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But what kind of business does that mean for app developers targeting this market?

A lot of parents are handing their smartphones and tablets to their children to use apps, and a lot of developers and brands are making apps to target them. But how many of those apps are actually being paid for?

A survey conducted by US market research firm NPD Group suggests not many. In fact, it claims that “there are an average of 12 apps on mobile devices that kids have access to, with 88% of those apps being acquired for free”.

NPD goes on to note that games are “by far” the most popular app genre used by children, and warns that kids aren’t the most loyal app users. “While there are a number of engaging and entertaining apps available to kids, many are used and abandoned after a short time,” says analyst Anita Frazier.

I’m puzzled about the 12 apps per average device figure, given that separate research from Nielsen earlier in the month suggested that in the US, at least, the average smartphone now has 41 apps installed.

Even so, the key points here – which are slightly worrying for developers making apps for children – are the seemingly large appetite for a constant succession of free apps.

That’s no different to the wider apps market, of course. Yet while developers in other areas see in-app purchases (and to a lesser extent, advertising) as their way to make money from this appetite for freebies, both of these models are problematic when it comes to children’s apps.

Apple has already been sued in the US over the existence of “bait apps”, following several controversies in 2011 when children blew their parents’ credit cards on in-app purchases within freemium games.

And advertising? That’s another can of worms when it comes to children’s apps, in terms of policing what ads are shown, and keeping to legislation around the world on marketing to children. It’s no surprise that a number of prominent kid-app developers make a virtue in their app store listings of not using IAP or ads.

Which brings us back to the question of how many companies are making good money from apps for children, in order to build a sustainable business for the future.

And if the answer is “not many”, is there a risk that over time, the kid-apps market will become more about big brands using free apps to market, say, physical toys or TV shows, and less about developers and startups making original, creative paid apps for children?

Which is not to say that the big-brand apps are a bad thing, all of the time. But writing as a parent, as much as a journalist, I hope the original stuff doesn’t get squeezed out in the months and years ahead.

Designer behind iPhone, iPod, iMac and iPad flies from US with family to be knighted by Princess Anne

The Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive has spoken of the “thrilling” moment when he was knighted by the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace.

The 45-year-old, who is senior vice-president of industrial design at Apple, flew to Britain from the US with his wife and eight-year-old twin sons to receive the honour.

“It has been wonderful. It was really thrilling and particularly humbling,” he said after being made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for services to design and enterprise.

Ive, who was born in Chingford, north-east London, is credited withdesigning some of the best-loved gadgets of the modern age, including the iPhone, iPod, iMac and iPad.

He said he and Princess Anne had talked about how often he comes to the UK and about her iPad.

Asked about the impact of his products on the modern world, Ive said: “We don’t really spend much time thinking about our impact.

We are fully consumed with trying to make the very best products that we can.”

Also being knighted was Sir Peter Bazalgette, 59, the TV programme-maker behind hit series including Big Brother, Ready Steady Cook, Changing Rooms and Ground Force.

He said he was particularly pleased to be receiving a knighthood as he is the great-great-grandson of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the civil engineer who was knighted in the 19th century for his work designing and overseeing the building of an enclosed sewer network for London.

Bazalgette said his knighthood was a “huge honour”.

What’s new on the app stores on Wednesday 23 May 2012

A selection of 23 new and notable apps for you today:

Kingdom of Plants with David Attenborough

Sir David Attenborough’s new TV show is airing on Sky rather than the BBC, which is a sign of the times. As is the official iPad app, which blends text, videos and panoramic photos of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.
iPad

Sidecar.me

Aiming to provide “smart calling for your smartphone”, Sidecar is the latest Voice-over-IP app looking to add extra features to standard voice calls. In this case, that includes the ability to share live video, photos and location data while chatting. It’s free to use with other Sidecar users.
Android / iPhone

Nike Golf 360°

At the time of writing, Nike’s new golf app appears to be a US-only affair. It tracks your rounds and statistics, uploading everything to the NG360° website for later analysis. Swing videos can be uploaded and analysed too, with golf-focused workouts and tips also included.
iPhone

Mass Effect: Infiltrator

Another treat for hardcore gamers on Android devices, as EA brings its latest Mass Effect game to Google-powered devices. That means spiffing graphics, touchscreen-optimised controls and lots – LOTS – of shooting.
Android

Louboutin

Shoes! Posh shoes, at that. Fashion label Christian Louboutin has an official app showing off its latest collection, including designers’ sketches, a store locator, and a wish list feature to store details of your favourites.
iPhone

Kate

The Daily Mail is the latest newspaper looking into one-shot apps for iPad, with its tribute to the Duchess of Cambridge. It offers articles and photos from the year since her marriage to Prince William, with a focus on her frocks.
iPad

#BeyHive

Hashtags in app titles? That’s 2012 for you. This app is a fan-project devoted to all things Beyonce, offering “a social network” for fans around the world. They sign in using Twitter, then get news, photos, links to music and the ability to earn points for their fandom.
Android / iPhone

Euro Finals from Betfair

Gambling service Betfair has a new app dedicated to the Euro 2012 football tournament, giving a quick way to access all its markets around the finals, place bets and then cash out from the device.
iPhone

Red Bull Racing Spy

Red Bull has launched a new Formula 1 app, promising news, gossip and party photos from the F1 circuit. The spy of the title is Red Bull’s “man on the inside”, who’s also running his own Twitter account.
iPhone / iPad

Trailr

Here’s an interesting use for image recognition technology: an iPhone app that when pointed at a movie poster, advertisement or DVD cover, searches for and plays its video trailer. It’s the work of LTU Technologies – a showcase for the company’s in-house tech.
iPhone

Clueful

Spooked by reports earlier in 2012 about how apps are sharing your personal data? Clueful is an iPhone app that aims to show you what apps are running in memory, and what they’re doing with your data. It can also be used as a reference guide before installing an app, to see what it does.
iPhone

AT&T mHealth

This is only available in the US for people with an invitation from their employer or health management company, but it’s still something to track. AT&T’s mobile health app focuses on diabetes, helping people manage their condition, track their blood glucose levels, and share data with medical staff.
Android

eWowBooks

The latest startup looking to provide a book-apps platform on iOS is eWowBooks. Its app is out now, including a 30-page story called My Random Digi-Life, aimed at young readers. It blends animation, interactivity and social features. Going forward, the company is hoping to work with other publishers and authors to get new stories onto the platform.
iPad

BitPix

Photo-sharing app BitPix might not end up being sold to Facebook for $1bn, but it looks good fun. It turns photos into “8-bit goodness” with visual filters based on vintage consoles and computers.
iPhone

Samplodica

The latest innovative iPhone music-creation app is Samplodica, which offers a selection of digital instruments, as well as the option to record your own samples – all played by “whipping your iPhone in the air, like a rhythm egg or a drum stick”.
iPhone

Digifit iCardio

Fitness app iCardio has made its debut on Android, helping you track cardio workouts “indoors and out”, mapping the latter and sharing (well, bragging) about runs, rows and other exercises on Twitter and Facebook. It works with Polar’s Bluetooth heart rate monitor too, to track your heart rate.
Android

WeAreTennis by BNP Paribas

Tennis buffs getting ready for the summer season should love the WeAreTennis app, which promises news, live scores from major tournaments, and push alerts from individual players. There’s also a social feature to make your own commentary for classic match moments and share the results with friends.
iPhone / iPad

Men In Black 3

Gameloft bagged the licence for an official mobile game based on the new Men In Black 3 film. It sees you building and running a Men In Black agency, as well as whizzing around New York to fight aliens. The link above is for Android but here’s the iOS version.
Android / iPhone / iPad

Skyrise Runner

Protect the forests in this environmentally-sound Android game, which offers lush side-scrolling platform action with crystals to collect and great eagles to, er, morph into.
Android

Perrette and the Pot of Milk

The flow of high-quality kid-apps from iOS to Android is improving, with Perrette and the Pot of Milk the latest example. Offering a choice of English, French, Spanish and Arabic, it’s an adaptation of a famous story, with 50 interactive illustrations.
Android

Rocka Bowling 3D

This 3D bowling game for iOS offers a six-person local multiplayer mode, and uses a freemium model funded by in-app purchases of bowling alleys, pins and balls. iOS developers may smile at the developer’s attempt to ensure it’s found on the App Store – the developer is listed as ‘Best 3D Bowling Game Arcade, Action & Sports Free Game – Flick Ball Online Multiplayer! A Ten 10 pins best game for Kids! The sudoku Puzzle Free Games! Bowling Games! Funny Cool Fun Free Apps! Free App Creation Company’.
iPhone / iPad

Moosejaw Sweaty And Wet

Outdoor gear and clothing firm Moosejaw has released a new augmented reality app for its summer collection, which involves virtually soaking the models with water. Dreadfully sexist? Well, the models are male and female…
iPhone / iPad

Hooters Calendar Sexy Screen Wash HD

Well, indeed. Included here purely for its disclaimer text: “This application does not actually wash or clean your iPad screen. However, this application includes a video of a talented model/actress simulating a screen wash.”
iPad

What’s new on the app stores on Tuesday 22 May 2012

It had to happen eventually: a slow apps day, with just five new and notable apps to tell you about:

The Sandbox

There are plenty of Minecraft clones in the apps world, but The Sandbox does something different with the pixelly world-building genre. It’s a “physics sandbox” that aims to get you creating your own universe, from mud and sand to plants, walls, metal and, er, light bulbs.
iPhone

101 Ideas: Flying with Kids

Going on a flight with easily-bored children? This app wants to help you not tear your hair out. It offers 101 “fun activities/in-flight games” that the developers claim “all children will enjoy, from toddlers to young teenagers”. Which is a rather optimistic view of young teenagers, but worth a try.
iPhone

Calpol

Talking of ways to keep children quiet on flights… No, as good parents know, child medicines don’t make kids drowsy nowadays. It’s all about the pain relief. Now the makers of Calpol have an official app, including a dosage diary, local pharmacy and hospital info, and lullabies to play to poorly children.
iPhone

9mm HD

Gameloft has ported its grizzled-cop action title 9mm HD to RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook – the latest in an impressive flow of quality games for the tablet. Here, you’re hunting down a gang leader before he hunts you down, with guns all over the shop.
BlackBerry PlayBook

Crumbly

This may be US-only at the moment, but it’s an interesting spin on social location. The app aggregates check-ins and photos from friends on Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram with a view to showing you the most interesting places to visit in your current location. Or, as it styles itself, a “friend-powered compass”.
iPhone

Alteration to ‘Cellular’ comes after complaints to Advertising Standards Authority over ‘LTE’ compatibility claims but investigation could still follow in Sweden

Apple has removed claims that its new iPad has “4G” capability from its UK and other non-US online stores, after complaints that its high-speed mobile connection could not work outside the US.

The UK Apple Store now describes the mobile-capable device as having “cellular” capability, rather than 4G. The latter offers superfast mobile connections at speeds of up to 100 megabits per second.

But in the UK there are no publicly available 4G networks, and those which are expected to come into service from the end of this year will run on a different frequency from those used in the US, where 4G (or “LTE”) networks are being deployed. That means the latest generation of iPad will not be able to hook up to them, though it will be able to connect using 3G and the faster HSDPA and HSDPA+ connections.

Previously Apple had been reported to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority for including the claim that the new iPad, released in March, had “4G” capablity. The ASA had said it had had more than 40 complaints.

Similar complaints have been made in Australia and in European countries including Sweden, where the Swedish Consumer Agency had been planning to launch an investigation. The Swedish online Apple Store still offers “4G” capability, although none of the networks in Sweden is understood to be able to connect to the 4G/LTE functionality.

Sky Gamblers party mode, Infinity Blade Dungeons, Star Academy, Nike+ Training and more on the way to iPhone and iPad

Apple is expected to unveil the iOS 6 software at its WWDC conference in June, and while proprietary maps, Siri APIs for developers and a revamped App Store have been rumoured, the exact details won’t be known until the event.

However, Apple is showing off some of the apps that it expects to be big summer hits on its iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. The company’s senior director of iPhone product marketing, Stan Ng, sat down with The Guardian this morning for an “iOS momentum” briefing.

The choice of apps offers some clues about Apple’s priorities for its platform, and how it’s positioning iOS against competition from Android in particular.

The figures are familiar from Apple’s most recent quarterly financials call: more than 365m iOS devices shipped so far, more than 600,000 apps in its App Store, 25bn downloads so far and a current run-rate of 1bn a month.

(Google, meanwhile, said in February that 300m Android devices had been activated, while in May it reported that its Google Play Store had passed the 15bn downloads milestone, also running at around 1bn a month.)

Not-so-throwaway references to the lack of iOS malware, developers making money from paid apps, and OS fragmentation during the briefing also show where Apple is looking to pitch the battle for developer mindshare this summer. With WWDC coming just a couple of weeks before Google’s own I/O developer event, expect more barbs ahead.

Exclusivity on the rise

Ng and his colleagues showed me nine apps and one iBook during the briefing, although he had a number of meetings and the selection of apps may have varied from journalist to journalist – in other words, this isn’t the definitive list of the apps that Apple is showing off.

All of them are iOS exclusives, for now at least. This seems to be where the battleground is heading between iOS and Android, as Apple ramps up its backing for apps that aren’t available on other platforms.

See also the three exclusive apps shown at the unveiling of the company’s new iPad in March, and senior vice president of worldwide marketing Philip Schiller’s public abandonment of Instagram when it “jumped the shark” by being ported to Android.

But yes, the apps. Namco’s Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy is already out – and was one of those iPad-event demos – but its publisher is adding a party-play multiplayer mode designed to be used with iOS’ AirPlay feature and a TV.

I watched NG and two colleagues play from a mixture of iPads and iPhones, all wirelessly connected to an Apple TV set-top box, with the TV screen split between their views. Essentially the same thing that games consoles have been doing for years.

That’s important in itself, since it’s a sign that developers are already looking at Apple TV as… Well, as a stealth console. The action was pretty jerky, but the feature is apparently still in development.

I also got a closer look at Infinity Blade Dungeons from Epic Games’ Chair Entertainment studio, which was also shown at the iPad launch. The version shown off today was running on an iPhone 4S, and while the bubbling lava and blowing leaves are nice in a processor-showing-off way, I was more impressed by the developers’ decision to shun a virtual D-pad and buttons in favour of touchscreen gestures.

Independent spotlight

The third game Apple talked up was a different kettle of fish: SpellTower, a word game by independent developer Zach Gage, who recently generated some canny social media buzz with a “Holy Crap, I’m Near the Top, This is Crazy! Help an Indie Take On Rovio+Zynga!” price-cut promotion.

Singling out a game like this to show to journalists is telling, and not just because it showcases the more casual side of iOS gaming. With no shortage of games that have crashed and burned on the App Store, Apple is clearly aware of the need to keep the dream of iOS riches alive for the indie community.

Armed with its featured slots on the App Store, I’ll be interested to see if Apple turns SpellTower into the next Tiny Wings, in terms of a one-man success story.

Also interesting from the demo: Ng’s reminder of Apple’s claim that the iPod touch is the best-selling handheld games device in the world. It’s been easy to forget about the iPod touch in recent times – it hasn’t been updated since September 2010.

If it does get refreshed this summer (or more likely, Autumn), perhaps it will have even more of a focus on gaming, and a continued challenge to Sony’s PS Vita and Nintendo’s 3DS. That’s my reading, rather than anything specific said by Ng, though.

Book-apps and iBooks

Also shown this morning was a succession of reading/book apps, including two existing titles from Touch Press: Barefoot World Atlas and Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy.

There was also an iBook – George Harrison: Living in a Material World by the late Beatle’s widow Olivia – showcasing its use of photos and audio alongside the text.

I’ve heard from several book publishers lately that Apple is taking a pro-active approach when it comes to separating iBooks from iOS apps – those who are simply looking to add more photos, video and audio to a print text are being encouraged down the iBooks route, with apps left for those with grander interactive ambitions.

The George Harrison iBook is a good example of the former, but another app demonstrated today – a still-in-development book-app called Star Academy from developer Monster Costume – illustrated the latter.

No virtual page-turns here: instead it offers parallax-scrolling scenes, visuals from artist Dylan Cole (whose CV includes Avatar, Tron Legacy and Lord of the Rings) and the promise of games and puzzles.

Ng offered up panoramic-photography app TourWrist and polished city-guide Cool Cities Collection as current cutting-edge travel apps – both are already available – before donning a pair of Nike trainers to show off the sportswear firm’s upcoming Nike+ Training and Nike+ basketball apps.

The trainers contain sensors to measure the movements of their wearer, transmitting the data wirelessly to the iPhone apps for interpretation. The apps also include workouts from famous athletes, while tying into the NikeFuel community – a bit like Xbox Live with less sitting on the sofa.

The interface between apps and third-party hardware (or, indeed, leisurewear in this case) has plenty more mileage, and for now it’s an area dominated by iOS. So-called appcessories may be plentiful at WWDC, or looking further ahead, at the CES consumer electronics show in January 2013.

All eyes on WWDC

In summary, then: More developers and brands are shifting towards a dual iOS/Android publishing strategy in 2012. Grumbles about Android fragmentation and the appetite of its users for paid apps continue, but the platform’s sheer scale is counterbalancing that, especially for certain app genres like freemium games and social apps.

From today’s admittedly-small selection of apps being talked up by Apple to journalists, my takeaway is that the company’s strategy is a mixture of: doubling down on genres it’s stronger in, like console-quality games, book-apps and appcessories; reminding developers of the promotion it can put behind iOS exclusives, and also highlighting some of those Android negatives.

That said, June’s conferences will give us a much better picture of how the next generation of iOS and Android software and stores will shape up for developers.

The Press Gazette is irrepressible. The weekly journalism trade magazine that went monthly four years ago after a period when it looked likely to disappear may become a weekly once more.

But it will be in digital form rather than in print, as editor Dominic Ponsford announced in his PG blog.

From the end of May, the magazine hopes to gather together its daily content into a weekly bundle to be read on iPads, e-readers, desktops, laptops, iPhones and other mobile devices.

But Ponsford requires help to get what he calls “Press Gazette Journalism Weekly” off the ground. He writes:

“We already have 7,000 subscribers opted in to receive email news… If we can get that figure up to 10,000 by the end of this month we believe we’ll have a compelling case for advertisers and it will be all systems go for the new launch.”

Meanwhile, Press Gazette’s monthly print edition will continue to be produced as well.

Source: Press Gazette More info here