Bored with iPhone OS?  Frustrated by Apple’s death-grip platform control?

Well David “planetbeing” Wong may have an answer for you. He’s successfully dual-booted Android on an iPhone. Yes, really! In IT Blogwatch, bloggers look on, in slack-jawed amazement.

It would appear that a way to run the Android OS on an iPhone has been discovered.  This is massive news for iPhone users waiting for the new iPhone OS 4.0 and all the features that are available with that platform.

Googles platform has been hard on the heels of Apple for quite sometime, and despite some good features has so far been shunned in favour of the iPhone OS.  Android however has seen a growing interest over the past few months with many predictng 2010 to be the year of Android.  The Android App sotre now has in the region of 30,000 apps with 9000 apps added in March alone.

News of a way to run Android on an iPhone will only fuel speculation that Android is becoming the must have OS for your smart phone.

For more information on this story visit http://blogs.computerworld.com/15980/android_on_your_iphone_theres_an_app_for_that?source=rss_blogs.

Application stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010

App Store

Consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores while advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide, according to Gartner. Analysts said mobile application stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free to end users.

Gartner forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013. Free downloads will account for 82 per cent of all downloads in 2010, and will account for 87 per cent of downloads in 2013.

“As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads,” said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. “Games remain the No. 1 application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money.”

An application can be free because the developer is offering it at no cost to the consumer while charging for other things within the application. There are also applications that are free to use but that charge for physical goods that you can have delivered through the application. There are many applications that are free to users and derive their revenue from advertising. This can be done with banners as well as full page advertising between game levels for instance.

Worldwide mobile application stores’ download revenue exceeded $4.2 billion in 2009 and will grow to $29.5 billion by the end of 2013. This revenue forecast includes end-user spending on paid-for applications and advertising-sponsored free applications. Advertising-sponsored mobile applications will generate almost 25 per cent of mobile application stores revenue by 2013.

High-end smartphone users today tend to be early adopters of new mobile applications and more trustful of billing mechanisms, so they will pay for applications that can meet their needs. Average smartphone users will become less tech-savvy as smartphones come down in price to have a mass market appeal and these users will be more reluctant to pay for applications.

“Growth in smartphone sales will not necessarily mean that consumers will spend more money, but it will widen the addressable market for an offering that will be advertising-funded,” Ms Baghdassarian added. “The value chain of the application stores will evolve as rules are set and broken in an attempt to find the most profitable business model for all parties involved.”

“Application stores will be a core focus throughout 2010 for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. “Consumers will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover applications they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support but also which store to promote their applications in.”

There’s been some useful discussion recently about using the app store model for distributing enterprise software and services within organizations. Up until now, most IT needs in the majority of businesses have been met through one-size-fits-all delivery of solutions that are either hand-crafted or purchased and then imposed on all. It’s been this way for at least three decades, but now this aging and inadequate process is beginning to improve.

The premise of an app store model for enterprises is simple: By removing the middleman, the famous bottleneck between the business and IT demand can be reduced in many cases. Application backlogs can shrink, consumption of internal and external IT resources will increase, and fierce competition to provide the best solutions to niches can greatly improve overall quality (the long tail of IT argument), all while reducing costs. At least, that’s what is possible if we look at what’s happening to the non-enterprise software market today.

Related: The app store: A “must-have” new digital business model

Fellow Enterprise Irregular Jevon MacDonald posits this as a likely outcome of the emerging Personal Enterprise. Current trends involving the mass personalization of services and the consumeration of enterprise IT have come together and resulted in ready-to-use catalogs of IT solutions that are much easier to acquire and consume today than they from traditional channels. Jevon cites Force.com, Intuit Marketplace and Get App as current examples of app stores for enterprises and SMBs, to which I’d definitely add IBM’s Smart Market. Google is even rumored to be ready to release an enterprise app store of its own soon.

Distributing SOA, SaaS, & Mashups with The Enterprise App Store

Even the Web itself has become a sort of ad hoc app store writ large in the cloud with thousands of SaaS applications available today that most enterprise users can acquire and use with little or no provisioning or support from IT.

In this view, monolithic enterprise deployments become rarer and IT solutions begin to look more like their counterparts online: smaller, more specific apps that fit the local conditions better (and are usually cheaper too). That this might actually happen is evidenced not only by the already existing enterprise app stores today but by the work currently going into rethinking of IT in terms of emergent enterprise architecture (intentionally) and the growing use of shadow applications in the cloud (grassroots).

App Stores: Not Just For Apps

ebizQ’s own Joe McKendrick recently explored the app store’s applicability to service-oriented architecture (SOA) this week, quoting George Ravich, who promulgates the SOA-as-a-store approach to enterprise users in the same way that iTunes is available online to get whatever one needs at the time: “The SOA service catalog promises to have the same impact on enterprise computing as the iTunes playlist has had on listening to music.”

SOA has always been an approach that promotes reuse and interoperability between existing IT systems. Those who have adhered to SOA principles have been able to project their services and data into widely distributed and far-flung IT solutions, both within and between organizations. But successfully driving SOA consumption has been hard, and the focus is too often on opening up services instead of focusing on increasing usage. But the SOA industry quickly hit upon a potential solution. Proving that what is old is new again with the app store model, there have been commercial service directories for a long time now that have have helped organizations maintain open inventories of services, such as StrikeIron or IBM Mashup Center…

Social news aggregator Digg.com has released its free iPhone app in the App Store. Packed with a slick, feature-rich interface, the app is a strong start for the popular website, though there’s plenty of room for it to grow.

Source: (Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/digg-iphone-app/#ixzz0jIb7zwIa)

Launching the app, you’ll be able to immediately browse popular stories on Digg. You can also view popular stories by topic (e.g., technology, business, science, etc.) or upcoming articles that are about to go popular. You can search through stories by typing a keyword in a search field.

The best part of the app is it makes it really easy to Digg or bury a submission. Tapping a link launches the story inside an in-app browser, and a bar below contains thumbs up and thumbs down buttons to cast your vote. There’s also a button to save a story for reading later. The entire interface is snappy; from my testing on an iPhone 3GS, stories loaded quickly inside Digg’s browser.

With that said, there are some features missing that I’d like to see in version 2. One major minus is you can’t comment on stories like you would on Digg.com. You can view comments, but you can’t actually write any. According to Tap Tap Tap, which developed the app with Digg, the public Digg API doesn’t support adding comments yet. So hopefully we can expect this feature in a later version.

Also, there’s limited interaction between the Digg app and other apps. For example, if you’re browsing your Twitter feed in Tweetie and you tap a Digg link, it doesn’t launch the Digg app. Instead, you’re stuck with viewing the Digg link in the Safari browser. To be fair, you can hit a button to share Digg links through Twitter, Facebook or e-mail, but the inability to use the app to view others’ shared Digg links is stifling.

The free Digg app is downloadable now in the App Store. A video demo of the app is below.

News release [Digg]

The Social Shindig party, the official networking party of Social Media World Forum will be taking place on the middle evening of the event.All conference pass delegates are invited to head over to the Archangel venue situated opposite the Kensington Royal Garden Hotel.  The venue is a10 min walk from Olympia & The Hilton Olympia Hotel – the official event hotel and 5 m ins from High Street Kensington Tube Station.

Please Note: Open only to full conference pass holders – wristbands will need to be shown to gain access Networking Party Partners

About Social Media UK

‘Social Media UK’ is a networking community based in London consisting of a LinkedIn group of 850+ members, a crowdsourced blog www.socialmediamonday.co.uk and a monthly networking event ‘Social Media Monday’ with presentations & plenty of ‘social’ till late… (follow @SocialMedia_UK & tweet about #SMUK)

We’ve grown tremendously over the last 6 months and we’re really proud to be continuing these talks in the Workshops at the Social Media World Forum 2010.

‘Social Media UK’ is organised by the Digital / Social Media recruitment specialists; Fresh Resources. We’re ridiculously passionate about all things digital and absolutely believe that being an active part of the community and contributing towards the industry we specialise in, means we’re poised to consistently deliver precision services to our much adored clients. 

#SMUK loves social media, that why even this description is wrapped up in 140 words!

Monterosa (www.monterosa.co.uk) have confirmed their attendance at the Social TV Forum Europe, (www.social-tv.net) taking place on the 15/16th March 2010 at Olympia, London.

Monterosa are a creative and technology company based in central London. We’re a team of experienced producers, project managers, software engineers and designers with range of backgrounds backgrounds in broadcast, advertising, games and software development.

Ooyala’s player has always supported sharing to popular social networks sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Ooyala now supports deep linking which allows a viewer to share only a particular video within a playlist or a specific scene within a video. These deep linking sharing options are available for its player embeds, its sharing links to social networking sites, as well as the newly released URL link, also available in the player. What’s great about this is that it does not require any custom development work. A publisher can easily enable the various sharing options in Backlot for all their viewers.

Ooyala is a leading video technology company, for details visit www.ooyala.com/blog

Buongiorno

Mobile Communication, like the printing press, personal transportation and the advent of mass media – is delivering new levels of personal independence, choice and opportunity. Through the most popular gadget in history, billions of people are beginning to interface with their world in completely new ways. More than 3 billion people now carry personal mobile devices, which can offer far more than just voice and text.

Social networking has clearly been an exciting, if unexpected, success on the web. This success has attracted hundreds of millions of users who connect to each other on their own terms, actively creating content and defining the links between this content. Social networking has proven to be the natural expression for the Web 2.0 movement, allowing users to wrestle the publishing power from established media to become both consumer and supplier.

Buongiorno believes the success of web social networking is but a pre-cursor to the explosion of mobile social networking. The mobile phone is the most prevalent social networking tool on the planet, combining media capture with always-on connectivity, portability, simplicity, personalisation and individuality. Quite simply, the mobile phone is the medium of friendship. From a business standpoint, aiming at a market of mobile community users that will grow by a factor of 10 by 2012, to 428 million[1], opens up a huge market where mobile devices will rapidly prevail over PC-based devices .

Mobile internet connectivity is now a reality , which, when combined with the ubiquity of devices, networks and internet “understanding”, will transform mobile behaviour. Research predicts the rapid growth of mobile broadband access, as users expect high-performance devices and faster mobile networks to deliver better user experience and data capacity – all amidst a cheaper pricing environment and the pervasive use of Web 2.0 services. A similar revolution is taking place on handsets, as users increasingly demand a rich experience based on seamless access to messaging, search, entertainment and content. These users are redefining their needs – needs built around “diversion” and ever-richer “connection.”

Clearly, existing web players understand this new and potentially game-changing opportunity, and will be offering mobile features to their services. Will they be successful? That depends on the nature of mobile social networking – will the future deliver social networking through mobile (the status quo) or true mobile social networking (the new)?

Mobile social networking will offer something new, and this offering will not come from a web incumbent. Instead, it will be a mobile native solution from a mobile specialist, a company which understands the power of the medium, the technical environment, user behaviour and the needs of consumers. The environment is now right for an explosion in mobile social networking; the devices, network capabilities, and user understanding and desire is all in place. Until now, what has been missing is a mobile-centric solution from a mobile expert.

To learn more about Mobile Social Media visit – Mobile Social Media Show (www.mobilesocial-networking.com)

The Cloud Computing Congress (http://www.cloudcomputingcongress.com/), has just announced a range of free to attend workshops on mobile cloud computing, co-located with the Mobile Social Media forum (http://www.mobilesocial-networking.com/).

The workshops examine why mobile and cloud computing are the perfect fit, and how this can be used to generate the next generation mobile experience. The workshops also cover practical demo of hybrid and mobile cloud computing, and how core functionality can be expanded to mobile devices for the cloud. View the free to attend workshops here: http://www.cloudcomputingcongress.com/exhibition/workshops.html

“Cloud computing technologies look like they will become a changing force in the mobile world, facilitating mobile solutions to be offered to a much broader audience of mobile subscribers.” commented Ian Johnson, MD, Six Degrees Events. “We are delighted to announce a range of free to attend workshops, and think that  the mobile social media event will help outline the next generation in mobile cloud applications, new business models, and the obstacles to be overcome.“

“In the mobile Web device detection, media adaptation, and optimized content delivery are challenging tasks as there are so many different devices out there. Mobile cloud computing gets all these hurdles out of the way. Using a web-based mobile publishing platform, it’s not only more cost-efficient, it also delivers much better quality output on a broader variety of handsets.” (Michael Neidhoefer, CEO, Netbiscuits)

“What if you could build applications based on web standards, move the processing associated with the applications off the mobile device to powerful, centralized platforms and then use the Internet to access the applications, in essence moving these applications into the cloud?” (Mark Beccue, ABI Research)

Additional workshops at the event include cloud application development, Microsoft Azure overview and more.  To register for the free to attend workshop please go to – http://www.cloudcomputingcongress.com/register/free-exhibition.html

Learn which mobile applications will lead the growth, the key technologies, players and initiatives involved, new business models that will be introduced, and the barriers that must be overcome. Additional free to attend workshops with Facebook and other partners are co-located @ the social media world forum, please see agenda – http://www.socialmedia-forum.com/exhibition/workshops.html

Cloud Computing Congress & Mobile Social Media is co-located with the Social Media World Forum (http://www.socialmedia-forum.com/) an event that encompasses the entire spectrum of Social Media.  It will take place at Olympia, London on the 15/16 March.

Speaker line-up announced at the London Social Media Events.  200 confirmed speakers across the conferences.  See our full line-up below.

Speakers @ Social TV & Mobile Social Media 15/16^th March  include – http://www.social-tv.net & http://www.mobilesocial-networking.com

• Robert Marsh, VP, Interactive & Telephony, Freemantle Media
• Peter Ward, Co-founder & CEO, WAYN
• Bob Rapp, Head, User Communities, Vodafone Group
• Rahul Chakkara, Controller of TV Platforms, BBC
• Angel Gambino, Vice President, Sonico
• Mark Watts-Jones, Head of Development & Innovation, Orange UK
• Yoel Flohr, Head of Mobile, Bebo
• Andrew Kearney, Vice President TV Products at UPC Broadband
• Richard Griffiths, Director TV and Entertainment, Eircom
• Nicolas Bry, Vice President, Orange Vallee
• Kevin Baughan, Head Technical Strategy, Virgin Media
• Ian Kegel, Head of Future Content Group, BT UK
• Triona Campbell, CEO, Campbell Ryan
• Pasa Mustafa, Head of Digital Studios, Endemol
• Damien Byrne, Head of Entertainment, T Mobile
• Miroslaw Smyk, General Manager TV Business Division at Romtelecom
• Matt Dicks, CMO, Flirtomatic
• John Cole, Managing Director UK, Adknowledge
• Claudio Venezia, Researcher, Telecom Italia
• Cian O’Sullivan, Editor in Chief, GoMo News
• Tim Hussain, Head of Mobile and Video Advertising
• Guillaume de Saint Marc, VP R&D New Initiatives, NDS
• Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Head of Product, Mobile – EU, Yahoo!
• Paul Berney, Managing Director Europe, Mobile Marketing Association
• Adrian Drury, Principle / Media, Broadcast & Telecoms, Ovum
• Paul Berney, Managing Director, Europe, MMA
• Deborah Porton, Head of Mobile Development, Badoo Ltd
• Franco Beschizza, Head of Mobile, Interactive Services, COI
• Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Head of Product, Mobile – EU, Yahoo!
• Martin Harris, SVP Corporate Sales, Bango
• Peter Ward, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, WAYN.com
• Stefanie Hoffmann, CEO Finance, Business Development, aka aki
• Simon Spanswick, Chief Executive, Association for International Broadcasting
• Dan Cryan, Head of Broadband, Screen Digest
• Paul Bristow, Vice-President of Strategy, ADB
• Dr William Cooper Founder and Chief Executive, informitv.com
• Justin Kan, founder and President, Justin.tv
• Aliza Beckett, Business Development, Web, Mobile & New Platforms, Channel 4
• Chi-chi Ekweozor, Director, RealFresh.tv
• Dick Rempt, CEO, Talents Media
• Richard Lindsay Davis, Director General, DTG
• Benjamin Schwarz, Owner, CTO Innovation Consulting
• Martin Jarrold, Chief, International Programme Development GVF

Speakers @ Social Media World Forum 15/16^th March – http://www.socialmedia-forum.com

• Lucas Herscovici, Global Marketing Manager, Becks
• Dr. Torsten Wigenter, Head of Social Media Marketing, Lufthansa
• Trevor Johnson, Head of Strategy and Planning, EMEA, Facebook
• Stephane Panier, Global Head, Bebo
• Nick Halstead, CEO, Tweetmeme
• Allison Wightman, Head of Marketing Systems, Virgin Atlantic
• Kerryn Dinsdale, Senior PR Manager, Barclaycard
• Muhammad Karim, Senior Brand Manager, Mars
• Peter Crosby, COO, Viadeo
• Dr. Helmut Becker, COO, XING
• Mark Schmid, Communications Director, Talk Talk
• Martine Edgell, CRM Specialist, Mercedes Benz
• Neal Sato, CTO, mixi
• Christian Schultz, Head of Communications, Mattel
• Michael Smith, Deputy Director of Interactive Services, COI
• Lorenz Bogaert, CEO, Netlog
• Jason Baker, Head of CRM and Digital Media, Ikea UK
• Justin Kan, founder and President, Justin.tv
• Guy Clapperton, Freelance Journalist, Editor and Broadcaster
• Penny Power, Author, International Speaker, Entrepreneur and founder of Ecademy
• Matthew Fraser, Senior Fellow at INSEAD & co-author of  ‘Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom
• Fred McIntyre, Vice President, Product, CBS Interactive
• Sienne Veit, Social and Mobile Commerce Development, Manager, M&S Direct
• Ricky Chopra, Digital Marketing Manager, Speedo International Limited
• Igor Beuker, Founder, SocialMedia8
• David Henry, VP Digital Marketing, Europe, Monster Worldwide
• Mark Watts-Jones, Head of Development & Innovation, Orange UK
• Lisa Mane, Head of Social Media, COI
• Mike Gamoroff, Owner & MD, Gamoroff
• Will McInnes, Managing Director, NixonMcInnes
• Michael Caselli, Editor, Online Casino News
• Adam Caplan, Vice President – Virtual Currency (Super Rewards), Adknowledge
• Neal Sato, CTO, mixi
• Fred McIntyre, Vice President, Product, CBS Interactive
• Oli Newton, Head of Emerging Platforms, i-Level
• Celina Maguire, Consumer Director, Gorkana
• Laila Takeh, Online Manager, British Heart Foundation
• Kristin Wadge, Director, Metrica
• Sam Barratt, Head of Media, Oxfam
• Craig Elder, Online Communities Editor, Conservative Campaign HQ
• Alex Aiken, Head of Communications, Westminster City Council
• Kerry McCarthy, Labour MP for Bristol East & New Media Communications Spokesperson
• Mark Jones, Online and Social Media Editor, Thomson Reuters
• Alex Miller, Head of Social Media, i-Level
• Markus Berger – de Leon, CEO, VZ Networks
• Angel Gambino, Vice President, Sonico

Speakers @ Enterprise Social Media & Cloud Computing http://www.cloudcomputingcongress.com – 15/16^th March

• Dion Hinchliffe, Editor in Chief, Social Computing Magazine & Web 2.0 Journal
• Geoff Timblick, Group Internal Communications Manager, New Media, Vodafone Group
• Helen Farrar, Head of Internal Communications, Virgin Media
• Martin Bellamy, CIO, Cabinet Office
• Adrian Steel, Head of Infrastructure Management, Royal Mail
• Thanos Kokkiniotis, Business IT Analyst, Shell International Ltd
• Eachan Fletcher, CIO, Sporting Index
• Simon Revell, Associate Director, Collaboration and Web Technologies, Pfizer
• David Wilde, CIO, Westminster City Council
• Per Rombouts, Project Manager Intranet & Social Media, ING Group
• Kenneth Verlage, CIO, DHL Express
• Paul James, CIO, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, MOD
• Dominic Burch, Head of Corporate Comms and New Media, ASDA
• Sonia Carter, Senior Manager Online Communications, AXA
• Anthony Frost, Head of Corporate Communications, Santander
• Euan Semple, Independent Advisor/former Director of Knowledge Management BBC
• Alison Coward, Owner, Bracket
• Evangelos Kotsovinos, Vice President, Technology, Morgan Stanley
• Eachan Fletcher, CIO, Sporting Index
• Richard Ellis, Manager, UK & Ireland, Iron Mountain Digital
• Andrew Charlesworth, Director, Centre for IT and Law, University of Bristol
• Dr Bill Ashraf, Director of Technology Enhanced Learning, University of Sussex
• Adrian Davey, Head of IT, Tube Lines