App Download Reaches Record High Over the Winter Break

An impressive increase of 60% mobile app downloads was seen from the 25th December through to 31st December over the week prior. Mobile analytics firm Flurry, estimates that this was the first time the 1 billion download mark has been passed over a 7 day time period.

Flurry describes this as a “power week” where an estimated 20 million iOS and Android devices were activated. Flurry estimates that prior to the winter break, the global active installed of Android and iOS devices was 245 million, suggesting an 8% increase in the final week.

The United States is recognised to be behind the bulk of the app downloads, with over 40%, 509 million being attributed to them. China places in 2nd with 99 million and the UK is snapping at their heals at 81 million. Canada, Germany and France each share around 40 million, this is around 3%.

Flurry vice-president of marketing, Peter Farago, suggests that in the future these seemingly large download figures will be common place with the constant growth of mobile internet devices.

“Looking forward to 2012, Flurry expects breaking the one-billion-download-barrier per week will become more common-place. While iOS and Android growth continues to amaze, the market is still by all measures relatively nascent.”

Flurry attributes its ability to collect such data is due to their large detection penetration of over 140,000 apps.

 “Flurry can detect over 90% of all new devices activated each day.”

The majority of the popular apps are free to download games, such as Angry Birds and Where’s My Water? For the UK, free TV catch-up apps like BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and 4oD reign supreme.

Google+ App Now Available for iPhone

Today Apple have approved the free Google+ app for iPhone and have listed it on their app store. It has been suggested that the app was submitted to Apple two weeks ago and has been waiting for approval since. This is an unusually long time, as Apple CEO, Steve Jobs has previously said "95% of the apps submitted are approved within 7 days".

The features listed within the Google+ app are the Circles; allowing for selective sharing, Stream; similar to Facebook's News Feed and Huddle; a collection of Circles. The compatibility requirements for this app are indexed for the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 & requires iOS 4.0 or later.

As of this moment the app is available only for iPhone, it is unclear however whether a similar app will be provided for the iPad in the future. Though it is noted that iPhone apps can be used on the iPad through emulation.

Google Unveils ‘Google Wallet’

Google have today announced a new wireless payment scheme, labeled 'Google Wallet'. The test cities for this new tech are San Francisco and New York, allowing users with a Samsung Nexus S 4G phone to purchase items by tapping against a payment PayPass terminal in a retail outlet.

The Google Wallet initially supports only MasterCard credit cards, with users being able to pay at 120,000 U.S shops, Including; Subway, Macy's, American Eagle and Toys 'R' Us amongst others. Google plan to officially release the service in the U.S. this summer, pointing out that over 300,000 international retailers have the capability to support this service.

Google Wallet is planned to be integrated with the new Google Offers service, allowing for local offers to be searched based on location. Further down the line, Google have hinted at maybe incorporating driving licences, hotel keys and concert tickets also into the service.

Video: Why are merchants excited about Google Wallet?

Windows 7 Phone App Store in Development with Mango

Microsoft have announced that they are in the process of developing a web-based Windows 7 Phone app store, following on from the success of similar Apple and Google stores. The release of the store is expected to be this Autumn, in time for the release of Microsoft's new smartphone operating system, Mango.

The look and feel of the store should be similar Apple and Google's stores, allowing users to browse a catalog of apps, read reviews, see screenshots and view the details. Furthermore Microsoft plan to incorporate a new discovery feature, which will allow users to show off their favourite apps to friends, family as well as social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Currently Google's Android store holds 200,000 apps, Apple's iPhone at 500,000, Microsoft are estimated to include a mere 16,000 apps. Microsoft has reassured that the small selection will emphasise quality not quantity.