This week's news on Microsoft on Android.
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Apps Rush: Super Bowl XLVI, RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge, Marie Claire Runway, Camden Crawl and more
3 Febwww.guardian.co.uk - sport
What's new on the app stores on Friday 3 February 2012
Super Bowl XLVI Guide
The NFL has launched an official Super Bowl app just in time for its season finale, as the New York Giants take on the New England Patriots. It includes a guide to host venue Indianapolis and an NFL Huddle feature to keep tabs on social media buzz around the event. The link above is for Android, but here's the iOS version.
Android / iPhone / iPadRBS 6 Nations Live Challenge
In a big day for fans of chasing odd-shaped balls round a field, rugby's 6 Nations tournament also has an official app. Here, the focus is more on testing your knowledge: answering trivia questions before matches, then predicting the results of conversions and penalty kicks during games. Facebook is integrated to see how you compare to your friends' scores.
Android / iPhone / iPadAvid Studio
Avid's tools have been used by professional film and TV editors for a long time, but now the company wants to take on Apple's iMovie on iPad. Avid Studio is aimed at regular users looking to edit their home movies and share them on YouTube and Facebook. However, it can also export to the PC version of Avid Studio.
iPadMarie Claire Runway Spring/Summer 2012
IPC has launched a new offshoot from its Marie Claire magazine – Marie Claire Runway – focused on fashion. It's a standalone print mag, but also an iPad app that costs £2.99 versus the print issue's £6. Expect footage from fashion shows and editors' verdicts on the key trends.
iPadCamden Crawl
Going to London's Camden Crawl festival in May? There's an app for that, with schedules, artist info, maps, social features and "money saving offers". The latter will have to be good to convince people to pay £2.99 for the app, we sense.
iPhoneRemarks – Write notes and Annotate PDFs
Readdle's latest iPad app does what it says on the tin, enabling you to take a PDF file and add annotations, highlighting, underlining and scribbles. Social features mean you can also collaborate with other Remarks users.
iPadGameloft Live!
Mobile games publisher Gameloft has launched a standalone Android app for its Gameloft Live! community, with mesaging, discounts and other social features built in. It's fair to say Microsoft is an inspiration: there are 3D avatars and a "gamer score".
AndroidDoodlecast Pro
Doodlecast was a fun app for children that let them draw while recording their voice, turning the results into a video to be shared with family. Now the idea has evolved into a professional tool for presentations: "Perfect for teachers, students, business people and anyone needing an elegant way to share ideas..."
iPadTallyTots
iOS kid-app TallyTots has made the leap onto Android, offering 20 mini-games to teach children the numbers one to 20. Chipmunks, apples and racing cars are all promised, along with a song.
AndroidGuess Who? for iPad
Sadly nothing to do with the famous boardgame, but still a very interesting app. Based on Kyoung Kook Lee's print book of the same name, this gets children to guess which characters are coming up on the next page, while listening to music and recording their own voices.
iPadDespicable Me: Storybook
More iPad fun for kids comes with this book-app based on the animated movie Despicable Me. The core storyline is augmented with a soundboard, interactive blueprints and other playful features.
iPadSir Benfro's Brilliant Balloon
Lovely-looking iOS game Sir Benfro's Brilliant Balloon sees you flying the "naturalist, scientist and explorer" through forests, oceans and down into the depths of the Earth in search of bizarre beasts.
iPhone / iPadBlipSnips Social Video
Android's equivalent to SocialCam on iOS makes its debut. BlipSnips claims to be an easy way to shoot, tag and share video footage, including pushing it out to Facebook and Twitter while tagging friends on those social networks within the video itself.
AndroidBabylon Translator
Text-translation firm Babylon has taken its app to Windows Phone, translating words between more than 75 languages, with a currency converter thrown in for good measure.
Windows PhoneSector 33
The latest game to follow in the wingtips of Firemint's Flight Control is Sector 33, which gets you merging arriving planes into a single traffic stream over California. The developer knows a thing or two about airspace, as well. Who are they? Oh, NASA...
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Samsung Takes The Apple Route For Its Next Big Launch, the Galaxy S III
1 FebpaidContent:UK
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has accused Samsung of “slavishly copying” its hardware designs; but whether or not that is true, one area where Samsung is taking a note from Apple is in how it debuts its big products. The company today announced that it would not be launching its next big smartphone, the Galaxy S III, at this month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, as originally expected.
Instead, Samsung will be presenting it at its own-branded event, with less of a gap between the product launch and actual roll-out.
“Samsung is looking forward to introducing and demonstrating exciting new mobile products at Mobile World Congress 2012. The successor to the Galaxy S II smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product. Samsung stays committed to providing the best possible mobile experiences for customers around the world,” a spokesperson told paidContent, via email today.
The Android-based S II (pictured here with its best enemy, the iPhone 4S) has been one of Samsung’s best sellers since launching last year—although Samsung hasn’t given exact sales figures—and many have been anticipating the upgrade, which will apparently feature a faster processor, better camera and other enhancements.
One of the big issues with the S II, however, was that while Samsung unveiled the device at the 2011 MWC event, it didn’t launch in Europe until summer, and the U.S. several months later, in September.
Did that possibly steal some thunder from the launch? As smartphone competition hots up—including leaks of the first BlackBerry 10 “London” devices and even a new iPhone coming this year—that’s a variable that Samsung probably doesn’t want to explore again.
But while Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has pulled out of CES, and Apple has been running its own launch events for years, Samsung doesn’t seem to be bowing out of the trade show peep show altogether. There have been rumors of Samsung unveiling its first Tizen handsets—that is, the new linux OS that it is developing with Intel (NSDQ: INTC) from the ashes of MeeGo—which could point to a new direction altogether for the Korean handset maker. There are also reports of further tablets on the cards.
Related
- Samsung: Smartphones Up 30 Percent But You Have To Guess How Many We Sold
- Samsung Galaxy S II Hits U.S., Will Cost $199 At Sprint
- Update: Patent Plot Thickens: Apple Sues Samsung; ITC Pushes For Nokia, HTC
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Sony's Crackle Launches On Xbox Live
31 JanpaidContent:UK
Sony’s Crackle streaming-video service, which needs to expand its reach to compete in the connected-TV market, debuted on Xbox Live video network today. The move gives Sony’s ad-supported channel access to most of Xbox Live’s approximately 40 million subscribers, spread across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia.
Crackle believes it has found an opening in the connected-TV market with its focus on longer-form video targeting men 18-34 – mostly movies and TV shows in the Sony (NYSE: SNE) library, foreign-made anime content, and an extensive library of original series. Eric Berger, executive VP of digital networks for Sony Pictures Television, says that unlike subscription services like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Hulu Plus, Crackle lets viewers watch one-off feature films like Talladega Nights, TV shows like Seinfeld, and a range of originally produced Crackle series for free with ads.
Berger also believes Crackle is differentiated from what companies and YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) are doing with original content. “YouTube just put $100 million in the marketplace [to create original series], and it’s fantastic, but it’s still mainly short-form content,” he said.
But nearly five years after paying $65 million to purchase Grouper – the site that would become Crackle – Sony still hasn’t released revenue figures for its streaming operation, which has gained notoriety for spending as much as $1 million to create original digital series.
While Crackle doesn’t provide revenue figures, Sony says the site got 227 million visits across all channels last year, up 54 percent over 2010. Berger says Crackle averages about 10 million unique viewers a month. This is about double what the streaming service averaged in 2010, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR). But Crackle wants to compete with channels like Hulu for advertisers, and Hulu averages more than three times as many viewers.
For Crackle, the primary challenge remains finding new distribution channels. Thanks to their shared corporate parent, Crackle already had distribution on Sony’s PlayStation network, as well as through internet-connected Sony Bravia TVs and Sony Blu-ray players. The company also announced a carriage agreement with Roku last year. That’s on top of online distribution through the main Crackle.com site and through a dedicated Crackle YouTube channel. On the mobile side, Sony says that over 7.5 million users of Android and iOS devices have downloaded the Crackle mobile app to date.
Gaming consoles are important to a site like Crackle because they have much greater penetration than so-called over-the-top set- top boxes. The U.S. adoption of PlayStation Network and Xbox Live is well over 50 million, versus about 15 million for non-gaming set-top devices like Roku, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) TV, Boxee.
Crackle will split advertising revenue with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) under the new deal, but neither side would discuss the details. Crackle joins Xbox Live at a time when Microsoft is greatly expanding the service’s program offerings. It is trying to evolve its Xbox 360 into a singular set-top box to serve all programming needs worldwide. To that end, it has signed on U.S. cable channels including ESPN (NYSE: DIS), Bravo, SyFy and HBO, U.S. cable service providers such as Verizon FiOS and Comcast’s Xfinity TV, and foreign broadcasters including the BBC in the U.K., and Canal+ in France and Spain. In all, it said in October that it would add around 40 new cable and satellite providers, and individual channels to stream live TV and VOD programming through Xbox 360 in 20 countries.
Related
- Microsoft Shifts Strategies To Expand Xbox Live TV, Go Global
- Sony's Patience With Crackle Persists; Playstation Expansion In The Works
- Sony's Crackle Launches On Android; iPhone Plans In The Works
