It seems that smartphones were top of everyone’s Christmas lists this festive season with an estimate of over 20 million iOS and Android devices being activated between December 25th and 31^st according to a new report by Flurry. The report also found that a record breaking 1.2 billion apps were downloaded in the same week, known as “power week”.

The holiday “power-week” has become far more important for application makers than the run-up to Christmas and with the 60% surge in downloads in that week compared to the average, shown in the graph below; it’s easy to see why. This has led to a number of firms offering festive discount deals on apps with even Apple giving away free iOS apps through their ‘12 Days of Christmas’ app to encourage downloads.

According to Flurry’s report the US saw the most app activity with figures hitting 509 million compared to download figures of 81 million in the UK and, popular bird flinging app Angry Birds saw downloads of 6.5 million on Christmas Day alone. “Flurry expects breaking the one billion download barrier per week will become more commonplace” said vice president of marketing at Flurry, Peter Farago, as the number of mobile internet devices grows.

Last week at Apps World buzzdoes the app distribution tool exhibited at the show and CEO and founder of the tool, Assaf Kolirin presented in the New Platforms and Technology Developer Zone.

buzzdoes is an automated word-of-mouth tool that turns apps users into apps distributors. All it takes is a click on the buzzdoes icon for users to recommend an app to a selected list of friends – they just need to pick the ones they want. The result is that each happy user can steer dozens of new ones your way.

The ‘recommender’ is rewarded for every download that occurs as a result of his/her recommendation. It’s a win-win situation. The users gain from their goodwill and the developers gain new users. buzzdoes, have added a social aspect to the tool, where users can see their friends’ applications. This serves as an advertisement area where the developer can earn money from every download that occurs through the buzzdoes button on his/her application creating a new revenue stream.

“A few years ago, I was involved in developing applications for both the games and business markets. We thought our ideas were great and couldn’t wait to get them in front of users and we started looking for ways to market our apps,” says Assaf, “This is when I had my Eureka moment. Why not use the most reliable and influential marketing model – word-of-mouth? It worked for Gmail, it worked for Facebook. Why wouldn’t it work for my app?”

If you want to find out more about buzzdoes you can view their website here

Apps World exhibitor LeadBolt, the leading mobile advertising network and in-app ad monetization company announced this week the release of a revolutionary new ad format. “App Wall” is designed to allow developers to monetize their apps quicker, with more consumer engagement options and without the integration issues of an SDK.

“We set out to create a solution for developers to monetize their apps without the need for much effort over the development of the app itself. Developers should be able to focus on what they do best – developing amazing apps,” said LeadBolt CEO, Dale Carr.

Released initially as a “Top Apps” wall, this new format will ensure high returns for developers by presenting the app user with an offer wall of the top performing apps. The combination of app installs, which are amongst the highest paying offers, presented on an offer wall, a high performing ad type, will ensure superior eCPMs for developers. However, its method of delivery is what makes this ad format even more revolutionary. Top Apps requires no SDK integration.

With just simple html, developers can integrate the “Top Apps” wall into various different forms that perfectly compliment the developer’s specific app, such as a menu icon, a top apps tab, a navigation bar, a simple banner, a hyperlink or app of the day announcements. From there, users will install one of the apps from either the Android marketplace or iTunes store. Advertisers will get quality non-incentivised app installs and publisher will get paid for each of these app installs.

For more information and a short video of the new ad type visit

www.leadboltapps.com/appwall

A big thank you to those that attended the Apps World in London

Special thank you to all the speakers at the event, sponsors, exhibitors & media partners – have a look down the shots and see if you can spot yourself!!

NXP Software exhibited at this week’s Apps World Europe. The world-wide leading software vendor for multimedia specialises in innovative solutions and applications to help mobile device manufacturers and service providers deliver extraordinary media experiences.

The company used the event to launch a new release of their highly popular LifeVibes CineXPlayer, CineXPlayer 2.5, the first video player for iPad, iPhone and iPod devices to support Dolby® Digital Plus.

“NXP Software aims to help people enjoy life to the full by delivering outstanding mobile multimedia experiences. That vision has seen CineXPlayer become a top video player in Apple’s App Store. Many of CineXPlayer’s fans asked us to add true multi-channel sound and, working with Dolby Labs, that’s exactly what we’ve done. It brings the digital audio quality people know from the home theater to mobile devices,” said Peter Van de Berg, Marketing Director, NXP Software.

Dolby Digital Plus improves the quality of sound from content creation to playback. It delivers an optimal audio experience across a range of portable devices, whether listening through headphones or built-in speakers, or sending an HD entertainment experience with discrete multichannel audio to the home theater from the smartphone in your pocket.

“Dolby Digital Plus in NXP Software’s CineXPlayer allows for more high-quality entertainment across screens,” said John Couling, Vice President, Electronic Media, Dolby Laboratories. “Dolby is committed to bringing a cinema-quality experience to the home on a wide range of services, devices and applications.”

CineXPlayer lets end-users transfer Xvid movies instantly on to their iPad, iPhone or iPod without file conversion. And as it is possible to save full movie files to the CineXPlayer app, users can watch at home or on the go, even if there is no Internet connection available (e.g. on trains, planes, and so on).

CineXPlayer is available for download in the Apple App Store now and you can find out more information here

Sophisticated geo-location technology will be able to compose a predictive customised schedule  for your day, reacting not just to where you are, but also what’s around you and what you’ve done in the past. This was a vision of the future delivered by the Geo-Location panel on day 2 of Apps World Europe.

For instance, your future app will be able to use location to realise you’re about to hit an area of forehead-slapping traffic congestion, calculate how late you might be for your important business meeting, then reschedule for you while you fight through the jam.

This fascinating panel session, chaired by Peter Swain, CEO of Always on Message, included Patrick Connolly from ABI Research, Ian Holt from Ordnance Survey, Anwar Ahmed from NAVTEQ and Phillip Gontier from Poynt. In the future our location apps will be jaw-droppingly amazing, they agreed, but right now, no one’s really come up with the killer location product.

“We’re at that transition point,” said Connolly. “We’re going through the service stage where location is the key point of the service. But GPS is going to triple over the next few years and high accuracy location is going to sit under so much of what we do in mobile; location is becoming important for developers, and it’ll improve marketing and analytics.”

Privacy

But what about issues around privacy? I’m not sure if I want my every movement tracked on some marketing database somewhere in California.

“There is problem with privacy,” admitted Connolly. “It needs to become more explicit and people need to know what the benefits are. Regulators are pushing change that way. And as people get more educated it will catch on.”

Platform owners like Apple and Google have taken a legal approach to regulation of this data, claiming it’s the responsibility of developer, said Connolly. “I think it’s up to them to actually take control,” he added. “And I think regulation is pushing them that way.”

Phillip Gontier looked incredulous at the suggestion that Poynt might sell data around the location of its users. “It’s about value exchange,” he said. “What we do is give the user something really useful that allows them to connect with local businesses.

“It’s a utility tool. If we provide enough value and location advertising that relevant and valuable, in terms of context, then I don’t think it becomes an issue. When you push stuff that not relevant, that’s when it becomes an issue.”

Developers itching for access

So what needs to happen before we get to the point where my location app can book me onto a later train because it knows my important business meeting over-ran and I’m not going to be able to make the earlier one I’d booked?

Gontlier would like to see a lot of organisations open their data up to developers. Imagine what could be done with the information that TFL folds, ahead of the London Olympics. “These are basic things to have in place,” he said. “App developers could do really cool stuff with that, and it needs to happen across the board.”

Apps industry growth is still significant in the UK and throughout Europe, though the really rapid growth areas are Asia and Africa, according to Terence Eden, head of developer community at InMobi.

Developers need to recognise the global nature of apps, he says; your market isn’t just limited to the country or even continent that you live in.

“The UK market is getting saturated,” he adds. “If developers want to unlock the power of what they’re doing they have to translate their apps to all the different app stores around the world.”

Not only that, but he believes developers need to think more strategically about how they’re going to monetise their apps over their entire lifecycle. “Think about that first sale and think about how you’re going to follow that up,” he says. “We can monetise your apps by putting advertising in them.”

With growth in app downloads predominantly around free apps, offering a free version of your app is often a smart way to go. “Once they’ve got your free version, you can upsell them, get them to buy the premium version,” says Eden. “If you want to sell extra functionality or features, we can provide a payment solution for that.”

Eden says his big issue is making developers aware that mobile advertising is also an option for their own business.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re the biggest brand on the planet or some guy in his bedroom working on the next big thing; you can use advertising to get your app out to millions of people, he says. “You can actually make a big splash worldwide with not a huge amount of budget.”

Embarcadero will be exhibiting at Apps World next week, come along to stand 126 and see how you can target both Win and Mac from a single codebase – making Mac development easy.

FireMonkey from Embarcadero provides the only single native Win/Mac development solution helping developers rise to the challenge of providing compelling, fast and highly functional software for both Windows and Mac simultaneously.

Come along and meet Embarcadero by registering for your free expo pass here and see how to write truly stunning visual business applications on Windows and deploy them natively to both Win and Mac from a single code base using one language, one framework and one IDE.

Embarcadero are also running ½ day workshops on 7^th and 14^th December that will delve even further into their FireMonkey software, register for free at their stand.

Good morning, welcome to the first day of Apps World Europe 2011!  We’re taking over the Olympia 2 here in London with some of the leading brands and people in the industry for two days of apps discussion, insight and networking.

If you’re heading down to the event this morning, the first sessions will be kicking off at 9am. Here’s a link to the full agenda.

Last minute booking has been furious but there are still a small number of places left on the free and paid for conference streams, so if you’re in the area, feel free to come down.

We’ve got some fascinating sessions today, with brands such as Nokia and Spotify taking part; as well as global operators such as Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica and Singtel all offering the benefit of their experience and industry viewpoint.

Here’s some interesting food for thought around some of our key sessions today. In the morning we’re looking at operator strategies for Apps & content:

Mobile Europe: Mobile application stores: what’s the opportunity?

Txt4ever: Operators need to embrace apps for new revenue streams

OVUM: Operator billing for third party app stores: changes ahead

In the afternoon we are looking at advertising your app and the media strategies available within the apps business.

Smashing Magazine: How to market your mobile application

Apps Tech News: 10 ways to make your app stand out in the mobile crowd

.NET: 10 step approach to marketing your app

Over in Developer Zone 1 Samsung are taking over with a whole afternoon dedicated to bada developers. Here’s what’s in store

2:00 Welcome
2:10 The UK bada developer challenge
2:15 bada ecosystem/from idea to published app
2:45 bada: show us the money
3:30 Coffee Break
3:45 Tools: implement, test, optimize
4:15 bada and iOS
4:45 Q+A
5:00 End of workshop

Manfred Bortenschlager, Platform Evangelist, Samsung
Keith O’Brien, Head of Content, Samsung
Sameer Ballewar, Technical Consultant, Samsung
Keith Bauwise, Technical Evangelist, Samsung
Jon Lansdell, Technical Writer, Samsung

So there are some things to think about today… If you’ve got something to add to any of the sessions you see, or harbour a burning question that needs answering, you can tweet it into the #AppsWorldQ hashtag; our panel moderators will be keeping an eye on this. Or you can earn maximum kudos by asking it directly over the Q&A mic.

Don’t forget about the official after show drinks will be at the Old Firehouse in Hammersmith. There’ll be complimentary drinks, networking and general merriment for all paid delegates. Doors open at 7.30, come along!

Microsap will be joining the exhibition at this year’s Apps World Europe event on 29-30^th November at London Olympia.

Microsap will be located at stand 120 and will be doing live demonstrations of their latest offerings including Augmented Reality apps. Augmented reality technology has enabled a virtual vision of objects to understand the pros and cons of products and global revenues from AR apps and services are expected to reach $1.5b by 2015. Microsap’s TV buying guide app helps the user to visualize a virtual image in the real world. This means you can decide your purchase even before visiting a retail shop all you need to have is a smart phone and a smart app.

Augmented reality looks set to be the future of buying! Boosting the buyer’s interest in the product and building a strong brand value. Augmented reality will enhance the selling medium, making it more reliable and portable for the retail industry and Microsap has taken a lead in showing the way it can be done.

To meet Microsap and see their demonstrations at Apps World you can register for a free exhibition pass here.

Related articles

• Retail Chain Uses Augmented Reality to Render Catalog in 3D (mashable.com)
• The Magic of Augmented Reality [Video] (geeksaresexy.net)