The classic BlackBerry OS distribution has gone largely unchanged over the past month with OS 7 still having less then half of the overall market share.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of February 2013 through the end of February 2014, and does not include BlackBerry 10 or PlayBook devices.
The month of February showed the majority of BlackBerry 10 users running the newest release of the operating system. As has historically been the trend, users of the Stuff I Need app have been quicker to upgrade than users of Pixelated.
The Stuff I Need checklist app saw 76.7% its downloads from users on OS 10.2.1 which means that it has already caught up to where 10.2.0 was just two months ago. Pixelated users were a bit less likely to upgrade, with only 57.3% of users on the newest OS. Still the upgrade cycle is encouraging as after just one month BlackBerry 10.2.1 has gotten an adoption rate that is better than what BlackBerry 7 has managed to get in two and a half years.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of February 2013 through the end of February 2014.
I came across an early sketch for the design of the Liar’s Dice app. While there have been a few changes, you can see that the original idea mostly held true over the years.
Nokia has just announced their new X line of phones that run a skinned version of Android. In their announcement, Nokia boasted that 75% of existing Android apps were already compatible. However, instead of being impressed, my gut instinct was that the number seemed rather low…
A run through the compatibility checker confirmed my fears. Of the five android apps I am currently selling through Google Play, only one had no compatibility issues. Most of the problems with the apps centered around support for in-app billing (there are also issues with supporting any mapping APIs). While the tool regards this as a minor issue, the ability to make money from apps is kind of important (and due to my use of the AIR framework also tricky to fix).
The billing API is mostly a drop-in replacement for Google’s, but I feel that it would be easier if Nokia took a page from BlackBerry’s book and allowed the apps to integrate with its store without any code changes at all. Amazon does a similar thing to Nokia in forcing developers to rework their apps, but in exchange at least promises a unique and sizable market. Meanwhile, Nokia’s X phones live under the threat of being axed by Microsoft before we even reach summer.
The Mileage Tracker app has been updated to version 1.6 in BlackBerry World. This update allows you to import data from previously exported .csv data, includes a redesigned menu for switching between different categories, and also includes a reduction in the overall install size of the application.
Mileage tracker is a free app designed to help you track the miles you drive on each trip, so that you can use this information for tax deductions, accounting, or employee reimbursements. Instead of keeping this information charted on your computer, it makes much more sense to be able to track this directly on your phone, which you normally would have with you in the car already.
Trips can be grouped into categories, and edited (or deleted) at a later date. Following a one time in-app payment, you can also export your data into an Excel compatible .csv format and a pretty (and sortable) .html format.
This past weekend, Xploding Boxes celebrated its third Birthday.
The game has grown dramatically over the past three years, from a start of 100 levels to the 420 different levels that the game has today. On BlackBerry World the game has 1886 reviews and is averaging four out of five stars. Additionally, while the original version of the game only supported BlackBerry OS, the game has since been rewritten in order to also support the BlackBerry PlayBook, BlackBerry 10, Android, Kindle, Nook, and Windows 8.
Ebscer games starting applying for ESRB ratings a month ago, and all games have now been rated.
Games rated E for Everyone include:
Games rated T for Teen include:
Liar’s Dice received this stricter rating for including “Simulated Gambling”.
Stats from netmarketshare.com and other web statistics sites are showing very low upgrade rates for Windows 8.1 with roughly two out of three users staying on OS 8.0 instead.
With only 37.3% of users upgrading to the newest version of Windows 8, the question is why? Version 8.1 is a free upgrade, and is not subject to the carrier approvals that typically cause issues with upgrade rates. There is an understanding on why users may want to stick with Windows 7, but for those already on 8 there is no reason to not want to upgrade to 8.1 instead.
The culprit may be the manner in which Microsoft is pushing the update. Instead of making the upgrade available through Windows update (as they have traditionally done with service packs), the upgrade to 8.1 must be downloaded from the Windows app store. This process is actually very smooth, but the suspicion is that users simply are not checking the store often enough to notice the upgrade.
A look at the January downloads for the free Stuff I Need app shows that the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom together make up 53.8% of users.
In total, downloads came from 138 different countries, with Germany making a surprising showing at 5.4% of the market. India also does better than expected with the 7th largest number of users despite not being a traditional BlackBerry market.
Just one year into the launch of BlackBerry 10, and users have shown themselves to be rather quick to upgrade to new versions of the OS. While the wireless carriers have interfered with BlackBerry’s ability to get out the newest versions of the operating system to everyone, even the United States seems to have gotten on-board with OS 10.2.1 so expectations are high for next month.
While the day following the launch of 10.2.1 showed 66.61% of users on the newest OS, this came too late in the month to have much of an impact on the overall numbers for January. Growth of newer OS versions was overall steady, but slow. February is expected to be much better as there are now no carriers pretending that OS 10.1 is the newest release.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of February 2013 through the end of January 2014.
Twinkle has been updated to version 5.3 in BlackBerry World for all BlackBerry 10 phones. In addition to a few optimizations, this new version also allows Twinkle to act as a share target for calendar events from other applications including the built-in calendar app.
Twinkle is an app that allows you to set and keep track of upcoming and past events. Twinkle will tell you how far away an event is, and share it with a friends through social networks. The app includes an number of options for sorting or filtering your views in order to allow you to easily be able to manage and share a large number of different events.
In order to send an event to Twinkle from the native calendar app, just open the event and then select the ‘Share’ option from the menu. This will give you a list of applications (including Twinkle) that you can share the event to. Twinkle will then pre-populate the fields as if you were to manually create a new event.
The BlackBerry game 10,000 Farkle has been updated to version 2.3 in BlackBerry World. This new version offers a number of optimizations that makes the app faster, and also reduces the overall install size of the app by over 26 percent. Additionally, this update to the game also includes a swipe-down menu in order to give you another way to access some of the game’s advanced features.
Farkle gives you six dice to roll and awards points for a straight, three pairs or three or more of the same number. Fewer points ares also awarded for each individual 1 and 5. Any dice that do not score can be re-rolled for additional points. If all 6 dice can be scored, then all of the dice can be re-rolled on the same turn.
The skill in this game comes from knowing how far to push your luck, and which scoring combinations to take, and when to re-roll.
The default game mode gives you 10 turns to score as many points as you can. The 10,000 point mode gives you unlimited turns to reach 10,000 points. The two competitive game modes both use the traditional format of racing to 10,000 points.
While BlackBerry 10 users have been quick to upgrade, the demographics of the older BBOS are mostly unchanged over the past month. OS 5.0 was first released in 2009, and still claims a decent percentage of the market share. With the release of OS 7.0 coming in 2011, even this version has been around for awhile, but has yet to even capture 50% of the market.
This data was collected by BlackBerry World for downloads of the free BlackBerry strategy game Pixelated. Data shown on the chart is from the beginning of January 2013 through the end of January 2014, and does not include BlackBerry 10 or PlayBook devices.
BlackBerry officially released OS 10.2.1 this past Tuesday, and despite a few wireless carriers blocking the update for their users, the majority of users who downloaded my apps on Wednesday were already running the newest version of the OS. Taking the average from users of Pixelated and the Stuff I Need apps shows 66.61% of users on the newest OS just a day after it officially launched.
Statistics were collected by BlackBerry World for downloads on January 29th of the free strategy game Pixelated and the free checklist app Stuff I Need. Because this is a snapshot of just a single day, the overall sample size is significantly smaller than for most of the statistics that are posted on this site.
An update to Xploding Boxes has increased the total number of levels to 420. This update also brings some tweaks to the swipe down menu on BlackBerry 10 devices, and a smaller install size for the Windows 8, Nook, and PlayBook versions of the app.
Additionally, Xploding Boxes has received its official ESRB rating, and is rated E for everyone.
Xploding Boxes is a strategy game for BlackBerry, Android, Nook, Windows 8, and BlackBerry 10 where the goal of the game is to start a chain reaction that will explode all of the boxes on the screen. Each level gives you a different number of touches, and requires a different strategy to solve.
The game itself, and the first 25 levels are available for free, while a one time in-app purchase can be used to access the rest of the levels for just $2.99 while maintaining your progress from the free levels.
|  |
 |  |