Google has introduced a new method for Android developers to monetise free users with a feature called ‘Rewarded Products’.
Free apps are increasingly more popular than paid. In Q1 2018, Statista found 94.24 percent of app downloads are free.
It’s understandable from a user perspective that most want to at least try an app before committing to a purchase. In-app purchases allow users to pay for the full app or additional functionality, but some users don’t want to cough up any cash.
One way to monetise those users has been to reward them with in return for watching adverts. Google is now making this method an official platform feature.
“One trend has been to reward users for a monetizable action, like watching a video, with in-game currency or other benefits. This gives users more choice in how they experience the app or game, and has been an effective way to monetize non-paying users.”
The company provided an example of 100 ‘coins’ being rewarded for watching a short video:
Developers will earn ad revenue from the interaction. The adverts are, of course, served from AdMob and feature a range of content to help make them relevant.
While such functionality was available in the past, it required implementing extra SDKs. Google claims Rewarded Products “significantly reduces the work required to implement”.
The feature is now available in open beta in the Play Console.
Microsoft has updated its app store policies to give developers a much fairer revenue cut of up to 95 percent.
There are some caveats to Microsoft’s revenue cut. To receive the full 95 percent, the app must be purchased through a deep link directly to your app. If the app is purchased through Microsoft listing it or marketing it somewhere, the developers will receive 85 percent.
App store fees have become a hot topic in recent months. The general feeling among developers is the platform holder’s 30 percent take on the likes of the App Store, Play Store, and Steam is far too high.
On iOS, the lack of alternative app stores means it’s a case of putting up with it or not reaching the lucrative market full stop. On Android, users can install third-party app stores or sideload apps themselves.
For its Android launch of Fortnite, developer Epic Games controversially bypassed the Play Store to avoid the cut taken by Google on in-app purchases. Several fake versions of Fortnite quickly appeared to take advantage of the reduced security.
On Windows, Epic Games recently launched their own game store as a competitor to Steam. The Epic Store only takes a 12 percent cut of the revenue from sales in comparison to Steam’s 30 percent.
“As a developer ourselves, we have always wanted a platform with great economics that connects us directly with our players,” said Epic CEO Tim Sweeney in a statement. “Thanks to the success of Fortnite, we now have this and are ready to share it with other developers.”
Microsoft’s new fees apply to purchases made on Windows 10 PCs, Windows Mixed Reality, Windows Phone, and Surface Hub. However, it excludes purchases made on Xbox consoles.
A report from Sonatype highlights that open source breaches have increased by a whopping 71 percent along with several other security findings.
This report is the largest DevOps survey conducted by Sonatype with 5,558 people sharing their views. Participants were from most of the major sectors but primarily in the technology and banking/financial industries.
Respondents’ primary reason for implementing security across the development lifecycle is for risk management (34.77%) purposes, followed by improving the quality of code (24.75%). Compliance requirements (23.42%) was just behind.
48 percent of developers this year report that security is important but they don’t have enough time to spend on it. This is the same as the previous year, although down from 50 percent in 2017 which indicates developers are still feeling time-constrained.
The report quotes Lu Cortez from graphic design website Canva:
“Notrecognisingthe importance of security in a DevOps strategy is a recipe for disaster. No matter how fast the velocity of a DevOps organization, if what they produce is not supportive of confidentiality, integrity, and availability then they have failed. Including security in everything that is done is part of enabling the business to meet its strategic goals. DevOps needs security.”
Over 85 percent of modern applications use open source components; in part due to the aforementioned time constraints. Developers are opting to use pre-existing code rather than write their own.
A concerning 47 percent of DevOps organisations do not maintain a complete record of what components are used in their applications. Of those with an ‘elite’ DevOps practice – 38 percent report third-party components as being ‘locked down’, 36 percent have ‘some standards’, and 26 percent have ‘no standards’.
In 2014, 14 percent suspected or verified a security breach related to an open source component. This year, that grew to one in four.
There’s an interesting discrepancy between large (more than 5000 developers) and small (less than 100) development teams when it comes to security policies. For small teams, over 60 percent don’t believe their security policies are slowing development. With large teams, almost 53 percent believe they are.
Fortunately, the majority have a cybersecurity incident response plan in place. 81 percent for those with elite DevOps practices. This drops to 63 percent for those without a DevOps practice in place.
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam to learn more.
from developer-tech.com: Latest from the homepage https://ift.tt/2Ulh6t0
from Tumblr https://ift.tt/2BYZxb1
A new study from crowdsourced QA testers Global App Testing has explored developers’ biggest pain points, with Python dethroning JavaScript as Stack Overflow’s most questioned programming language.
The research focused on JavaScript, Python, R, Ruby, C#, C++, Java, Objective-C, Swift, PHP and SQL – not so much 11 languages but 10 languages and a database – and went through a semantic route to determine major issues.
In terms of sheer numbers, JavaScript came out on top with more than 1.75 million questions asked over Stack Overflow’s more than 10-year history. Java came second with 1.51m, with C# (1.28m), PHP (1.26m) and Python (1.1m) the others to break the million mark. Yet with regard to today, Python is top of the shop, having overtaken JavaScript for questions asked in late 2018.
Digging down into what developers were looking for in each language – the data cleaning was done in Python and the word cloud builder was in JavaScript, just to be fair – led to arguably few surprises. For JavaScript, ‘jQuery’ was by far the most questioned framework, with ‘function’, ‘duplicate’ and ‘string’ also popular words. For Python, the latter two were the most popular, but of interest to note was ‘django’. “Python is a general purpose duct-tape language and gets involved in many different domains of tech,” as the researchers put it.
The other languages analysed came up with some more interesting results. For Ruby, the most popular word was ‘rails’; hardly surprising, but it was the most popular by a street. More niche-purpose languages such as R, for data scientists, came back with more specific terms, including ‘dataframe’, ‘datatable’ and ‘ggplot’.
Global App Testing assessed the overall research thus. “Each programming language has over time been geared toward – or was even designed for – a particular niche within tech,” the company noted. “R is to data science as Swift is to iOS development as C++ is to video game development. This explains some of the differences in the types of problems that arise… why we see ‘database’ a commonly questioned concept in SQL but not, for example, Objective-C.
“Despite these obvious differences, these visualisations represent some fundamental similarities within the different domains,” the company added. “Base-level data types such as strings and arrays – but not integers, floats, or Boolean values, apparently – are frequently pain points that cause developers of all stripes and creeds to turn to Stack Overflow.”
The developer portal has previously noted some of these trends. A report from Stack Overflow last January noted how jQuery remained the most popular JavaScript framework while adding the share for market voice was ‘brutal’, while as far back as September 2017 the company was assessing what it called ‘incredible’ growth in Python.
You can read the full Global App Testing analysis here.
“Apps with auto-renewable subscriptions will soon be able to provide a discounted price for a specific duration for existing or previously subscribed customers. You can use subscription offers to help win back subscribers who have cancelled their subscriptions or promote an upgrade to another subscription at a special price. Customers can accept the offer even if they’ve already completed an introductory offer.”
The feature will be enabled for iOS, macOS, and tvOS apps.
Apple will provide three different options:
Free
Customers access your subscription for free for a specific duration — for example, a 30-day trial for a subscription with a standard renewal price of $4.99 per month.
Pay As You Go
Customers pay a promotional price for each billing period for a selected duration — for example, $1.99 per month for three months for a subscription with a standard renewal price of $9.99 per month.
Pay Up Front
Customers pay a one-time promotional price for a specific duration — for example, $9.99 for the first six months of a subscription with a standard renewal price of $39.99 per year.
Apple says existing subscribers can also be targeted in order to help boost retention and reduce any feelings their loyalty is being penalised.
Once the desired offers are created in App Store Connect, developers must download the Xcode 10.2 beta and implement the new StoreKit APIs to allow these offers to be accepted by the customer.
A session during MWC highlighted the growing importance of video and VR when it comes to creating immersive experiences.
Anjali Sud, CEO of Vimeo, was part of the session. Vimeo is the largest ad-free video network and its monetisation model allows it to be agnostic, even allowing creators to publish to YouTube.
Sud highlighted that video is becoming ‘the de facto form’ of communication. People expect a constant supply of professional, engaging video content.
“If you want someone to see your message, it needs to have video,” claims Sud. “Video is a more compelling way to grab someone’s attention in a world where our attention is everywhere.”
Sud has the research to back her claim. She cited an analysis of ~700 million Facebook posts which found video content is 63 percent more engaging than any other format. Everyone is using video, regardless of age.
This demand is showing in network traffic. In fact, over 80 percent of mobile traffic is now video.
Live streaming has grown in prevalence in recent years and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently claimed it has six more engagement than pre-recorded content on his platform.
“We acquired Livestream [a company founded in 2007 as ‘Mogolus’] in 2017, they’re the world’s leading provider of professional live streaming tools,” says Sud. “Through that, we now power live events similar to this one; it’s used by the World Economic Forum, the European Space Agency, Spotify, NBA, Tesla…”
AI is opening up new opportunities for video content, especially for creators without large teams. Vimeo is using AI in its Livestream solution to do things such as switching to optimal angles with multi-camera setups.
Then, of course, there’s VR
Cher Wang, Founder and CEO of HTC, took the stage to discuss Vive and the company’s vision of creating more compelling experiences through virtual reality.
Wang makes some bold predictions, chief among which is that VR will overtake smartphones. HTC is making a significant bet at this point on that being the case.
“Virtual and augmented reality will be even bigger than smartphones,” predicts Wang. “It will become all-embracing, generating a far larger virtual economy with a broad range of fantastic experiences.”
As the adoption of VR grows, Wang believes devices will fade into the background. Humans will be brought to the foreground as mixed reality experiences create ‘more meaningful’ social interactions which bring people together with greater empathy.
HTC’s video called ‘Vive Reality’ shows how this could look:
It’s a fun video which shows how VR could improve work and play. However, Wang explains how VR can have a far more profound impact.
VR’s role in helping to reduce pain and improving mental health is being talked about more than ever. Studies have shown how using VR can even reduce activity in the brain’s pain receptors.
Wang provides a couple of examples where VR has been used to better people’s lives.
In one case, a wife was no longer recognised by her husband and he was exhibiting signs of depression. A VR experience of Frank Sinatra jogged his memory and he began speaking excitedly about memories in New York with the love of his life.
Another example was provided of a woman who moved from Duwala to France over 50 years ago. She had terminal cancer and was unable to leave her bed although dreamed of seeing her hometown one last time. VR made that possible and caused her to cry with happiness she could walk those streets again.
Finally, Wang spoke of VR’s role in educating people about history and helping us to learn from it. In one example, VR enabled a boy to emulate the stories his father told him of crossing from East to West Berlin during the cold war; avoiding searchlights and knowing detection meant certain death.
VR has the ability to open up new opportunities, especially in underprivileged areas. Kids unable to afford field trips can experience historical sites, or learn how the body works, all from their classroom.
Wang claims doctors have performed 7,000 neurosurgeries across 30 hospitals aided by VR. This has provided extra data to surgeons prior to vital surgery.
“Their system has expanded beyond brain tumours and is now used for conditions almost everywhere in the body,” comments Wang. “Assisting doctors and patients before lifesaving surgery.”
Bell Helicopter says the average design time of a new model is six years. For its FCX-001 helicopter, VR brought that down to just six months and saved millions in costs.
Like many experts at MWC, Wang spoke excitedly about technologies converging to unlock new possibilities. She likened 5G to the air we breathe, VR/AR to our eyes, AI to the brain, and blockchain as ‘the DNA to our digital empowerment’.
VR has struggled to gain much traction so far, but the maturation of these technologies is helping to solve its previous issues. Wang notes how 5G – combined with edge computing – enables latency as low as 1ms for more real-time applications.
Wang expects AI to deliver ‘curated’ experiences personalised for the user’s needs rather than a predetermined experience. Blockchain, meanwhile, will help to increase public trust and ensure personal data is kept protected unless they decide to share it.
“At the core of technology is not silicon, it’s our humanity,” says Wang. “Today, we face many global challenges; poverty, inequality, climate change, and caring for our elderly and disabled. The power of humanity can spark creative solutions.”
The session highlighted the importance of video and VR in creating immersive experiences, and it’s worth considering whether it could be useful for your own strategies.
Apple has announced that developers with the ‘Account Holder’ role on the App Store will have to enable two-factor authentication.
The change is compulsory and will come into effect from February 27th.
“In an effort to keep accounts more secure, developers with the Account Holder role in a developer program will need to enable two-factor authentication to sign in to their Apple Developer account and Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles,” the company wrote.
Apple has not disclosed a specific reason for the change, but it could be part of its wider crackdown on enterprise security certificate abuses.
Last month, Facebook was discovered to be distributing a ‘research’ app to consumers – which incentivised users as young as 13 to share their phone and web activity in return for payment – through Apple’s enterprise program.
As part of its crackdown, Apple revoked the enterprise certificates of Facebook and several other developers found to be misusing them. Access has since been restored but Apple continues to be more strict about policing its program.
In a statement, Apple said its enterprise program was designed “solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization”.
“Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data,” it added.
The ‘Account Holder’ role allows the distribution and revocation of enterprise certificates, a power not even admins have. There’s a good chance the 2FA requirement is designed to prevent hacked accounts from abusing Apple’s program.
Account Holders require a device running iOS, or a Mac running OS X El Capitan or later, as their second source of authentication.
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this? Attend the co-located IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam.
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences? Attend the 
