Online fashion retailer Missguided has launched its own iPhone app in a bid to expand its online retail offering.

The business, which specialises in “catwalk looks and celebrity inspired women’s fashion”, hopes to use the application to strengthen ties with customers by providing access to its online catalogue as well as fashion industry news for shoppers on the move.

Missguided’s venture is the latest sign of a growing trend among fashion retailers to connect with potential buyers through mobile and smartphone devices. And after research released last week suggested that in three years time mobile owners may be spending over £250m a year on goods bought through their phones, it’s not hard to see why the fashion sector is taking such an interest.

In an effort to widen the customer experience and make its iPhone app more than simply a sales tool, Missguided has included a host of features on top of its online catalogue. New fashions are sent to users’ phones each day, and social media fashion links to the firm’s blog, Facebook and Twitter pages are provided.

By Richard Morris

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Google’s Chrome browser continued to make inroads into its rivals’ share of worldwide browser usage in May, new statistics show.

Chrome rose 0.3 percentage points to take seven per cent of the market, said Net Applications, which monitors browser usage on a network of Web sites.

The statistics reflect activity, not the number of people using a browser, as people load up about 160 million pages each month on sites Net Applications monitors. Because Web usage is increasing, the absolute number of people using a browser can increase even as its fractional share of usage drops.

Drops in market share were recorded by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which dropped 0.3 per cent to 59.75 per cent, and Mozilla’s Firefox, which slipped 0.2 percentage points to 24.3 per cent. Fourth-place Safari from Apple rose 0.1 percentage points to 4.8 per cent, and Opera rose by the same margin to 2.4 per cent.
 
The browser market has become highly competitive as new features are built in to support new Web standards. Even Microsoft, long considered a technology laggard despite the dominant market position enjoyed by its browser, is fighting back, with extensive development work taking place on IE9.

Microsoft has been trying to rid the world of Internet Explorer 6, introduced in 2001 and now considered outmoded, slow, and insecure. Another analytics firm, StatCounter, reported IE6 use had dropped below 5 percent in the United States and Europe and to 9.8 percent worldwide.

“At these levels, Web developers now have valid justification not to support IE6 in the future,” StatCounter Chief Executive Aodhan Cullen said in a statement. The company collected its data from 15 billion page views of web pages in May.

Net Applications also released statistics for iPad use, showing the Apple tablet’ making gradual progress. With the iPad now for sale internationally, usage peaked May 29 with 0.17 per cent.
Net Applications’ data shows the iPad is relatively popular at weekends, when browsing using it roughly doubles.

The company also tracked mobile phone browsing usage. Java ME, a mobile phone version of the technology from Sun Microsystems and now owned by Oracle, took the top spot with 40 per cent of usage share.

Next in line was iPhone OS with 32.8 per cent, Symbian at 14 per cent, Android at 6.2 per cent, and BlackBerry at 3.6 per cent.

One commenter on the story, when it appeared on technology news website CNet, said the appeal of Chrome was simple: “I like Chrome for one reason: speed. It’s so much faster than Firefox when it comes to loading web pages,” he said.

Apple top man Steve Jobs fears that the internet will be reduced “into a nation of bloggers” unless a sustainable way of persuading people to pay for online content is devised.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal-organised D8 conference near Los Angeles, Jobs said that newspapers’ and magazines’ futures, along with that of quality journalism, depended on media outlets finding a way of making it worthwhile for readers to pay to look at website content.

“One of my beliefs very strongly is that any democracy depends on a free healthy press, some of these newspapers, the news gathering and editorial organisations are really important,” he said.

“I don’t want to see us descend to a nation of bloggers. I think we need editorial more than ever right now.

“Anything that we can do to help news gathering organisations find new ways of expression so they can afford to get paid so they can keep their news gathering and editorial operations intact, I’m all for it.”

He was keen, of course, to stress the possible role which his company’s latest big thing, the iPad tablet computer, could play in facilitating this shift in attitudes.

“What we have to do is figure out a way to get people to start paying for this hard earned content. And so this (the iPad) provides us with a potential opportunity to provide more value than a web page and start charging for that,” Jobs said.

However, Jobs appeared to hint that his attempts to take a hard line over charging for iPad apps had made media owners reluctant to develop their own apps, reported Gordon McMillan on MediaWeek magazine’s The Wall blog.
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“I’m trying to get these folks to take more aggressive postures than what they charge traditionally for print because they don’t have the expenses of printing, they don’t have the expenses of delivery, and to charge a reasonable price and go for volume. I think people are willing to pay for content,” Jobs concluded.

His assertion seems to have been borne out by early sales of The Times newspaper’s iPad edition, which was reported to have sold 5,000 six-day subscriptions, at GBP9.99 each (about US$16), in its first three days of availability.

The Times newspaper of London has launched an iPad edition on the same day as the device went on sale in the UK.

The move also came just days after the launch of the News Corporation-owned newspaper launched its revamped website, which will soon go behind a paywall.

The iPad app will allow users to download and read Times content offline. An article on the old Times website promised that the app would make more use of interactive graphics, picture galleries and video.

It has been priced at £9.99 for a 28-day subscription – a different pricing structure from the soon-to-be-launched paywall for the new Times and Sunday Times websites, and substantially lower than the £1 a day or £2 for a week which has already been announced as the cost of a subscription to the new sites.

Speaking at a pre-launch event for the new websites, Sunday Times executive editor Tristan Davies said his newspaper may also launch an iPad app.

However, no details have been given of any payment plan for using the iPad app and accessing the paywalled websites through the device.

“The Times’ iPad application is an optimised, edited edition specifically for the iPad – including most sections of the paper – which can be downloaded and read offline. It is a separate product from thetimes.co.uk, which is why it is priced differently – so readers can choose whether they want to read The Times in a print, online or iPad format,” a spokeswoman for the Times told Journalism.co.uk.

Speaking at a pre-launch event for the new websites, Sunday Times executive editor Tristan Davies said his newspaper may also launch an iPad app.

Apple has overtaken arch-rival Microsoft to become the world’s biggest technology company – and it’s thanks largely to the iPod and the iPhone.

In the aftermath of a volatile stock market day on Wednesday, the value investors placed on Apple reached $222billion (£154billion), shading out Microsoft which was valued at $219billion (£152.2billion) at the close of that day’s trading.

This is despite Microsoft continuing to be more than two and a half times more profitable than its major rival, and having more than 35 per cent more annual revenue in 2009.

Microsoft always had the upper hand until Apple’s MP3 player came along, and although the portable music player runs on Microsoft’s Windows software, its massive success made legions of new buyers aware of Apple’s range of computers.

Apple’s success has been cemented by the impressive sales figures achieved by its iPhone since its launch in 2007.

The latest variant of the smartphone is imminent, while Apple’s newest baby, the iPad tablet computer, finally reaches shops in the UK this week.

Microsoft has had mixed fortunes with its efforts to similarly diversify away from its software base, with the X-Box games console being the most notable success.

Google has overtaken Microsoft in the battle over the software that runs mobile phones and is challenging Apple for share of the fast growing smartphone market.

Google’s Android was the fourth most popular operating system on smartphones sold in the first quarter of 2010, according to research firm Gartner.

This means the company is well-placed to usurp Apple as the number of apps continues to grow dramatically.

Android, which powered 10 per cent of smartphones sold in the US between January and March, still lags Nokia’s Symbian, Blackberry-maker Research in Motion and Apple.

But Gartner said Android phones were already outselling the iPhone in North America, less than two years after the Internet search giant entered the market.

“Until next year it will likely be a battle between Apple and Android,” Jee Dong-seob, a senior official at SK Telecom, told Reuters Global Technology Summit.

The number of start-up businesses dedicated themselves to developing apps for Android is growing, and in the process this is boosting interest among consumers and posing an increasing risk to Apple, venture capitalists told the gathering.

While Apple’s app store offers more than 200,000 games, tools and other software to jazz up the iPhone, against just 38,000 for Android, the openness of Google’s mobile operating system is helping it gain popularity with developers.

“I am quite impressed by the traction the Android ecosystem is getting,” said Redpoint Ventures’ partner Chris Moore.

“On the current trajectory, they (Android) will pass the iPhone platform, or at least reach parity by the end of this year or middle of next year.”

App developers usually choose a limited number of mobile platforms to write software for as every additional platform sharply raises their costs.

Nine major operating systems have either launched or are in development. Some players in the industry expect to see further consolidation, while others say fragmentation is set to continue.

“Markets will continue to remain fragmented and competition will only get tougher as players will push hard to develop new systems or upgrade existing ones to offer customised products for mobile carriers,” Lee Ho-soo, head of Samsung’s bada smartphone operating system, told the summit.

Microsoft, which has been making mobile software for around 10 years, said it was committed to wireless, and hopes to claw back market share it has lost to rivals with new Windows Phone 7 models, due to reach markets in time for holiday sales at the end of the year.

 ”We are very committed, it’s a core part of our strategy,” Microsoft CFO Peter Klein told delegates.

“Don’t just shop for it, i-Phone it to Argos” – that might well be the latest variation of Argos’ well-known advertising catchphrase promoting the retailer’s latest idea to open new channels for its customers.

The high street company has followed several other big-name retailers in announcing the launch of an interactive shopping service available over customers’ i-Phones.

The move has been prompted by a huge increase in traffic to its website from Apple mobile devices last year.

Customers can use the app to update their Argos accounts, order items for collection in-store, and check the availability of stock in specific stores.

Regular users of its website are the main targets of the launch.

David Tarbuck, head of multi-channel development, said 750,000 people visited the Argos site using Apple devices.

He told New Media Age magazine: “The biggest trend we’ve seen in the way customers use their mobile phones to shop has been the increase in product browsing online.

“We’ve seen product browsing figures increase by nearly 700 per cent in the last year from the iPhone, so we’ve developed an app tailored to this consumer trend.”

UK consumers can pre-order Apple’s handheld iPad from today (Monday May 10), with the first of the devices expected to go on sale a little more than two weeks later, on Thursday May 28.

Apple is taking pre-orders for the touchscreen tablet computer whose UK retail price will be between £429 for a 16GB and £699 for a 64GB model.

May 28 will also see the iPad hit the shops in 27 other countries including Germany, France and Italy. Customers will be restricted to two iPads per order, after sales in the US which far outstripped supply caused the initial delay of the device’s European launch.

Spanish-owned O2 has announced that all iPad data tariffs will be available without a long contract and include unlimited free access to BT Openzone and The Cloud Wi-Fi hotspots. Pay & Go 3G broadband tariffs from O2 will range from £2 a day to £15 a month.

The other major UK sellers of the iPad, including Vodafone and Orange, have yet to announce price plans.

Apple has already sold over one million iPads in the USA, with more than 300,000 being snapped up on the first day of sale, April 5.

Customers have also downloaded more than 12 million apps from the App Store, as well as over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore.

The iPad allows users to browse the web, read and send email, share photos, as well as watch HD videos, listen to music, play games and read ebooks.

Full pricing details of the iPad are available on the Apple website.

Police investigating the alleged theft of a prototype Apple 4G iPhone have raided the home of technology blog editor Jason Chen.

Chen, who writes for Gizmodo.com returned to his house to find officers searching the property. According to a report by the Daily Mail, the police confiscated four computers, two servers, an iPad and various other devices.

An investigation is now underway into whether Gizmodo broke the law by purchasing the next generation iPhone which is believed to have been left in a bar by an Apple employee and then picked up by a member of the public. Gizmodo paid $5,000 for the device and then proceeded to blog about its features.

The story brought in an estimated three million readers in the space of just 12 hours.

The prototype iPhone was returned to Apple after the company made an official request to Gizmodo.

A spokesman for the San Mateo County District Attorney’s office confirmed the raid had taken place, adding this was “the beginning of the investigation”.

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Apple has unveiled details of a mobile advertising platform which is to be included in an update for the company’s iPhone later this year.

iAd, which will be used to allow advertisers to place adverts in third party applications, is the company’s first attempt to enter the potentially lucrative market, according to a report by the BBC.

The programme will allow external developers to take a 60 per cent cut of advertising revenue.

Van Baker, vice president of research at Gartner, told the BBC that mobile could well be the future.

He said: “It has huge potential to really change mobile commerce. The evidence so far is that very few transactions really happen in this space. Mobile is used to compare prices, find restaurants, movie times and the like but very little in the way of commerce.”

The announcement follows Apple’s acquisition of mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless in January for a reported $275m. Two months earlier Google said it had bought AdMob, another mobile ad company for $750m.

Apple was looking closely at AdMob before Google made its move or according to Apple boss Steve Jobbs, “snatched them (AdMob) because they didn’t want us to have them”.

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