Today Yahoo finally made its deal with Microsoft public.  Under the new agreement, Microsoft will now power all Yahoo searches and Yahoo will become the sales force of the two firms’ advertising customers.  Additionally, Yahoo will continue to focus on building customer-facing portals and Internet destination sites.

So, in effect, Yahoo has abandoned any type of unique identity it once had as all the capital and manpower invested in its search assets are down the drain.  You see, in the three horse race of desktop search, Google was number one, Yahoo was a second place with about 20% of the search market, and Microsoft was third place.  Now, Microsoft has secured the second place and will now be in a better position to challenge to Google in the lucrative desktop search market.

Yahoo was once a mighty giant in the Internet space.  It even commanded the number one spot in search for many years.  Then, abandoning its search technology, Yahoo adopted Google as their search provider.  in more recent years, Yahoo abandoned its deal with Google and went pack to powering their search queries on Yahoo.com.

Now, with search results provided by Bing, Yahoo has gutted themselves of any identity as a provider of any valid services.  With today’s announcement and its deal with Microsoft, Yahoo has admitted defeat to Google in the search market.

Who’s the big winner in today’s deal?  Microsoft, obviously.  They’ve now entered in to an agreement whereby Bing has asserted itself as a force against Google’s search dominance.

Unfortunately for Yahoo, they waited too long for this deal to be sweet for them.  Over the winter, they tried to hold out for a high share price to be taken over by Microsoft.  In the meantime, Flickr’s founders have left and so have the founders of Del.icio.us, Yahoo’s other exciting Web 2.0 acquisition of the recent past.

So, as a result, Yahoo has lost its sexiness as a provider of innovative web 2.0 services and their highly sought after search assets as well.  Hopefully Yahoo has something up its sleeve, otherwise Microsoft stands out as the clear winner in this deal between the web giants.

So, you’ve spent months working on your iPhone app and are finally ready to release it to the showcase that is the App Store. But wait – have you considered how it will look against your competitors in the App Store list view?

If you have  high-hopes, then you won’t just be competing against apps that provide a similar feature-set to yours – you’ll be competing against a diverse range of apps on the Top 25 page for a fraction of the user’s attention. We already know the App’s name, star rating & price have a big impact on downloads. But what about the Icon?

No doubt, a lot of the decision process is subjective. If you’re after a specific app then you’re going to try it out no matter how it appears in the App Store. The ‘A Fake Caller’ app is successful because it provides utility, but it’s no beaut. A quick once-over from a visual designer and the app would get even more downloads.

Differentiation from competing apps is key here – what’s going to make someone download your amazing Touch app from the ten other Touch apps that are out there? It must be stressed that first impressions are key. As with the packaging of food goods, a quality icon will yield a higher perception of quality of the product itself.

Of course, we still need to think about how the icon will look on the Home Screen.
iPhone app icons are like pin-badges on your jacket – they add a touch of decoration and add personality. They are digital jewelry – gems that I love to leave installed on my iPhone, even if just for cosmetics.

Need some help designing an app icon in context of the App Store or Home Screen? Here are some Photoshop templates we use when designing our app icons.

Robert Scoble recently visited the United Kingdom along with other bloggers and social media types as a part of the Traveling Geeks.  After his visit to the UK, Mr. Scoble posted a July 9th article saying that Europe is “stuck on texting” based on his observation that youngsters in the Tube and around London weren’t using the mobile Internet, but instead were texting like crazy.  Also, the hipsters in and around London were not donning the latest Nokia NSeries phones.  Rather, these influentials were utilizing the iconic iPhone from Apple.

Scoble went on to use the point that because of Apple’s new dominance in the mobile marketplace and Nokia’s slow reaction and resulting loss of market share show that Europe has lost it’s innovative edge in the Mobile world.

I recently asked our CEO, Steve Ives, for his thoughts on Scoble’s post.  Ives’ response is that Scoble is right and wrong at the same time.

Where Mr. Scoble is Wrong

Regarding Scoble’s assumption that Nokia is “stuck on texting”, Steve disagrees with Scoble’s assertion.  To illustrate his point, Steve shows us a 2 year old study whereby M:Metrics surveyed U.S. and European mobile phone habits.  At that time, the UK had twice the smartphone penetration than that of the U.S. where 8% of British had smartphones.  Looking at other countries in Europe, Spain and Italy had even higher penetration rates with 10% and 18% respectively.

How did these smartphone-toting mobile customers, 2 years ago, use their phones?  40% of British smartphone users were utilizing the mobile internet for news, information/entertainment.  Meanwhile, in the United States, where feature phones dominated the market, only 14% of these customers were utilizing the mobile internet.

In the 2 years since M:Metrics conducted their study, smartphone sales in Western Europe have continued to grow, but at a slower rate than in the U.S.  Gartner reported a 10% growth in smartphone unit sales in Western Europe in 2008, while the US market saw a dazzling 70% uptick in smartphone purchases.  So, the US has almost caught up to European levels of smartphone usage.

Where Robert is Right

Meanwhile, Robert makes some very good points regarding Apple and iPhone uptake in the West.  What thoughts did Steve offer on these points?

Looking at the US market, the main sellers in the smartphone arena continue to be the Apple iPhone and Blackberry platform from Research in Motion (RIM).  Looking further at mobile Internet and mobile data use, it is known in the industry that the iPhone drives 10x mobile data usage than the old-style featurephones.  In fact, Google has reported as much as a 30x usage on some touch devices.

Other touch phones such as Android devices like the T-Mobile G1 are showing similar metrics.  However, BlackBerry users show lower Internet usage (aside from email, of course) than the new touch phones on the market.  So, apparently, touch phones seem to be driving mobile Internet usage.  And, in the West at least, the uS market is driving touch forward the quickest.

This change in market drivers has been a huge wake up call for Nokia, as the Finnish phone giant has been slow to embrace the touch form factor, and everyone knows Nokia is the largest player in the European mobile hardware market.  But, Nokia has always been slow to embrace new form factors (remember the candy bar vs. flip phone debate?).

At Taptu, we feel touch phones will account for 75% of mobile internet usage by 2012.  For further info, check out our whitepaper, available for download from our website.

Perhaps two years ago, Nokia could claim to be amongst the leaders in driving mobile Internet usage, but not now when you analyze the numbers.  The mantle has been passed from Espoo to Apple (iPhone) and Google (Android) who, with the help of US consumers and their huge appetite for mobile Internet usage and the latest touch phones, are now driving the market.

We spend a lot of time looking at iPhone apps these days and it’s very clear that the user experience can be the difference between someone buying an app or not.

Marc posted about the importance of creating the right impression within the App Store . I wanted to write here briefly about how the app itself then needs to continue with creating the right impression through its UX.

As example, lets take the simple ‘converter’ app – you know, the one you download because you need to convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade, or Miles to Kilometers? It could be seen as a ‘boring utility’ by many, but user experience design can still make one app stand out over another.

I’ve downloaded a couple of converters and one that I really liked was Convertbot. With Convertbot the designers have really crafted the user experience. They have considered everything from the icon onwards and made it feel seamless and clean to use.

When you start the app, the loading screen is a metallic/industrial-feeling ‘shutter’ with animation – this then leads nicely into a main screen which maintains the industrial feel and where users simply spin a wheel of icons to choose what type of conversion they want to make – length, weight, etc.

Putting that in the context of other converter apps its clear to see that Converbot user experience is more considered from a design perspective.

Take a look at the two screens here from two different converter apps. This is the main screen where the user chooses their conversion and enters what they want to convert.

Convertbot keeps it very simple – the user just flicks the wheel to select what they want to convert. Convertbot also reduces complexity by offering the user either the wheel or the keypad – depending on the context they are in. This reveals the complexity as needed rather than attempting to fit everything onto one screen.

As you all know, we’re really excited about the utilizing the touch interface to it’s fullest extent.  To this end, we’ve taken a project of ours, The Music Cube, and ported it to the iPhone.  Our new application is now available in the iTunes App store.

How does The Music Cube work?  It’s a fun game whereby you analyze an image puzzle and try to guess the artist/band/song  based on the visual image(s) you see.  It’s challenging, addictive and works  well on the touch interface. So if you have an iPhone or Touch and love music then give it a spin.

Music Cube on the iPhone was a little side project here at Taptu.  As linked above, the desktop web version was produced a while back and proved so popular we just couldn’t resist porting it to the iPhone.  When so many Taptuans rally behind an effort, its hard to hold them back.  Our lead engineer on the project was Telmo Menezes (since crowned King of Open GL) with Matt and Marc on the design side.

Astonishingly, the Music Cube iPhone app was pumped out in just four weeks.  Pretty cool, I think!

The intent of the Music Cube is to provide a fun game to pass the time while you’re waiting in a line, riding the bus, or otherwise have a few spare moments to challenge your music knowledge.  Also, if you get stuck, you an always rely upon Taptu Mobile Search to help guide your way

Be sure to check out upcoming versions of the Music Cube app for additional, more challenging questions.