17 September 2008

Handango Releases Smartphone
Content Trends for First Half 2008

Handango, the world's leading provider of multi-platform smartphone apps, today released the First Half 2008 Handango Yardstick, a global trend report about the smartphone content industry.

The Games category leaped from fourth place at year-end 2007 into the second spot behind the Entertainment category, for the first time in Yardstick history.

This indicates that categories focused on "killing time" are now surpassing the categories known for "saving time," such as business and productivity apps, in unit sales.

Contributing to this increase in Games ranking are strong sales from popular titles from brands such as EA(TM) Mobile and Capcom(R) Interactive. In a separate Handango survey that measured consumer smartphone behavior and opinion, an overwhelming 86% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that smartphone content makes their lives easier while 76% agreed that it made their lives more enjoyable.

In the first half of 2008, Handango added more than 370 developer partners to its roster of more than 23,000. Handango's catalog now exceeds 140,000 apps spanning numerous categories including Entertainment, Games, Productivity, Business & Professional, Utilities, Travel, Health & Fitness and more.

FIRST HALF OF 2008 IN REVIEW:

Smartphone users downloading more Games and Entertainment applications than any other category of content.

In the first half of 2008, Entertainment and Games ranked one and two respectively in the top selling categories, totaling 42% of unit sales of the top ten categories. Business & Professional applications, number four at 13% in 2007, moved up to third place with 15%. This suggests that smartphone owners are now utilizing their devices as mini entertainment centers in addition to the traditional business use. Productivity applications, such as address book and calendar, took fourth place with 9%.

Productivity and Utilities applications remained the top two categories, respectively, in unit sales in the first half of 2008 on the Symbian platform. The top device for Symbian OS continues to be the Nokia N95, which launched in 2007.

The top 10 best-selling Symbian OS applications
in First Half 2008 include:

1. Quickoffice Premier (document manager)
2. ProfiMail (email viewer)
3. Handy Weather (weather)
4. Advanced Call Manager (call manager)
5. X-plore (file management)
6. WorldMate Professional (travel assistant)
7. IM+ for Skype (instant messenger consolidator)
8. LCG Jukebox(music player)
9. Advanced Device Locks (security)
10. Ultimate Voice Recorder (voice recorder)