Well, it’s done. This:

Becomes this:

This feature is available only on the iPhone right now, but we’ll be moving it to the .mobi, BlackBerry and Android versions soon.

When this setting is turned “on”, the application will only download data updates when the user is connected to a WiFi network. This isn’t so important for domestic visitors, but international visitors will appreciate being able to keep their roaming charges down. By default, the app ships with this option off but we can selectively turn this on for any destination.

This feature is only available on the iPhone version, but we’ll be moving it to the Android and iPad applications soon.

Blogger asymco did a little calculating from last week’s announcement numbers, and has hammered out a rough estimate of just how many of each iDevice are floating around the world today. According to Steve at last week’s event, there are 120 million iDevices total in the world, and we already knew from SEC filings that 59.6 million of those were iPhones. The current number of iPads in the hands of customers around world is 3.2 million, which (with estimates for the past month on both of those devices added in), means that there are likely 45.2 million iPod touches around. That’s 37.7% of iOS devices at large — not as big as it used to be, as the iPad’s arrival shook things up a bit, but still a very significant total.

Your apps need to work without a network connection, or you’re missing almost 40% of the iOS handheld market.

• there’s now 45 million smartphone users in the US, up 21% in the last 3 months
• Google/Android is the big winner, having over doubled its market share to 9% over the last quarter
• RIM and Apple hold stead in terms of share, meaning their absolute numbers are still growing
• Microsoft and Palm are the big losers, and are likely to continue to do so

Discover Anywhere Mobile notes:

• the rapid adoption rate of smartphones is a sign that many people are choosing to replace their cell phones with something more modern: expect smartphones to dominate the market in the next 2 to 3 years
• we expect Apple to start growing market share again after they release a version that does not depend on the AT&T network
• Palm blew it
• Microsoft will make a recovery next year after Windows Mobile 7 becomes available, but not until its share drops to Palm-like numbers

The latest AdMob numbers tell the story:

AdMob serves north of 10 billion ads per month to more than 15,000 mobile websites and applications. Thus, although its data is about ad rather than page impressions, it can be taken as a pretty robust indicator of how web usage habits are developing and changing over time. Android is the big standout of its most recent figures, with Google loyalists now constituting a cool 42 percent of AdMob’s smartphone audience in the US.

Given the trend lines, the Android’s probably in the #1 position by now and is likely to maintain it, at least until Apple introduces a version of the iPhone that’s not dependent on the somewhat flaky AT&T cellular network.

Here are the key advantages of developing an app:

• Immediacy – except for exceptionally-well developed websites, there is often a several second lag between doing an action on a mobile phone and seeing a result come back over the mobile network. Apps are immediate: when one does something, you see the results instantly. Immediacy leads to a different type of interaction between the user and the device, more playful, more experimental and fundamentally deeper.
• Offline Use – apps don’t depend on a network connection, which means they work in airplanes, in below-ground floors of buildings, in tunnels and (especially) they work on iPod Touches which comprise nearly half the iPhone device market.
• Gizmos – your app can access your device’s camera, compass, GPS, touch screen, motion sensor, and so forth. Mobile sites, not so much.
• Privileged space – people who own devices that can run apps, run apps. The first place they’re going to look for information is their apps which are given a “privileged” place on the screen of the user’s mobile phones. Your mobile app is just another website, that they may or may not get to when they use their browser.

We’ll also briefly mention here that most “mobile optimized” websites rarely are: they don’t work with the user’s location, they don’t design for limited bandwidth and high latency network connections, they’re not tested against a range of devices, and they rarely provide the right amount of information in the right way. In short, the user experience is awful.

Related reading:

• Five Reasons Mobile Apps Rule
• Mobile apps: Cemented into your business’s tech strategy?
• Mobile apps: Does your business need one?

It is very important for DMOs and CVBs to realize the implications of this.

Many iPhone app companies are just traditional web developers offering what are called “wrapped apps”. A wrapped app looks – more or less – like an iPhone app, except it’s really just a shell of an application connecting to a web server over the Internet. This means that if your visitor is not connected to the Internet, they can’t use your app! And when they can connect to the Internet, there’s still very little immediacy – things take seconds to happen, rather than the instant touch-response cycle people expect from great apps.

Not only does this affect all iPod Touch users, it is also detrimental to any iPhone-using foreign visitor who will be paying very high data rates to connect to the web over the cell network. If they can’t use your app, or don’t want to use your app because it’s costing them a lot of money, they’re not going to get that great experience they’re looking for in your destination from your app.

How would using a wrapped app affect your DMO? The numbers follow…

From The Apple Blog, iPod touch Now Outselling iPhone:

At the iPad event, Steve Jobs announced 75 million iPhone OS devices had been sold to date, though whether that date was January 27 or January 1 is not known. It won’t matter either way, but let’s assume the latter. Through 2009, Apple sold 42.517 million iPhones. Subtract that number from 75 million iPhone OS devices and we get 32.483 million iPod touches.

If you’re still awake, here’s the bottom line: the rate of sales growth of the iPod touch is very likely greater than the table shows, as in double that of the iPhone. True, the period includes the holiday quarter, the best quarter for iPods, but it just doesn’t matter. The iPod touch, the stealth device for iPhone OS, will be the best-selling model for the platform in 2010, if it isn’t already, and it is.

To reiterate: there are about 32 million iPod Touches out there and a wrapped app won’t reach them when they need it most: in your destination.

From AdMob January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report:

iPod Touch users download an average of 12 apps a month, 37% more apps than iPhone and Android users.

The bottom line from the AdMob report? iPod Touch users love to use apps – but you have to make sure that they can use yours! A wrapped app – an app that depends on being connected to the Internet – does not allow them to do this.

Discover Anywhere Mobile produces native iPhone apps. All the essential data your visitors need is stored right in their iPhone / iPod Touch. This means that whether or not they’re connected to the Internet, they’re going to be able to find the things they’re looking for – and that’s why your DMO/CVB created the app in the first place, right?

All images taken from original blog posts.

Top Five Converged Mobile Device Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q4 2009 (Units in Millions)

Vendor	4Q09 Unit Shipments	4Q09 Market Share	4Q08 Unit Shipments	4Q08 Market Share	4Q09/4Q08 Growth
1. Nokia	20.8	38.2%	15.1	38.5%	37.7%
2. Research In Motion	10.7	19.6%	7.6	19.4%	40.8%
3. Apple	8.7	16.0%	4.4	11.2%	97.7%
4. Motorola	2.5	4.6%	1.6	4.1%	56.3%
5. HTC	2.4	4.4%	2.2	5.6%	9.1%
Others	9.4	17.2%	8.3	21.2%	13.3%
Total	54.5	100.0%	39.2	100.0%	39.0

Top Five Converged Mobile Device Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, 2009 (Units in Millions)

Vendor	2009 Unit Shipments	2009 Market Share	2008 Unit Shipments	2008 Market Share	2009/2008 Change
1. Nokia	67.7	38.9%	60.5	40.0%	11.9%
2. Research In Motion	34.5	19.8%	23.6	15.6%	46.2%
3. Apple	25.1	14.4%	13.8	9.1%	81.9%
4. HTC	8.1	4.6%	7.5	5.0%	8.0%
5. Samsung	5.7	3.3%	5.4	3.6%	5.6%
Others	33.1	19.0%	40.6	26.8%	-18.5%
Total	174.2	100.0%	151.4	100.0%	15.1%

Via MacRumors.

If you’re interested in finding out more about what DAM does, have a look around the website and give us a call for a demo. We have the first, the most compelling and the best priced mobile solution for getting CVB/DMOs mobile in the market.