Instagram goes the Facebook way

It’s been few hours since the news of Facebook buying Instagram, the much loved photo sharing app broke out. Instagram has around 27mn users on iOS and its android launch was also quite successful with a 1 million downloads within few hours of its launch.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook first came out with the news on his page.

“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

Sharing photos has been a popular activity on Facebook with people sharing photos of their family and friends. Instagram will continue to function independently and will not be integrated to Facebook as of now. However, its team will join Facebook, and you can expect more wonderful things to come from their complementing skills.

“We need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook. That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.”

Speculation is ripe on what new features might be coming from this combination. According to Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram in a blog post:

“It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away…We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience…You’ll still have all the same people you follow and that follow you. You’ll still be able to share to other social networks. And you’ll still have all the other features that make the app so fun and unique.”

What do you expect from the combination of Facebook and Instagram? Tell us your thoughts.

This post by me was first published on the ODigMa blog

Google’s Android touches 700,000 activations every day

Android

The interest in Android based mobile phones and tablets has been growing and according to a recent update by Google’s mobile chief Andy Robin, there are now 700,000 daily activations on the platform each day. The update was made on Google+, a social network launched by Google in July 2011.

The hike is explosive growth for Google promoted operating system which was pegged at 550,000 devices by Google chairman Eric Schmidt at a Le Web conference held in Paris two week back.

In his public update on Google+ Andy further mentioned that “…and for those wondering, we count each device only once (i.e. we don’t count re-sold devices), and “activations” means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service.”

According to http://www.9to5google.com, a web resource on Google, “to put it in perspective, 700,000 devices a day is almost 5 million every week, or 21 million a month, or over a mind-boggling 250 million a year.”  These figures play a fast catch up to Apple’s iPhone which sold 4mn iPhone 4S within the first week of its launch.

It should be noted here that Apple’s generates bulk of its revenue through the sale of iPhones and ipad leading to iOS activations. However, Android is installed on various mobile and tablet devices through various vendors like HTC and Samsung reaching low cost emerging markets selling products at a cheaper rate compared to Apple’s iOS enabled services.

Google has been aggressively promoting Android and trying to fill in the void left after its mentor Steve Job’s demise. Andy Robin during a AsiaD conference held last week had remarked, “…the DNA in the people walking the halls at Apple is a very powerful combination of the arts and computer science, and I don’t think that’s changed with Steve’s passing. That combination of creativity and computer science, it’s still there. Apple will certainly miss Steve’s leadership, but now it’s time for the other guys to step up.”

Experts on the blogosphere believe that if Android is able to sustain the growth rate then daily activations by the end of next year could touch 2.5 million a day, amounting to at least 900 million activations a day. However, Google may not be making much money out of Android activations as they are routed through third party vendors, meanwhile Apple makes a healthy margin of more than 30% on its activations and sales.

This article of mine was originally published in Daily Post. You can also access it here

Related articles

• Android is not a copy of iPhone: Schmidt (socialmediaalley.wordpress.com)

Android is not a copy of iPhone: Schmidt

Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman did some straight talk during the Le Web conference held at Paris earlier this week. In conversation with Loïc Le Meur, founder of Seesmic, he made some startling predictions.

Addressing the issue of Google TV he said, “By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see will have Google TV embedded in it. A similar strategy to what we did with Android. The price is free from Google, so you are only paying for the television.”

Not shying from being aggressive and in sync with Google’s much loved Android platform Eric said, “Android is ahead of the iPhone now… based on unit volume, price is lower, more vendors, it’s free. ”

The friction between Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS has been legendary. Steve Jobs the CEO of Apple who recently passed away is said to have strong contempt for the Android which he considered as a ‘stolen product.’ Though Eric made it clear that he doesn’t feel the same and strongly disputed the claim that Android is a copy of iPhone. “Android was founded before iPhone,” he said.

This would not have been music to Steve Jobs’s ears, who in his biography written by Walter Isaacson through a series of exclusive interviews and released shortly after his demise expressed contempt for Android.

The book had quoted Jobs, “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.” During a meeting between Schmidt and Jobs, the latter is said to have told Schmidt, “I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.”

No doubt Google has been aggressively working towards ‘social, local and mobile’ features to make Android a market leader. “We spend time in the social world, mobile first is almost the answer to every question with best engineering going to mobile apps.. and we live in a local context,” Eric said at Le Web.  “The internet revolution is creating more jobs, its creating new markets for existing businesses. The government has to make sure that the citizens get access to broadband,” Eric added.

While discussing other issues Eric talked about the role of  technology and how it has come to the aid of masses and played its part in the Arab revolution referring to Egypt in particular he said, “It is much easier now to start a revolution, it’s harder to finish it… its easy now to mobilise a society but that does not produce the leader to replace the current leader.”

Le web brings together the most influential audience in the Internet ecosystem with 2500 entrepreneurs, leaders, investors, bloggers, and journalists engaging in conversations. The full length of the video hosted on Le Web’s YouTube channel can be accessed below

Above is the full version of my article on Eric Scmidt’s interview at Le Web 2011, originally published at Daily Post. You can also read it here

Related articles

• News: Google’s Schmidt claims Android ‘ahead’ of iPhone (ilounge.com)
• Eric Schmidt’s Le Web Keynote Video: “Android is Ahead Of The iPhone” (techcrunch.com)
• Android is beating iPhone, says Schmidt (techradar.com)
• Google’s Schmidt claims Android is beating iPhone (zdnet.com)
• Eric Schmidt thinks developer preference for iOS over Android will wane in 6 months (edibleapple.com)