“Android captured a record 39 percent share of global tablet shipments in Q4 2011, rising from 29 percent a year earlier. Global Android tablet shipments tripled annually to 10.5 million units. Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes.”

The second report comes from mobile analytics firm Flurry. They found:

“In January, after the holiday boom in devices and in apps, we see that strong adoption of Kindle Fire, combined with significant downloads driven from the Amazon App Store, resulted in a massive surge in session usage that just edges out the Galaxy Tab. Unrounded, Kindle Fire represents 35.7% of sessions and Galaxy Tab represents 35.6%. Remarkably, and from a standing start, the Kindle Fire overtook the Galaxy Tab in just a few short months. Total Android tablet sessions in January more than tripled over November, with Galaxy Tab sessions increasing by more than 50%. Overall, Android Tablets are growing aggressively as a category.”

The numbers are not exactly comparable, since the first report looks at new sell-in shipments and covers October-December, while the second looks at total usage for January, but it’s clear that Android tablets are finally getting some traction thanks in part to the success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

What’s the key to success as a mobile developer?

[Gregory] Focus on providing customers a great value proposition. If you’re making games, they need to take maximum advantage of the mobile experience. Angry Birds is the best example of this. The gameplay is simple and you only need a few minutes to play to the next level. It’s ideal for mobile. Sustaining success in digital media is more challenging, we’ve seen huge companies rise and fall in only a few short years. Being flexible enough to evolve is key, but you also need to develop a strong sense of what works in digital and stick to it.

Once you have an idea that works, then what? How do you turn that into profit?

There are four—and only four—ways to make money with apps.  The most obvious is through paid downloads, in which you set a fixed price for your app, customers purchase it, and the transaction usually ends there.  You could also seek an exclusive sponsor for your app.  It’s not the most economically sustainable method of monetizing, but it might help you establish yourself enough to make your next app a success.  Then, there are the increasingly prominent in-app purchases, in which your customer might not have to pay anything at the beginning (”freemium”), but will have the opportunity to make purchases within the app to enhance the experience.

[Read: Survey says: Mobile gamers prefer free games that are full of fertilizer]

And finally, you can sell advertising space within your app. Provided you have a good match between app and advertiser and an installed base large enough to support the volume of impressions needed for profit, this can actually make you more money than you can with a pay-per-download model. I always recommend developers mix and match models to their particular app business. The more monetization strategies you can employ, the more money you will earn.

What about marketing?

With over one Million apps in the world, competition is fierce. You can have the greatest app in the world, but if you can’t get the word out about it, nobody’s going to download it.

Should I worry about piracy?

If you’re developing apps for iOS only, you won’t really need to worry about it. Apple is committed to copyright and has done a good job at protecting the eco-system.  But of course Apple isn’t the only player in the game, and piracy is becoming an issue with Android apps.  Here at InMobi, we’re actually working on a technology that will still display ads in pirated apps, so that you continue to make money from your advertisers.

If you don’t develop for Android you’re missing out on a huge segment of the market. In a recent Mobile Insights Report, which covered August through October of 2011, we found that 31.1% of mobile ads were displayed on an Android device. Piracy is also not an issue if you focus on ad supported apps. Plus, unlike iOS apps, Android apps are available through multiple stores worldwide, so your potential for exposure can actually be even greater.

Before joining InMobi you spent many years as an artist and creative director. Why did you transition to high-tech marketing?

I was always good at that strategy and concept aspect of advertising. I found my clients responding positively, so after a while it just made sense for me to go onto the business side full-time.  I like to jokingly say that a good creative director is 85% marketing manager, 10% high school principal, and 5% creative. When I transitioned, I only had to give up that 5%.

Nobody will use those fancy phones and tablets unless they have lots of great apps, and developers are the ones that create the apps. With a few exceptions, apps normally run on a single platform, so developers have to decide (sometimes well in advance of release) which platforms to target. Guess what attracts developers to one platform over another?

Money.

And according to mobile analytics company Flurry, iOS is winning the money game so far this year:

“Anecdotally, developers consistently tell us that they make more money on iOS, about three to four times as much.  To be sure, we pulled a sample of in-app purchase data from a set of top apps with versions on both iOS and Android, comprising of several million daily active users (DAUs). Running the numbers, we find that, on average, for every $1.00 generated on iOS, the same app will generate $0.24 on Android.”

In the 3rd quarter 2011, Flurry reports that new project starts on iOS outnumbered project starts on Android by a 3 to 1 margin. They place the blame squarely on Google for not making it easier for Android users to spend money in the Market:

“The largest single factor that appears to impact developer support for the platform is the consumer’s ability to pay.  This comes down to Google Checkout penetration.  Upon setting up an iOS device, a consumer must associate either a credit or gift card to her iTunes account.  In theory, this means that 100% of all iOS device users are payment enabled.  This has not been the case for Android, resulting in lower revenue generation possibilities on the platform.”

I think the Amazon Appstore is poised to take everybody by surprise and become a real revenue generator for Android developers. Ideally, we’d just have one app store, but with Google’s missteps with the Google Market and their witholding of the Market from unapproved devices, they’ve left the door open for competitors. Flurry, though, is optimistic Google will step up to the plate:

“With the recent integration of Google Wallet and Google Checkout, as well as their current $0.10 Android app sale to spur new account sign-ups, Google appears to be taking steps to correct this.”

We’ll see. Lately Google’s emphasis has been on everything but apps, in particular Books, Videos, and Music. These are all things that Amazon is good at (especially the first two) and I’m highly skeptical Google can take a significant share away from them. Perhaps it’s time for Google to team up with Amazon, let Amazon run the Market and let Google concentrate on their core competencies: providing the enabling technology (Android), searches, voice, ads, and ad networks.

Wow

Figuring this might be a lacking a little in the detail department, I decided to write something longer. So here you go:

Wow!

Kidding aside, the Kindle Fire arrived at my doorstep in an unassuming brown cardboard box yesterday afternoon. I’ve spent several hours playing with it, trying different apps on it, and hooking it up to Eclipse to see if I could write and debug programs for it. And let me just say, I’m impressed.

The Kindle Fire is a sweet little tablet, exceeding my expectations in almost every way. Especially considering the $199 price. Where do I start?

• The screen is bright and colorful, a pleasure to read and play.
• The size is perfect; much easier to carry around than a 10 inch tablet. It even fits in my big pockets.
• The Fire’s screen has true independent two-finger multi-touch. Games like Pew Pew 2 have no problem at all with their joystick-like controls.
• All the Amazon user interfaces are beautifully designed and color coordinated.
• Integration with the Amazon ecosystem of books, movies, and apps, is airtight and natural.
• The Fire is fast! App switching, page turning, video watching, no matter what you throw at it, it just purrs along. I’ve read reviews about it being sluggish, but that hasn’t been my experience at all.
• It uses the latest version of Android for which source code was available (2.3.4 API level 10). This is important because it’s the first version with decent APIs for native gaming. According to a source at Amazon who asked not to be named, they are working to port Android 4 to the Fire now that the code is available.
• Amazon did a great job handling navigation with no hardware buttons without taking up a lot of the screen (better than stock Android 3.x or 4.x IMHO).
• The Fire allows side-loading of apps, so I can install apps from web sites or email attachments (great for developers and enterprise users).

Using instructions at Amazon I was able to set up a USB driver and plug the Kindle Fire into my PC with a micro USB cable I had laying around.  I took 3 programs I had written for the Nexus One and ran them on the Kindle Fire with no problems whatsoever. The Kindle Fire is not a threat to Android at all. Quite the opposite - it’s a sterling example of what can be done with the Android and Linux underpinnings.

There are a few negatives and tradeoffs, which I’ll talk about in a later article. But overall, I’m amazed that Amazon was able to put together such a gorgeous device for such a small amount of money. Watch out Apple, Samsung, Icona, and RIM - the Kindle Fire is smokin’ and heading your way.

Hi! We just released a bit of code we thought this group might be interested in. Over at our Android Open-Source Project git servers, the source code for Android version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is now available…

This is actually the source code for version 4.0.1 of Android, which is the specific version that will ship on the Galaxy Nexus, the first Android 4.0 device. In the source tree, you will find a device build target named “full_maguro” that you can use to build a system image for Galaxy Nexus. Build configurations for other devices will come later.

This release includes the full history of the Android source code tree, which naturally includes all the source code for the Honeycomb releases. However, since Honeycomb was a little incomplete, we want everyone to focus on Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we haven’t created any tags that correspond to the Honeycomb releases (even though the changes are present in the history.)

JBQ, on behalf of the AOSP team.

Originally, Android source was hosted on kernel.org, the same site that hosts Linux source code. After those servers were hacked in September, however, Android code was moved to Google hosted servers. Unfortunately the tools to browse the code and review contributed code are not there yet. What is there is a “git” repository.

Read: Top 10 features in Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

Full instructions for downloading the source are available at the AOSP download page. Developers can check out the ’ics-release’ branch with the command “repo init -u https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest -b android-4.0.1_r1″.

For non-developers, this release means that the floodgates are open for cheap Android 4-based tablets and phones, and for custom ROMs based on the latest version of Android. Google didn’t release Android 3 (Honeycomb) to open source claiming it wasn’t ready, so Android 2.3.3 was the last version that had source. That version (Gingerbread) was not optimized for tablets, but that didn’t stop manufacturers like Amazon, B&N, Viewsonic, and Archos from using it on tablets.

Now, both tablets and phones can share a unified code base and graphical improvements such as the new Roboto font and hardware accelerated user interface.

See also:

• Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich source code is now available
• Google releases Android 4 source code, but true openness still elusive
• Google Open Sources Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich

As usual we’ll break this up into user-oriented features and developer-oriented features. First, the top user features:

1. New consistent look and feel. Designer Matias Duarte (former designer of WebOS) says “While people like and need Android, they didn’t love Android”. So he gave the user interface a top to bottom overhaul to make it “enchanting, easy, and powerful”. New widgets, new gestures, context sensitive action bars, more discoverable commands - these are just the tip of the iceberg. Anybody who had complained about Android not having the level of polish or usability as other mobile OS’s should give Android 4 fresh look.
2. New system font. Android 4 sports a new type face called “Roboto” which was designed especially for high resolution screens like the one found on the Galaxy Nexus. By putting a new emphasis on typography, Duarte is taking a page from Steve Jobs who credited a college calligraphy class he audited for the great looking text on the Mac and iPhone. Roboto is part of a magazine-like revamp to many of the redesigned Android apps, which now have “big bold pictures with giant headlines”.
3. Screen shots. Hold down the power and volume down buttons to capture a screenshot of the currently running application. The picture will appear in your Gallery. I know this sounds like a minor thing, but it was sorely missed in stock Android.
4. Home screen improvements. The Android home screen got a lot of love in Android 4. New features for phones include resizable widgets with stacks and scrolling for richer information at your fingertips. Other new features include the ability to create a folder by dragging one icon on top of another, and a customizable quick action bar at the bottom of the screen. You can press a button in any screen to see recent apps and swipe them to the side to close them. There’s nothing really revolutionary here, and influences from TouchWiz and iOS and other systems are obvious, but the combination of all the features and little refinements will make Android much more approachable to new users.
5. Instant voice. In Android 2.x, 3.x, and iOS 5, you press a button to start recording, say what you have to say, and when you stop talking the phone sends the entire recording to the cloud. Servers in the cloud chew on it for a little while and then send the text or commands back to your phone. Android 4 gets rid of most of those delays with a cool feature called Instant Voice. Now you press the button and start talking and the text starts appearing while you are still talking.

There are dozens of other great features in Android 4 but those are my favorites. Others include improved notifications, better soft keyboard, face recognition to unlock (although that didn’t work so well during the demo), reading notifications from the lock screen, and more.

Next let’s take a look at the features and new APIs for Android developers>

That’s what happened to Google developer Steve Yegge this week. The only reason we heard about it was that he also committed the social media equivalent of hitting the “Reply to all” button, and posted his missive to the world instead of just to his coworkers at Google. Oops.

The classic "deer in the headlights" look.

Immediately, he regretted it, agonized about it for a while, and eventually ended up pulling the post. Not before people made copies of course. Many bloggers and news organizations picked up the story, and spread his name and story all over the internet.

Unfortunately almost everyone missed the point entirely.

Here’s a sampling of the coverage that compelled me to write:

• Google engineer calls Google+ a “pathetic afterthought” and “knee-jerk reaction”
• GOOGLE ENGINEER: Here’s Why Google+ Is Failing, And How We Can Start ‘Doing This Right’
• Google engineer slams Google+ as ‘pathetic afterthought’
• Google engineer rant suggests Google+ Games was an afterthought
• Google+ slammed by…Google engineer?

Now, I’ve written a few headlines myself, and I understand all about hyperbole and grabbing attention. But even if you go deeper into most articles and read beyond the headline, they still miss the point, and I think, do Steve’s comments a great injustice.

So do yourself, and Mr. Yegge, a favor. Before forming an an opinion about the article, take a few minutes to actually read the article. Here’s a link to that copy again. Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait. Then come back and tell me it isn’t one of the most brilliant essays you’ve ever read. I think it’s Honest. Heartfelt. Funny. Insightful. Courageous. Hard hitting. And spot-on accurate.

First of all, it’s not about Google+ at all. That was just used as an example to illustrate his point. Steve could have used any number of other products, including my favorite pet peeve - Google Translate.

For Translate, Google did a web site product and a web services mashup-friendly API. Then they killed the API because people were using it too much. That left developers like me who were building on top of the API in the lurch because we didn’t have anywhere else (except maybe Bing) to turn.

Consider what would have happened if Google had killed the translate.google.com web site instead of the API. Then somebody else, probably a lot of somebodies including other groups in Google, could have built their own sites and apps on top of the API. There would have been innovation as developers tried to do interesting new things with the underlying service, such as mashing it up with other services and social networks, improving the quality through crowdsourcing, running multiple translations and comparing the results, and a thousand other things I can’t even think of.

Now consider Eclipse. There’s an organization that got the right focus very early on. Eclipse started as an IDE, basically a fancy editor and program building tool for geeks. But then the designers realized that the core of the product was a Platform. With some work, the Platform was exposed and the result was an explosion of creativity and commerce that continues to this day. A book I wrote about Eclipse 6 years ago is still selling well, and Eclipse is celebrating 10 years of success in November.

The power of a Platform-oriented mindset, and the point of Steve Yegge’s article is this: good Platforms enable not just your own products (the things you can think of and have time for) but a whole bunch of other stuff you haven’t even thought of. Amazon, Eclipse, Facebook, Salesforce, and others have figured this out already. Have you?

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

What was truly important to Steve? His work, which revolutionized the fields of computers, graphics, industrial design, entertainment, communications, and more. His passion for that work showed through in his designs, his attention to detail, and his lively stage presentations.

Join me as we remember his amazing journey through the pictures on the next several pages. Let your mind wander as you consider each one, savoring the memories and feelings they evoke.

One more thing… >

Read: Is the iPhone 5 your dream phone?

Apple is using every weapon in its arsenal to hold ground against the threat from its competitors. The best weapon, of course, is innovation. Despite the commonly held notion, innovation usually isn’t something completely new. You could browse the web on a phone before the iPhone, but the experience was awful. You could do video calls before FaceTime but nobody did because the quality was poor and it was hard to find somebody to talk to. Apple’s strength is making technology work in a simple way for average people.

Read: Today’s launch points to an ‘emerging market’ iPhone

Then there are the not so great weapons, the ‘dirty bombs’ if you will. I’m talking about Apple’s concerted world-wide effort to slow down competitors through legal action. So far they’ve managed to keep Samsung devices out of the German and Australian markets, and they’re struggling to do the same across Europe and the US. Apple says they’re protecting their ideas from thieves, while the other side says the ideas aren’t original, weren’t stolen, and that the action reduces consumer choice. Apple isn’t alone in using legal actions of course. But regardless of where you stand in this argument, it’s clear that Apple feels threatened and that they’ve decided that innovation alone isn’t going to cut it.

They could be right. According to the Nielsen Mobile Insights survey conducted in August, new smartphone buyers are favoring Android handsets two-to-one compared to iOS devices (56% vs. 28%). That’s an astounding gap that a few evolutionary phone models can’t overcome. I’m not sure there’s anything Apple can do, besides try to secure its place as a niche player.

Apple’s problem is not the lack of innovation or lawyers or money, it’s that the company is going it alone against a strong and growing array of manufacturers such as Amazon, HTC, ZTE, and Samsung, and a volunteer army of smart, motivated hobbyists such as the XDA community. Android is an open source platform using Linux so anybody can build compatible devices without anybody’s permission, even Google’s.

Sometimes it’s messy and loud, and sometimes it’s fractious and disjointed, but this entrepreneurial alliance of converging interests called “Android” is currently crushing everyone else on the field. Unless it can pull out some kind of secret weapon, Apple is headed towards the same fate.

The most anticipated model is arguably the Kindle Fire so that’s the one we’ll focus on. Running Android and Linux under the hood, the Fire is an all-Amazon experience with nary a Google app in sight. Aimed squarely at the Apple iPad for its all-purpose tablet and multi-media capabilities and the Barnes and Noble Nook for its color e-reader capabilities, the Fire will be out on November 15.

Amazon enters a crowded tablet market dominated by the iPad but filled with dozens of Android-based offerings from companies as varied as Samsung, Asus, HTC, Motorola, and ZTE. To stand out in the crowd, Amazon will rely on its unique content and partners.

There are e-books of course, but Amazon believes if all you want is an e-book reader then one of the e-ink black-and-white models might be better for you. The higher powered (and higher priced) Fire tablet brings you full color magazines (New York Times, Wired, and more), video streaming (through Amazon Prime, Netflix, CBS, NBC, Universal, Fox, and others), comic books, games (Angry Birds of course), and other applications.

Here’s a look at the Kindle Fire specifications revealed so far, and how they stack up against the competition:

Updated: New specs from Amazon web site and statements from Amazon. Anything unconfirmed is marked with a question mark (?).

What do you think? iPad and Nook killer? Or is this something else entirely?