LeBron James may leave Cleveland this summer, but one fan hopes his iPhone app will convince him to stay.
Also in today’s App Industry Roundup: The Android OS is on 34 smartphones while the iPad is the ideal device to curate content.
Please Don’t Leave 23 was developed by a Cleveland fan who wants James to stay in Ohio. The app’s publisher, listed as Matthew Staton, believes that if enough people download his app — where Staton will post the dates and times for fan rallies to keep LeBron in Ohio — it “will have a significant impact on his decision” to stay, according to the app description.
Um, I don’t think so. But we love the effort. Now, how about if someone develops an app with the odds that James stays or goes? I say it’s I say it’s 2 to 1 he stays in Cleveland, followed by 5 to 1 he goes to New York and 15 to 1 he plays for the Bulls. Get to work, people!
Android update: 34 phones and counting
Let’s check the scoreboard: Google 34, Apple 1. That score represents the number of phones shipping globally with the Android software vs. the number of phones shipping with Apple’s mobile operating system. Furthermore, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday that 65,000 mobile phones using the Android OS are being shipped each day.
Android sales in the U.S. have started to outpace those for the iPhone this year, according to researchers at NPD Group, with Android smartphones accounting for 28 percent of sales compared to 21 percent for the iPhone in the first quarter.
What does that mean? Well, if you’re a developer and have thus far ignored app development for Android, you might want to rethink that strategy.
Also, if you’re Apple, when are you going to start introducing more than one iPhone at a time? Yes, in the summer, we’ll see the official debut of the iPhone’s fourth version, but will there come a time when the iPhone is sold in multiple flavors? I mean, it’s not like there’s one iPod model.
Of course, Google’s willingness to let any mobile phone maker develop a model running Android continues to push this large and growing disparity. Plus, it’s led to some really great phones, such as the HTC Incredible and several social-media focused models from Motorola.
The iPad as curator
The unique features of the iPad represents the first of many devices that will change how we think about the PC, writes Sarah Rotman Epps for tech blog Ars Technica. Rottman Epps, a Forrester analyst, argues that the iPad usher in a “new era of personal computing that we call ‘Curated Computing’ — a mode of computing where choice is constrained to deliver less complex, more relevant experiences.”
She compares the iPad to a jukebox, able to run the apps we choose — and sometimes pay for — as opposed to a desktop computer, where users run more robust programs. On the iPad, she writes, “each of these applications is in itself also curated, since the publisher selects content and functionality that’s appropriate to the form factor, just as a museum curator selects artwork from a larger collection to exhibit in a particular gallery space.”
We shall see if her analysis is right, but I certainly agree with the premise: The iPad is a different type of device, and if companies like Google and Microsoft want to succeed with their versions of tablet computers, they would be wise to think more like “museum curators and editors,” where less can be more.
