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O'Reilly's Ben Lorica slices and dices current app trends for iPhone and Android (nice data points on price stabilization too): "While it might be true that the number of Book...

While it might be true that the number of Book apps is growing at a faster rate, Games continue to dominate the list of popular U.S. iTunes Apps. Games accounted for about a fifth of all iTunes apps over the past week^†, but the category continued to have a disproportionate share of the Top 100 charts, accounting for 52% of the Top Grossing, 56% of the Top Paid, and 50% of the Top Free apps.

The iPhone gets a lot of the attention when it comes to smartphones, but signs point to Android playing a huge role in the growing smartphone market, with 20+...

Google has announced a free turn-by-turn navigation system for Android 2.0 phones such as the Droid. Read more about the features of Google Maps Navigation.

While a steady stream of so-called iPhone Killers are filtering into the market, Apple's momentum continues unabated. Inspired by his own experiences upgrading to the Blackberry Tour, the author ponders why so many solution providers confuse delivering a bunch of 'chicken parts' with producing an actual, living, breathing chicken. BlackBerry Storm, Palm Pre, the G2, and now Droid have all been touted as contenders to the mobile computing crown, yet the iPhone continues to kick butt.

The Fourth Quarter was Apple's most profitable quarter ever. Yesterday's earnings call was about two things. One, the iPhone Platform continues to deliver the goods. Two, the continued impressive growth of the Mac, especially MacBooks. As such, it was about the power of the platform as much as it was about the device itself.

Yesterday, Apple announced that they are now allowing In-App Purchasing within free apps. I think that this is a big deal, an entree into what I refer to as 'land and expand,' and yet another reason that Apple remains the gold standard of mobile computing.

Adobe, a long time player in rich internet applications wants be an active participant on mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Adobe engineers put their minds together and delivered a solution to work around the problem of the iPhone browser's lack of support for Flash. If the iPhone Safari browser will not support the Flash player, let's use the Flash tools to compile a native iPhone application (ipa) which lives directly on the device. This initiative now gives the opportunity for ActionScript developers to develop applications for the wonderful iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

Shortly after installing Snow Leopard I saw the first evidence of the new location services built into the operating system. I got the new version of Clarke, a Fire Eagle updater. After the install a window appeared that asked me if I wanted to share my location with an application. Finally! So how is Apple doing it? The same they do on the iPhone.

Adobe have spent a lot of cycles / years nudging Apple that Flash should be on the iPhone. Apple have firmly just said no, and despite the answer, Adobe keep expecting them to cave due to public demand. The problem with this logic is that Apple won't give in. Let's break this down into two parts: First, Don't poke the sleeping giant. Secondly, just because it's easy, doesn't mean its successful.

We've wrapped up work on Head First iPhone Development (it's shipping now) and that gave me a chance to sit down and think about Head First in general. Going through the process with both an academic book (Head First Algebra)...

Adobe has announced that the browser based Flash player 10.1 will soon be running on every major mobile platform (Windows Mobile, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, WebOS) except Apple's iPhone. (See my opinion on Apple here). They also announced that although Apple...

Some of the most interesting data on trends in mobile development has been coming from Flurry, an app analytics company (developers insert little snippets of Flurry code in their...