Despite all the hype around mobile apps, only a minority of consumers download them on a monthly basis. Research released this week based on a survey of more than 25,000 European adults shows that only 4 per cent of all mobile users and 15 per cent of smartphone users download apps at least once per month.

According to Forrester, the researcher which carried out the survey, the fact that 21 per cent of all European mobile users consider apps to be an important feature when choosing a new mobile handset highlights a large gap between the limited actual usage of apps and consumer awareness.

This limited usage is primarily due to the combination of two factors: identified as the small number of exhaustive offerings available, and the fact that only recently shipped smartphones come with native application stores embedded.

The exception to this rule, unsurprisingly, is Apple, with 64 per cent of European iPhone users downloading apps on a monthly basis. But while the numbers look impressive — more than five billion downloads and $1bn paid to developers in the two years since the launch of the Apple App Store – Forrester analyst Thomas Husson expects that the limited number of paid apps means it is likely that a significant number of independent developers have not recouped their investments.

Husson notes that the recent launch of Apple’s iAd platform is a way for Apple to maintain attractiveness, allowing third parties that provide free apps to develop sustainable business models. But he also notes that in the longer run – with around 80 would-be application stores available worldwide as of June 2010 – few players will be able to address the key factors that will make them a success.

In this respect, Husson argued that the market opportunity for app stores is somewhat overhyped, and said players should be looking at sources of inspiration other than Apple to provide a unique user experience. “Expect successful players to look at Amazon.com and Facebook, which provide open platforms with unique social, personalization, and recommendation features, rather than to copy and paste Apple’s model,” Husson said. Indeed, we can expect the concept of app stores to expand to other connected devices and platforms.

Successful market players will be those capable of creating a viable business model for third parties and developers; providing third parties with marketing and merchandizing tools; and those offering a wide choice of payment and pricing options along the lines of in-application billing, operator billing, and subscription models.

The sample comprised RAJAR respondents drawn from the main RAJAR survey who had claimed to listen to the radio via the internet, or downloaded podcasts, or listened to the radio via their mobile phone. The survey findings are based on 1,083 respondents.

The survey found that:

• 31% of adults claim to have ever listened to the radio via the internet, including 29% who have listened live (up from 27% in November 2009) and 25% who have used time-shifted listening (using Listen Again services, up from 23%).

• 71% of those Listen Again listeners said the service has no impact on the amount of live radio to which they listen; while half said they are now listening to radio programmes to which they did not listen previously. The average user of Listen Again services listened to just under 2 programmes in this way in the previous week.

• Awareness of Personalised Online Radio (POR) increased from 14% of Adults 15+ to 17% while the number of users of such services has increased from 8% to 11%. 6% claim to use POR at least once a week.

• 15% have heard of WiFi radio (a standalone radio set that connects wirelessly to the internet and is able to play any internet radio service) but only 2% claimed to own one.

• 13%* of adults 15+ have ever listened to the radio via mobile phone. Of those, 54% select the station using specific FM preset and 14% run an app for a specific 20% of smartphone owners on the Midas survey (or 1.4 million) have downloaded a radio app and, of those, over half (53%) use their radio apps at least once a week.

About RAJAR
RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research and is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK. It is jointly owned by the BBC and the RadioCentre on behalf of the commercial sector.

While the Android Market is far from perfect, it’s still gets the job done just fine. And, with recent performance charts popping up from all mobile app stores, it looks like the Market stands out in a couple different ways when compared to competition. Whether or not these differences are good or bad is up for question.

The Android Market has the highest percentage of free applications of any mobile app store out there. Free apps in the Android Market comprise a full 57% of the entire market place, easily besting any other application store’s availability of free applications. Some might say that the Market isn’t primed enough to make the kind of money that the App Store generates. They may be right, but more free applications is still more appealing to the average consumer. And “free” doesn’t necessarily mean lesser quality, either. The developers just choose to make money in other ways, and ads seem the be the way to go with Android right now.

The average price for all paid Android applications is $3.29, with the average price for the top 100 paid apps around $4.27. This is cheaper than Apple’s $4.65 and $6.02 price points, respectively, but it’s hard to deny that apps coming from the Android Market lack the polish of those coming from the App Store. With almost no interface guidelines to help keep user interfaces consistent across different Android apps, some can look like a complete mess. This is where Apple’s improvement process for applications, love it or hate it, comes in handy.

Google is activating about 160,000 devices a day, about 2 phones every second, so it will only be a matter of time before the OS will outpace almost all competitors with units sold. At that point, developers will flock to the Android Market with premium app offerings. But I wouldn’t expect to see that until Google gets some improvements rolled out to their application store.

Opera Software and Vogins Technology Co., Ltd., a China-based mobile application middleware provider, today announced that Opera Mini is now available in the Vogins App Store for MediaTek-based mobile phones. MediaTek phone users can now install an optimized version of Opera Mini for a full Web experience directly on their phones. This version is exclusively available through the Vogins App Store.

Vogins Technology has signed with more than 100 handset manufacturers, offering over 200 applications through the Vogins store. The store is powered by VRE, a middleware solution for mobile devices. VRE includes embedded middleware and a server service layer, and it is a highly efficient platform for development on mobile devices.

Nagravision is partnering with Samsung Electronics America to provide TV applications that bring more interactive web services and video content to consumers. As a result of the partnership with Nagravision, consumers will have access to more interactive and compelling applications on Samsung Apps, the world’s first HDTV-based application store where users can download and purchase applications from select 2010 Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray Players and Home Theater Systems via the upgraded Internet@TV – Content Service.

Part of a complete solution, Nagravision’s content publishing tools provide simple application templates for creating and publishing applications on Samsung Apps.

Nagravision developed applications using the content publishing tools to deliver video content from Fashion TV and Travel Wizard. Both applications were demonstrated on Samsung’s latest HDTVs at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and they will be available on select Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and Home Theater Systems that feature the Internet@TV – Content Service later this year.

As next step in app enablement strategy, Alcatel-Lucent formalizes former custom platforms and moves into the cloud.

In the early days of applying Web 2.0 principles to telecom, former IT vendors ruled the agenda. But traditional network equipment manufacturers have been steadily embracing more open application server platforms to again lay stake to being at the center of telco service creation.

Alcatel-Lucent put its most aggressive stake in the ground yet on this front, delivering new Application Exposure Suite capabilities and tools to help service providers expose core network capabilities to developers – both in-house and out in the wild.

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