The mobile app market is heating up, both for paid and free apps. And we’re seeing numerous app developers and content publishers jumping into the market every day looking to make money on this opportunity. If you can get consumers to pay for your app, great. But with all the free apps already available for smartphones and tablet devices such as Apple’s upcoming iPad, many newcomer apps will likely have to be free, too, in… (more…)

(This is part 4 of 6 of “Microsoft: Can Elephants Really Dance?” series. For earlier parts, please follow the links below the post)

It’s been a while since Microsoft’s heyday as the monopolistic king of technology.  Called “too big to innovate”, “inefficient”, and “crippled [by redundancy]”, the bearish outlook on Microsoft’s once glorious future seems pervasive.  But with the highly anticipated Project Natal arriving this year, a healthy 32.5 million Xbox 360 consoles sold, and a blossoming Xbox LIVE community of over 20 million users, Microsoft’s console gaming division has shown everyone that Microsoft can still come up with some cool new tricks. Let’s take a look at how the Xbox 360 is faring against its two fiercest competitors (*cue battle music*). (more…)

With Google Buzz, Google has launched yet another product to compete in the social networking arena. It’s just one week new, and already Buzz has a significant user base and poses a viable threat to several existing players.

Google, like Microsoft, keeps trying. In the social networking space, it has made several attempts to become more relevant: Orkut, though fairly popular in Brazil and India, never really took off in the US and became more irrelevant with rise of Facebook. (…more)

Internet video has the media industry worried. DVD sales, which are projected at $17 billion today, are expected to slow down substantially in the next few years, as online streaming picks up momentum. In the meanwhile, Avatar, with its record breaking sales of $2.2 billion, has injected new hopes in the industry. Would movies like Avatar be enough to save the sinking ship? (more…)

Every week VentureBeat publishes top stories of the week in a column called “Week in review: …”, based on number of hits each story gets. I have written a total of eleven columns on VentureBeat so far, and three of them have been featured (each in a different week) in top stories of the week. I am listing the stories here, and each is linked to the “Week in review” post it was featured in. (more…)

Since Apple announced its forthcoming iPad tablet device last week, there’s been quite a bit of banter about its shortcomings. The device has no camera, no phone, no Flash support, no way to project to a big screen (TV), and doesn’t allow multitasking, just to name a few of the issues.

But before you conclude Apple’s made a terrible mistake here, remember, this is exactly how Apple it’s launched several of its most successful devices…Continue Reading

2009 marked another profitable year for online retailers with e-commerce growing by 5% despite lower overall consumer spending . This implies the continued decline of brick and mortar stores and rise of online commerce. This is due, in part, to the richer online experience, which helps consumers make better purchase decisions from convenience of a few clicks. What’s next for online retailers? Would social media transform online shopping into “social shopping”? … Continue reading

Life as a mobile developer can be tough. First, you’re hoping and praying your app will get noticed among the thousands in Apple’s App Store. Then, if you’re lucky, you hit the jackpot — your app’s downloaded by 10,000 users. But your excitement lasts only until you start getting tons of customer complaints and you have no money to pay a customer support staff.

Now, if you could outsource that customer support when you need it…Continue Reading

There are only a few users with more than a million followers on Twitter. A few of them might be flukes (Ashton Kutcher ?), but most are not. They are celebrities such as Britney Spears and Oprah Winfrey or popular media sites such as The Onion and New York Times. I call them “mega tweeters”.

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Research in Motion has announced that it is launching a mobile PowerPoint presenter, a device that completely does away with the need to carry around a laptop when you need to give a presentation with slides — consultants rejoice!

Able to store up to 100 presentations, the presenter only requires you to own a compatible Blackberry and have access to a projector. It’s like a Mac Mini dedicated just to the dreaded task of PowerPoint, only even… Read More