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Last week was a huge week with respect to mobile news and buzz, primarily driven by the impending launch of the iPad on April 3rd. Of course we’ll get to some of the iPad coverage, but there were some other interesting stories that deserve a quick mention as well.

Mobile Consumers are Willing to Pay

Facebook-based app store Mplayit recently conducted a survey of 64,000 Facebook users. The findings reveal that mobile users are willing to pay for mobile apps, suggesting that if developers are making good applications, they shouldn’t be afraid to charge for them. At the end of the day though, with so many applications in the App store, how do consumers determine which apps are good, and by extension worth paying for, and which ones are not.

Overall, the survey suggests that users of the iPhone are more likely to considering purchasing applications than other mobile users (BlackBerry and Android). It remains to be seen how this will play out long-term. A large part of the reason that iPhone users may be more willing to pay, is because there are simply more apps available, both paid and free. As BlackBerry and Android apps grow in numbers, perhaps there will be more willingness on the part of owners of those phones to participate through purchase.

Pay For Your Coffee With An App

Starbucks has expanded their mobile payment application pilot to include over 1,000 stores. At the participating locations, Starbucks customers with an iPhone or iPod touch can simply flash their device (loaded with the Starbucks payment app) showing a barcode that can be read at the counter and accepted as payment. The app is linked to the customer’s Starbucks card which can be reloaded online using a credit card. The pilot started last September with just 16 stores and clearly Starbucks has been happy with the results. Certainly if progress continues, we’ll see this service offered at all Starbucks locations and expanding to other platforms as well.

This sort of convenient purchasing option is great, but it does come with a risk. When you start to picture the opportunity for users to start using their phone for payment, using it as a digital wallet, the potential for theft increases as well. Will you be adding your credit card profiles to your phone in order to eliminate the need to carry around physical plastic cards?

Justin.TV Downloaded Over 350,000 Times

For anyone looking for confirmation that mobile apps can still rack up downloads, despite the huge number of apps available, last week provided a great example. Justin.tv for the iPhone launched a couple of weeks ago and the company stated that in the first week the app was downloaded 355,000 times. This just goes to show that if you’ve got a great app, you can make it big, of course getting onto the front page of the App Store certainly helps.

iPads, iPads, Everywhere

The interwebs are abuzz with news stories about the iPad and the excitement all came to a head when the iPad was finally released on Saturday April 3rd. Analyst predictions were that launch sales of the device would amount to 600,000 to 700,000 units, considerably higher than the numbers seen for the release of the original iPhone, which only saw launch sales of 270,000.

With the launch of the device came iPad specific apps available in the App Store. Within a day of the launch, the numbers showed that there were in excess of 3,000 apps for the iPad already available, of which 20% were free and the rest were paid apps. Included in the releases were several high profile media apps, including one from NPR and The Wall Street Journal.

Interestingly, pricing of iPad apps is higher on average than the price of the corresponding apps for iPhone. In some cases, the prices are as much as three times higher. Developers have suggested that this is due to the additional development work required to put together the apps and make them function well on the larger screen. It is quite possible that pricing will decline over time, depending on the volume of actual iPads sold.

Certainly the iPad will continue to be a buzz topic for the next little while, and depending on it’s success, we may start to see the rise of tablets in earnest.

That’s It, That’s All

Another week, another post, a bit more coverage of the mobile news. There really is a tremendous amount of information out there and I’m just one guy. The stories I find and have time to read are among thousands of others, what did I miss? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the mobile space. Connect with me through twitter, or check out the Appboy blog and provide feedback to us there. If you haven’t registered for Appboy yet, check that out as well.

Till next week.

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