GetJar bans Opera Mini on Apps Store for T&C violations
GetJar, an independent App Store has announced that it has banned one of the biggest selling apps from its platform.
Opera Software had used GetJar to promote its mobile web browsers, but broke GetJar’s terms and conditions after it recently launched its own Apps Store in competition to GetJar.
The Opera Mini browser had racked up more the 30 million downloads on Getjar over the last several years and was one of the most popular apps in the browser category.
In a statement, the company confirmed that Opera had been banned for T&C violations. It later confirmed the reasons in a letter that was sent to its apps developers.
Patrick Mork, CMO GetJar confirmed that the simple problem is that Opera mini decided to include a competing app store in its browser.
He added that although they don’t have any issue with this in principle, in practice it means that consumers might start using this app store instead of visiting GetJar to get their favorites apps. This robs GetJar of traffic and therefore, of the advertising necessary to keep their service free for the more than 25 million consumers that use GetJar.
GetJar invests a further $25 million to expand Apps Store
Mobile apps store, GetJar has invested another $25 million in Series C funding from Tiger Global Management.
Accel Partners, which provided its series A and B rounds, will also participate in the series C funding. The new capital will be applied to support its growth by expanding sales, marketing and engineering initiatives, along with developing new services.
GetJar is planning to expand its offering to Android publishers in order to secure its position as the premier open Android Market alternative while continuing to support other smartphone platforms such as Blackberry and IOS.
In the past year, GetJar has established partnerships with key players such as Yahoo!, Sprint, AT&T, Openwave, Rovio (developer of Angry Birds), Zynga and Glu Mobile, quadrupling the number of downloads per month and significantly extending its global reach. This growth has led GetJar to triple their number of employees and expand its operations in Europe.
According to Lee Fixel, Managing Director at Tiger Global Management, GetJar has the rare combination of a differentiated, cross platform app store solution coupled with a unique revenue model. They have been highly impressed with the leadership team and their ability to disrupt the marketplace with the fraction of spend compared to the likes of Google and others.
AT&T to offer GetJar on Smartphones
AT&T Inc, the second largest U.S. mobile provider has collaborated with GetJar to provide immediate access to GetJar’s entire library of 75,000+ free mobile applications.
According to the company, AT&T will let customers use a mobile apps store run by GetJar on about 50 different AT&T phone models ranging from the company’s cheapest phones to BlackBerry smartphones.
As per the IDC analyst Al Hilwa, the inclusion of a new app store could be an effort by AT&T to begin to lessen its dependence on the iPhone, as it is widely expected to lose its exclusive U.S. right to sell the device next year. This gives them a way to go past Apple and leverage the app store for customers not on the Apple platform.
According to Patrick Mork, GetJar’s chief marketing officer, the inclusion of the store on phones from Sprint Nextel, the third largest U.S. mobile provider, has helped boost app sales by up to 15%. But he did not give an estimate for sales to AT&T customers for GetJar, which is backed by Facebook investors Accel Partners.
As per AT&T, it now lists GetJar on its Media Mall software portal, where consumers can go to download a GetJar app in order to use the store. Mork conceded that some consumers may be put off by having to take the extra step of downloading the GetJar app.
Angry Birds flies to Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts has acquired mobile games publisher Chillingo, popular for the smash hit Angry Birds, to increase the gaming giant’s presence in the mobile space and on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch platforms in particular.
Chillingo is acquired for an undisclosed sum and will continue to operate as part of EA Mobile. Other games in its portfolio comprise of Cut the Rope, Helsing’s Fire, Predators, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Minigore, iDracula, and Modern Conflict. Angry Birds alone has been downloaded more than 20 million times.
But as per the reports, the deal went down for around $20 million cash and other incentives. The deal doesn’t include Angry Birds, however, with developer Rovio retaining the rights to that property and the inevitable sequels (Angrier Birds, Enraged Birds, and Bloody Furious Birds)
According to the EA’s statement, this move helped give it increased market leadership on the Apple platform, and strengthened its position as the world’s leading wireless entertainment publisher.
But EA’s marketing chief won’t be around to celebrate this as she’s moving to GetJar. The world’s second biggest app store has announced that it has appointed Berenice Kalan as director of UK marketing, to develop GetJar’s voice amongst advocates, develop new and existing relationships with UK app developers and publishers, and drive GetJar’s growth in the UK.
Kalan spent the last five years working as head of product and marketing for key players in the mobile games industry such as I-Play, Glu and most recently, EA Mobile.
Virgin Mobile India inks deal with GetJar to offer apps catalogue to consumers
Virgin Mobile India has joined hands with GetJar, an independent mobile phone application store , to provide applications from GetJar’s App Catalogue Express.
Through the deal, Virgin Mobile customers will have the access to applications varying from games, social networking, entertainment, food, health, lifestyle and other helpful applications.
Applications like Yahoo, Nimbuzz, Opera Mini Browser and such applications can now be downloaded in all major handsets, like Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Java and Symbian phones.
Virgin Mobile subscribers can visit m.virginin.getjar.com to get GetJar’s applications. This link is presently available on Virgin Mobile India’s WAP portal on GSM platform in sixteen circles, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Chennai, Kerala, Orissa, Mumbai and Maharashtra, Kolkata and West Bengal, Haryana, Bihar, MP&CG, Punjab, UP (E) and UP (W).
Virgin Mobile India users can download all applications free of cost. Only the data browsing charges of INR 0.01 per kb will be charged.
Rogers Customers offered GetJar Apps
Independent app store GetJar has announced that it will make its entire library of more than 60,000 free mobile applications available to Rogers customers at no charge. The customers of the network will be able to access GetJar’s applications library via a GetJar link on the Rogers Application page on its mobile Internet portal.
The app includes games, social networking, sports, entertainment and productivity applications.
According to GetJar CEO, Ilja Laurs, the company is thrilled that Rogers is working and cooperating with GetJar to meet the demands of its customers.
This agreement is much like their recent announcement with Sprint Nextel, allows Rogers to immediately connect all its customers with over 60,000 free applications with very little effort, opines Laurs.
Apps revenue to increase manifold by 2012- GetJar
A report has been released by independent app store GetJar predicting that the worth of the global mobile applications market will become as high as $17.5 billion (£11.5 billion) by 2012. The current value is a fourfold increase from its value of $4.1 billion in 2009. It has also been predicted that an increase from 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012 will be noticed in the total number of mobile app downloads as well.
Off-deck paid-for apps will become the biggest revenue generator by 2012. In 2009, on-deck apps accounted for over 60% of all apps revenue but the percentage is expected to fall under 23% by 2012. Apart from apps, opportunities for both high end smartphones and feature phones have also been reflected in the report.
According to the report, revenue opportunities in Europe are set to soar from $1.5 billion in 2009 to $8.5 billion in 2012, while in North America, the figure will rise from around $2.1 billion to around $6.7 billion in 2012. Currently, Asia is the most popular country with applications having 37% of global downloads in 2009. However, North America accounts for the spending of maximum money for downloading these applications.
Sprint & GetJar offer 60,000+ free apps
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Independent app store’s 60,000-plus free applications will be offered under the new partnership between Sprint and GetJar to all feature phone subscribers as well as BlackBerry and Windows Mobile smartphone users. A link to the GetJar catalog is now live on the Sprint portal across most of its handsets.
Facebook Mobile, Google Maps, YouTube, Weather Channel Mobile, ShopSavvy and Loopt are some of the popular applications offered by GetJar. 750 million GetJar apps have already been downloaded by the consumers worldwide.
According to Sprint director of product management and development Kevin McGinnis, the company has been fairly open about its views on storefronts and they want to provide the greatest amount of choice and support operating systems, as opposed to their own proprietary storefront.
