iPhone App-titude and Snapr

Locally made Snapr - yet to be released - is a photo/twitter app that builds a map of geo-tagged photos.

The iPhone is now the third most popular smartphone in the world.

In New Zealand it's possibly the most popular, since the Palm kinda died a few years ago, and the Blackberry didn't seem to get all that far beyond our politicians (who still aren't allowed to use iPhones) and big-noting CEOs.

I reckon about 30,000 iPhones are in use here, so if anyone has a figure for any other smartphone in New Zealand, do tell.

Worldwide, Apple shipped 24.9 million iPhones by the end of last year, giving it an estimated 14.4 per cent of the total mobile operating system market (which puts it in third place), .

iPhone is behind Nokia's Symbian platform, thanks to its very impressive 46.9 per cent (on sales of 80.9 million units) of the global market.

Research in Motion, with 19.9 per cent of the market, is second on 34.3 million units sold, but iPhone is still growing – 2009 represented an increase of 81.9 per cent over 2008.

Can it keep growing? That's a moot point. iPad lust may mean that some opt for the new Apple tablets instead of iPhones, for example. Twenty-five per cent of respondents in a recent said they would delay planned purchases of one or more Apple products due to the iPad – MacBook purchases would be delayed by 9 per cent of respondents, while 10 per cent were prospective iPhone buyers now postponing their purchases until the iPad's out.

The survey found 13 per cent of respondents were likely to buy Apple's forthcoming iPad, while the number planning to purchase an iPhone prior to its launch in 2007 was 9 per cent.

We still don't fully know what we're getting with the iPad – as Adam Greenfield of Nokia said at Webstock a couple of weeks ago, he had a 'failure of imagination' when it came to predicting what the iPhone represented.

Our imaginations are now much less likely to fail. We may not know much about the iPad until we get ours in late March, but we certainly have the iPhone in our mitts (or midst, anyway), so we know a lot more of what we can expect. Which, to my mind, is why more people seem keen to get iPads than were keen to get iPhones.

The RBC/ChangeWave survey
survey was released by RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, gleaning responses from 3200 participants.

Of those surveyed, 68 per cent said they would surf the internet with the iPad, 44 per cent would check email, while 37 per cent were interested in reading ebooks, but I think this will change too, once it's available. I think ebooks and emags will be to iPad what apps are to iPhone.

And will we get the iPad along with everyone else? I met two blokes from Apple last week, and they said yes. So yes.

Is Apple worried that iPad will take away iPhone sales? Maybe. The next iPhone model, likely to be in June, may see the arrival of cheaper models, or so thinks Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty.


Huberty notes that the cost of the iPhone is an obstacle around the world. It certainly is here.

Huberty anticipates (or is this just wishful thinking?) iPhones with "both a lower total cost of ownership and new functionality, potentially including gesture-based technology." The Vodafone NZ plans are still painfully unmalleable and exepnsive; since I suspect it's Apple that sets these plans and not Vodafone, here's hoping we'll get some flexibility.

On the iPad, Huberty expects shipments of 6 million by the end of this year. So maybe she is the wishful type – general consensus calls for just 3 to 4 million units.

The Adobe Flash versus Apple's iPhone and iPad rejecting Flash is still a controversy. Canadian site Macgasm has an interesting take on this, with the site's Joshua Schnell saying it's to protect the iPhone SDK.

"If Flash gets approved, game developers will be able to continue using the Flash platform instead of using the iPhone SDK. That's the real issue here, not streaming video content. Flash games will challenge Apple's AppStore model, and that's something Apple doesn't want to encourage."

That said, Joshua links a video showing Flash romping through battery life on a Nexus One.


Apple and apps

Why did I meet a couple of Apple blokes? It wasn't just me – John Marx and Marcus Arnett from Apple NZ (I mean Apple Australia) were showing several Auckland journos the latest apps.

Don't worry, I showed them a couple, too, like the not-yet-released Snapr, a photo/twitter app that lets you build a map of geo-tagged photos. Rowan Wernham and Edward Talbot founded Snapr in April 2009, using their "modest personal incomes" and work carried out in spare time to develop the model.

It looks great – but it has been put together for the two New Zealand developers by Cactuslab, the Webstock awards' finalists. Auckland's Cactuslab also made Mobilefotos, the most popular third party Flickr app for iPhone, and World Surfer.

The NZ Snapr developers are soon taking it to the South By Southwest Festival in Texas soon. South by South West has three parts – Music, Film and Interactive. It's a big deal – SXSW is where Twitter found its way towards a mainstream audience. And also the oft-mentioned FourSquare, another tech startup with a location aware, mobile platform focus.

The back-end web service for Snapr will be largely built by MEA Mobile.

Snapr is the only New Zealand based company to make the finals of the Biz-Spark Accelerator category at SXSW. Across all four categories and 32 finalists, only three companies from outside the USA have been selected.

Snapr basically lets users Tweet their snaps to Twitter, and create account logins based on existing Twitter accounts.

It will be possible to embed Snapr images and maps into Facebook via a Snapr facebook app that's also coming.

The Apple guys were still intrigued by Augmented Reality, which is still the big rising tide of app development. They also showed off World Surfer, the Cactus Labs' app mentioned at Webstock. They also showed me the free global coffee finding and commenting app Beanhunter

I also looked at the great Australian app Triple J Unearthed, which showcases unsigned bands and the awesome Tunein Radio app, an NZ$2.59 application that truly makes your iPhone into a global radio.

If you're doing something with iPhone apps in New Zealand, do let me know.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com