Medialets

Apple has made claims that the iPhone OS 3.0 yields significant performance gains on the 3G model, and that the new 3GS can accomplish the same tasks up to twice as fast as its predecessors. Anecdotally, the new 3GS definitely “feels” faster under certain conditions. But how do Apple’s devices and OS versions really compare to one another? And perhaps of even greater interest, how does the latest hardware from Cupertino compare to smart phones recently released from other vendors?

“Objavectaweb-C” OS?

One of the key challenges in conducting an objective evaluation of software performance across devices that utilize different operating systems lies in accounting for the fundamental differences in the various OSs. While the iPhone 3G and 3GS could potentially run the same app on the same Objective-C-based operating system (making direct comparisons relatively straightforward), Android apps are Java-based, and the Palm Pre runs the entirely new Web OS. Given these divergent OS implementations, is there anything that come close to a standard unit of measure for judging performance of this growing breed of “superphones?”

Finding Common Ground

The common thread between these three OS’s is JavaScript execution in WebKit—the open source project that, in varying degrees, powers web browsing technology for these three disparate operating systems. With the exception of certain browser plugins (e.g., Flash), web rendering technology installed on today’s premiere mobile devices makes almost all—and in some cases even more—features of their ubiquitous desktop web browser counterparts available. Therefore, given the global commonality of JavaScript and WebKit-based web browsers, it becomes possible to compare the performance of these “pocket computers that make phone calls” to the performance of desktop machines.

The Yardstick

The WebKit Open Source Project provides a JavaScript test Suite dubbed SunSpider. According to the description on the SunSpider home page, “this benchmark tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs. It is designed to compare different versions of the same browser, and different browsers to each other.” We at Medialets have found it to be one of the best attempts to measure real world JavaScript performance in a balanced and statistically sound way.

Medialets ran the SunSpider test suite in the following environments:

1. Safari 4.0.1 on a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo White MacBook.
   The MacBook results were used as a baseline for relative comparisons.
2. Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3G with iPhone OS v2.2.1
3. Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3G with iPhone OS v3.0
4. Mobile Safari on the iPhone 3GS with iPhone OS v3.0
5. The “Browser” app on the T-Mobile G1 with Android OS v1.5 (Cupcake)
6. The “Web” app on the Palm Pre with Web OS v1.0.2

Each device was fully restored and rebooted immediately before running the test suite. Every attempt was made to assure that no atypical background tasks were executing while the tests were running. The SunSpider tests automatically run five times sequentially and the mean average from all five tests are reported. Network speed and latency have no effect on the results of the test.

Results

The results of the iPhone-based tests alone are rather astonishing and seem to indicate that many of Apple’s claims about the performance gains of their 3.0 OS and the iPhone 3GS may hold some water. Using OS 3.0 on the same iPhone 3G yields nearly 3X the JavaScript performance in Mobile Safari vs. using iPhone OS 2.2.1. The iPhone 3GS ups the ante by another factor of 3, bringing JavaScript performance on the iPhone 3GS to just 12X that of a full-powered desktop machine that has well over four times the raw processing muscle alone. The T-Mobile G1 running the “Cupcake” version of the Android OS completed the test suite in about 91 seconds. This makes it about a third faster than the iPhone 3G running Apple’s previous OS (2.2.1). The Palm Pre came storming out of the gate with speeds that closely rival the iPhone 3G running Apple’s latest iPhone OS.

Do any of these numbers really indicate which phone might be the best choice for a given individual? Absolutely not. At Medialets we use all of these devices, and love each one for many reasons. The fact that these tests can even be performed across this many device/OS combinations is a testament to how far mobile technology has come in such a relatively short time. We are looking forward to seeing an even greater variety of advanced mobile devices and OS revisions enter the market and we’ll keep you posted as we test more devices in our lab. Subscribe to our feed, leave a comment below, or reach out to us directly if you have any questions.

Just 18 days after the launch of the Palm Pre, their App Catalog has hit its first major milestone, 1 million downloads. On launch day, Palm sold 50k devices and their App Catalog experienced 100k downloads - that’s an average of 2 apps downloaded per device and 5,500 downloads per app (with a low of 600 and a high of 20k). 18 days later and they’ve tripled the user base to 150k units, averaging 6+ apps downloaded per device and 33.3k downloads per app (with a low of 2.4k and a high of 114k).

A Perspective: Apples To Palms

The iTunes App Store is the most successful app store in the mobile market today, so it makes perfect sense that analysts and critics immediately compare the two. Unfortunately, there really is no common ground for the two app stores based on the numerous factors involved. So instead of a comparison of the two, we’ll just use the precedent the App Store has set to put things in perspective.

The App Store hit the 1 million download point about 17 days earlier than the App Catalog, housing more than 16x the amount of apps and was accessible by more than 26x the number of devices than the App Catalog. Looks pretty bad for the Pre, right? Well, that’s until you take a look at the downloads themselves.

Still comparing at the 1 million mark, the average Palm Pre user had downloaded 26x the number of apps that iPhone users had, and the average app in the App Catalog experienced 16x the number of downloads that apps in the App Store had experienced. Funny how those numbers look so familiar.

So congratulations Palm! The Pre is an amazing device with lots of potential and we’re looking forward to what a public SDK will offer both consumers and developers alike. And just like my father told me on my millionth download “Learn from the mistakes of those who came before you.”

On Saturday, June 6th, the Palm Pre launched nationwide after roughly two years of development. Two years isn’t a whole lot of time when you think about the fact that they not only created a new device, but a new operating system and app store at the same time. The device has a sharp design (literally and figuratively), a stunning user interface, and a lot of potential to grow into a competitive platform in the smartphone market.

On May 29th, 2009, 9 days before the device officially launched nationwide, the Palm Pre App Catalog went live with 4 apps (Classic, Sudoku, Today Show, and WHERE). By launch day (6/6/09), this number grew to 18 apps total and then jumped to 30 at the end of the first week (6/12/09), and has remained unchanged since. Compared to the other app stores we’ve seen so far, this number is a mere fraction on what we’ve experienced at launch, but there are a few factors that paint a picture as to why this isn’t an issue.

Palm has been very selective about who they have offered their development SDK to prior to it’s expected public release later this summer. This decision stems from the fact that originally, Palm had no plans to launch their App Catalog on day one. Somewhere along the line, they changed their mind and went forward with a beta version of the App Catalog, which many would agree is much better than launching without one. Those previously developing for PalmOS were approached directly by Palm with the WebOS SDK. This offered Palm more of a launch filter than any other app store has witnessed.  Also noteworthy is that aside from Palm’s App Catalog, the only other app store to have a simultaneous launch alongside the first device running its operating system is the Android Market, which launched with just over 60 apps in late October, 2008.

Digging deeper into Palm’s App Catalog actually provides quite a bit of information. The first thing to note is that the entire store and all of the apps in the store are in beta except for one app (Classic by MotionApps). The App Catalog clearly lists this with a banner over the top right corner of the screen and so far, only the app Classic has had a version number of 1 and higher, the rest have been variations of 0.9 or lower.

The most distinctive piece of information we see is that the App Catalog lists actual downloads, which no other market currently does (see the Chart below).  Apple’s App Store listed downloads only for a couple of hours post-launch before they were made unavailable.  Android Market provides “buckets” of download ranges which, at the low end are helpful, but at the upper end vary widely (e.g. 50K -  250K, >250K).

For developers, the greatest appeal of working with WebOS has been the promise of a platform that is simple and easy to develop for. With the limited time the select developers have had access to the SDK, the fact that the App Catalog houses two developers (out of 28 total) that each currently offer two apps definitely gives that impression. What appears to be the issue at this point, and one of the major hold ups behind releasing a public SDK, is the App Catalog itself.

Currently in the App Catalog, when a developer updates an app, their release date changes to the date they released the update along with removing all traces of the original date. This allows for any developer to release an update and reposition themselves at the top of the Most Recent category and the top of whatever other categories they belong to when sorting by date. After all the gaming we’ve seen take place in the App Store, this issue, coupled with a lack of payment system in the store itself, are two of the major reasons why the App Catalog isn’t ready to handle the volume of submissions that a public SDK would bring. While releasing the SDK to the public and barring submissions/approval to the store may sound like a smart alternative to some, Palm has clearly thought things through and decided to go with their current selective approach.

The excitement for the Palm Pre has only grown since we first heard word of it. Now, nearly two weeks after launch with the hype winding down, you have to wonder, did Palm miss their window of opportunity with their App Catalog, or do they have something up their sleeve?

Medialets serves thousands of publishers and advertisers as the mobile application market continues to grow exponentially

NEW YORK–Medialets, the leading analytics and ad technology platform for next-generation mobile applications, has today announced that they have closed a $4 million Series A financing round led by investor Foundry Group, with participation from DFJ Gotham and Bobby Yazdani, early investor in Google.

Founded in June 2008, Medialets is the most widely deployed rich media advertising and analytics platform for mobile applications built for iPhone and Android, with support for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm Pre devices coming this year. The company develops technologies that enable publishers to measure their audience and monetize their applications through advertising and allow brands to leverage all of the capabilities unique to these devices into advertisements in a completely measurable environment, whether a user is on- or offline.

“Medialets entered the market at the inception of the new generation of the mobile application space, and we are proud to have been able to help foster and grow the market by providing tools and support to the developer community. Over the past year, Medialets has become the trusted partner to over 1,000 leading developers. Through this investment, we’ll focus on significantly enhancing the platform they use to gain a competitive edge and continue to win market share,” said Eric Litman, Chairman and CEO of Medialets. “We’ve accomplished a great deal in a short period of time, and are thrilled to now bring in partners who are just as passionate about the business as we are.”

Medialets launched on July 11th, 2008, the same day as Apple’s App Store, has been installed over 60 million times across over 15 million unique devices to date, and measures usage in many of the top 20 highest downloaded applications on the iPhone platform based upon data released by Apple in April 2009. On the measurement side, Medialets primarily works with large developers and media publishers who look to the company’s analytics product, Medialytics, as a business intelligence tool to help them make informed decisions around improving app strategy and performance. Medialets does not collect any personally identifiable information from users. The data gathered from the analytics product is anonymized and applied to improve the advertising experience and targeting capabilities for advertisers.

The Medialets ad platform solves a core set of challenges successful publishers and developers face when deploying a mobile application. Medialets’ ad technology makes it possible to target and serve rich media ads to millions of smartphone users worldwide immediately, whether those ads are sold in-house or come from a third party. The company’s unique ad formats let brands and agencies create engaging ads that deliver the power of a branded application with the immediate distribution of an ad. Publishers add Medialets’ analytics code to their application and Medialets provides the infrastructure on the server side for aggregating and reporting on usage, as well as for reliably delivering ads into enabled applications. The rich media ads can include video, animation, sound and other advanced functionality.

“Although this is a very young sector, we believe that Medialets has the management team, experience and traction in the market to be the clear leader in the space,” said Seth Levine, partner at Foundry Group. “We look forward to working closely with Eric and his team to solidify Medialets’ lead in the market and continue to innovate and push the boundaries around what is possible in mobile advertising.”

For more information about Medialets, please visit www.medialets.com.

About Medialets

Medialets is a New York City-based rich media advertising and analytics platform for native applications on devices such as iPhone and Android. Medialets works with agencies and brands to define and deploy innovative ad campaigns that tap into all of the capabilities of the iPhone. Medialytics, Medialets’ free analytics and reporting solution, is the leading analytics and advertising solution for the world’s most downloaded iPhone applications. Medialets is a privately-held company with offices in New York, NY and San Francisco, CA. Email us at connect@medialets.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/medialets.

About Foundry Group

Foundry Group is a venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage information technology, Internet, and software startups. In addition to providing the necessary venture capital to get a company up and running, Foundry Group is committed to leveraging their experience in starting and growing companies, expertise in the technology industry, and network of relationships to help great entrepreneurs turn great ideas into great companies. Foundry Group is based in Boulder, Colorado, and invests in companies located across the United States. For more information, visit www.foundrygroup.com.

About DFJ Gotham

DFJ Gotham Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City focused primarily on early-stage information technology companies on the East Coast. DFJ Gotham Ventures partners with extraordinary teams of entrepreneurs to build strong and successful businesses that make a huge impact in their industries. DFJ Gotham Ventures takes pride in being an active partner, leveraging its experience, knowledge and relationships to provide substantial value to its portfolio companies. DFJ Gotham Ventures is proud to have backed such category leaders as Massive (acquired by MSFT), XOsoft (acquired by CA), Q-Link (acquired by Adobe), Mimeo.com, ContextWeb, Worktopia and Drop.io, among many others. For more information, please visit www.dfjgotham.com.

About Bobby Yazdani

Bobby Yazdani is the founder and CEO of Saba. He founded Saba in 1997. Today, Saba, with over $100M in profitable revenue is headquartered in Redwood Shores, Calif., is the premier global provider of strategic human capital management. Saba’s people platform are used by more than 17 million people worldwide. Prior to founding Saba, Bobby held various senior R&D management positions at Oracle Corporation. He has successfully mentored and invested in many early stage start-ups including Clearspring, Dropbox, Google, HotPrints, Salesforce.com, Social Gaming Network, Webs.com and Masimo. Bobby has a BA in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Contact

Medialets
Rana Sobhany, 703-203-2508
VP Marketing
rana.sobhany@medialets.com

The past 10 months have been special to all of us here at Medialets. From our launch on July 11, 2008, through the first of several industry awards we’ve been fortunate enough to have received, to the recent, groundbreaking launch of Medialets’ ad platform, customers, industry analysts and the press have joined us in helping to reshape the world of mobile advertising and analytics. We’ve grown quickly to become the most widely deployed solution of our kind in mobile, and every day work with some of the most talented partners a company could hope to know.

This is just the beginning for us. Today we’re announcing that we’ve raised $4m from the stellar teams at Foundry Group and DFJ Gotham with participation from Bobby Yazdani, an early investor in Google and Salesforce.com. Together with a series of advisors and new team members we’ll announce soon, we’ll collectively work to solidify Medialets’ position in the market and establish us as the standard for highly measurable, rich media ads in mobile.

If you’re a publisher, application developer, advertiser, agency, or anyone else interested in learning more about the measurable impact Medialets’ platform can have on your business, drop us an email at connect@medialets.com and we’ll get right back to you. Or send a message to careers@medialets.com if you have the passion, talent and drive to help us to lead an industry.

Early this year our partner, OMD’s Ignition Factory, approached us for help in crafting a groundbreaking mobile experience for their client Levi’s Dockers. We took them through the capabilities of our rich media mobile advertising platform, brainstormed through a number of concepts, and together with creative agency Razorfish launched Pants Dance, the world’s first Shakable Ad™.

This ad was built by the Medialets team and served via our ad server into several top iPhone apps including iBowl, i.TV, SGN Golf and iBasketball. It is currently running - as of the date of this post - as a full screen interstitial, and includes stop motion video (a very cool effect done by our creative director Theo Skye), sound, and the ability to shake the ad to move between dance sequences.

Forbes, Mobile Marketer, Silicon Alley Insider, Advertising Age and a host of others have given their praise for this campaign. Special thanks to John Haber and Jamie Wells at OMD for their creative vision and support.

If you would like Medialets to help you with rich media ads on iPhone, Android or BlackBerry, drop us an email at connect@medialets.com and we’ll create a plan to shake up the market together.

Milestone indicates maturation of market and mass uptake of publisher tools and reporting by iPhone developers

NEW YORK, New York. - April 15th, 2009 - Medialets, the leading analytics and ad technology platform for next-generation mobile applications, has today announced reaching the milestone of processing one billion events through the company’s free analytics product, Medialytics.

Medialytics, launched on July 11th, 2008 - the same day as Apple’s App Store - has been installed over 60 million times across more than 13 million unique devices to date. Medialytics measures behaviors in many of the top 20 highest downloaded applications on the iPhone platform based upon data released by Apple last week. Medialets works with developers and media publishers who look to Medialytics as a business intelligence tool to help them make informed decisions around improving app strategy and performance.

“Knowing and tracking key metrics are an important part of any successful business’ operations. With Apple nearing a billion downloads, there’s now meaningful scale from which every developer on the platform can draw insights to drive their product and marketing decisions,” says Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets. “We give our customers the tools they need to collect the data and metrics that are important to advancing their business.”

The most powerful insights to come from 10 months of data relate to engagement time with content and functionality-rich applications.  Engagement time across all Medialets applications falls between 3.5 minutes and 7 minutes on average per session.  The company sees ad click-through rates range from 1% on the low end to 8% on the high end for both advertiser content as well as cross-application promotion.

“It is still a young market, but developers and publishers alike on the platform are quickly learning what to track and how to adapt to the data they see.” remarks Litman. “Analytics are a competitive tool. Knowing more about your audience than your competitors do in this exceptionally competitive space is an important part of staying ahead.”

About Medialets

Medialets is a New York City-based rich media advertising and analytics platform for native applications on devices such as iPhone and Android.  Medialets works with agencies and brands to define and deploy innovative ad campaigns that tap into all of the capabilities of the iPhone. Medialytics, Medialets’ free analytics and reporting solution, is the leading analytics and advertising solution for the world’s most downloaded iPhone applications. Medialets is a privately-held company with offices in New York, NY and San Francisco, CA. Email us at connect@medialets.com, visit us on the Web at www.medialets.com and follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/medialets.

Press Contact:
Rana Sobhany
VP Marketing, Medialets
rana.sobhany@medialets.com
Phone: 703.203.2508

The team at Red Herring told us today that Medialets has been named a Red Herring Global 100 company for 2009. We’ve been working day and night since our launch six months ago in July to build the best platform for understanding and connecting with audiences in mobile and couldn’t be more pleased that Red Herring has taken notice.

Thanks to Red Herring, our customers and partners for a great start, and look to us to continue to drive the pace in mobile advertising in 2009.

Here at Medialets, we are believers in innovation and transformative thinking. Ingenuity, creativity and a desire to push the boundaries of what critics claim is possible drives us to revolutionize the way marketers think of mobile advertising. SMS and static banners are the beginning, but they won’t inspire and move you the way rich engagement and interaction can when 6 inches away from a consumer’s face. This type of passion for innovation extends to every industry, from manufacturing to sales to technology to entertainment, and we support everyone who wakes up every morning excited to build something great. 

One of the most interesting and forward-thinking musical artists of the past few years is Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk, a former biomedical engineer turned DJ, who has established a cult following due to his masterful mashups of disparate artists, resulting in music that bridges the gap between genres and brings people together. He has recently devoted himself to making music full-time, and is one of the most in-demand artists of the year.

It is our pleasure to extend an invitation to two winners to join the Medialets team at Girl Talk’s show in NYC on Sunday, November 16th.  Instructions for entering the contest are on the image below, and the two winners will be picked at random at 4:00pm EST on 11/16/08.  You must be in NYC to be eligible to win.

To those who are cutting-edge and forward-thinking, we salute you, and here’s hoping that you will join us tomorrow at Terminal 5 to see Girl Talk work the crowd.

Good Luck!
Rana and the Medialets team

Here we are a little over a week since the launch of the first Android-powered phone, the G1. As of Monday, Android Market has been open to developers to distribute their applications as they wish. We’ve made some more observations on how the Android Market is evolving, and we’re eager to share them with you. 

Highlights

(1) 167 Apps have been downloaded between between 667,000 and 2.9 Million times.

(2) Downloads are being driven by 41 apps, which account for between 73% and 83% of all possible downloads.

(3) Two applications, Pac-Man by Namco and The Weather channel generated the most downloads (50,000 - 250,000).

(4) Although download ranges can be very large, growth on the low-end was still nearly 80% during the first week.

(5) 5 Categories account for 61% of all apps.

(6) The number of apps has nearly tripled since launch, led by the Games, Tools and Productivity categories.

Applications By Category

Android Market applications totaled 167 as of 10/29.  The top 5 Categories with the most apps accounted for 61% of all titles: Tools, Games, Lifestyle, Multimedia, and Productivity.

Title growth has nearly tripled since launch, as the chart below shows.  Three categories - Tools, Games and Productivity led the growth, representing just over 50% of the 105 apps added since last week.

Downloads

Android Market provides download data in ranges or “bins.”  While it’s better than having no information at all (e.g. Apple’s App Store) it gets a bit unwieldy within the top 2 bins, 10,000 - 50,000, and 50,000 - 250,000, where the top end is 5x larger than the bottom end, and the variance can be up to 200,000.  In the chart above, we’ve looked at the trend of total downloads from both ends of the ranges given, and growth seems pretty healthy on both ends.  Apps downloaded from the end of the Market’s first day until 10/29 grew at a rate anywhere between 80% on the low end to potentially 97% on the upside.

The table below gives detail on the distribution of downloads, which are driven by 41 apps in the two highest bins. Taking the low/high ranges into consideration, these 41 apps comprise anywhere between 73% and 83% of all possible downloads

Within these 41 apps, two of them, Pac-Man by Namco and The Weather Channel generated the highest number of downloads (50,000 - 250,000).  The remaining 39 are in the 10,000 - 50,000 range - we displayed the “Top 5″ in the table below, which were determined by  the most recent average of user ratings.  

We’ll keep you posted as data continues to roll in.  In the meantime, we’d love to hear your comments and ideas as our ecosystem continues to evolve.  Reach out to us at connect at medialets dot com and add us on Twitter at @medialets.