Thanks to Distimo, we can look at what is the most popular apps in the various appstores of the different mobile platforms – the report covers the Apple App Store for iPad and iPhone (with specific focus on in-app purchases), as well as BlackBerry App World (Worldwide), Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile for June 2010 in the United States.

Here are the top selling apps by platform:

True to form, the top selling apps on Android remain tools and utilities, which pretty much confirms who the Android phone’s current target market is:

On the iPhone, games dominate the top selling apps. Its clearly the preferred platform for game developers currently.

On the iPad, things look a little more productive. Like in the last report, Apple’s Pages word processor app is the top seller. It seems people are willing to actually pay for apps to make work easier on the iPad.

And then on the Blackberry front, here are the top sellers. The best sellers are themes for the OS:

Some other interesting tidbits out of the report:

The percentage of applications with in-app purchases is significantly higher in the Apple App Store for iPad (10%) than in the
Apple App Store for iPhone (2%). The Games and Social Networking categories in both stores have the highest proportion of
applications with in-app purchases available.

The most successful free applications that monetized using in-app purchases this month in the Apple App Store for iPhone are
MobiTV (MobiTV), ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup (ESPN) and Tap Fish (BayView Labs).

The most successful paid applications that monetized using in-app purchases this month in the Apple App Store for iPhone are
Guitar Hero (Activision Publishing, Inc.), TomTom U.S.A. (TomTom International BV) and Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies II
(Activision Publishing, Inc.).

Mirroring the Distimo report covering May 2010, Pages and iBooks, published by Apple Inc, are again the number one paid and free
applications on the Apple App Store for iPad, respectively.

Three out of the ten most popular applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone were published by Electronic Arts.

Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad entered the top 10 highest ranked paid applications chart in the 6th position. It was the
top grossing application in the Apple App Store for iPad after Pages by Apple Inc.

Nine out of the ten most popular paid applications on the Apple App Store for iPhone are Games, however only two out of the ten
most popular free applications are Games. In the Nokia Ovi Store, seven out of ten of the most popular paid applications are
Games, while only three out of ten of the most popular free applications are Games.

If you want to see the report for yourself, go look at it here.

This year’s Tech-Ed conference is once again in Durban, and is one of the premier training oppurtunities for just about anyone who works with Microsoft’s suite of products, technologies, solutions and services. If you are a technology professional involved with building, deploying or maintaining IT solutions, Tech-Ed Africa is a great conference that will give you many insights into dealing with present and future challenges.

I attended last year, and I have to say it is one of the most well organized, informative conferences I have ever attended. The sessions are informative, and I really appreciated the information on upcoming products, and how businesses should ready themselves.

This year there is more than 200 technical solutions, all delivered by Microsoft and industry experts. These technical sessions are very open, and attendees always get an oppurtunity to get there questions answered.

Tech-Ed is running from 17 to 20 October, and if you book within the before 30 July, there is a super early bird special.

If you want more info on Tech-Ed 2010, click here.

Via: MBA Online

Oh this will make the gamers happy. For long us South Africans had to use strange methods to be able to use Xbox Live, we had to masquarade as yanks in order to play our games online. What made this doubly insulting is that we pay full price for our Xbox games, and these days the online component of a game is even more important than the actual game. Just ask any Halo or Forza fan.

Microsoft has finally announced that SA will be getting Xbox Live within the next three months. A definite date was not given, but we can be assured it is before the end of September. This was of course hand in hand with the announcement of the “Kinect” peripheral (called “Project Natal” in the past) and the new Xbox 360, which is slimmer, shinier, quiter and better looking than the original Xbox 360.

So will you be getting the Kinect? And will you finally sign up for Xbox Live now that it is officially in SA?

Image from LazyGamer.co.za

This is a big deal folks. In terms of market capitalization, Apple has just shot past Microsoft. For many, many years Microsoft was untouchable, but unfortunately their growth in terms of share price has been dwindling recently. Apple on the other hand, has had a impressive growth spurt in the last few years, starting with the iPod, and now their big money maker, the iPhone.

What makes this even more impressive is that in the mid nineties, Apple were just about ready to close up shop. With a bunch of corporate shake ups and poor leadership on the board, many expected the company to just give up. Luckily Apple somehow go hold of its ousted leader, Steve Jobs, and put him back in charge as interim CEO, or in Apple speak, the iCEO. Before this, Dell CEO, Michael Dell famously pronounced that the right thing to do for Apple is to close shop, and give back the money to the shareholders. Imagine you were one of the shareholders then – things are definitely looking up today. This because Steve Jobs shaked up Apple’s structure and brought back its culture, something that was always Apple’s biggest asset.

What he did is basically scrap unnecessary product lines and refine existing products to just a few choices. It is still very much evident today with the Apple range of products. Despite thinking that people want infinite choice, Apple proves that people do not want to be bombarded with different products.

Now one should not dismiss Microsoft in this – this is after all percepted value of a company based on shares. Apple only has around 10 percent of the US market, while Microsoft is still very profitable, despite these profits primarily coming from its operating systems and productivity software, but then again they sink a lot of money in to other divisions like Xbox and Windows phone, which is yet to turn signaificant profits, if any at all.

What it comes down to is that investors are not always the best people to value a company – Microsoft is still the dominant player in the corporate market, where scale, not pure profit per sale is what is more important (just go look at the profits in building an iPad). Whatever you might read into this, we still live in a Windows world.

I dont believe Microsoft to take back their place in the next few weeks – Apple has an exciting month lined up. On June 7th they are releasing their next generation iPhone (which has been leaked it seems, and it looks great) and also roll out the next release of it iPhone operating system, which will roll out to eager iPhone 3G and 3GS users. This software update also addresses one of the last major criticisms of the iPhone platform with multitasking, although only for the 3GS model (and of course the upcoming one).

I think the battle is still coming.
PS: If you want some history on Apple, go read iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, a great book by Jefferey S. Young. Another great book is Inside Steve’s Brain, by Leander Kahney (he is the guy behind the Cult of Mac website).