148Apps
And the prize for Best App Ever (2012 edition) goes to ...
January 27, 2012: 11:00 AM ETThe results of the "People's Choice" app award are announced at Macworld|iWorld
Image: Halfbrick Studios
A record 1.5 million votes were cast earlier this month in the fourth annual Best App Ever contest, more than three times as many as last year. Created in 2008 by 148Apps -- a smartphone app-tracking website named after the maximum number of apps that could be installed on Apple's (AAPL) original iPhone -- its purpose, according to founder Jeff Scott, "is to help publicize the very best apps available, not just the best-selling apps."
It's not a bad idea. There are a dizzying number of mobile applications to choose from, especially if you include -- as Scott did this year for the first time -- apps for Google (GOOG) Android devices. This year,
- 1,692 apps were nominated
- By 1.1 million users
- 53.9% of the votes were cast for iOS apps
- 46.1% for Android apps
And the winner, with 36,431 votes, nearly ten times the number the nearest Android app drew, was (wait for it)
Jetpack Joyride, for the iPhone or iPad
Created by Halfbrick Studios, an Australian firm best known for the 2010 game phenom Fruit Ninja (more than 30 million downloaded), Joyride is a retro throw-back to the one-touch jump-and-run horizontal scrolling games of the Super Mario Bros. era packed -- like any addictive game -- with just enough twists, missions, prizes and upgrades to keep players coming back for "just one more."
The app is free on the iTunes App Store (here), but you can buy your way to higher levels with in-app purchases like the popular coin doubler ($0.99).
Jetpack Joyride had already won editorial accolades from publications ranging from the TouchArcade to the New Yorker. Now the people -- or at least 1.1 million of them -- have made their choice.
Below the fold: The official trailer that tells the backstory of why Barry Steakfries is scattering evil scientists with a machine-gun powered jetpack in the first place, but you don't need it to enjoy the game. The full list of winners and honorable mentions in 148Apps' other 108 (!) categories is available here.
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Apple: 500,000 apps, 18 billion downloads, 100 million for Mac
Cupertino responds to a Google milestone with a flurry of nice round numbers
Last Tuesday, Google (GOOG) announced that Android users had downloaded more than 10 billion apps from the Android Market and that the number of downloads was growing by 1 billion per month. To celebrate the milestone, Google was going to make a new set of "awesome apps" available on the store every day for the next week for only 10¢ each.
The week MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 12, 2011 10:31 AM ETPosted in: 148Apps, Android, Android Market, App Store, Apple, Google, iOS, Mac App Store, Mobile, PCs -
Apple's iTunes store: 500,000 iOS apps and counting
Less than three years after it opened for business, the App Store hit the half-million mark
Here's a nice round number likely to be trotted out at the Apple's (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Sometime after midnight Tuesday morning, the iTunes team pushed through a batch of app submissions that sent the total over a six-figure milestone. In 34 months, Apple has approved more than 500,000 iPhone, iPad and iPod touch MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 24, 2011 6:38 AM ETPosted in: 148Apps, Android, Android Marketplace, Angry Birds, App Store, Apple, Chillingo, Chomp, Google, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch -
App Store hits 10 billion - updated
It does in 31 months what it took the iTunes Music Store nearly 10 years to achieve
The nines on the app download odometer Apple (AAPL) posted on its website last week rolled over early Saturday, indicating that 10 billion apps have been downloaded since the store opened for business July 10, 2008.
Somebody -- we don't yet know who -- just won a nontransferable $10,000 App Store gift certificate, which if MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 22, 2011 12:05 PM ET -
300,000 Apple apps? That depends.
For the second time in three weeks, an analytics firm jumps the gun
"Apple's App Store Soars Past 300,000 Apps," reads the headline posted Thursday on the website ReadWriteWeb and picked up by SlashGear and GottaBeMobile.
Sound familiar? Perhaps that's because two other prominent tech news sites -- MacNN and VentureBeat -- reported that Apple (AAPL) had passed the same milestone nearly three weeks earlier, on Oct. 16.
Who's right? As near MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 5, 2010 6:44 AM ET -
300,000 Apple apps? Not so fast!
The iOS App Store is large and dynamic market place, and measuring its size can be tricky
On Sept. 1, Steve Jobs announced that there were more than 250,000 apps to choose from in Apple's (AAPL) App Store.
On Saturday, two websites -- VentureBeat and MacNN, it's not clear which was first -- reported that the count had crossed the 300,000 mark.
Fifty thousand new apps in the space of six weeks? That MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Oct 17, 2010 7:40 AM ET -
Meet the guys behind Pocket God
Their pygmy-killing iPhone game is the unlikely winner of this year's "Best App Ever" award
It started as a week-long "sprint project" -- a bit of bare-bones entertainment for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, written as quickly as possible and published last January.
Within hours, users were complaining on the Internet that the game -- which involved bumping off tiny island dwellers by flicking them into the water or launching them toward the sun, MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 11, 2010 6:00 AM ET
