According to TechCrunch, Apple’s iPhone has now surpassed Windows Mobile as a smartphone OS in raw market share.

Of course, looking more closely at the bar graph reveals the real story, which is that platforms like Palm, Symbian and Windows Mobile are very much losing steam in the face of the growth of RIM and Apple.

Android, which is in its infancy as a consumer platform, and which had not been particularly well-supported by marketing until the splashy launch of the Droid, has yet to really start rolling, but we suspect it’ll get there sometime in 2010.

If you’re building mobile apps you’ve got to be cautious about picking a platform.  Apple and RIM are clear winners, Android (google) is definitely one to watch… and Palm or Windows Mobile could again be contenders if they affect a turnaround.

The clear trendline to success, though, is embracing the consumer’s purchase decision of a mobile phone.  For Microsoft, twisting the arms of customers via their employers has always been a doomed strategy.  This palpable shift by RIM away from Enterprise sales to the Consumer channel, which has been underway for at least two years, accounts for most of their growth, and of course Apple’s iPhone is a consumer pure-play, although their Exchange compatibility is at least a nod toward the overlords of the IT department.

Mobile technology is a personal choice.  Ignore it at your peril, smartphone vendors.

As we noted last week in our blog, AppSocial was among 20 companies selected to pitch the investors and media attending Vancouver’s Fusion Forum on November 12, 2009.  Fortunately, the company and our CEO Ian Andrew Bell made the grade and were among the 10 finalists chosen by those investors for follow-on meetings and discussions.

AppSocial was also chosen as first runner-up for “Best In Show” by the investors attending the Fusion Forum, the second time in three years that Bell has garnered this award (previously, this was for Something Simpler Systems).  Those winners were announced the evening of November 12.

Fusion Forum 2009 Winners' Circle

“It’s an honour to be chosen among such a great group of companies, people and ideas,” said AppSocial CEO Ian Andrew Bell.  “The stiff competition this year bodes well not only for investors but also for the health of the Canadian new media scene.”

The Fusion Forum is an annual investor conference held in Vancouver which invites a selection of qualifying Canadian new media and technology ventures to present their plans to an audience of global investors pursuant to financing.  Organized by New Media BC, and supported by the Canadian National Research Council, and Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, the Fusion Forum has an 11-year history of presenting the nation’s best and brightest early stage ventures to the investment audience.

AppSocial has been selected to pitch at the Fusion Forum in Vancouver, Canada on November 12th & 13th.  AppSocial was one of twenty companies selected to showcase for investors from among dozens of applicants in the British Columbia region.  The Forum has invited Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors from across the region and in the US to meet the presenting companies.  From among the 20 presenters, 10 will be invited to private sessions with investors on the 13th of November.

This represents a great step forward and we’re excited to share some (though not all) of our plans with the crowd.

Retrevo announced the results of a study last week that we originally missed.  This is ever-so-slightly off other studies we’ve seen, but is well within the margin of error.  iPhones, and even Blackberries, are quite gender-balanced.

… they followed up that data with the revelation this week that 1 in 3 iPhone users has broken up with a partner via text message or email.  iPhone owners also prefered cool gadgets over a college degree three to one in their potential life partners and that if their partner had out-of-date gadgets, it would be a turnoff. Compared with other cell phone users, iPhone owners are more likely to see themselves as media buffs, extroverts, and intellectuals.

Hey all, we’re hoping you can help us with the following study:

2D Boy, publishers of innovative indie game World of Goo have released the results of their week-long first birthday pricing experiment, where they asked customers to pay exactly as much as they wanted for the game (which is awesome and addictive, by the way) via their web site (which bills thru PayPal).  The company previously estimated that their game had a 90% piracy rate.

The results are revealing:  the cumulative average price paid was $2.03 over the week.  This certainly validates the $1.99 (or more) that many games charge on Apple’s App Store.  More interestingly, the hubbub generated by this “Radiohead Pricing Model” spilled over to sales of their game on another distribution network, Steam, driving them up by 40%.

The histogram is a fabulous representation of the varying nuances of the human psyche when buying a game:

2D Boy Histogram

Pricing a game, application, or other product or service is always very hard… and it takes lots of focus testing and customer interaction to get a sense for how they value a service.  This is made even worse by the fact that your customers aren’t even always honest with you or with themselves.

What’s been overlooked here is that these guys earned $100K in one week, putting their product into the hands of 50,000 users.  That’s amazingly impressive for an indie studio.  No wonder they’re extending the experiment for another week.  Kudos for such a small team that had the courage to break new ground in this area.

We created these really cool worksheets to use in planning and design sessions for your iPhone app.  Drawing your ideas out is a really fast and useful way to discuss user interface designs, text layouts, etc.

click to download.