NewsFactor – Web metrics firm comScore reports that 234 million Americans above the age of 13 were using mobile devices during the three months prior to Thanksgiving. The Web metrics firm’s new survey of more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers also demonstrates that Google’s Android remained ahead in the mobile OS platform race with a 46.9 percent market share.

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Android Remains Top Mobile Platform in the U.S.
(NewsFactor)

Editor’s note : Contributor Brad Spirrison is the managing editor of mobile app discovery services Appolicious , AndroidApps.com and AppVee . With this post, he continues an annual tradition of picking the best iOS apps of the year. It’s telling that Apple chose an app that debuted more than 14 months ago, Instagram, as its “ iPhone App of the Year ” for 2011. This should not imply that there was a shortage of quality and groundbreaking apps released this year. Far from it. From social magazines to music discovery apps to console-quality games that players can hold in the palms of their hands, there are hundreds of new titles in the iTunes App Store that will inform, organize, and entertain virtually anyone who owns an iOS device. As more choices become available to different kinds of consumers, however, it’s difficult to identify the undisputed champions of the app world. We picked 20 of the best iOS applications that came out or received significant updates in 2011. The list is a healthy mix of free and paid titles that can run on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. (We will follow up with a separate top 20 list just for games, which are not included in this list). There are hundreds of additional titles worthy of mention, and we selected our favorites based on the production value of an app more than its popularity on the Top Seller charts. You might take issue with some of the apps included here as well. But with about 600,000 apps available for iOS devices, everyone is entitled to their own favorites. Here are ours. 1. Flipboard After launching exclusively on iPads last year, this pioneering social magazine expanded to all iOS devices in December. Significant updates to the app — including LinkedIn integration and the inclusion of many more third-party publishers like Conde Nast — make Flipboard the best iOS app of 2011. The new iPhone-specific Cover Stories feature that showcases what users are most interested in is also a game-changer. 2. Photosynth Who would have thought that one of the most enjoyable and innovative iPhone apps of the year would be developed by Microsoft. That’s the case with Photosynth, which lets users quickly and reliably capture panoramic 360-degree gyroscopic images simply by moving their cameras. 3. SoundTracking This next-generation music detection app lets users not only identify what song they are listening to, but also seamlessly share the track with friends and followers from Facebook, Twitter and foursquare. SoundTracking also lets users tap into what their friends are listening to and tagging. 4. Google Translate This language translation app from Google excels above all others for its ability to audibly translate spoken words into other languages. Google Translate’s simple and elegant interface translates text between 63 languages and lets users star notable translations and access them for later use. 5. SkyView – Explore the Universe City dwellers in particular appreciate this astronomy app which uses augmented technology to display stars, planets and satellites that otherwise would be obscured. The dead simple point-and-use functionality, 3D graphics and snippets of celestial background information can make anyone a happy and well-informed stargazer. 6. GarageBand While Apple created an ecosystem for thousands of third-party developers to innovate and market their wares to iOS devices, the company is also capable of producing its own killer apps. Having GarageBand available on the fly for less than five bucks is music to the ears of working and aspiring musicians and podcasters. 7. Tiger Woods: My Swing This app, which is also available on the iPad, is arguably Tiger’s greatest professional accomplishment of 2011. Users can compare side-by-side videos of their swings next to Tiger’s. For those spooked by Tiger’s potential skills regression, an option exists to customize alternate “swing lines.” 8. iMuscle Beyond measuring heart rates and determining how many calories are burned during a workout, iMuscle — also available as a separate iPad application — provides more than 450 unique exercises and stretches. Fittingly, the app offers 3D views to help users target the muscles and areas of the body that deserve the most focus. 9. Snapseed While there were worthy and less expensive photo editing apps released for the iPhone and iPad this year, none were better than the $4.99 Snapseed. The app’s user-friendly interface combines a nice mix of basic editing tools and cool effects that will please beginner photographers and experienced shutterbugs alike. 10. Super 8 Super 8 is an innovation in advertising as much as it is a real cool retro camera app. A promotion for the JJ Abrams/Steven Spielberg film of the same name, the app lets users create their own Super 8-style movies on their iPhones (scratch overlays and shaky cameras included). Nice to see a major studio release something more thoughtful than a cheesy commercial. 11. Spotify Spotify was worth the wait. Three years after launching in Europe, this music streaming service finally made its way to North America in July. The iOS application combines access to Spotify’s deep library with great playlist creation and social networking capabilities. Well worth the $10 monthly subscription for hardcore music fans tired of iTunes. 12. Pinterest Embracing the minimalist style of Tumblr, this blogging app allows users to create virtual bulletin boards of their favorite things. Friends and followers can then re-pin their own comments on words and images that attracted them. This is not an app for the verbose. 13. Quora A must-have mobile extension to the popular questions and answers site, the Quora app captures information about nearby locations using the GPS capabilities found within iOS devices. Where else can you tap into the collective wisdom of the digerati wherever you travel? 14. Weather+ With mainstays like The Weather Channel and Accuweather already available for iOS devices, it’s difficult for other upstarts to find any sunlight. Weather+ shines through the clouds by providing looped visualizations of each type of weather forecast displayed at any time of the day. 15. IntoNow A Shazam for television, IntoNow identifies what a user is watching on TV merely from picking up signals from its audio track. IntoNow, which was recently purchased by Yahoo!, uses proprietary fingerprinting technology called SoundPrint. The app also makes it easy to share what you’re watching with friends and followers. 16. Bill James Baseball IQ Armchair baseball general managers can now access the Sabermetric wizardry of acclaimed baseball statistician Bill James with this free iOS app (that debuted for $14.99). The level of detail here is unprecedented for any piece of software that can be displayed in a device smaller than a baseball mitt. 17. Google Currents Google’s Flipboard competitor is the best pure news aggregator available for mobile devices. While currently no match for Flipboard in terms of social integration, Google Currents is faster and offers more intuitive customization options with third-party publishers. Not surprisingly, it’s also the best way to tap into Google+ profiles from thought leaders like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki. 18. HBO GO Beyond the premium content this app serves up to HBO subscribers, HBO GO is pioneering how broadcast and cable networks make programming available to users on-the-go. The ability to tap into an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm from any place at any time is a pretty, pretty, pretty good thing to have. 19. Procreate Simply the best painting app available for the iPad. The clean and simple interface enables painting in real time. There is enough variety and options to appeal to painting pros as well as talentless amateurs just having some fun. 20. Garmin StreetPilot onDemand While turn-by-turn navigation technology is not revolutionary, packaging it within a 99-cent app (with an eventual $2.99 monthly subscription) is. The app also features great pedestrian-friendly walking directions. Top image:  Daniel Y. Go

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The Top 20 iPhone And iPad Apps of 2011

Earlier today, we posted on some data from Pando Networks that shows that free-to-play online games, often overlooked in the hype around social and casual games, are growing just as fast and as furiously around the globe as their counterparts. Obviously, much of this has to do with the industry’s transition from paid to freemium models — the examples of which are numerous not only in online gaming, but for web and mobile apps on the whole — and even startups and SMBs making their way in the consumer Web. While many of us probably take the rise of freemium for granted by now, some new stats and a nifty infographic from Quixey show that we are still very much in a transitional phase. As app developers work out the best ways to monetize their free products via in-app purchases, mobile advertising, rewards, deals, offers, incentivized downloads, and so on, free apps still comprise less than half of all mobile apps — across top mobile platforms. Of course, as you can see in Quixey’s infographic below, apps that cost $50 and above only comprise about 0.3 percent of mobile apps, whereas apps priced between $1 and $50 make up about 32.6 percent of the app population. Considering 45 percent of apps are free today, that leaves the remaining some 22 percent of apps pricing between free and $0.99. So, upwards of 54 percent of mobile apps will cost you some real, hard currency to download. And, in conjunction with this, it’s interesting to see that 60 percent of the “most buzzed about apps” have the words “free” or “lite” in the title, which seems to point to the fact that app stores are becoming increasingly crowded and overpopulated, so the best way to reach eyeballs and attract downloads is to assure consumers that the app being presented is cheap — if not free. If that’s not enough to tip you off to the overwhelming increase of app developers jumping into the game (along with the hike in the total number of apps), the infographic shows that the top 50 app developers only produce about 5 percent of the content in app stores. Of course, potentially part of the reason that they’re top developers is that they produce less content — or what content they do produce is of a high quality. This is where the drek comes into play, those “cr-apps” that are pumped out as if on an assembly line . Of the hundreds of thousands of developers out there, few are having their voices heard, and it seems that overproducing and churning out apps (hence the over one million active apps now available on top mobile platforms) isn’t helping their cause, either. The infographic poses some interesting questions for app developers — and app consumers. ( Especially seen in tandem with Flurry’s report earlier this week on developer adoption of Android vs. iOS .) Check it out below and let us know what you think.

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If Freemium Is In, Then Why Do Paid Apps Still Reign Supreme?

San Francisco-based  Liftopia , an online retailer of lift tickets and mountain resort activities, is launching its iPhone app today. The app’s title is quite the mouthful: “ Liftopia Ski Reports, Snow Conditions and Ultimate Lift Ticket Deal Engine App .” Whoa! So there’s the news, I guess – it’s all in the app’s name. Oh you want more info? OK. The new app, available for iPhone and iPod Touch , lets skiers and snowboarders browse and buy deals on lift tickets and other mountain activities in advance just like Liftopia’s website does. Upon launch, the app taps into your current location to instantly pull up nearby deals. You can also browse through deals in your favorite regions or search deals by date. Whe you’re ready to purchase, you can buy the tickets directly from the app itself. All your activity in the app is synced back to the Liftopia.com website, too, so if you prefer to shop online, you can just use the app to access your tickets on the go instead of having to print out and carry vouchers with you to the resort. Handy. Other features in the app include the ability to check conditions and weather reports, get directions to the lifts, store resorts as “favorites,” set up deal alerts and more. Liftopia now offers over 75,000 deals at more than 150 ski areas which are up to 80% off ticket window prices. Current partners include Aspen/Snowmass, Park City, Mount Snow, Sun Valley, Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows and others. The startup recently raised $1.3 million in funding from First Round Capital and others, bringing its total raise to nearly $3 million. Seriously, though, what’s with the app title? App Store SEO?

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Ski Lift Ticket Retailer Liftopia Goes Live On iPhone

Family safety startup Life360 , which makes a freemium mobile security app by the same name, is today announcing it has secured $3.5 million in Series A funding. The round included investment from Fontinalis Partners, Kapor Capital, 500 Startups, Bessemer Venture Partners, Venture51, Bullpen Capital, Social Leverage and Eghosa Omoigui’s EchoVC Partners, as well as existing investors LaunchCapital, Seraph Group and Mark Goines. The latest investment brings the company’s total funding to $5 million. The company says it will use the new funding to move into other verticals, including cars and homes. For those unfamiliar with Life360 , the app provides a number of features targeted towards families, including family locator services, private “check-ins,” alerts, neighborhood safety notices, identify protection, and more. Some of the features are available for free, while others are available for the app’s premium subscribers. The move to freemium caused a big uptick in growth , as Jason Kincaid reported back in January. At the time, the company was nearing 1 million signups. Now it has over 10 million. With the additional investment, the company says it’s expanding its focus beyond mobile, with plans to automatically link vehicles and homes to the service, without requiring additional hardware. This would allow users to enable vehicle tracking and home monitoring features which would be accessible via their mobile phone. Currently, Life360 is available on the Android and iPhone platforms, but is listed as “coming soon” to both Windows Phone and BlackBerry. You can grab a copy for yourself from here .

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Life360′s Family Safety App Grabs $3.5 Million Series A

Well, there we have it. After weeks of deliberation, HP CEO Meg Whitman has just announced to all of the company’s employees that HP will make webOS’s underlying code available under an open-source license. Before I go any further, I’d like to take this chance to applaud HP on making the right decision: they managed to make some lemonade after all. According to a company-wide email from Whitman, making webOS open source “is the best way to ensure the benefits of webOS are accessible to the largest possible ecosystem.” A new release from the company goes into slightly more detail: HP will help “accelerate the open development of the webOS platform,” and “will be an active participant and investor in the project.” The rest is up to webOS developers, who are now able to pick up where the personal computing giant left off. While the news will certainly be welcomed by webOS enthusiasts (myself included), let’s not forget that HP sunk over $3 billion dollars into the webOS experiment before ultimately giving it away for free. Still, I’m sure HP has picked up some much-needed brownie points from webOS users whose devices have suddenly been given a new lease on life. Of course, with that shift toward open source, drastic changes will almost definitely be made to the company’s existing webOS team. AllThingsD reports that no official word has yet been handed down about staff rearrangements, but webOS’s smaller role in the company’s future means less manpower will be devoted to it. Meanwhile, HP has remained quiet on the hardware front. After former CEO Leo Apotheker give standalone webOS hardware the axe, it was widely rumored that HP would find a home for the wayward operating system on their scores of printers. It’ll be interesting to see if the landscape shifts now that third-party hardware vendors have access to yet another open source OS, but for now we can rest assured that webOS will indeed live on in one form or another. And hey, now you should feel a bit more comfortable about picking up some of the $99 TouchPads HP is throwing on eBay this Sunday — they should have a bright future after all.

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HP To Keep webOS Alive By Making It Open Source

Just as consumers are adopting smartphones (to the tune of 84 million in the U.S. ) and tablets at a breakneck pace, an increasing number of clinicians, healthcare administrators and staff are using mobile devices to manage patient care, communicate within the workplace, and carry out their day to day work. Nearly 80 percent of physicians will adopt smartphones by 2012. Consumers interact with and use app stores on a daily basis, and there are a growing number of consumer-facing healthtech services that offer a variety of health services, as people become more interested in using web and mobil services that help them stay in shape and get fit. So, as the centers of healthcare, and arguably with serious demand, why can’t hospitals take advantage? Across the board, hospitals want to offer applications for their doctors and employees to use, but not all of the apps they want to offer are consumer, or even patient, focused. Hospitals and most other care facilities are enterprises, their use case doesn’t fall under healthcare categories of traditional app stores, there is a lot of sensitive and private data within their walls, so they want secure and custom deployment of their apps. This is no easy task. This is where Happtique comes in. Happtique is a mobile app store developed by healthcare professionals for hospitals and other healthcare professionals. The startup offers enterprises like hospitals, continuing care facilities, and physician practices, the ability to create individually branded and secure app stores that support apps for both patients and employees. Happtique has previously partnered with HealthSaaS , the maker of cloud-based healthtech solutions, to create a custom catalog of mobile health apps, designed to connect patients to their healthcare organizations and physicians through their mobile phones — all via a secure network. (And AppCentral runs the backend .) The health app catalog basically offers a suite of mobile apps for patients and providers that will eventually (this is still in the works, but you can see the intended use case) allow patients to remotely monitor their health and continue treatment off-site. The solution will enable patients to upload medical documents requested by physicians into a secure portal (which healthcare organizations and hospitals can customize, i.e. it’s white label), as well as the option to integrate this into their electronic health records. The solution will be platform agnostic, which means that patients will be able to access this via the majority of their mobile devices, as well as giving both healthcare providers the ability to be more proactive in managing care and further bring patients into the center of the treatment process, rather than having treatment and care be a one-and-done process that only happens on-site. HealthSaaS provides the custom apps, while Happtique provides the ability for healthcare providers to manage and control deployment of certain apps to their patients. As part of its beta trial, Happtique has offered a number of East Coast medical institutions their own branded, private mobile app stores, including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Beth Israel Medical Center. Across the board, the medical institutions Happtique is working with have either developed their own mobile apps or are in the process of developing their own apps, which is reflection of where hospitals are today, said Cory Ackerman, President of Happtique. Happtique can help with development of apps, or for those hospitals and facilities that have already been creating their own, Healthcare they can then use these new, custom app stores provided by Happtique to offer apps to their patients and employees. While the intent is to be platform agnostic, initial focus has been on Android and iOS, with expansion to other mobile platforms coming in the near future. In the broad picture, there are over 23,000 mobile health apps available for iOS and Android, but for doctors and hospital administrators, there really hasn’t been an easy way to recommend and effectively categorize apps. Happtique’s team of healthcare pros curates their app store, rating and categorizing apps in a way that’s akin to a medical library, rather than the traditional consumer-focused store. So the solution was created to both organize the mobile healthcare app library, and to make that a customizable platform so that hospitals, doctors offices, etc can each have a unified solution across their devices. While doctors may want to use some of the awesome consumer-facing health apps publicly available today, each hospital has its own legacy system and infrastructure it uses internally to push and circulate records, patient data, treatment information, and so on. They want to have all this information on their devices, as they move around the hospital, but they want that info to be private and secure within a hospital’s already existing data silos. Again, this is tough to do, especially for a platform trying to be a one-sized-fits-all solution with white label customization, but that’s where Happtique is going. And boy are we glad they are going there. These represent some big, big problems facing the healthcare industry, and as Happtique rolls out the ability for doctors and hospitals to prescribe apps to patients, let post-transplant patients, say, interact with an app that walks them through post-treatment rehab on their iPad — well, you can see the value. Happtique is currently in the process of raising a round of venture investment. For more, check them out at home here .

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Happtique Brings Secure, Branded App Stores To Hospitals And Healthcare

Japanese mobile social gaming giant and Openfeint owner GREE has outlined today its previously announced plan to launch a mobile social gaming network for the global market next year. Details are (relatively) scarce at this point, but the publicly traded company (current market cap: US$7.5 billion) seems to be serious in positioning itself against Facebook Mobile as a gaming platform for smartphones. In the press release, the word “Openfeint” not even appears once. Instead, GREE aims at launching a unified gaming platform that knows no borders: new users and the existing 155 million players on GREE in Japan and Openfeint worldwide will be able to use a single-sign on to register and play together. There will also be a payment system for virtual goods that works internationally and a “a series of robust out-of-network cross promotional opportunities” plus analytics tools for game developers on iOS and Android. GREE is planning to launch the global gaming platform sometime between April and June 2012. In the end, GREE’s vision is to have 1 billion players on their platform (you read that right). The initial game line-up was unveiled at GREE’s portal for developers today, and includes titles from the company itself (as first-party titles), Capcom, Konami, Sega, Taito, and Square Enix. Here are screenshots for Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution , GREE’s RPG doliland , and GREE’s fantasy strategy game Dragon Ark (from top to bottom): The company is set to go head-to-head not only with Facebook Mobile, but also ngmoco owner DeNA (which has already launched Mobage in English for smartphones ), and similar services like Heyzap , Gamewave from Japanese company CyberAgent , Apple’s Gamecenter, and others. GREE has opened an office in San Francisco in January this year ( GREE International ) and either opened or is planning to open presences in Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, London, Amsterdam, Dubai and Sao Paolo. The company is on track to generate up to US$$1.8 billion in revenue and US$900 million in profit this fiscal: almost entirely in Japan, only with social games, and only on cell phones. GREE CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka was a speaker at the TechCrunch Tokyo 2011 conference just last week. You can watch Erick Schonfeld’s interview in Tokyo with him here and dive into Erick’s comparison of GREE and Zynga here .

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Japan’s GREE To Challenge Facebook And Zynga As Global Social Gaming Platform In 2012

Today, the new multi-player gaming service Nextpeer is exiting its private beta period and is now available for all iOS developers to try. With the company’s software development kit (SDK), game developers can easily turn their single player games into social, real-time, multi-player tournaments where users compete against each other for top scores, achievements and virtual gold. For those unfamiliar with Nextpeer, the service provides a way  for mobile developers to upgrade their single player games to multi-player, just by dropping in the SDK . A Nextpeer-enabled game’s users can face off against in each other by competing for the best score during a timed tournament. During the tournament, gamers aren’t playing alongside each other in the sense that their characters are sharing screen time – they simply play the game as usual. Meanwhile, they’re also receiving updates as to their status versus the others in the tournament. (e.g. “Hurry up! You’re in 3rd place!” ) This gives what had previously been a standalone game a sense of real-time action and excitement, and that can make the game more engaging and addictive. Since its private beta launch in August, Nextpeer has signed up 250 developers and is now in the process of integrating its SDK into around 40 games. There are currently over half a dozen games available in the iTunes App Store featuring Nextpeer, including Chicken Rain , Word Flow , Slot Machine+ , Hurry Honey! , Hold It Up , Pingo , and Castor Man , to name a few. The company says it’s on track to continue launching around 1 to 2 games per week going forward. To date, Nextpeer users have played over 25,000 tournaments, says CEO Shai Magzimof. But what’s even better is the retention rate - 30% of the users go back to play again after 3 + days. And 10% of Nextpeer users take advantage of the in-game feature that allows them to discover and download additional games which offer Nextpeer tournaments. Users tend to average around 5 tournaments each, says Magzimof. For now, there is no cost to integrate the Nextpeer SDK into a game, but Nextpeer does participate in revenue-sharing with those who allow users to place “bets” on games using the virtual gold. This split can vary depending on the game, but is around 50/50. Buying more coins via in-app purchases is not yet available, but is arriving soon. For now, there are other ways to earn currency (beyond the initial amount all players get), like daily bonuses, and, of course, winning. Also on the way is support for push notifications, which will allow users to invite friends to play with them in real-time. The Facebook integration will improved, too, so gamers can invite their Facebook friends to join them. Below is a video showing the process of integrating Nextpeer into an app. From start to finish, it takes just 15 minutes: Those interested in integrating Nextpeer into their own apps can grab the SDK from here .

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Nextpeer’s Public Launch Brings Live Multi-Player Tournaments To Any Game

Every once in a while, a pitch hits our collective TechCrunch inbox that is equally ridiculous and intriguing. In a situation like that — one full of hilarity and intrigue — how can we not post it? That said, I really don’t know what’s going on over at iRobot, as the makers of the very popular robotic vacuum, the Roomba , have decided to branch way, way out there and create an iOS app called Roomba Revenge. A few things worth noting before I continue: The app has absolutely nothing to do with the functionality of your Roomba. The app is a game, which has absolutely nothing to do with iRobot. And… The app is a game about cleaning. Well, vacuuming up dust bunnies if we’re getting really specific. Obviously the ridiculous part of this pitch has made itself clear. But why is this intriguing you may ask? Well, I can’t seem to stop myself from wondering why iRobot would do this? Why, iRobot? Why?! The pitch may have a few answers: “No, iRobot isn’t becoming a gaming company,” writes media rep Jennifer Kohanim. “They did this just because having fun and making cool stuff is part of their DNA. In fact, the idea for a game featuring the world-famous robot was born via a casual text-message conversation between two iRobot employees.” Here’s how the app works: You’re in a dirty room. You control the Roomba and your goal is to clean up the floor. If the floor isn’t clean before the time runs out on the clock, you lose. Yeah, it’s pretty simple. Roomba Revenage is available now for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch in the Apple App Store for $0.99 .

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iRobot, Makers Of The Roomba, Launch An iOS Game?