We all know that Apple’s App Store makes lots and lots of money, but every now and then it still manages to surprise us. The app repository has shattered previous records, generating the whopping $10 billion in earnings in 2013.

What’s so impressive about this number is that it pretty much doubled 2012′s revenue estimate of $5 billion. December 2013 proved to be the most lucrative for the App Store, with over 3 billion app downloads and $1 billion in sales. Read more »

Intel’s keynote at the on-going Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas saw the announcement of a new technology, which the company calls ‘dual OS platform’. The newest innovation from the semi-conductor company allows you to run two of the most popular operating systems, Android and Windows, on a single device.

With Intel’s newest technology on board, you can switch from Android to Windows OS almost instantly by just pushing a button. Read more »

Users of the popular Pandora service on Android will be glad to know that the latest version adds a much requested feature to the app. You can now set an alarm from within the app and choose to wake up to your favorite music streamed straight to your phone.

The app lets you choose a simple alarm along with a snooze timer if that’s more more your thing. You will a see a timer on the screen when you snooze the alarm showing you how much time is left. Read more »

CyanogenMod has just issued a new M2 release of the popular CyanogenMod 11.0 ROM based on Android 4.4.2 KitKat.

The new M2 release is available for 65 Android devices and you can get it either from the dedicated download portal or via your CM Updater on your CyanogenMod-running device. Read more »

If you’ve been waiting for a way to interact with Vine on the web, rather than from a smartphone, you’re in luck. Vine has just released web profiles for its huge user base of over 40 million people.

Although users cannot upload clips from their web browser, they are able to like, share, and comment on Vine videos through the web site. Read more »

Blackberry Messenger, or, BBM as the cool kids call it, received a warm reception when it was initially for Android, raking in over 10 million downloads within its first 24 hours.

BlackBerry has now a few new BBM features available on the Android version of their application: specifically Voice Calling and Channels. They’ve also ported over 100 new emoticons (your inner teenage girl is squealing, isn’t she?), increased the BBM group size, and added new ways to find friends within the app. Read more »

When you talk about Windows Phone devices these days, you can only think of Nokia, with others such as Samsung and HTC having nearly been wiped from our memory. But turns out Samsung still cares about the handful of Windows Phone devices it made (or perhaps this is the reason).

Samsung has launched two new apps that are exclusive to its own Windows Phone 8 devices. The first one is called Share Box, which works over DLNA and lets you share multimedia content with other DLNA compatible device. The second app is called Samsung Link, which will allow you to play content stored on other registered devices remotely over an internet connection. Read more »

Back in September, Google acquired Bump, the smartphone data-sharing software developer, and now they are shutting it down. Bump’s CEO and Founder, David Lieb, announced in his blog that his two services, Bump and Flock, will be terminated officially on January 31st of this year. The apps will be removed from both the Apple App Store and Google Play, so users have until that time to export all of their data.

Bump was introduced in 2009, allowing smartphone users to share photos and contacts by simply bumping their phones together. Paypal adopted the technology briefly by allowing customers to transfer money via the software. Bump then ventured out with their own mobile payment application, and then released Flock; which was capable of aggregating pictures from various devices into one photo album. Read more »

One of the biggest selling points of Android over iOS is the fact that there are more free apps available in the Play Store than the App Store. Sure, with free apps there are in-app advertisements and the occasional annoying pop-ups that users need to withstand. However, most people seem willing to deal with it, considering the growing popularity of Android. Now, new research from analytics firm, Distimo, indicates that this strategy is working, because a whopping 98% of all Google Play Store revenue comes from in-app purchases of free titles.

What about the the other 2%? Well that is divided equally between paid only apps and in-app purchases within paid applications. What kind of apps are people most likely to spend money on? Games. 90% of gaming revenue is made from in-app purchases. Read more »

Good news for the Sony Xperia M users out there! An unofficial CyanogenMod 11 based on Android 4.4 KitKat has been made available on XDA Developers and even though some features are still in development, the Xperia M devices can now taste some KitKats.

It is unclear if the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean-running Sony Xperia M will ever get an official KitKat ROM, so it’s good to see someone out there is already working to deliver this experience to the affordable smartphone. Read more »

Recently launched, the Oppo N1 flaunts its Color OS atop Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean but as Oppo has a collaboration partnership with the CyanogenMod team, the device also has ready access to their beefed-up Android builds. Starting today, owners of the N1 can enjoy a stable CM10.2 ROM, which is based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean.

Running on a great variety of hardware, Google’s Android allows a variety of looks and features across the board. CyanogenMod has the most popular lineup of customized Android ROMs for devices by various manufacturers. Oppo made sure to work closely with the CyanogenMod group when making its Oppo N1 and as a result their smartphone allows one of the easiest ways of installing the custom CM ROMs. Many times installing CyanogenMod would require you to either root your device and/or lose some functionality, but in this case the functionality of the Oppo N1 remains all intact. Read more »

Nokia has taken down its Here Maps app from Apple’s App Store. It is no longer available for download and won’t come back in a while. The only way to access the Here services on the iOS is through here.com.

There is no fallout between Apple and Nokia, at least we didn’t hear of any, but Nokia says the reason is in the iOS 7 recent changes. Read more »

NVIDIA has started rolling out the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update to its Tegra Note 7 tablet. The new firmware comes with a couple of new features along with a few improvements to enhance the overall experience of the slate.

The Tegra Note stylus now has better support for left handed users and is a lot sensitive. The addition of DirectStylus option under the setting’s menu, stylus removal and insert notifications are some of the new features on-board. Read more »

Who said that Apple couldn’t be generous? The California tech giant known for charging premium prices for their products are getting in the Christmas spirit after the fact and are giving away one free gift every day from December 26th until January 6th 2014.

We already told you about the app a while ago (along with the fact that it’s only available for iOS7 devices and that it covers US users for the first time this year), but the good news is that the free gifts start coming today. You will need to download the Apple 12 Days of Gifts app onto your iOS device or Mac computer to get access to the free content. Read more »

Amazon is giving away $5 store credit to app shoppers this holiday season. And all you have to do is download an app from their Appstore.

To get the $5 store credit, all you have to do is go to the Amazon Appstore app on your Kindle Fire or any other compatible Android device and download any app, including a free one. You’ll soon get an email informing you that $5 credit has been added to your account, which can then be used to purchase more apps or games from the Amazon Appstore. Read more »