Mobile Groove

Developers are replacing a “lost enthusiasm for developing smartphone apps” with a new passion for tablets, according to a survey by Strategy Analytics. The company also notes that the mobile app ecosystem has matured, making it tougher for smaller, niche developers to complete with larger organisations.

• The launch of Windows 8 and Blackberry 10 will see Microsoft and RIM seeking to take advantage of the shift, by enabling developers to easily create products across tablet an…

The majority of mobile local search click actions were calls in 1Q2012. According to a report released by xAd, placing a call to a local business was the leading secondary action after a mobile-local search ad click.

• 58 percent of secondary actions post-search click led to calls, ahead of maps and directions (36 percent).
• Overall, the secondary action rate stood at a healthy 36 percent, with the click-through rate on search campaigns reaching just over 8 percent.
• SOURCE: http://www.xad.com/a

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Should we brace ourselves for a new battle as companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nuance) jockey for position to control the voice interface and our personal search/assistance experience? We continue our look at the opportunities and competition around mobile voice with Roberto Pieraccini, industry veteran and author of The Voice in the Machine.

In other segments we discuss the wider issue of personal privacy, following the news that social app Path has been uploading user data to its servers without our consent. Rob Woodbridge recounts a checklist of things to consider when building privacy into your minimum viable product. And we both find a perfect fit with a brilliant presentation— whose time has come (again) — from Jonathan MacDonald, a thought-leader and entrepreneur in digital media perhaps best known for his passionate views on the 3Ps (Permission: people will decide what brand messages they interact with; Privacy: people will decide where their data is collected and how it is used; and Preference: people will decide what content they find relevant). More about that further down in this post.