According to new data from research firm IHS, the Android Market saw revenue grow by 861.5 percent year-over-year (YoY) from 2009 to 2010, although the actual dollar figures are tiny compared to all the other major app stores.
Revenue grew from $11 million in 2009 to $102 million in 2010.
By comparison, the Apple App Store saw 131.9 percent growth YoY, jumping to $1.7 billion.
More surprisingly, the BlackBerry App World had revenue of $165 million, and the Nokia Ovi store saw revenue of $105 million, both larger than Android despite a much smaller selection of available apps.
Google says there are 300,000 Android phones activated daily.
Result for: expo
According to Sony president of product planning Naoya Matsui, the company has been planning a UMD-less PSP since the launch of the original handheld system, but was simply waiting for the market for digital downloads to mature.
“We’d planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning,” says Matsui, via Develop. “But if we’d simply released the hardware, there wouldn’t have been much for everyone to enjoy. We needed to prepare the right environment for it first - things like the transferral of content with the PS3 and PSN, and PC software to manage content like music and movies such as ‘Media Go’.
“We wanted to release it when the delivery of digital content was on par with the delivery of physical media. Thats what we’ve been working on these past two years. We’ll be selling the PSP Go alongside the existing PSP models, because it’s a product targeted at those people who are more accustomed to digital content.”
Sony officially launched the PSP Go at the E3 Expo event, and the handheld, besides removing the UMD drive, adds a slider design and and is slimmer than previous models.
Result for: expo
Last week during the E3 Expo, Sony officially launched the PSP Go handheld, which removes the UMD drive, adds a slider design and and is slimmer than previous models.
Today, expert gaming analyst Michael Pachter has called the system a “ripoff,” claiming that Sony is severely overcharging for the handheld in North America. The console retails for $250 USD.
Pachter adds that the current “slim” PSP-3000 is more expensive to build but sells for significantly less.
“I’m sorry to say it, I don’t want to get bad fan mail from the Sony fanboys, but Sony is ripping off the consumer until they sell a couple of million,” says Pachter.
“Disc assembly for UMD costs more than 16GB of Flash does,” he notes. “So this new device doesn’t cost them as much to make as the PSP-3000 and they’ve jacked the price up USD 80. And if consumers don’t buy it then the price is going to come down. They’re making a lot more money on the PSP Go than the PSP-3000.”
Pachter also added that he expects digital delivery methods to become much more mainstream now that console makers are behind the move.
“PSP Go is a game changer for digital delivery and yet they’re still going to support the PSP-3000, they’ve got to keep the retailers happy.
“This year’s show is ‘packaged goods are going away’. Half of all gaming purchases ten years from now are going to be digital. You can see it coming for the first time ever, the console manufacturers are behind it,” he concluded.
