Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for Chrome and Android today announced that the company’s Chrome browser now has more than 750 million monthly active users. That’s up from 450 million users Google announced at last year’s I/O. This number, as far as we can see, includes both desktop and mobile users.

Google launched Chrome in 2008 and since then, as Google proudly noted in today’s keynote, it has become the most popular browser in the world. It is also now, as Pichai noted early on in the keynote, a very important platform for Google that stands side-by-side with Android.

Just recently, Google also decided to take more of the development process of Chrome in its own hands when it dropped WebKit and decided to start developing its own Blink rendering engine based on WebKit.

Updating…

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Netflix is quickly building a stable of its own original content, but those programs end up getting lumped in with all the movies and TV series that it’s licensed from other content providers. To combat this, Netflix is running landing pages on a wide range of devices to show off the new series that it’s investing in, with the next one being Eli Roth’s Hemlock Grove.

Over the last year or so, Netflix has aggressively invested in original content, paying for shows that are available only if you’re a subscriber. These shows have run the gamut from the Kevin Spacey political thriller House of Cards to the long-awaited return of Arrested Development, with a few others in between.

Now Netflix is looking for ways to promote that original programming on all the platforms it is available on. On the Xbox, iPad, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii, the Netflix app will feature Hemlock Grove. From the Xbox team, for instance:

“This week, the Xbox community will notice an app update for Netflix rolling out across all regions where the service is currently offered. This update will include performance improvements and a newly designed ‘Netflix Originals’ landing page, offering viewers a look at the very latest in original programming from Netflix, including the highly anticipated ‘Hemlock Grove,’ slated to launch April 19. ‘Hemlock Grove’ comes from director Eli Roth (‘Hostel’) and is a chilling supernatural series based on Brian McGreevy’s novel.”

Netflix is basking in the success of House of Cards, which has quickly become the most-watched piece of content on the service. And, of course, as the company is quickly adding new shows to its content library.

Hemlock Grove is being launched on April 19, so the Netflix update will serve to highlight this new show that Netflix founders might not yet know about. That follows a similar strategy that it undertook with House of Cards, which had a similar page on those same devices. Next month, Arrested Development will become available, followed by the launch of Orange Is The New Black, a new series from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

App analytics company Flurry, which measures monthly usage on more than a billion active smart mobile devices, has taken a look at how U.S. consumers are splitting their time between mobile apps and browsers. The company found the iOS and Android app economy is in rude health: with consumers spending 80% of the average two hours and 38 minutes per day that they use smartphones and tablets spent inside apps, while only a fifth of that time (20% — or 31 minutes) is spent using mobile web browsers.

When it comes to app categories, games take a big bite out of consumers’ mobile device time — with around a third (32%) of daily average usage spent flinging fowl or similar. Facebook was the next biggest time-sink, cutting itself an 18% daily usage slice. Add in a further 6% of time spent on other social network services and activity within social media apps accounts for almost a quarter of the average user’s mobile day, according to Flurry’s data.

But it’s not just social networking that is driving Facebook app usage. Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf speculates that the large proportion of time spent inside the Facebook app is down to users viewing web content from inside Zuckerberg’s walled garden. He notes: “We can assert that Facebook has become the most adopted browser in terms of consumer time spent” — and goes on to add that mobile has “become Facebook’s biggest opportunity”, with consumers spending almost 39 minutes per day using the Facebook app on average.

Facebook has become the most adopted browser in terms of consumer time spent.

“Five years into its existence, the app economy is thriving,” Khalaf writes on the company blog. “We looked for possible signs of slowing, we could not find any, largely due to the fast adoption of tablets just after smartphones… Tablets and smartphones are eating up desktops, and notebooks and apps (including the Facebook app) are eating up the web and peoples’ time.”

iOS browser Safari also took a biggish chunk (12%) of mobile users’ time. Flurry’s data suggests iPhone and iPad owners might be doing a little more mobile browsing than Android users (unless Android users are more prolific Facebookers than iOS device owners) — since even collating the Android native browser with Opera Mini and other unnamed browsers picked up by Flurry’s analysis yields only around half the proportion of time spent in a browser vs Safari use. The iPad may be the cause of Safari’s dominance here, being as it’s well suited to browsing the mobile web (and Android tablets are not (yet) as dominant as the iPad).

Elsewhere, Flurry’s data shows entertainment and utility apps took 8% apiece, while productivity and news apps only accounted for 2% of usage each. It also found that U.S. consumers — far from being bored of apps, as third mobile ecosystem platform contenders sometimes try to argue — are actually using increasing numbers of apps per day. Comparing three years of worldwide data, Flurry found the number of apps launched per day has risen steadily from 7.2 in Q4 2010, to 7.5 in Q4 2011, to 7.9 in Q4 2012.

“To us, the steady growth rate indicates that the app economy is not yet experiencing saturation, as consumers steadily use more apps over time,” Khalaf writes. “And while there are more apps in the store, large numbers of them have short lifespans, such as books, shows and games. Assertions that people are using fewer apps in 2012 than they did in 2010 appear to be incorrect.”

Flurry also compared new vs existing app usage and found that the proportion of new apps being used almost doubled between Q4 2010 and Q4 2012 — see chart below. This portion of the study was based on a sample of more than 2.2 million devices that have been active for more than two years. The positive takeaway for developers here is that the market is still very dynamic and open to newcomers.

“We believe that with consumer continuing to try so many news apps, the app market is still in early stages and there remains room for innovation and breakthrough, new applications,” Khalaf notes.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Atlassian’s HipChat is stepping up to its commitment to roll out native clients for its real-time group chat and private messaging tool, with a beta release of the Linux client. The Linux client couldn’t come fast enough: Adobe AIR no longer supports the open-source operating system, which means the new native app adds to the web-based client as another option for Linux-based users.

Also, since Adobe AIR is bad and awful, the Linux client not only brings a standalone app back to Linux, but also greatly improves functionality over previous versions. It’s not bug-free and is still missing some features compared to other versions (there’s no auto sign-in, for instance), but it’s completely usable for those working on Linux machines. Native Linux support has become the most-requested HipChat customer request, according to Atlassian, which is in part why this release pushed ahead of the Windows app in terms of the priority queue.

For HipChat, the Linux release follows the introduction of the Mac app beta, as well as the launch of rebuilt Android Beta client around a month ago. The Windows app mentioned above is also still on track for a release “coming soon,” HipChat says, though it didn’t give a specific window for launch.

Paired with its recent decision to offer an entry-level tier of service completely free for up to five users, HipChat’s aggressive rollout of native clients indicates it’s looking to try to lock up the group chat market with an approach that both lowers the barrier to entry for new users, and makes sure they’ll have access via the platform of their choice to the service when they do sign up. Since teaming up with Atlassian, the HipChat go-to-market strategy seems to have shifted, which means we should see some interesting changes to their user and subscriber numbers over the course of the next few months.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It’s been, what, five months since PSY’s Gangnam Style first made its YouTube debut? You’d think that Gangnam fever would’ve died out long ago, but it just keeps chugging along — the video recently beat some Justin Bieber garbage to become the most-watched thing on YouTube, and some expect it to hit 1 billion views in short order. If all that weren’t enough, there’s now an official Gangnam Style live wallpaper for Android-toting K-Pop fanatics to throw their money at.

Sure, it’s not the first one to worm its way into the Google Play store, but it’s by far the best. To wit: double-tapping the wallpaper causes the otherwise dull background image to slide apart and reveal the infamous elevator thrusting scene (accompanied by brief snippets of the song, naturally). It’s funny enough, but Gangnam Style purists will probably be miffed when they discover that none of the snippets actually match up with what’s happening visually.

What’s more, each new email or text message you receive also causes the wallpaper to spring to life. Jaded though I may be at this point, watching PSY gallop about like a ninny whenever I got a new message still manages to elicit some giggles. To top it all off, an audio file called “sexy_lady” is automatically set as your device’s default notification sound once the live wallpaper has been enabled — you can probably guess exactly what happens, but here’s a video just in case your imagination is a little lacking:

Terribly obvious visual gags aside, the live wallpaper will occasionally display PSY’s latest tweets, as well as upcoming concert dates and tour stops. If all this sounds like a recipe for a good time, you may want to mosey on over to the Google Play Store to see for yourself. Be warned, though — most reviewers didn’t seem to have much trouble with it, but I found that the live wallpaper would occasionally force close on my Nexus 4. If you’re thinking about shelling out the $1.99 for this thing, do yourself a favor and take advantage of the 15-minute return window if things turn sour right out of the gate.

[via Droid-Life]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Mobile money is a big deal in emerging markets. When a farmer can simply SMS payment for a cow or two people can transact business by swapping airtime, that changes the entire dynamics of an economy. So it’s little surprise that some research just out today indicates how big the market is going to be. And it’s all done on plain old feature phones. Berg Insight reports that the number of active mobile money users in emerging markets is forecasted to grow from 61 million in 2011 at an annual growth rate of 36 percent to reach 381 million by 2017.

The most successful mobile money services are currently use in Africa, such as M-Pesa which is now reputedly processing something close to 10% of the GDP of Kenya (M is for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money). However, it’s now the Asia-Pacific region that is expected to become the most important regional market, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the active mobile money user base in 2017.

Berg says that the total value of mobile money transactions is projected to grow from $44 billion in 2011 at a rate of 44% to $395 billion in 2017. And while mobile money extends financial services to people without banks, plenty of people with banks will be using it as well.

Startups are noticing. Last year Boston-based TxtEagle raised $8.5 million from a consortium including Spark Capital and RBC Venture Partners, in order to parter with 220 mobile operators in almost 100 countries who between them cover 2.1 billion subscribers. TxtEagle surveys masses of people on mobile TxtEagle then forwards the survey (or other task) to thousands of individual members via their GSM phones, and pays them upon completion.

Lars Kurkinen, Telecom Analyst, Berg Insight says mobile money services are now extending into insurance providers and merchant acquirers.

Sounds like those feature phones will be around a lot longer…

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Apple is not the most valuable company in the history of the world. It’s not even Microsoft, which was reported to have been toppled by Apple today.

It’s IBM by a long shot.

Apple’s $661 billion market share does not account for inflation.  With inflation in account, IBM remains the historic winner with a 1967 value of $1.3 trillion.

The Columbia Journalism Review put this into perspective today by calling out the press for their over zealousness in hoping to tell a  story about Apple and its victory. Nonetheless, Apple’s run has been incredible. But it has not been enough to take the crown as the most valuable company in the history of the world.

I wonder how Steve Jobs would feel if he was being given a handicap. For that’s what this amounts to if you give Apple the prize.  Accounting for inflation, $1 in 1967 is worth $6.85 today. In that year of systems and mainframes, IBM had a market capitalization of $192.3 billion. Don’t account for inflation and sure Apple is the winner.  But I don’t think Jobs would see much pleasure in winning by such means. I’d instead expect he’d want to win the prize based upon the performance of the company and beat the rest without an asterisk next to the record.

Apple could become the most valuable company in the world if it keeps up its growth. In February, The New York Times calculated that at a market capitalization of $500 billion, Apple’s would have a value of more than $3 trillion by 2020. As the Times points out, that is bigger than the 2011 gross domestic product of France or Brazil.

Much of the media attention today was placed on Apple as the winner and Microsoft as the loser. But the reality is something different.

Big Blue still reigns supreme.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Feature phone users can now apply simple filters and borders to their mobile photos using the ”Facebook For Every Phone” app, according to a post by the company.

Facebook offers the option to make photos sepia or black and white by clicking the “effects” button on the photo edit screen. This lets users without smartphones post photos similar to the popular Instagram style. Facebook acquired Instagram in April, but no one from the Instagram team was involved with the new Facebook For Every Phone feature. According to a spokesperson, it was made by one engineer during a Hackathon event.

The social network has released several updates for its Facebook For Every Phone app recently, striving to bring smartphone-like capabilities to more than 3,600 different Java-enabled feature phones. Last month, Facebook updated the app to allow users to interact with pages and check into locations. These are key features to increase engagement among feature phone users, particularly in growing markets like India and Africa, where many users never access the desktop version of the site. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, about 83 million monthly active users accessed Facebook solely through mobile apps or m.facebook.com in March.

Facebook has not provided usage numbers for its feature phone app, but the fan page for the app has more than 82 million Likes. Users are given the option to Like the Facebook For Every Phone page when they first log-in using the app, though other users can Like the page even if they don’t use the app. The page has quickly grown to become the most popular page on Facebook since the its launch on Jan. 20. According to our PageData service, the page has more than 16 million more Likes than the second most popular page on the site, which happens to be the general Facebook fan page.

In late November of last year, we noted a changing of the guard: Chrome had become the most-used browser amongst TechCrunch readers, ending the four year reign of Firefox in the pole position. And since then, Chrome has actually widened its lead. In the past 30 days, it’s a full 2 percentage points ahead of Firefox now. And that lead continues to grow. But something really odd happened last week. Chrome wasn’t number one. And neither was Firefox. Instead, it was Internet Explorer.

Yes, IE took the crown last week.

You might not think that’s a big deal considering that IE is still by a fairly large margin the most-used browser overall. But as long as we’ve been keeping track of stats for TechCrunch, it has never been the top browser here. In fact, it has been number four for quite some time. And it’s normally about five percentage points behind number three: Safari. So for it to surge to number one is a real oddity.

So what happened?

One word: AOL.

We’ve written about this before;

Experian Hitwise released statistics yesterday indicating that “Facebook” was the most frequently searched term for the second year in a row, besting YouTube, Craigslist, and MySpace. Among the top ten searched terms, four were variations of Facebook, including “Facebook login” showing that users frequently search rather than entering the site’s URL or clicking a bookmark when they want to browse the site.

The rankings of the top searched musicians closely mirror our PageData charts of the most popular Pages, showing that Like count may be an accurate measurement of public interest. Facebook also overtook Google for the first time to become the most visited website of 2010.

Social networking sites claimed 4.18% of the top 50 searches, demonstrating that the public is very interested in using and learning about ways to interact with friends online. Facebook, and variations like “Facebook.com”, made up 3.48% of U.S. searches among the top 50 terms, a 207% increase over 2009, outpacing Facebook’s monthly active user growth for the year.

The climb of the term “Facebook login” from the ninth to the second most searched term means users are interested in a quick, simple way to access their account. Facebook has been trying to help users achieve this by prompting some to add the site as their home page.

All five of the top searched musicians, including Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson, are also among the top 30 Facebook Pages and top 11 musician Pages on Facebook according to our PageData tracking service. While Like counts can be artificially increased through marketing and Like-gated promotions, the correlation in the statistics shows that Facebook Page size may be an accurate gauge of public interest for some categories.

Google led Facebook in terms of total visits across its owned web properties with 9.85% of all U.S. visits, summed from its search engine’s 7.19%, YouTube’s 2.65%, and other sites including Gmail and Google Maps. Facebook.com alone brought in 8.93% of all U.S. visits, meaning it might one day exceed Google in this category if it expanded its service offerings.

Hitwise stated that “the top 10 Websites accounted for 33 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010, an increase of 12 percent versus 2009.”, showing the biggest sites in several categories are pulling share away from their smaller competitors. This consolidation could be fueled or signaled by the numerous acquisitions by web giants like Facebook and Google in 2010.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook