of all of the providers is extremely lacking. Flurry, Pinch Media and Medialets have these “Web 2.0” interfaces that are all graphical and pretty but do not provide a simple concise display of information. Here is a comparison of the dashboards of a few. Click for full size.

As a developer and marketer, we want to see relevant information easily. This is not possible with these other solutions. Being the first, and leader does not mean you can provide an inferior product. Then again, you get what you pay for . Also the drill down pages are just as lacking in content and valuable information.

Here is a comparison of the “By Date” detail pages. Notice how Pinch Media has these HUGH numbers on the page. What’s that about? Also note how both Flurry and Pinch Media only show one metric at a time. You have to drop down menus and change pages to view the other metrics (also one at a time). Who can use this?

I was very disappointed when I saw how these products present the data. We found the same issues with Mobile Web Analytics when developing Mobilytics.

Please visit our more specific posts comparing these solutions and what we found.

• Asteroid Runner – AppClix and Flurry Comparison
• Doodle Copter – AppClix and Pinch Media Comparison

If anyone is interested in beta testing AppClix, please contact us.

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For the last 6 months we have been changing the direction of Mobilytics. We have recently entered AppClix into beta, which we consider to be the ULTIMATE mobile application analytics and reporting solution available. With that change we are expanding our blog to include posts and news on all mobile analytics, not just mobile web related. Over the next few days we will be putting up a number of posts we have written recently that have been waiting in the queue.

While developing AppClix, we have done extensive research and testing of our competitors applications. In order to really understand these products, we also developed a number of iPhone applications through another company of mine called Millennium Studios. We are currently developing Blackberry App World and Android Market apps and are looking for beta testers in those areas as well.

Four of these apps are now in the iTunes store and are producing invaluable data for our development and testing. Stay tuned for more posts about AppClix and some detailed analysis of the mobile app analytics Landscape.

AppClix is not just an application analytics solution like Flurry, Pinch Media, Localytics, MobClix and others. (Yes, as usual we are not afraid to link to the competition.)

AppClix is a complete analytics solution that includes detailed sales reporting, and campaign tracking. Some of the features we have that others don’t are:

• Automatic download of iTunes reports from iTunes Connect for complete sales analysis and reporting
• Click through tracking with conversion for in app and mobile web ads. We also support traditional web ads which we believe will be huge for iPad application marketing.
• Reporting on Reviews and Rankings of apps across mutiple app stores in every country available.
• reporting on how price affects conversions and downloads
• reporting on how changes to descriptions affect sales
• reporting on how ranking and review affect sales
• reporting on referrers when purchases are made from web sites.

These features do NOT require the installation of our library in the mobile application. Signup is instant and reporting is available immediately.

As for our Analytics, we also offer quite a few metrics and features again not available in others.

• Additional metrics such as
• conversion rate
• trial to paid upgrade rates
• update rates that show what percentage of users update to new versions and from what version they updated.
• days from last use to new version update
• Simple OpenFeint integration – We have created a simple OpenFeint service that simply drops into the OpenFeint library for instant analytics integration using same syntax and formats as existing OpenFeint code. For those of you who don’t know about OpenFeint, it is a great community, leaderboard, achievement and application cross promotion solution for iPhone games and apps. We have tried a few solutions, but the OpenFeint community is the largest and has the most robust solution.
• Real Time Analytics! – Yes, this is possible. We are currently using the Amazon EC2 infrastructure for 95% of our solution and can easily scale to accomodate real time stats. While some of the summary data is updated hourly, event and user data is immediately available. Through our testing, we have been amazed at the lag time some vendors are providing. Data in our Pinch Media integration into the DoodleCopter app has not been updated since February 27^th! Yes, 11 days!

(click to enlarge)
They finally put up a note about this, and we will be commenting in additional post shortly.

• Lastly, AppClix is also available in a dedicated and customer installed solution. Yes, you can purchase AppClix and install on your own servers. No need to compile a third party dependency int your precious apps. (Google AppLoop for reasons why). AppClix is avilable as a complete Amaon EC2 paid AMI so you don’t even need your own hardware. More on this to come.

We’re excited about the new blog and AppClix. We look forward to our reader’s feedback, and the continued growth of this market.

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