eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) today announced it has acquired Critical Path Software, a leading mobile application developer that has worked with eBay for more than two years to help deliver popular mobile apps such as the eBay for iPhone® app, and StubHub, eBay Classifieds and Shopping.com iPhone applications. Critical Path Software’s proven mobile development capabilities will play an integral role in enabling eBay to accelerate improvements to the mobile experience for customers globally. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

 

“We’re very serious about innovating in mobile commerce, and this acquisition underscores our commitment to bringing the very best and brightest in the field to eBay,” said Mark Carges, chief technology officer and senior vice president, global products, eBay Marketplaces. “Integrating the Critical Path Software team into eBay will be a big win for mobile shoppers around the world; combined with the talent on our team today, we can make shopping and selling anywhere, anytime, for almost anything, even better.”

The race for mobile marketplace revenue generation is on. Back in June 2010, eBay acquired Red Laser for its barcode scanning technology. Their strategy and plan for the acquisitions has to be creating mobile commerce applications for retailers and e-tailers and dominate the space. Currently eBay is forecasting over $1.5B in sales through mobile commerce in 2010.

Read the full article here

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) surpassed analyst expectations with hefty BlackBerry shipments and profits in its most recent quarter, results that–at least for now–serve to counter worries over the company’s strategic position in the smartphone market.

Perhaps RIM’s most notable quarterly figure was 14.2 million–the number of BlackBerrys the company shipped during the period, a figure that grew 40 percent over the same quarter last year. (RIM said it expects to ship 14.5 to 15 million BlackBerry units in its next quarter.) RIM’s BlackBerry shipment numbers likely are a particular point of pride for the company; (NASDAQ:AAPL) Apple CEO Steve Jobs called out RIM during Apple’s third quarter earnings conference call, noting that Apple shipped 14.1 million iPhones and therefore surpassed the 12.1 million BlackBerrys RIM sold in its second quarter. With BlackBerry shipments of 14.2 million in its most recent quarter, RIM managed to pass Apple’s iPhone 4-powered high point.

Well, this was a bit unexpected. With Android going strong and RIM outpacing Apple this quarter, what’s next?

Read the article here.

In other RIM news, they’re in talks to acquire social profile aggregator Gist:

Gist–named one of the Top Mobile Applications of 2010 by FierceMobileContent–automatically aggregates professional contacts from across inboxes, address books, social media websites and related sources to build rich business profiles, sans invitations or friend requests. From there, Gist culls information from more than 60,000 news sources and over 20 million blogs as well as Facebook status updates and Twitter feeds to keep all network profiles up to date, enabling users to more effectively stay on top of their contacts’ movements up and down the corporate ladder.

This makes complete sense. RIM’s core market is the enterprise, so having this type of information integrated into your Blackberry is a perfect fit, but it also fits well with the personal users who are avid social media addicts.

Read the article here.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

IDC, a leading research firm reports the market for mobile applications is seriously huge.

From Fierce Wireless:

As mobile applications continue to expand from smartphones to tablets, connected TVs and connected homes, research firm IDC anticipates worldwide download totals will increase from 10.9 billion in 2010 to 76.9 billion in 2014, with global app revenues surpassing $35 billion by the end of the forecast period. IDC credits continued application takeup to what it calls the “appification” of broad categories of interactions and functions in both the physical and virtual worlds–e.g., apps designed to improve physical training, cooking and driving, as well as social networking solutions and m-commerce services.

Read more: IDC: Mobile app revenues to reach $35 billion in 2014 - FierceMobileContent

The incredibly rapid adoption of mobile apps is exciting, the next generation of computing is here to stay. What’s amazing to me is how broad the marketplace is, crossing all borders, industries and businesses, large and small.  The possibilities for developers to create great apps is limitless.

The winners in the race for dollars will be those developers who have the tools they need to analyze the performance of their applications. Application analytics are essential to optimize the user experience and upgrade free or lite versions users to fully paid versions, or convert lite users to super users. As always metrics tell the story and help you allocate resources correctly for optimal revenue generation and retention.

For more info you can check out our application analytics offering, AppClix or contact us at  info@appclix.com.

Tags: mobile+app, iphone+app, android+app

Bookmark It

Hide Sites