85 Million Android Devices Affected by HummingBad Malware

A malware named HummingBad has affected around 85 million android devices. It’s creators are generating around $300,000 per month by means of false ad revenue.

This malware was originally spotted in February and it’s suspected to have originated from a company in China. Android devices are infamous for not being secure due to irregular update patterns.

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India is Now the World’s 4th Largest App Economy

HummingBad affects devices by implanting a persistant rootkit. This malware runs its campaign along with genuine campaigns. These details were revealed in a report by security specialist company Check Point. The report, which is 24 page long also said that any data inside the affected smartphones are also at risk. In fact, if the malware acquires root access of your device, then it gains full access.

India is Now the World’s 4th Largest App Economy

App Annie, a mobile app analytics company has reported that India has grown to become the World’s 4th largest app economy. The company has also said that the time spent on apps by Indians have gone up drastically.

The companies that are ahead of India interms of yearly app downloads are China, US and Brazil. India might take a higher position given that a growth of 92% is predicted, making the total downloads to 7.7 billion and by 2020, it would reach 20.1 billion.

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App Annie APAC MD Yunde Yu said that the introduction of affordable smartphones and improved infrastructure support for smartphones combined with India’s population gives huge potential for growth in this area.

He also added that the key aspect that drives app economy now is the amount of time that users spend on mobile apps, rather than revenue or number of downloads.

In the first quarter of 2016, Indians spend more than twice the time on mobile apps than they did during the same period in 2014.

One surprising finding was that above 25% of Android users are using at least one ride-sharing app such as Ola Or Uber. This figure is below 20% in the US, UK and Brazil.

425,000 Apps Vanished from the App Store in Thailand!

Earlier this month, during a routine app monitoring, Sensor Tower, a mobile analytics firm noticed that a huge number of apps were missing from the App Store in Thailand.

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The company first estimated the number to be around 19,000. But it was later found that the number of missing apps were a much higher number, titaling to around 425,290.

Responding to the news, Apple confirmed that a number of apps were accidentally removed from the App Store when they were repricing the apps in local currency. They also revealed that the bug was fixed within 48 hours. But Sensor Tower Data Scientists claimed that they were unavailable for around 6 days.

5 iOS Apps that May Save Your Life

Who said iOS app development is only done for trivial ideas like photo editing or managing your daily mails? There are iOS app development companies who have thought different.

One such thought led to the development of apps that could actually help in saving one’s life when there is a threat or danger. Here are some cool apps that you could use for your safety or to get inspiration for iOS app development.

1. Itriage app

Itriage is a healthcare app that can provide you with medical answers to your health related queries, care options, advices etc. The main features of this app includes:

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  • Description, symptoms, causes, clinical tests, and treatment available for diseases and conditions.
  • It has detailed descriptions, cost, and possible complications along with associated images, and videos for medical procedures like C section and cataract surgery.
  • Detailed information about drugs including side effects, usage instructions, brand names, and overdose first aids.
  • Search for doctors in your location and book appointments from your smartphone.
  • Find the nearest hospital and other healthcare service facilities.

The app also has the option to store your personal healthcare information such as consulted doctors, health conditions, medications, insurance information etc. By this way, you can easily share your medical history with others.

2. Weather-Pro

Weather-Pro is an app that will alert you about severe weather conditions, which are likely to hit your current location. The app comes with easy navigation, worlwide coverage for extreme weather conditions, and an Android wearable support.

The service offers realiable forecasts for weather variables including temperature, precipitation, air pressure, humidity, wind direction and speed, over two weeks in advance. Additional features include weather news and reports of about 2 million locations globally.

3. Around-Me

You will never know when you will be placed in an emergency situation. For e.g., imagine that you took the wrong road and got lost on your way back home from a weekend getaway in the middle of the night. And to make things worse you found out that your car has run out of gas.

Around-Me is just the right kind of app if you wish to be prepared to deal with any such unexpected situation that could freak you out. The app shows you a list of nearby gas stations, hospitals, restaurants, supermarkets and other similar services.

4. Flashlight

Flashlight is a very simple yet useful app, especially when darkness becomes your enemy, as it can serve as a cloak for criminal activities. This common tool added in your iPhone can possibly become your life saving appliance during a number of survival situations.

Even if you are capable of defending yourself normally, darkness can leave you disoriented. So, the first thing you want to do is become aware of your surroundings. Flashlight helps you spot someone who is hiding.

Some other advantages of keeping a flashlight ready and handy includes warding of dangerous animals, finding the way while travelling through rough terrains in the dark, sending emergency signals etc.

5. Circle of 6

Circle of 6 is a personal safety app that is originally designed for college students, yet could be beneficial for everyone. It is designed to be the first step against abuse and violence towards one’s life.

Circle of 6 lets you pick up six of your trusted friends or family members and add them to your circle. If you find yourself in a risky or threatening situation, you can get help with just two taps. The app will send alert SMS to the contacts in your circle that you are in danger and need assistance, along with your exact location.

There are also two pre-programmed national hotlines for safety and information in the app, which is customizable with the local emergency number of your choice.

Circle of 6 U, which is available for download is a school specific version of the same app.

11 iPhone App Development Ideas That’s Worth a Try

Apps are developed for almost every industry today. There are apps created in the field of communication, education, food, tourism and much more. Here are some great iPhone app development ideas that’s worth a try.

1. DIRECTORY OF RECIPES APP

 This app is for those people who really like to get experimental in the kitchen. You can just simply enter the main ingredients that you may have with you and the app will show you all the different recipes that you can try out with those key ingredients. For e.g., if you give flour, chicken, egg, butter, and potato as the core ingredients, the app might give you recipe suggestions such as Chicken Kiev with mashed potato or Chicken Frittata.

2. DISTANCE MEASURING APP

This app will help you to measure the distance between two points without having to use a measuring tape. You simply need to hold your iPhone and move it between the two points, and the app will display the distance in the unit of your choice.

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3. SPEED CONTROL APP

This is a very cool idea for iPhone app development. The app will make use of the GPS technology in your phone to calculate the speed at which you are travelling. It will then alert you when the speed crosses the set limits.

4. YOUR DAY OUT GUIDE APP

With this app, you can find out exciting tourist places and attractions that could be fit for your one day trip budget. Searching the app by entering the distance you wish to travel and the budget at hand, will provide you the list and details of local tourist spots.

5. COUNT YOUR CALORIE APP

You can calculate your total calorie intake for a day through this app. Enter the food that you eat throughout the day, and an alarm will be triggered once you’ve exceeded the recommended limit. This is a very beneficial app for people who are on a diet as well as for diabetes and cholesterol patients.

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6. CELEBRITY SINGER APP

This is a fun app. Sing into your iPhone and the app will record it and play back the song to you in the sound of some popular artists that it contains. The app can be distributed as a freemium one with a few voices, and the option for in-app of more artist voices can be included.

7. FIRST AID APP

Medical emergencies happen anytime and anywhere. So, it is important for everyone to have at least some basic first aid knowledge. This necessity could be turned out into a very innovative iPhone app development idea. An iPhone app serving this purpose can guide you in giving all the necessary first aids to a victim of any injury or illness until professional help is accessible.

8. READ ONE’S MIND APP

Get ready for some serious merrymaking and laughter by pointing your iPhone at someone’s head. The app will give you a hilarious read-out of people’s thought at the moment.

9. HEIGHT TELLER APP

Yep! You’ve guessed it right. As the name suggests, this is an app that could be used for measuring someone’s height.

10. SPOT THE ITEM APP

This is a very useful app, especially for someone with serious memory issues. The app can keep track of certain items that you store in your home. The indexed item’s location is found out using the bar-code tracking technology.

11. GET FATSO APP

This app is used to create funny fatso pictures of yourself. The app is linked to your iPhone’s camera, and the pictures taken will show you as someone who has gained a few extra pounds.

Get Your Apps Ready! Android N API’s are Now Final

The 4th and final developer preview of the next version of Android, named Android N has been released. Devices which has been enrolled to the Android beta program will be notified of an update to the Developer Preview Version.

You can download the final SDK from the SDK Manager in Android Studio. With this, you will be able to test your app against the official Android N APIs. You can test for new features such as Multi-window, direct reply and more.

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The Android support library has been updated to 24.0.0, allowing you to use multi-window, picture in picture callbacks, new notification features, new MediaBrowser APIs and methods for supporting Direct Boot.

The N Developer Preview is now available for Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, and Pixel C devices, as well as General Mobile 4G [Android One] devices and the Sony Xperia Z3.

App Store has Generated $50 billion in Revenue for Developers: Tim Cook

Apple CEO Tim Cook has claimed that they have paid $50 million in revenue to developers. This is a 20% increase from the $40 million in January. Last year, the number was $30 million. He was talking at the Wordwide Developers Conference yesterday.

Also the number of apps in the App Store has seen a significant increase to 2 million apps from 1.5 million apps same time last year. The total downloads has reached 130 billion.

Apple also overhauled the App Store revenue sharing model last week, now offering a developer friendly 85-15 split that are at least a year old and have subscriptions. This model replaced an 8 year old 70-30 revenue split model.

Another major development announced was that Apple would allow app creators to advertise search-related apps in the app store, thus giving users a chance to re-engage with apps.

Google App for iOS gets Accelerated Mobile Pages

Google app users in the iOS app platform has a reason to rejoice. Accelerated Mobile Pages, the Google feature to load websites instantly with a click rather than loading after a click, is coming to Google’s iOS app.

With the introduction of this feature to Google’s iOS app, we’ll be able to experience the same instant loading feature that has been implemented for the web within the app itself.

As per Google, “Starting today, AMP will be available in the Google app for iOS. So now news articles from a vast array of publishers will load instantly for your reading pleasure. Just look out for the lightning bolt and “AMP” next to articles in the “Top Stories” section of your search results and enjoy blazing-fast news.”

All the websites will obviously not be compatible with AMP. But there are a number of websites which are AMP compatible. In case you haven’t updated your google app yet,

Apple App Review Waiting Period Slashed to Less than 2 Days!

iOS app developers/businesses, there’s great news for you.Apple has reduced its stringent review period from more than a week to less than 2 days. This is a very welcome move from Apple.

Why this sudden move, you ask? Well, its part of Apple’s master plan to increase revenue from its mobile app services. The shortened time to market means app bugs would get fixed faster, and it wouldn’t be such a pain to test out new features. For Apple, tt will help build the loyalty of app developers to iOS platform.

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AppReviewTimes.com has reported a drop in the average review period from 8.8 days in 2015 to 1.95 presently.

This move closes the review period difference App Store had with its competitor, Google’s Play Store. It also points to a shift in the mobile industry for Apple, whose mobile phone sales have started to stagnate in a saturated market. The new focus would be on deriving more revenue from the service sector.

“Apple is a little bit of a different company than it was a few years ago when it first built the App Store,” said Maddern, founder of Button. “It’s becoming a lot more developer-friendly. It’s becoming a lot more open in its approach to building an ecosystem.”

So, what do you think? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section.

5 Reasons to Try iPhone App Development Right Now!

Over the years, Android has gained ground over iOS devices and is being rapidly picked up as the device of choice by the majority worldwide. It has got some amazing features and also shows a good growth graph.

You might be wondering why you should go for iOS development when the world is circling Android, in terms of the number of devices. Here are some reasons that you may find justifying to choose iPhone app development.

Largest app store for a single device

Even though Android hovers on top with 1.6 million apps in Google Play, leaving Apple behind at 1.5 million apps in total, we should not neglect the fact that Android apps combine apps coming from multiple different markets. In this sense, we can consider Apple has the largest digital repository of apps focusing a unique brand.

Better trust

The one thing that Apple devices guarantee you more than any other environment is its nearly flaw-free UI. The framework of iOS devices is sturdy and stable compared to that of the Android device. The softwares and hardwares blend together and functions like a single body of operation that gives its owners an amazing user experience.

Adding to it, Apple itself has a set of regulatory rules and standards to verify the quality of the apps that are let into their app store. So, users are more satisfied about the brand quality and the trust is so high towards Apple’s apps. This automatically makes them willing to comparatively newer apps.

Best platform to try innovative and new ideas

iOS developers love the fact that they can always reach out to a lot of loyal customers who will pay them more. iOS app users wouldn’t mind to invest more on apps that they find valuable or interesting.

Conversely, in the android market, users are a lot more hesitant to invest above a reasonable amount, even for quality apps. So, regardless of the lesser number of iPhone users worldwide, the total revenue that the iPhone apps generate is more than that of Android apps. This makes iOS an ideal platform to try innovative and unique ideas, which shoots up the development cost.

Apple’s development environment

First of all, we should admit that Microsoft’s Visual Studio is unbeatable for Windows app development. Though Microsoft advocates for Xamarin and is trying to make it an option of universal app development, real experiences show that Xamarin is highly unstable. Further, the licensing costs are high and the IDE demands frequent upgrades.

Well, it turns out then that Xcode is the best suited and regulated platform for iPhone app development. Xcode is amazing, fast, almost crash-free and has so many useful features ideal for iOS development, together with it’s clean UI. It is specifically designed for Objective C programming and Swift.

Android IDE like the popularly endorsed Android Studio has got many drawbacks when compared to the stable Xcode. It is relatively slow and it’s gradle build system is very much complex for beginners. It’s recurrent demand for updates can make understanding the system laborious unless one knows the history behind each component’s design and upgrade. This has eventually made the IDE unpredictable and the projects unstable.

Simplicity

iPhone app development is a lot simpler than doing it for Android. While ease of use and effortless navigation are boon for users, developers have also got many advantages working with iOS. For example, the testing platform is only a single one for iOS – the whole range of iOS devices.

In the case of Android you may have to deal with fragmentation i.e., you will have to consider almost 24,000 different devices and counting to cover the market. What you can do at the most while developing for Android is that, you can simply concentrate on any number of particular models that you may wish to support.