It’s actually been a while and I didn’t get to update the blog. But, it is worth sharing that we launched Active 24′s iPhone app in the App Store and it actually made it into top 10.

Grab your copy today. It’s FREE! Download now.

The price of books published by indie authors on Amazon kindle store is slowly falling to $0.99. This is very similar to the iTunes App Store pricing. If I remember well, SEGA was the first major publisher to drop the price of it’s hit game Super Monkey Ball to $0.99 and all hell broke lose. Now we had a quality title selling for the lowest price point and it set the standard for most gaming titles to follow. Super Monkey Ball was one of the early success in the app store and in some part due to its “innovative” pricing. The same seems to be going on in the eBook space and the idea of $0.99 eBooks dominating the store is not too far fetched.

What does this teach us? And what does this have to do with paywalls?

The lesson to be drawn here is that in a competitive market with a relatively low barrier to entry the equilibrium price will be near the bottom of the pricing tier. That in itself is not a bad thing. As the saying goes: we will make it in volume. And indeed some have. SMB paved way for Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cut the rope et al. Having said that, it’s also clear that this price point will not suite every player in the market and force more pricing innovation.

Enter in-app payments. Apple realizes and works hard to make sure that the apps (or more importantly the developer) ecosystem is healthy. They create the conditions for developers to succeed and in-app payments was their another attempt at helping devs monetize their wares. The developers can now charge for additional content and an increasing number do. IAP were followed by iAds. There will be more pricing innovation and we can expect more from Apple.

Both apps and eBooks are content types where paying for content is the norm. This is made possible by controlling the distribution, delivery and consumption medium (iOS devices and Kindles/Nooks). It helps that the payment infrastructure is built into the platform. The price will not go to free because the economics don’t work (yes, there are zero dollar apps, but they are not a significant money maker for most devs on iOS). I will not touch on Android side of the story in this article so let’s keep ad-supported Angry Birds out of discussion for now.

These developments somehow seem to coincide with the rise of paywalls for content on the web. Of the major publications, WSJ has always had a paywall and arguably it works because they provide time sensitive information (Bloomberg has built a vast empire that way), but last month NYT raised it’s paywall as well. It’s too early to say how successful NYT is going to be with it, but I am not counting on it being a significant contributor to their revenue. A long time ago I remember reading somewhere that you can’t charge for news for a simple reason that as soon as you raise a paywall someone else will make it available for free. This happened pretty fast as The Atlantic found a way to link to NYT articles by skipping the paywall. As TechDirt pointed out earlier – Did The NYTimes Just Offload Its Front Page To The Atlantic?
(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110404/00434713761/did-nytimes-just-offload-its-front-page-to-atlantic.shtml).

Where does this leave us?

The conclusion so far seems obvious: if you don’t control the discovery, distribution and preferably end user experience, you won’t succeed with charging for content.

ZENTITY announced the availability of Teen Patti for iPhone on 2nd April 2010. The game debuted at #1 top selling card game.

Teen Patti (also known as Flash or 3-cards) is a card game similar to poker. The game is played worldwide and particularly popular in India and south-east Asia. Teen Patti recently featured in a movie of the same name.

Teen Patti can be played with a minimum of 2 players but it’s more fun with 4 or more players. Touch Teen Patti offers games of 4 or 6 players at the table. Touch Teen Patti brings the fun game with a great AI implementation and the best card game simulation.


This is the second in the series of Indian traditional games for ZENTITY having released the classic board game Touch Carrom. Touch Carrom became the number #1 selling game in it’s home market India and made it to top 10 and top 100 in many world markets.

Grab it in the App Store at itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/touch-teen-patti/id353709014?mt=8

Teen Patti for iPhone

While the world debates whether iPad is revolutionary or just a big dumbed down iPhone. We have made sure that Touch Carrom will look and play great on the iPad.

Generally, our take on the iPad is that it’s a decent first gen device. A great applications and content consumption platform. As it matures with software upgrades, new applications and even hardware, it will be the platform to beat in the tablet segment. In all the hype and hoopla leading up to the launch and then the “disappointment” people often forget it’s still the best device in the tablet form factor till date.

For your viewing pleasure checkout Touch Carrom in the iPad simulator:

Touch Carrom just got reviewed on the Daily App Show. Having no background in the game, the presenter compares the game with pool/billiard and table shuffle. Which is actually a very good way to look at it

The presenter likes the game and gets addicted while playing even without having prior knowledge about the game. Check it out at http://dailyappshow.com/touch-carrom.

As always any comments/feedback welcome.

Checkout Touch Carrom 1.1.2. The best version yet featuring the new faster controller.

Other changes include:
- Improved board visual
- New font across all screens
- New instructions video

Download at: http://itunes.apple.com/app/touchcarrom/id337993724?mt=8

Please provide your feedback in the App Store or comments below.

Isn’t the new game screen gorgeous?

Gizmodo broke the story on the Nexus One (NO – the Google Phone) pricing earlier yesterday. There is nothing innovative about the price it’s fairly standard way in which the mobile phones are priced: locked version which is subsidized by the carrier and unlocked full priced version. There had been a couple of earlier posts about the features and the form factor. All in all, NO is shaping up to be a competitive device and will further the cause of Android phones. It would be interesting to see how it all pans out with so many device manufacturers, carriers and now Google getting into the game so directly. There is also an indirect VoIP story in the NO launch somewhere and carriers will be sensitive to that. In a lot of ways, iPhone is actually a better play for carriers then anything Google can ever offer because the Google business model is so directly dependent on cheap bandwidth, ads and control over content discovery and delivery.

So what do I think about Google NO? It’s no iPhone killer. It will further cement Android’s position as a distant #2 in the smartphone category and become a second platform of choice for App Developers.

Oh and everyone at ZENTITY wishes you a very happy and prosperous year 2010.

Checkout a new review of Touch Carrom on http://www.amitbhawani.com.

This is quite a common requirement to be able to add a custom checkbox control in an iPhone app. In the Interface builder -> Tools ->library there is no CheckBox control while other controls like Label and Text Field are there. Here is how I implemented it. I would be interested in hearing about how others went about doing it.

You can use the UIButton control to make a CheckBox.

In your project, in the resources folder add the images e.g. the ones attached with in this post “checkbox-selected.png” and “checkbox.png”.

Define the members as follows in “CheckBoxViewController.h”

@interface CheckBoxViewController : UIViewController
{
 BOOL checkboxSelected;
 UIButton *checkBox;
 UILabel *checkBoxLabel;
}

Uncomment the viewDidLoad in “CheckBoxViewController.m” and use the following code.

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
	[super viewDidLoad];
	checkBox = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(60, 100, 16, 16)];
	checkBox.contentVerticalAlignment = UIControlContentVerticalAlignmentCenter;
	checkBox.contentHorizontalAlignment = UIControlContentHorizontalAlignmentCenter;
// Image for normal state
	UIImage *newNormalImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"checkbox.png"];
	[checkBox setBackgroundImage:newNormalImage forState:UIControlStateNormal];
// Image for highlighted state
	UIImage *newHighlightedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"checkbox-selected.png"];
	[checkBox setBackgroundImage:newHighlightedImage forState:UIControlStateHighlighted];
// Image for selected state
	UIImage *newSelectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"checkbox-selected.png"];
	[checkBox setBackgroundImage:newSelectedImage forState:UIControlStateSelected];
	[checkBox addTarget:self action:@selector(checkBoxSelect:)forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
	checkBox.adjustsImageWhenHighlighted = YES;
	[checkBox setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
	[[self view] addSubview:checkBox];
	checkBoxLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100, 90, 200, 40)];
	[checkBoxLabel setText:@"Check Box"];
	[checkBox setBackgroundColor:[[ self view] backgroundColor]];
	[[self view] addSubview:checkBoxLabel];
}

And add the following action method

-(void)checkBoxSelect:(id)sender
{
	if (checkboxSelected == 0)
	{
		[checkBox setSelected:YES];
		[checkBoxLabel setText:@"Check Box - Selected"];
		checkboxSelected = 1;
	}
	else
	{
		[checkBox setSelected:NO];
		[checkBoxLabel setText:@"Check Box"];
		checkboxSelected = 0;
	}
}

Build and Run the application, this will work as checkbox control.

In under two days Touch Carrom has added 99 fans as of now.

Announcing a new promo code give away: every 100th facebook fan will get a free promo code for the game. The codes are currently valid for the US store only.

Click here to become a fan!