Congrats to Noteflight

February 25, 2014
 
Dan Katcher

Huge congrats go out to Noteflight on their just announced acquisition by Hal Leonard.  Noteflight, our partner in music apps and space-sharer since 2009, has built an amazing set of technology for composing music in the cloud.  Around that technology Noteflight has also built a fast growing community of music enthusiasts and composers, which is about to cross the 1 million member milestone!
Noteflight

Hal Leonard is the world’s largest publisher of sheet music, and has a world wide distribution network of content, media, and technology in the music space second to none.  It’s truly a great combination that will open up all sorts of possibilities in how musicians compose and share music.  Especially in a mobile world.

We’ve been privileged to share space with Noteflight almost since our beginning.  We’ve partnered with them in building the Yamaha Notestar app, and hope to do much more in the future.

So congrats to Noteflight.  It’s mobile music for the ears.

So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

Mobile on the move

February 13, 2014
 
Dan Katcher

It’s been a good six months since our mid-year review of the growth of mobile. So I think it’s time to take another look at where the field is and where it’s going.
Our assessment? The state of our mobile landscape is strong.
It doesn’t take a statistical analyst to know that mobile devices – and the apps that make us love them – are soaring in popularity and becoming ever more integrated into our daily lives. But a flurry of recent year-end reports have put some exact numbers to the phenomenon we see every day.
According to a report released earlier this month by Cisco, global mobile data use grew 81 percent in 2013 as compared to the previous year. At the same time, average traffic per smartphone grew from 353 MB per month in 2012 to 529 MB per month last year.
What are users doing with all that data?
For one, they’ve been downloading apps, naturally. Gaming (Candy Crush Saga, anyone?), social photo and video (hello, Vine), music, and banking and financial management apps were among the high-growth market segments last year, according to a recent report from App Annie. And use of messaging apps nearly doubled, according to Flurry Analytics.

They’ve also been buying things. Business Insider has estimated that mobile payments – transactions in a physical location, aided by a mobile device – would hit $30 billion last year.  Starbucks alone topped $1 billion in mobile payments, according to Business Insider’s estimates.
And they’ve been communicating. Twitter’s earnings release earlier this month disappointed many investors; nonetheless, the numbers show the importance of mobile to any modern digital business model. More than 76 percent of Twitter’s users are now accessing the social media service over mobile devices and mobile accounted for more than $165 million of the company’s $221 million in ad revenue last year.

TwitterChart copy

Looking forward, mobile use is likely to keep growing by leaps and bounds, according to a forecast released earlier this month by Cisco.

So it’s clear that mobile is on its way up for some time to come. How will you take advantage?

So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

Mobile: A New Tradition

February 3, 2014
 
Dan Katcher

Last night’s big game was part of an American institution, so it was only fitting that that majority of the ads touched on universal and traditional themes: patriotism, family, determination. And, of course, let’s not forget innovation. Mobile technologies were very much in evidence throughout the ads, though not necessarily in the ways we were expecting.

There was little of the gimmicky or envelope-pushing within the spots, no ads that asked viewers to Shazam for added content or download a new app to take advantage of a deal. Instead, mobile was integrated into the commercials in a way that suggests that smartphones and tablets are now a way of business life and not just intriguing new toys.
A few of the stand-outs:
First up, Ellen DeGeneres as a modern-day Goldilocks for music-streaming service Beats Music. Roaming a dark, surrealistic “woods” in search of the perfect dance beats, she comes across a phone running the app. A very unusual dance party ensues.

 
Next, action hero Jason Statham uses a tablet and Xfinity’s X-1 operating system to enjoy a little DVRed Downton Abbey while meting out justice to a gang of would-be hijackers aboard a flying plane. After jumping from the plane and plummeting into an Xfinity control room, Statham brushes the dust off his jacket, confirms that the service works as advertised, and strolls off nonchalantly.
Click here to check out the hijinks, which don’t seem to be available on YouTube.
Then there was the Microsoft ad that asked “What is technology?”

Perhaps this spot doesn’t go with others particularly well, as it focuses more on space exploration and prosthetic limbs than on everyday mobile applications. However, the spirit behind it encapsulates and explains the more explicitly mobile-related trends in this year’s ads. The Microsoft ad is about the ways in which technology – from advanced medical devices to simple wireless communications – works itself into both the ordinary and extraordinary moments of modern life.
So this year’s crop of ads seems to make it official: We are past the moment of across-the-board wonderment when it comes to mobile and into an era of integration. For those looking to create apps of their own, this shift means it might be harder to reach consumers no longer agog at the abilities of mobile. But there is good news as well. Mobile has clearly made it past the novelty stage and become a part of everyday lives and business models, so there are plenty of potential customers out there for someone with an innovative new mobile idea. So get on it.

So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.