Amazon will expand its Special Offers advertising platform to the Kindle Fire tablet, the digital retailer's bestselling product.

Citing an ad agency executive briefed on the initiative, AdAge reports Amazon will roll out Special Offers sponsored screensavers to the Kindle Fire's welcome screen. Advertisers must spend about $600,000 for any package that includes Kindle Fire promotion, with all campaigns running for two months. An exec from another agency said Amazon also will offer expanded packages beginning at $1 million.

Amazon first launched the Special Offers effort in April 2011, introducing a discounted version of its original Kindle e-reader subsidized by homescreen deals and sponsored screensavers. Within two months, the 3G-enabled version of Kindle with Special Offers began outselling all other Kindle versions.

But advertisers remain skeptical over whether the model will work on the Kindle Fire. Execs interviewed by AdAge said Amazon isn't guaranteeing the number of devices that the Special Offers ads will reach, telling agencies it has not yet decided whether the promotions will run solely on new Kindle Fire devices or expand to units already in use. "It's kind of an expensive buy to not get a guaranteed audience and measurement," one executive said. "It doesn't comply with a lot of our necessary planning rigor."

Advertisers also expressed concern over how pushing Special Offers to existing Kindle Fire owners would impact customers unaccustomed to ads on their tablet. "You're already paying a premium for the product and then having that unexpected ad experience makes for a worse consumer experience," an exec said. "There needs to be a value exchange."

Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire in mid-November. The seven-inch tablet--priced at $199, compared to $499 for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) cheapest iPad--gives consumers a single, portable point of access to digital media initiatives including the Kindle e-book catalog, Amazon Appstore for Android, Amazon Instant Video and Amazon MP3, with all content backed up in the cloud. The Kindle Fire integrates with the Amazon Web Services platform and enables consumers to leverage free media offerings included within Amazon Prime, the $79 annual service that also offers unlimited two-day shipping on all products sold and processed by the digital commerce giant.

The Kindle Fire represents 54.4 percent of all Android-powered tablets nationwide as of February 2012, up from 29.4 percent last December, according to a recent comScore report. Samsung's Galaxy Tab device family is next at 15.4 percent, trailed by the Motorola (NYSE:MMI) Xoom (7 percent), Asus Transformer (6.3 percent) and Toshiba AT100 (5.7 percent).

For more:
- read this AdAge article

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Iliad’s Free Mobile, which launched its mobile services in France at the beginning of the year, signed up 2.6 million subscribers by the end of the first quarter or almost 4% of the country’s mobile market in just 80 days.

According to Free Mobile’s figures, the total French market had grown by 854,000 subscribers in Q1, suggesting that the carrier’s 2.6 million customers included a substantial number of defections from rivals. For instance, the market leading Orange France lost 615,000 mobile customers following Free’s launch on January 10th.

Free also added that its subscriber base was distributed evenly between the two of its “no-contract” plans, between the Free community and newcomers, and between subscriptions with mobile number portability and those with a new phone number assigned. “With its commercial and price innovations, Free Mobile has liberated conventions and galvanized a market that had been at a standstill for many long years,” they said in a statement.

[Via: MobileBusinessBriefing]

France: 2.6 million people sign-up for Free Mobile in 80 days! originally appeared on IntoMobile.com on 2012-05-18T09:45:42Z. FV1gMYsz9b5j

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It’s hard to underestimate how important ranking in Apple’s top 25 in the iTunes store is for mobile app developers. After all, the top 25 is probably the single most important app discovery mechanism for most iOS users. But how many downloads does it take to rank in the top 25? Mobile app store analytics firm Distimo today published some interesting data that answers just this question. Turns out, in the U.S. store, the answer currently is about 38,400 daily downloads for free iPhone apps and 3,530 for paid iPhone apps. To rank in the top 25 per category, of course, takes significantly fewer downloads, with games unsurprisingly being the most competitive category. It takes 25,300 daily downloads to rank in the gaming top 25 for free apps and 2,280 downloads for paid apps.

For free apps, other competitive categories include ‘entertainment’ (6,700 daily downloads), ‘social networking’ (5,800), ‘lifestyle’ (3,900) and ‘music’ (3,900). Interestingly, in the paid app charts photography apps rank just behind games and entertainment apps. Still, it currently only takes about 270 daily downloads to rank in the photography top 25 for paid apps.

These numbers, of course, are always changing and this just represent a snapshot of what Distimo found when it compiled this data last month.

Update: We just talked to one source with a lot of experience in building mobile apps and who also currently runs a top App Store app. According to this source, Distimo’s numbers are too low and may just represent data from a relatively small number of apps. Keep that in mind as you read Distimo’s data.

Given the popularity of games on iOS, Distimo also took a closer look at the various gaming subcategories. Here, arcade and action games lead the pack:

This is the first time Distimo is releasing a detailed set of these numbers. It’s worth noting, though, that at the end of 2011, the company reported that it still took about 45,000 daily downloads to rank in the top 25 of most popular free apps. Since then, though, Apple has been working hard to shut down various scams and bots that automatically downloaded apps and allowed developers to rank in Apple’s charts without having a real user base (then, once you are in the top 25, of course, real users will automatically find you, of course). Judging from Distimo’s latest data, these efforts are starting to pay off and will hopefully make life a little bit easier for legit developers.

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The booming social gaming market has been kind to Zynga, according to its CFO Dave Wehner. While speaking at the 40th J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference Wednesday, Wehner reported that Zynga is seeing a larger share of its revenue coming from mobile games for iOS and Android, with its own core games experiencing organic growth quarter-over-quarter.

"We're really excited about what we're seeing in mobile," Wehner said, adding, "There's a ton of connected wallets out there, people who are available as potential players and payers."

Only 2 percent of Zynga's montly unique users were paid users in the last quarter, and Wehner sees this as an opportunity to "increase payer penetration." He cited the millions of users with iTunes accounts, who already have mobile wallets built into their devices as a way to increase paid MUUs.

Zynga's revenue from mobile is three-pronged, with revenue coming from downloads, in-app purchases and in-game advertising. Wehner confirmed that in-app purchases are the "No. 1 driver" in revenue, despite the fact that one of its most popular titles, Words with Friends, is advertiser-based.

"We're building our own direct ad sales force both in mobile and on the Web," Wehner said. He noted the success of virtual goods tie-ins, including Cityville's McDonald's themed branded business available last year.

Wehner also broke down the differences in Zynga's audience on mobile devices and the Web. In mobile, it excels at turn-based apps, like its "With Friends" series, whereas on the Web its "ville" branded titles are more successful.

He attributes much of this growth to the changing gaming market. "I think the largest shift that we're seeing in our business as it relates to the gaming industry is that Zynga is bringing a whole class of gamers into the game space that weren't there before," he explained. And while shifting demographics of mobile gamers isn't new--mobile analytics firm Flurry noticed this trend last year--it does provide some insight into which types of games are popular now and will continue to be popular in the future.

Wehner reported the largest increase in Zynga's popularity in mobile comes from two genres: casino and casual games. Building on that trend, the company launched a bingo name, Slingo, in the first quarter and saw its daily average users jump to 4 million.

For more:
- listen to this webcast
- read this Hollywood Reporter article

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Zynga gobbles up 'Draw Something' maker OMGPOP in a $180M deal

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The report found that tablet devices will generate more Web traffic than smartphones by early 2013 and that consumers find browsing websites on tablets nearly as engaging as on PCs. Click here for more.

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Nick Blunden

with Nick Blunden, Global Publisher of Digital for The Economist

The Economist, while only a weekly publication, has surpassed a number of daily outlets in its reach. On its mobile side, the publication offers a mobile Web experience, mobile applications for multiple platforms and even an HTML5 product. At the head of the Economist's digital strategy is Nick Blunden, Global Publisher of Digital for The Economist. Blunden recently spoke to FierceMobileContent about The Economist's success in these endeavors and what it takes to bridge content from print to mobile.

FierceMobileContent: What are some of the differences in strategy in developing content for mobile versus for tablets?

Blunden: Broadly speaking, we differentiate in terms of our experiences between the "lean back experience" apps and the "lean forward experience" of the Web. To that degree, our apps are relatively consistent across iPhone, Android phone and tablet devices, and our iPad app and our iPhone app are broadly consistent, although clearly screen size is very different.

From a mobile perspective, we see two sides to mobile. We see the lean back experience of our apps but we also see an interesting alternative mobile experience which is the mobile Web experience. We don't strictly differentiate between tablets and phones.

FierceMobileContent: What are some of the challenges for a weekly publication moving from print to a mobile experience?

Blunden: We are relatively fortunate in terms of the fact that we are not in the breaking news business--as you say we're a weekly--and we're in the analysis business. And what we found is that the apps particularly and the tablets particularly have given us this really interesting opportunity to take the experience of reading The Economist in print but bring it to life in a digital way that reinforces the value of the product.

That's our strategy when it comes to the apps. We have taken what we consider to be the best parts of our print product and that people tend to spend a lot of time with and they tend to read it habitually and tend to have a habit that says they sit in their favorite chair or even sit in the bath and read their copy of The Economist and they tend to spend a lot of time with our content.

And what our apps have enabled us to do is bring that to life in the digital world. That's very different--that lean back immersive experience that's in our tablets and on our iPhone apps is very different to what we consider to be the lean forward, much more social experience that is on economist.com, whether you choose to access it from the desktop or even the browser on your iPad or the browser on your mobile phone.

FierceMobileContent: The Economist has obviously been very successful in its digital presence, surpassing other media outlets with larger print subscription bases. What do you think accounts for its success with mobile and tablet users?

Blunden: Well, I think that, one, we have a brand that translates very well across multiple channels, although many people associate The Economist with a print publication. Beyond that our brand stands for, or resonates, with people who are intellectually curious and actually that enables us to quite easily extend the brand across multiple channels. It is quite easy for people to think "I can relate to The Economist on the mobile phone or on the Web or through an app just as easily as I can in print." And I think that's an attribute of our brand.

FierceMobileContent: Apple introduced Newsstand late last year as a way for content providers to sell single issues and subscriptions of publications. The Economist originally opted out of Newsstand but it is now moving into this medium. What caused the change?

Blunden: I think well we originally wanted to see how it would play out so we weren't the earliest adopter of it. But, we wanted to see what impact it would have and just spend a little time thinking what impact it would have on our readers and the experience of consuming The Economist. We came to the conclusion that there were enough benefits to our readers to justify to moving into Newsstand. Our implementation in Newsstand is not complete yet. We are still rolling out additional Newsstand-oriented functionality, but what we like about it particularly is that when fully implemented I think the auto download feature is a very strong feature of Newsstand.

I also think that it does aid discoverability. ... We also have found in mobile and digital that we have been incremental in our ability to reach out to new customers, so a significant portion of new digital subscribers have never had a print subscription to The Economist. They are, as it were, new to our business, and I think Newsstand provides a wonderful opportunity for media organizations like The Economist that have a well established brand to be discoverable to a whole group of new people through Newsstand.

FierceMobileContent: Last week you announced The Economist would be the first weekly magazine to release a Consolidated Media Report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. How does the traffic and UMVs vary from mobile Web to mobile apps?

Blunden: That's a very interesting question. We were very keen to be helping to drive the transparency of this increasingly multichannel world.

What we're seeing, interestingly enough, is that we see differences in terms of time of day, particularly between mobile app usage and mobile Web usage. We still have quite high traffic from mobile devices to economist.com, so it tends to happen at different times of day. So during the day we we'll see more mobile Web traffic to economist.com. On the evenings and weekends the app traffic tends to ramp up, and that's partly, I think, as you know I'm sure, in the app world we are weekly. So we release our content on a Friday which partly drives consumption.

But I also think it speaks to these two different user experiences: the snacking--because I've got a few minutes I just want to find out what The Economist thinks about the U.S. presidential election or the French presidential election or you know what's going on in Sudan--through to this more leisurely experience that people tend to do at night when they get home from work or late at evening when they're lying in bed. Or over the weekend when they tend to want a more browsing-based experience that is particularly suited to our apps.

So it's not like we have people who just use print or who just use the website or just use apps. Increasingly, our customers are doing some of all of those things.

FierceMobileContent: In January, The Economist released a tablet-only, HTML5-based Web app, Electionism, currently available for the iPad, Kindle Fire and Galaxy Tab. Do you see HTML5-based apps as the future for access to publications on multiple devices?

Blunden: It was an opportunity for us to experiment with HTML5. It was an opportunity for us to partner with companies we haven't partnered with before. It was an opportunity to create a product that brought together editorial content from different parts of The Economist group. So, in our view, it's been a very interesting piece of experimentation, we've learned a lot from it and it's been well received. And it worked particularly well for the product, the Electionism, which was a combination of information from different sources including social sources and curation, and I think HTML5 was a good canvas for that and particularly for that new product that was distinct from our other applications.

Going forward, at the moment our view is that HTML5 doesn't quite have the same capabilities to create a compelling user experience as native apps in iOS and Android have. It is much harder in HTML5 to create that really compelling immersive lean back experience and over time that will change. There are companies that are pushing the boundaries of HTML5, and in the future it will be a technology that enables publishers to very efficiently and effectively publish content across different platforms. I just don't think we're there yet. So I think we're going to try to push it as hard as we can, but our view at this moment of time is that you can create a more compelling experience in native apps.

FierceMobileContent: The Economist hinted it would be bringing Electionism to the BlackBerry Playbook in the near future. Is that still happening and will support for other RIM devices follow?

Blunden: We have a rollout plan that will see us take our apps, our core Economist apps, out across an increasing number of platforms. The sequence of them and the priority of them is really determined by the pickup in those markets. So although I cannot comment on specific platforms, certainly we have a plan that has us moving out into spaces like PlayBook for our core apps, and other versions of Android. Currently with Android we're on smaller screen devices, and we'll be moving out into the Android tablet space as well.

FierceMobileContent: The Economist's mobile app is available for the iPad, iPhone, and Android-enabled devices. Are there plans to bring native apps to other operating systems such as Windows Phone or BlackBerry or will users remain limited to accessing the mobile version of the website?

Blunden: You know we have a roadmap, and we do plan to extend our coverage in terms of other devices, other platforms. But we look at it at very much a market perspective, that says we need to focus on where the pockets of demand are, so we constantly reassess what's next on our priority list, in terms of rolling out new versions of the applications. Because of course like any publisher, we also have to balance off time and investment in new platforms against increasing the functionality of our existing applications. That's always going to be a challenge for publishers--how do you get that right balance of increasing the functionality of your current apps vs. continually rolling out new platforms? HTML5 is an opportunity that may well make that trade off or decision-making process easier.

FierceMobileContent: How will The Economist's website and mobile apps change to better complement each other?

Blunden: We take the view that there are two distinct experiences. There is our app experience, and there is our Web experience. And we believe that they are complementary, but we do have a very consistent, clear and well articulated strategy, which says the apps are about this lean back immersive experience. The Web is about a social community lean forward experience.

So to a certain extent, we are going to preserve the distinction between those two experiences.

And of course the advertising opportunities on tablets are only just beginning to be explored. I think from an advertising perspective our clients are very excited about what the advertising opportunities are.

So we will continue to pursue a strategy that optimizes or focuses on leveraging the best points of the Web, whether that's fixed or mobile Web or tablet or phones

FierceMobileContent: From your position in the industry, do you have any predictions in terms of trends or new ideas in mobile publishing that you expect to see in 2012 and beyond?

Blunden: I think that the device market is looking really interesting. The structure of the market is interesting for a tablet perspective. The iPad has such a large percentage of the market and now you have the Kindle Fire sort of getting quote a lot of traction.

And my view is that actually the tablet space will become more dynamic and more competitive, albeit with the iPad continuing to have significant market share. And from a publisher's perspective that's interesting because it will force or push publishers to continue to think about what how do you bring your product to life in the best possible way within those different tablet experiences or within those different operating systems. 

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Big mobile plans afoot for Baidu, the Google of China that leads in search and has launched a host of other services in the wake of that business. The company today unveiled the first smartphone to be built on its own platform, the Changhong H5018. And while that device is designed on a “forked” version of Android — forked Android devices being very popular in China — Baidu says that it doesn’t want to stop there: the idea is to take its platform, the Baidu Cloud Smart Terminal, to other operating systems like Windows Phone and iOS.

“We want Baidu’s Cloud Smart Terminal to function as a platform that sits on top of all operating systems, such as Windows Phone and iOS,” Kaiser Kuo, a spokesperson for Baidu, told TechCrunch today.

“We are not yet working on a Windows Phone device but the hope is to make one,” he noted, adding that while Baidu plans to leave no stone unturned in its strategy, “some stones are proving to be more recalcitrant than others.” That is likely a nod to Apple and how Baidu could develop its platform on iOS without completely ruining its relationship with the iPhone giant.

Mobile is a big and growing area for Baidu. In Q1, it noted that 20 percent of all of its search traffic is now coming from mobile — it is already the leading search engine in official Android devices with 80 percent penetration, Kuo noted — and he added that the mobile traffic percentage is “growing rapidly”, almost certainly faster than its more mature traffic on fixed Internet devices. At the same time, mobile continues to boom in China, with the country now outstripping the U.S. and the world’s biggest smartphone market.

The Changhong H5018 is Baidu’s big strategy to create a device that will appeal to the less affluent demographic in the country. While the iPhone has proven to be hugely popular in China, it is sold at a premium price and that cuts out large parts of the addressable market that cannot afford it. Kuo notes that at the moment there are some 1 billion mobile users in the country still on feature devices. “It’s a market dominated by feature phones that prevent users from taking full advantage of the Internet,” he said. “There is a tremendous market for low-priced but feature-laden smartphones, and this product fits that niche very well.”

It’s understood that while the basic price for the device will be 1,000 yuan (around $159), it will be sold through resellers that will attach data and calling tariffs to the device — the first named carrier is China Unicom — and subsidize the cost of the handset in the process. The phone will start to sell later this year, the company says.

Part of the reason the device will be priced so inexpensively, Kuo said, is because most of the services that Baidu is loading into the device will be cloud-based. That means the device does not need to have as much processing power built into it. “You don’t need a lot of power, just the ability to connect to the Internet because we are shifting the computing from the terminal back to the cloud,” he noted.

Among the services will be a cloud-based storage service, location-based services and Baidu Map, voice recognition and handwriting-based search input, Baidu Music and services to recharge your call and data credits on the device.

In other respects the device sounds like it will be very much on par with other basic smartphones: 3.5-inch touch screen; 3G connectivity; 3 megapixel camera and a 1400mAh battery.

The phone is being made by Foxconn and that in itself is an interesting development and shows how the manufacturing giant — partner to Apple for the iPhone and iPad among many others — also has ambitions to position itself as a mobile brand in its own right.

It also follows on from an earlier model that Baidu had released in conjunction with Dell, which Kuo described as the “precursor” to the phone launched today.

Baidu’s plans to extend its circle of partners for the phones was also indirectly confirmed by its VP of engineering Jing Wang, who noted in a company statement that “The Baidu Cloud Smart terminal platform is a crucial step in Baidu’s overall Cloud strategy in the mobile Internet sphere…it will significantly lower manufacturing costs for many mobile manufacturers and cooperating partners. Baidu is joining hands with hardware vendors, terminal manufacturers, developers and others in the industry so that everyone along the whole value chain is a winner.”

Although Baidu certainly has a lot of ambition, for now it looks like most of the mobile plan is limited to China. Although Baidu has “dipped its toe” into other countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Egypt, there are currently no plans to offer Baidu’s new phone in markets outside of the mainland. “The whole point is that it is supported by Baidu’s cloud services and all of these are currently in Chinese and not supported outside of China,” he noted. “When we have robust cloud offerings outside of China, only then would it make sense to offer terminals there.”

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Japan’s largest mobile telco is about to buy in to mobile media content in Europe and farther afield, by acquiring one of the space’s pioneer companies.

NTT Docomo has tabelled a €224 million ($287 million, 24 billon yen) bid for Milan-based Buongiorno, which began in 1995 and has built up through acquisitions to offer mobile games, music and other services.

The price is 32 times Buongiorno’s €7 million annual operating profit. Buongiorno founder chairman Mauro del Rio (pictured) is selling his 20 percent stake.

Docomo says it wants to grow outside of Asia by adding Buongiorno’s two billion customers in 57 countries. It already invested in Vietnamese mobile content outfit VMG and Germany’s net mobile AG last year.

Buongiorno makes apps and mobile content services for a range of large clients including telcos, operates the Play.me mobile music service, Cashlog mobile payments and online cash gaming under the Winga guise.

The offer price is €2 per share. Buongiorno had been trading around €1.74 and jumped to €1.974 upon the offer news.

Buongiorno release | Docomo release

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For the moment at least, Facebook says that appearance in the App Center will be based on quality. It will use a variety of ‘signals’, such as user ratings and engagement, to determine if an app is listed. Much like Apple and Google also do.

Plus, to help monitor user feedback,Facebook is introducing a new app ratings metric in the Insights section to report on how users rate an app over time.

That’s not to say that in the future a ‘promoted’ section may appear, but for now this seems to be based on engagement and user input. So really, it’s more of a showcase than a store.

Brady puts it succinctly: 

Well-designed apps that people enjoy will be prominently displayed. Apps that receive poor user ratings or don’t meet the quality guidelines won't be listed.

There are several interesting aspects to this announcement, largely from a discoverability perspective, but also when considering mobile.

Facebook highlights that from the mobile App Center, people can browse apps that are compatible with their device, and if an app requires installation, they will be sent to the App Store or Google Play..

However, it’s important to remember that Facebook’s mechanics dictate that in order to view an app via mobile, there needs to be a mobile version. For apps like Spotify and Pinterest, people will simply be directed out of the Facebook app to download from the appropriate store, but for brands, those building apps for Facebook specifically and hoping to increase engagement via mobile still need to consider this.

Facebook sent more than 160m visitors in April to mobile apps (up from 60m in February) and the creation of a mobile App Center makes investment in creating a mobile version of an app much more valuable if it’s easier to find. But let’s not forget that it’s still not easy. Once built, you have to get it into the App Center.

Directing people to the mobile version of your Facebook app is problematic (it still will be) and the ‘you can’t see tabs via mobile’ issue remains.

This also marks a move away from the social network’s much-loved free apps, towards paid opportunities, since Facebook is introducing functionality that will allow developers to charge a flat fee – an evolution of the success many have seen with in-app purchases.

Facebook admitted in a statement ahead of the IPO:

If users increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetisation strategies for our mobile users, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our financial performance and ability to grow revenue would be negatively affected.

We won’t know much more until this rolls out, but till then, developers can start to prepare ‘details pages’, a requirement for listing in the App Center (again, drawing inspiration from Apple) and the new destination when non-users search for an app on Facebook.

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