Daily Deals News Bites for November 27-December 3 2011

Singapore’s Sprooki, a location-based app, says it will make it easy for consumers to find local deals, make purchases via their mobile device such as iPhone or iPad and then redeem the deal without the need to print out a voucher. The app was designed with malls and retailers in mind, allowing them to promote offers to shoppers in the near vicinity.

Sprooki users can follow their favorite merchants and receive special offers. This provides the merchant with the added opportunity to gain repeat customers and build brand loyalty.

According to Terence LEE from SGEntrepreneurs, there are those that think shopping centers have fallen by the wayside when it comes to ecommerce, but he said this is far from the truth.

“…I like how this company has not forgotten the fact that malls still hold much sway in the Singapore retail industry. Sprooki is smart to leverage on them to promote their own app, while at the same time offering malls a tool to promote their brand alongside the merchants under them.”

You can learn more about Sprooki by visiting the site at www.sprooki.com. – SGEntrepreneurs

Koobflog.com, a site described as a social network for golfers says it has added an online store just for golf gear and accessories. The store is divided into categories to make it easy for shoppers to find exactly what they’re looking for, such as accessories, gloves, balls, bags, clubs and even training aids.

With the holiday shopping season in full gear, you may be wondering what to get that special golfer in your life. Koobflob may have the answer.

“Finding the right gift around the holidays can be difficult, but there is an easy solution for the golfer on your gift list,” said Anthony Westrup, Koobflog co-founder.

Koobflab also provides a place for users to connect with other players through their forum, research information on golf courses and book tee times with on-line Tee Time reservations to over 3000 courses in partnership with GolfNow’s booking engine (over 4 million tee times booked!).

“In our on-going commitment to providing the most comprehensive golf site on the internet, offering a shopping venue is a logical value added choice for our community,” said Westrup.

You can find the Koobflog online store by going to the main site and clicking on the Golf Store link. – PRWeb

Frugalo, yet another mobile app looking to help consumers sort through the confusion of managing their daily deal vouchers, launched this past week. The app links to users Facebook friends allowing them to share deals, get alerts when a Facebook friend makes a purchase and lets users get together to take advantage of special promotions.

The app connects with Gmail accounts and imports all users’ purchases from major deal providers such as Groupon, LivingSocial, kgbdeals, GiltCity, Bloomspot, and BlackboardEats.

Founded by two former Digg employees, Michael Cieri and Scott Reynolds, earlier this year Frugalo is backed by funding from AngelPad, a mentorship program founded by a team of ex-Googlers.

To find out more about Frugalo, you can check out the site at www.frugalo.com – Social Barrel

Amazon Kindle tablet launching next week?

Given that a press invite from Amazon just hit my inbox for next Wednesday in New York City, I’d say it’s a safe bet that the long wait for Amazon’s tablet entry is about to end. The invite doesn’t offer any details, but all signs have hinted at a fall release for the device. And given the reported amount of Amazon tablets that were ordered from third-party hardware manufacturers — upwards of 800,000 per month — such a product launch would certainly warrant a huge press event.

Earlier this month, a prototype of the device, expected to be called the Amazon Kindle tablet, got a once-over from MG Siegler, who shared his initial impressions after using the device for a short time. Much of what he said then confirmed some of my prior thoughts and expectations of the device. It will likely be a 7-inch slate based on Google Android, but like the Barnes & Noble Nook Color, Android will be hidden under a custom interface. Siegler mentioned a cover-flow type of interface for Kindle books, music and video, which makes sense. In fact, the latest version of the Kindle app for Android devices moved in this direction as well; possibly offering a preview of what to expect.

We won’t know the tablet cost for sure until the product actually launches, but my thought was a top price around $250 with possible subsidies offset by Amazon Offers or Amazon Prime, which could further lower the cost in the sub-$200 range. Siegler confirmed the $250 price tag after using the device although Amazon could have since changed their position or could announce special deals to further reduce the price.

One “missing” feature that Siegler didn’t see (but I expect to be part of the device) is the Amazon AppStore, which is composed of curated Android applications. It’s clear the tablet will focus on Amazon’s media offerings — books, MP3s and videos — and it will have a web browser. Amazon has invested a fair amount of time and effort to create its Amazon AppStore, and I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t incorporate that into its tablet. Given that the device isn’t expected to have any Google apps at all, it seems likely to me that some basic third-party software options would be welcome. We’ll find out for sure as early as next week.

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Stat shot: Phones, tablets use airport Wi-Fi more than laptops

Smartphones and tablets now trump laptops for browsing at airport gates as the newer, more mobile devices use airport Wi-Fi more than traditional computers.

Wireless network provider Boingo Wireless notes that 58.9 percent of the total audience on its network in airports is made up of handsets and tablets, with the iPad alone accounting for 23.5 percent of these. While the recent growth of smartphone sales has surely contributed to this trend, Apple’s iPad may be just as big a factor; much of the mobile device growth Boingo has seen is from June 2010, or two months after the introduction of the original iPad.

In terms of smartphones, Apple’s iPhone is the most used device for Wi-Fi on Boingo’s airport network, with 42.1 percent of usage, or nearly four times as much as Android smartphones. Some other key takeaways:

Average megabytes per month used by mobile devices is now 211 MB, or nearly double the 114 MB used on average in May of 2009.
The corresponding megabytes used per minute is up as well: 0.89 MB vs 0.37 MB two years ago.
Network usage on mobile devices equaled that of laptops in airports just this past February, indicating the trend is continuing to accelerate.
While laptops outnumber mobile devices in terms of potential user audience by a factor of five, mobile devices now account for nearly 60 percent of Wi-Fi network usage.

I can remember wading through a sea of laptops while waiting for flights a few years back, but Boingo’s data roughly corresponds to what I see now: about half of those surfing the web at the gate are doing so on iPads and smartphones, with just an occasional sighting of an Android tablet.

I’m flying out this Sunday heading to our Mobilize event, and I’ll be sure to take a closer look at who’s using what while prepping for my flight. For the record, I’ll be packing my iPad for use in San Francisco, but I’m more likely to use my 7-inch Galaxy Tab at the gate and on the plane.

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Gartner: Still no true iPad challengers through 2015

Media tablet sales are set to grow from 17.6 million last year to 326.3 million in 2015, and the bulk of them will continue to be Apple iPads. So says Gartner, which on Thursday put forth a four-year estimate of tablet sales by operating system. The numbers reflect that Apple has a large head start with a mature tablet, as all other competitors are still struggling to catch up. That premise doesn’t surprise, but Gartner’s projected growth of QNX-powered tablets does.

Even over the next four years, as competing tablets and their supporting ecosystems mature, Gartner projects Apple’s iPad will hold a majority share of all tablets sales over the next four years. Android will continue to chase for the No. 2 spot but still manage just over a third of market share by 2015, while QNX and Microsoft slates bring up the rear. HP is considered to be out of the game completely due to abandoning the TouchPad hardware business with a massive inventory fire-sale. I think there’s a very slim chance that situation reverses itself due to speculation of HP replacing its current CEO, Leo Apotheker.

Here’s how Gartner sees the tablet market taking shape, with all figures in thousands:

A few thoughts jump to mind. First, I don’t doubt Apple’s dominance in the tablet market throughout the next few years. If anything, I think it’s understated by the estimates. That’s not to say the iPad is the best tablet for everyone, but it currently has the broadest customer appeal and most mature ecosystem for applications and services. Apple gave itself a good 18-month lead in the market and others are still scrambling to offer a fully comparable tablet experience.

I also wonder how Amazon’s upcoming tablet plays into the estimates as we already know the device is based on Android, even if it’s heavily customized so as to hide Google’s interface. The same holds true for the popular and extensible Barnes & Noble Nook Color, which ought to see a hardware refresh in the near future. I suspect that with weak sales of traditional Android tablets, these combination e-readers / tablets will make up the bulk of Android tablet sales, but Gartner makes no comment on that aspect.

Then there’s QNX. Earlier this week, I noted that Research In Motion shipped a scant 200,000 PlayBook tablets with QNX in the most recent quarter. That figure follows an estimated 500,000 PlayBooks shipped in the quarter prior to that. The data reflects shipped PlayBooks, not actual sales, and even if they were sales, I don’t see how Gartner expects RIM to sell 3 million PlayBooks this year. Even with a software update to add native email and support for Android applications, it appears impossible that RIM will sell 2.3 million tablets or more between now and the end of 2011.

It’s too early to call out any numbers for Microsoft tablets, although a touch-friendly Metro interface and ARM processor support for Windows 8 gets Microsoft in the game. Gartner expects a reasonably quick uptake once Windows tablets arrive, but I’ll wait and see the final product before taking a stab at sales. Regardless, the iPad is still the once and future king of tablets; at least for the next few years.

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Need to stress test an iPad app? Build a LEGO robot!

As a former software quality assurance manager in a past life, I have a soft spot for unique application testing methods. Maybe that’s why this story out of Pheromone Labs, an iOS development shop, caught my attention today by way of the NXT Step blog. The team is building a stop-motion iPad application for an unnamed client and was asked to stress test the software by taking 10,000 photos with the app.

Unless you’ve got nothing but time on your hands or don’t mind hiring a temp or intern to tap the iPad screen repeatedly over several days, this is an automated testing situation if I’ve ever heard one. But how do you automate something quickly and cheaply to test the app?

That’s where one of my personal hobbies comes in to play: Building robots out of LEGOs. As Pheromone Labs’ Mathieu Savage explains in this short video, it was a simple matter of cobbling together a small robot equipped with a pair of capacitive stylii to cycle through tens of thousands of screen taps.

The team used an old LEGO RCX set from the 1990′s, which was a precursor to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics kit that I and many others use today. Using two gears with the attached stylii, the robot cycles through snapping an image, previewing it and then returning to take the next image capture. This approach works because the software only has two specific touch points for this particular test; apps that have additional controls wouldn’t be good candidates for a simple robot. But for the Pheromone Labs team, this custom solution is a huge time saver and means that an actual tester won’t go crazy taking 10,000 pictures from an iPad.

What’s even more amazing is the specification comparison between the iPad and the LEGO robot, which is powered by an old 8-bit microprocessor and a scant 32 Kb of memory for firmware and programs. That’s old school!

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