Medialets

Big news today for all Blackberry and Android developers out there…Medialets Blackberry and Android Analytics SDKs are now available.

These SDKs extend Medialets analytics offerings beyond the iPhone, reflecting the strong growth in Blackberry and Android development.

Our analytics SDKs provide developers with a single dashboard that allows for the measurement and tracking of basic metrics as well as complex custom events within all of their Blackberry and Android apps (and iPhone of course). Now you can view deep, customized analytics for your apps across multiple platforms, to make the most informed improvements to your apps. The SDKs can be downloaded simply by signing up for Medialytics at http://www.Medialytics.com.

Here’s a screenshot preview of the dashboard…

The strength of Blackberry’s install base and high value users along with Android’s solid relationships with OEMs, carriers, and users, made it a priority for us to make our unique analytics capabilities available to developers working on these platforms.

And while we’ve spent a significant amount of time developing these SDKs, they are as always, available for free simply by signing up at Medialytics.com. We’re also hosting an Android Developer meet-up at or offices on March 3rd. All are welcome. More info and RSVP here — http://www.meetup.com/androidnyc/

More exciting announcements and product releases across our analytics and rich media ad platforms to come! Stay tuned.

Developers can now define and measure complex custom events within apps

New York, NY: March 1, 2010 – Medialets, the most widely deployed rich media ad and analytics platform for mobile, today extended its Medialytics offering by releasing a new Analytics Software Developers Kit (SDK) for Android and Blackberry applications. The new SDKs allow developers to track standard application metrics (unique users, sessions, average run-time, run-time frequency, etc) as well as define and measure complex custom user events within Blackberry and Android applications.

These custom events provide a great deal of insight and flexibility to the application publisher. Developers can instrument their application to capture the metrics that are most meaningful to their application and unique to the Medialets platform, developers can store a practically limitless amount of data with their custom events. For example, a game application developer can not only track what level a user has achieved in a game, but also all of the pieces and associated objects the user collected in that level. A content app developer can look beyond simply what article a user is reading and learn how they got to the page, how long the user spent on it, and if they scrolled to the bottom.

Integration of the new Analytics SDKs is a simple and rapid process – taking just a few hours to complete. Data captured through these events is then available in a comprehensive dashboard that also provides standard reporting metrics. Developers and publishers can make educated improvements to their Blackberry and Android apps based on these measurable insights into user behavior.

“Medialets offers analytics that support the high level of innovation that’s going into to Blackberry and Android apps, and go well beyond the basic metrics of simply counting downloads.” said Medialets CEO Eric Litman. “These insights help developers to deeply understand what users do and don’t do with their applications and empower them to make critical decisions about where to focus their valuable development resources.”

Developers can download Medialets’ BlackBerry and Android Analytics SDKs, along with our iPhone Analytics SDK, by signing up at www.Medialytics.com.

About Medialets:

Medialets is the most widely deployed rich media ad platform for mobile. Our clients include The Washington Post, NPR, Variety, MenuPages.com and more than 17,000 others who use Medialets to measure their audience and serve award-winning, high impact ads that outperform online rich media by an average of 2.5 times. Medialytics, our mobile app analytics platform supporting the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices, delivers in-depth views into both application and ad performance while providing the industry’s only solution for guaranteed post-click ad reporting. We are a privately held, New York-based company with marquee investors and a world-class team. Visit us on the Web at www.medialets.com, email us at connect@medialets.com, or follow us on Twitter @medialets.

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?