SEO Werkt!

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

App recommendation engines are getting booted from Apple’s app store because they suck, according to a new player in the app-finding business. But Hooked Media has come up with an entirely new take on app recommendation that has two unique qualities.

One, it doesn’t suck. And two, it can’t be rejected by Apple.

“Obviously, app discovery is a problem on iOS and Android,” Hooked Media CEO Prita Uppal told me, thinking of the hundreds of thousands of apps on both platforms. “The key problem from Apple’s perspective was that no-one was solving the problem … they were just looking at opportunities to make money.”

Which is why Hooked Media chose to avoid simply relying on manual curation or social discovery, which is what most app recommendation engines use. Instead, Uppal says, Hooked Media generates app recommendations for its users that rely on no fewer than 46 independent factors, including time of day, day of the week, what apps you’ve installed, which you’re deleting, the sequence in which you use them, your demographic factors, and yes, some social factors as well.

The result?

A 30 percent uptick in installs based on Hooked Media recommendations … and 33 percent more play time on games downloaded in response to a recommendation.

And most of that is without the typical app-recommendation app that shows you the free games, highlighted apps, and deals of the day. Because instead of just being an app, Hooked Media provides an in-app app recommendation service that helps mobile developers monetize and get distribution.

In other words, a large part of Hooked Media’s app recommendations happen in other apps, in that moment you’ve just finished a level or played a game, and the app flashes up suggestions on other apps to download. But these are just paid ads, they’re personalized recommendations.

“We’ve built a partnership on both platforms,” Uppal says. “We’re helping companies that are already doing this do it better smart and more personal … and increasing conversion rates over 20 percent.”

In other words, because the app suggestions are more accurate, users who see them are more likely to actually download and use the suggested apps — and app developers are more likely to be able to monetize their app via other developers’ marketing incentives.

“We can dynamically pick the right set of apps for the right user,” says Uppal. “And the minute you add that predictive rating for users, it totally transforms it from being an ad unit to something that’s personal to me, which totally changes that experience.”

It also changes the definition of an app recommendation engine from an app to a cross-platform service that developers can embed in their own apps via an API. And therefore makes it virtually impossible for Apple to take action against Hooked Media, because it’s in thousands of apps — not just an easily isolated and targeted one.

Hooked Media, which has been making online game recommendation engines for years, spent a dedicated two and a half years building the technology behind the recommendations for mobile apps. That’s partly due to the many, many factors in Hooked’s complex algorithm, and partly due to the need to provide customized recommendations based on huge numbers of criteria in literally milliseconds.

The service won 25 million users in beta on Android, and app recommendation app that it built — partially as a proof of concept — was promoted by Google twice. That’s a far cry from Apple, which has been busy kicking app suggestion apps out of the store.

Source: Hooked Media

Personalized app recommendations

And while there’s good opportunity on iOS which Hooked Media is happy to serve via its API, Android is where there’s a “bigger opportunity,” according to Uppal.

That’s not really due to the fact that Android has more users and now has or shortly will have more apps. Rather, it’s due to the fact that the “app store” functionality is fractured on Android, with more than 200 Android app stores in existence, according to Hooked Media.

“The app discovery problem becomes even more challenging on Android — users don’t even know where to go,” Uppal says. “In the U.S., Google Play is definitely dominant, but outside the U.S., Google Play is very small.”

In Korea, Uppal told me, Google Play is only used by a fraction of Android smartphone owners. (That seems a little extreme, given the fact that Korea ranks number two in the country list for downloads on Google Play.) And, she pointed out, Verizon is soon coming out with its own store. Regardless of Korea’s status, the reality is that there is more diversity of app stores on Android, even in the U.S. (Amazon, anyone). Hooked Media, however, will seamlessly find the right app store to download the right app, dynamically.

The core point?

Hooked Media has build a platform, app store, and app agnostic app recommendation engine. It’s one that can’t be banned by Apple. And it’s one that benefits developers who are seeking monetization as well as those who are seeking distribution.

photo credit: Daniel Y. Go via photopin cc

Filed under: Business, Dev, Entrepreneur, Games, Mobile

If I can paraphrase a popular Alicia Keys song, this woman is on fire. And Marissa Mayer is clearing moving Yahoo back into the center of the Silicon Valley tech conversation.

Days after finalizing a $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition, Yahoo has bought yet another company.

PlayerScale, a cross-platform game infrastructure startup that provides tools for games played by 150 million users on platforms such as iOS and Android, announced the acquisition on its site today. And — unlike recent Yahoo acquisitions like Astrid, CEO Jesper Jensen said that the company would continue to operate as it has, supporting over 2,600 developers and 4,000 games.

In fact, he added, PlayerScale is adding 400,000 users a day.

“With Yahoo’s backing, we can crank out awesome products and improvements to our platform faster than ever before,” Jensen said.

Source: Sean Ludwig

Marissa Mayer

That would be a major change from recent Yahoo acquisitions such as Stamped, OnTheAir, Snip.it, Alike, Summly, Jybe, and Astrid, all of which have been shuttered or put on notice. But it makes sense, given PlayerScale’s volume of business and growth rates.

And, presumably it makes sense given Yahoo has now signaled a move into casual gaming on iOS, Android, Facebook, the web, and even Xbox.

PlayerScale’s platform helps game developers with pretty much everything they need to make their game platform work, except the game itself. It includes payments, chat, analytics, virtual currencies, distributed caching, authentication, social sign-on, leaderboards, localization, and more.

Here’s CEO Jesper Jensen’s announcement in full:

Today is a great day — both in our journey with PlayerScale and for users of our Player.IO product. We are happy to announce the next big step toward our goal of building the best possible gaming infrastructure platform: we have been acquired by Yahoo!. And don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. Our platform will continue to support the same great games that you love playing today … and in fact, it will only get better from here!

Our goal has always been to help developers build the best possible games, without having to worry about building and scaling the infrastructure required to operate today’s biggest successes. In working with the folks at Yahoo!, it has become clear that we share this passion.

We have spent the past four years growing a three-person startup into a product that powers games played by over 150 million people worldwide and we are adding over 400,000 new users every day. In the last four months alone, we have increased our daily user growth rate by almost sixty percent. With Yahoo!’s backing, we can crank out awesome products and improvements to our platform faster than ever before. We will continue to support our existing product and deliver new services to help you grow and manage your success in cross-platform gaming — whether it’s casual, social or mobile.

Today marks a milestone for PlayerScale and I want to sincerely thank the team, our developers and millions of users for the adventure so far and can promise there will be more to come.

- Jesper Jensen

Image credit: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Filed under: Business, Cloud, Deals, Dev, Games, Mobile

Just about a month ago, Microsoft officially announced its Bing Fund angel fund and incubator program. Today, Bing Fund announced that it has enrolled its first two companies: app development service Buddy and Pinion, an advertising service with a focus on gaming communities. Both companies hail from Microsoft’s own home state of Washington and will, among other things, get subsidized use of Bing’s APIs, mentorship, funding and access to co-working space in Bellevue, WA where Microsoft’s Online Services Division is located.

When Microsoft announced the Bing Fund, it said that it was looking for startups that focus on mobile and web experiences and which provide “both inspirational vision” and the “ability to execute.” According to Bing Fund’s general manager Rahul Sood, his team heard “from a large number of startups” after the fund was announced. He believes both Buddy and Pinion “an amazing couple of companies” that “can really change the landscape in their respective areas.”

Buddy was founded by two former Microsoft employees, Dave McLauchlan and Jeff MacDuff, we worked at the company for 12 years before starting their own venture. The idea behind Buddy is to offer mobile developers a set of pre-built and pre-scaled web service, ranging from database systems to cloud storage and even Instagram-like image filters. Buddy, which directly competes with companies like StackMob and Parse, previously raised $1 million from Transmedia Capital. As Sood notes, the company’s tools support a wide variety of non-Microsoft platforms, including iOS, Android, SmartTV, Facebook and HTML5.

Pinion, says Sood, almost went broke three times before joining the Bing Fund. The company focuses on placing interactive ads on gaming servers and currently works with a number of major publishers, including Valve and their Steam platform.

The next batch of companies, says Sood, will be announced soon and will likely come from San Francisco and Boulder.

In the ever-unfolding drama of the technology world, the conflict dominating the stage is how to successfully create mobile apps. The question persists in front and behind of the curtain as entrepreneurs, investors, and executives act out their roles before a growing audience of smartphone users.

Multiple plotlines are at work. It makes for a complicated narrative of monetization schemes such as real-time bidding for advertising, premium business models, and apps with no revenue stream that run on a dedicated user base and hope. The growing importance of a strong mobile presence, combined with a shortage of talented mobile developers, further adds to this tension.

What a scene for HackRocket to enter.

HackRocket is an online iOS bootcamp featuring a cast of mobile development and business experts as instructors. It has officially opened its doors for applications and is ready to put the next generation of aspiring founders through its training program.

The 12-week program occurs completely online via live video feeds. It’s designed for students who already have a background in technology. The curriculum focuses on iOS development, with 10 hours of coding instruction a week at its core. In addition, it sports six hours a week of guest lectures that deal with topics relating to entrepreneurship.

“The course covers everything from A to Z,” founder Paul Vieira said. “We will offer help with design, app store optimization, copywriting, wire framing, budget creation, UI/UX, marketing, monetization, as well as language instruction. It is not just about building an app, it is about building a business.”

Classes are from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, which makes it most convenient for people in Europe and the U.S. Interested people in Australia and Asia can also participate, if they are willing to stay up late. Applications will close on August 31. Tuition is $3,500. The first class consist of 26 people and classes begin on September 10. To apply, go to http://hackrocket.com/apply/.

One of the featured instructors is Justin Beck, a young entrepreneur who has worked at both Google and Microsoft and currently runs his own gaming company, PerBlue. He has talked at conferences around the world. He covers how to translate coding skills into lucrative opportunities. According to Beck, many developers aspire to be found startups but do not have the right mindset.

“Technology is the underpinning of everything,” Beck said. “But to start a successful company, you have to have understand business, too. Being a good CEO is also about ‘softer’ things like public speaking, money management, organization, and social skills. It is about taking ownership and shifting your thought processes. These behaviors can fundamentally change the trajectory of a person’s life.”

The bootstrap mentality is a key component of HackRocket. Other programs, like Code Academy in Chicago and Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco, are location-based. HackRocket’s cources occur remotely and online. Without the structure of a classroom, students have to be highly motivated and self-directed to benefit from the curriculum.

The primary program instructor is veteran mobile developer Bear Cahill. Over the course of his career, Cahill has helped develop over 80 mobile apps and is familiar with just about every programming language out there. He has worked with major companies like IBM, Ericsson, and Travelocity as well as with small startups and individuals. The veteran developer is a firm believer in the importance of practical, as well as theoretical, experience.

“Many of the training courses out there are either video, so there is no live interaction, or condensed, so there is no time to go off and work on assignments,” Cahill said. “This is a new paradigm on the language learning model. My favorite part is hearing new ideas and seeing them develop overtime and come to life. With this type of course, we can all benefit from that.”

The students are expected to tune in daily to the lectures, but they must also draw on their own initiative to collaborate with their classmates during off hours. In addition to a lower cost and the convenience of being able to learn from anywhere, HackRocket also allows participants free time to work on independent projects.

Filed under: dev, mobile

The shopping spree for InMobi continues apace: today the mobile advertising network has announced the acquisition of UK-based Metaflow Solutions, a mobile app management and distribution company. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed; we’re looking and will update as we learn more.

The news comes in the same month that InMobi announced the acquisition of MMTG Labs, another company focused on the distribution of apps — and points to how InMobi is broadening the reach and targeting it can offer to its mobile advertising developers and publishers. (It also shows how the company is putting its most recent $200 million round of funding to good use.)

“As a global leader in the mobile advertising space, InMobi is committed to growing the mobile ecosystem. Our acquisition of Metaflow Solutions will help us to continue to rapidly expand the distribution and monetisation of content for our developers and publisher partners,” Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO at InMobi, said in a statement.

Consolidation in the mobile advertising and app distribution spaces seems inevitable. InMobi is one of the larger of the independent mobile advertising companies — its ads, it says, reach 578 million mobile consumers, in over 165 countries, through billions of ad impressions every single day — but there are at least 4 other ad networks working at that same scale or greater. Having a better route through to where those ads might go — that is, better targeting and placement, as well as wider placement — is essential for a company like InMobi to compete effectively against AdMob/Google, iAd, Jumptap, Millennial Media and all the rest.

And this is what the Metaflow acquisition can potentially bring. Metaflow says that it works with “thousands” of active mobile developers and helps distribute apps and other content to some 350 app stores and operators worldwide — another fragmentation issue that puts off advertisers — with some of the bigger names including EA, Orange, Glu, O2′s Bluevia and Eric Schmidt-backed white-label app storefront Appia.

Metaflow has been around since 2006 B.I. (that’s before iPhone btw), and as such has a continuing strong business in distributing content to feature phones. More recently, Metaflow has been growing distribution in the area of smartphones, with “a very strong Android app proposition,” says Rob Jonas, MD and VP EMEA and global business operations at InMobi (he was poached from Google back in 2007), who points out that smartphones “is what InMobi is focused on as well.” But even the feature phone part of Metaflow’s business is a good fit for InMobi. Despite the growth of smartphones in developed markets like the U.S. and UK, InMobi still has a very strong business in advertising on feature devices, courtesy of its strong presence in Asia and Africa.

Jonas says that the Metaflow purchase helps fill out a strategy InMobi has been pursuing to offer more services to the developer community. “The core of the business is the mobile ad network and that is not going to change, but for any company that is mob advertising-focused a huge part of our business comes form the developer community so we have been expanding our efforts with developers.”

If the four areas of focus for developers are build, distribute, understand and monetize their content, Metaflow helps bolster InMobi’s ability to distribute, he says. As for future acquisitions, they may be in the “understand” category: “We are lookign at analytics very closely,” he says. Less so app building: “That is the least interesting to us in terms of the four main areas, but we have to be responsive to what is going on in the market.” So right acquiring app building technology is is not a priority, but that could change.

While Jumptap is preparing to follow Millennial Media and IPO by next year, inMobi might not be following them very soon. “For now, we’re continuing to build the business,” he says. “We still have a lot left to do before we start thinking about that.”

The Metaflow team will report to Piyush Shah, VP and GM of developer platforms and performance advertising at InMobi, which is also where MMTG Labs’ team now also sits. Metaflow’s team, already based in the UK, will continue to stay in the country and work out of InMobi’s London office.

More to come. Full release below.

LONDON, UK, 31 July 2012 — InMobi, the largest independent mobile advertising network, today announced the acquisition of Metaflow Solutions, leaders in mobile app management and distribution solutions.

Metaflow technology simplifies the global deployment and content management process for developers through its intelligent submission tools optimised through six years of operations, servicing the biggest publishers in the market. Metaflow’s Management and Distribution of content to consumer portals has consistently provided the fastest, lowest cost way to publish apps to hundreds of independent, OEM & operator appstores across the globe.

“As a global leader in the mobile advertising space, InMobi is committed to growing the mobile ecosystem. Our acquisition of Metaflow Solutions will help us to continue to rapidly expand the distribution and monetisation of content for our developers and publisher partners,” said Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO at InMobi.

The Metaflow team will become an integral part of InMobi’s developer oriented efforts, led by Piyush Shah, VP and GM of Developer Platforms and Performance Advertising at InMobi. Piyush adds, “With the recent acquisition of MMTG Labs, along with today’s acquisition of Metaflow, we will augment our value proposition by offering highly compelling distribution, monetisation, and engagement solutions to app developers globally.”

“At Metaflow, our mission has been to simplify and unify the complex process surrounding content management and deployment of apps to a distributed and highly fragmented marketplace. The global reach and technology backbone provided by InMobi is hugely exciting for us. InMobi provides app developers with even greater opportunities to acquire millions of users and monetise their exciting apps,” said Charles McLeod, CEO at Metaflow Solutions.

The Metaflow Solutions team will relocate to the new InMobi London office.

About InMobi

InMobi is the largest independent mobile advertising network. With offices on five continents InMobi provides advertisers, publishers and developers with a uniquely global solution for advertising. The network is growing and now delivers the unprecedented ability to reach 578 million consumers, in over 165 countries, through billions of ad impressions every single day.

InMobi is venture-backed by investors including: SoftBank, KleinerPerkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures. The company has offices in Bangalore, Johannesburg, London, Nairobi, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo.

To learn more, please visit www.inmobi.com, follow us on Twitter @InMobi, or read our blog at www.inmobi.com/inmobiblog/.

About Metaflow Solutions

Metaflow provides the industry’s standard distribution solution for stocking mobile content into more than 240 mobile sales channels and portals, encapsulating all of the submissions requirements, devices and ingestion mechanisms for all major revenue generating channels in every corner of the world. For more information, please visit: www.metaflow.com

It’s no secret that the mobile app landscape has become extremely competitive. Over the last few years, this has led to an incredible amount of innovation and progress, but the cost of visibility — of acquiring new users — is also on the rise. In fact, Fiksu found that the cost of acquiring users hit a record high in December. While December is a critical month for app discovery, it remained to be seen whether or not this trend would continue.

Today, W3i, the monetization and distribution network for app developers, released new user acquisition figures for the first half of 2012, and the results tell the same story and are worrying for developers. Assessing hundreds of millions of mobile users from January to June 2012, W3i found that the average cost-per-install (of CPI) of mobile apps increased by 70 percent on Android and by 56 percent on iOS.

By June, the cost-per-install on Android had risen from $0.30 to $0.51, while iOS CPI has increased from $0.59 to $0.92.

W3i attributed this increase, in part, to mobile gaming giants like DeNA have entered the U.S. market, a prime example of the fact that, for the first time, billion-dollar companies are now competing with small to mid-sized developers. As free-to-play giants leverage their huge marketing budgets to help attract new users, the overall cost of user acquisition has increased — making it increasingly difficult for developers who are trying to make a living in apps.

“The entire user acquisition market is undergoing a sea change that will require mobile developers to re-think how they obtain and monetize their users,” said Robert Weber, co-founder of W3i. “This could be the ‘innovate or die’ moment for a lot of developers as the competition for mobile users continues to heat up.”

Many were surprised when popular Mac and iOS email client Sparrow recently exited to Google. Considering that the Sparrow team was widely respected, the app had risen to popularity, and the team had raised a seed round from some notable investors, it seemed a somewhat disappointing result.

The team behind iOS development startup, AppCubby, recently penned a post talking about what it called “The Sparrow problem” and the challenges facing indie mobile developers.

Here’s an excerpt:

… Things have definitely changed and Sparrow is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The age of selling software to users at a fixed, one-time price is coming to an end. It’s just not sustainable at the absurdly low prices users have come to expect. Sure, independent developers may scrap it out one app at a time, and some may even do quite well and be the exception to the rule, but I don’t think Sparrow would have sold-out if the team — and their investors — believed they could build a substantially profitable company on their own. The gold rush is well and truly over.

AppCubby’s conclusion, mixed with this news from W3i, points to the hard truth that, going forward, developers will likely have to consider new alternatives to marketing. W3i recommends that developers focus on designing apps for strong monetization to optimize their ability to compete, along with making paid buys during focused time windos to magnify chart rankings. And, since cost rises with volume in this market, there’s still hope for beating the average rates by producing titles in less-saturated areas.

Meanwhile, W3i said that, for the most part, social app discovery is still an unproven method for developers, with Facebook’s App Center still new to the market and Apple’s App Store becoming increasingly competitive. But social mechanics will become increasingly important going forward.

Iris Shoor also recently penned a post for TechCrunch talking about the approach she and her team took to marketing their app, and how they used non-traditional marketing tactics to get to 10 million downloads, including getting customer stories and testimonials and creating direct channels to their users.

W31 also noted that, like we saw from Fiksu’s analysis in December, the value of new users jumps even more during long weekends. Unsurprisingly, the company found that holiday weekends are high in advertiser demand, with rates increasing by 65 percent over the 2012 Memorial Day Weekend, for example, with some CPI rates even more than quadrupling the industry standard.

6waves is a major publisher of third-party Facebook and mobile games. Now the company is parlaying its strong position as a distributor of games by creating a mobile traffic exchange where developers can cross-promote games with 6waves completely free of charge.

The mobile traffic exchange platform, dubbed WaveX, will enable developers to grow the number of downloads for their games without forcing them to spend a lot of money on acquiring new users. Hong Kong-based 6waves has a lot of users for its mobile games. With the WaveX platform, it will promote the games of other developers that are similar to ones that users are already playing.

Normally, companies such as Chartboost charge a fee for this kind of developer exchange. But 6waves will not be charging a fee at all, said Jim Ying, senior vice president of publishing at 6waves.

“Developers have been asking us about cross-promotions,” Ying said. “We were going to build a platform anyway and decided to open it up. Ours has no commission. So you can get more users without ponying up the dollars.”

Ying says the biggest challenge facing mobile developers is how to expose their games to relevant players without spending exorbitant amounts on marketing to get new users. With WaveX, 6waves says developers will be able to quickly and easily get access to a high-quality network of players.

“With the launch of WaveX, we look forward to working with an expanded pool of independent developers from around the world to help them grow the global audience of their games,” said Josh Burns, director of products at 6waves.

WaveX is a powerful, yet simple to use product that caters to mobile game developers of all experience levels and games of any size. Cross-promoting players across games is a proven, cost-effective way to expose developers’ games to a larger audience. Best of all, WaveX is free to use. Sign up and begin growing your game right now.

6waves has 40 mobile games in the works between its own internal developers and deals with external teams. Ten have launched so far, and the rest are coming in a matter of weeks.

6waves’ investors include Insight Venture Partners and Nexon. Besides Chartboost, rivals include Tapjoy and Flurry.

“There is a lot of crazy, stupid money being spent now in acquiring mobile users,” Ying said. “Astronomical sums are being spent on mobile advertising. That’s creating a problem for mobile game developers.”

Filed under: games, mobile, VentureBeat

Can’t find a good developer to work on your smartphone app? Join the club, pally.

In fact, the mobile developer shortage of ’12 is so dire that a bunch of VCs just lobbed — lobbed, I tell you — $12 million at Xamarin to address the crisis the only way that startup knows how: with technology.

Xamarin is the current home of Mono — not the disease, the kinda sorta open-source project that allows for cross-platform development between Microsoft technologies, Android, iOS, etc. Mono has been in development for more than a decade, but the developers who created it founded Xamarin just last year.

(Parenthetical history lesson: The Xamarin team was, back in 2000, the Ximian team. Ximian was where Mono was born and bred, but that company was acquired by Novell in 2003. When Novell itself was acquired in 2011, a bunch of folks got pink slips, including the guys who first cooked up Mono. So they took the project with them and founded the new company, Xamarin.)

In its first year, the startup has signed up 150,000 developers to use Xamarin’s Mono products, and 7,500 of those devs are paying customers, as well, which adds up to “millions of dollars in revenue,” according to co-founder Nat Friedman.

So, what’s all that got to do with the mobile dev shortage?

“Enterprises face a severe shortage of mobile developers as pressures from BYOD [bring your own device] escalate and as mobile becomes a strategic customer engagement channel,” said International Data Corporation researcher Al Hilwa in a statement on today’s funding. “Technologies that leverage large existing ecosystems of developer skills are exactly what enterprises need to support multiple device platforms productively.”

In other words, if you make it easy for an old-school .NET developer to build Android and iOS apps without having to relearn everything he already knows for a new ecosystem, we all profit. Especially Xamarin.

Today, the startup is announcing it’s taken a grand total of $12 million in venture capital from Charles River Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Floodgate. This is Xamarin’s first institutional round of funding.

The startup is based in Boston, Mass., and its clients run the gamut from megacorporation National Instruments to music startup Rdio.

Top image courtesy of igor1308, Shutterstock

Filed under: deals, dev

The Apple iOS is surging ahead of the Google Android platform for enterprise development, according to survey results from Appcelerator, the mobile platform development company.

In the largest survey of its kind, Appcelerator developers were asked what operating system is best positioned to win the enterprise market. Developers said iOS over Android by a 53% to 38% margin. Last year, in its second quarter survey, the two companies were in a dead heat for the enterprise market, tied at 44%.

In a surprise of sorts, Windows showed some life as 33% said they would be interested in developing apps on the Windows 8 tablet.

Each quarter, in conjunction with IDC Research, Appcelerator surveys its community of 340,000 developers. It is the largest survey of mobile developers. This quarter, more than 3,600 developers participated in the survey.

Apple’s dramatic push ahead is in part attributed to developers perception about Android. When asked what interests them, developers said the size of the market and the price point of the devices.

“Apple is a consumer centric app in the eyes of developers,” said Appcelerator’s Director of Enterprise Strategy, Michael King.

Apple has also put more emphasis on supporting the enterprise through better security. They have worked closely with mobile device management companies such as Mobile Iron, SAP Afaria and Symantec’s Nukone.

On its Web site, Apple has successfully marketed its iOS products. For example, it markets the ways it is used; the companies that have adopted it; the apps and its security features. It beautifully shows the iPad and the innovative ways it can be used.  Its resources page helps people understand how to use, integrate, and support iPad in business environments.

In addition, Apple now has an enterprise associate in every Apple store.

Also reflected in the survey results, is a trend from consumer app development to enterprise apps. Two-thirds of those surveyed are building apps for their company or a business customer.

Enterprise managers are recovering from the bring your own device (BYOD) era. They are now learning how to manage devices and how to use them to innovate.

The interest in Windows is arguably as interesting as Apple’s gains. Could this be the new race between Apple and Microsoft?

Appcelerator, maker of mobile development tool Titanium, is gearing up for Codestrong, its big code conference and hackathon set to take place in San Francisco this October.

In just three months, more than 500 developers will descend on the Intercontinental Hotel for two days of keynote talks, around 30 breakout sessions, and Hack to Help, a charity-focused hackathon.

“Last year’s Codestrong conference was amazing, and this year is going to be even better,” said Appcelerator CEO Jeff Haynie in a statement today.

“In addition to delivering great mobile and technical content, this year we have a big focus on building a successful mobile business … [and] compelling apps for both consumers and the enterprise.”

Last year’s Codestrong did have a hackathon for mobile developers, conducted in a fairly typical hack through the night/be judged/declare the winners format. This year, the Hack to Help event will also take place overnight, but in addition to having an overall winner for the hackathon, each app will be built for the benefit of a pre-selected nonprofit organization.

Twelve teams will work around the clock to build apps for 12 charities. The apps will help each nonprofit boost their fundraising and awareness efforts. Some of the organizations that will receive apps include Stop Hunger Now, Mercy Corps, Special Olympics, and the Avril Lavigne Foundation, which supports organizations working with children and youth who have serious illnesses or disabilities.

“I am very excited that my fans will have the opportunity to give back from the convenience of their mobile phones,” said Lavigne in a statement on the hackathon.“I think an app will be a great way for them to help make a difference and to follow all the great things we do for sick or disabled children and youth. I am very grateful to all of the developers who are participating in Hack to Help, and I can’t wait to see the final results!”

Codestrong is Appcelerator’s annual mobile conference. This year’s two-day event will take place in San Francisco, Calif., at the Intercontinental Hotel starting October 21, 2012. Currently, all-access passes are available online for $599.

Top image courtesy of olly, Shutterstock

Filed under: dev