Category: Tech news

Google SVP Andy Rubin took to Twitter again today, not to delete one of his tweets but to publish a brand new one, saying Android saw 3.7 million activations in two days (Christmas day and the day before).

He also posted it on his Google+ account, just in case you were wondering.

Probably, Rubin was trying to add some context to a report published earlier today by Flurry, which said 6.8 million Android and iOS devices were activated on Christmas day alone, combined, and 242 million apps were downloaded the same day.

Just last week, Rubin revealed that Android passed 700,000 device activations per day, which means the 3.7 million Christmas period activations translate to roughly a 2.7 times-spike.

Not exactly a bad report card for a two-day period, but not mind-bogglingly impressive either.

The question everyone will be asking is how many iOS devices were activated during the same period, but don’t expect any Apple executives to jump on Twitter to tell you. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that slightly less iPhones were activated on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but more iOS devices in total when you account for iPods and iPads.

UPDATE: There were 3.7M Android devices activated on 12/24 and 12/25.—
Andy Rubin (@Arubin) December 28, 2011

According to customer experience analytics company ForeSee, e-commerce giant Amazon once again topped consumer satisfaction in online retail after taking the top spot in 2010. However, Netflix, which had a dismal year, plummeted in customer satisfaction. For the past seven years, Netflix and Amazon have been competing for first place in Foresee’s Index, but this is the first year where one of the e-retailers saw a massive dip in sentiment.

Amazon climbed two points to score 88 on the study’s 100-point scale, which is the highest score from any retailer in 14 consecutive studies. Netflix’s well-publicized blunders, including price hikes last summer and the unsuccessful attempt to spin off the DVD rental business, caused its customer satisfaction to plummet by seven points and 8% to 79.

Netflix saw scores drop in every single element of the website that ForeSee measures, including site content, site functionality, merchandise, and prices. Next to Netflix, both Gap (down 6% to 73) and Overstock.com (down 5% to 72) saw the largest declines in satisfaction, leaving them with scores at the bottom of the Index.

Besides Amazon, the largest gains in satisfaction go to TigerDirect.com (up 8% to 79) and JC Penney (up 6% to 83), which nabbed Ron Johnson, former head of Apple’s retail operations, as CEO this year. Top-performing e-retailers include Amazon, Avon, JC Penney, QVC, and Apple.

The report also found that American consumers were less price sensitive during the 2011 holiday shopping season than they were last year, as price had a smaller impact on satisfaction than last year. Instead, for many e-retailers, improving merchandise and content would have a greater return on investment than price, says survey respondents.

Another key finding from the report related to repeat buying. Highly satisfied shoppers say they are 64% more likely to consider the company next time they are purchasing a similar product, 68% more likely to purchase from the retailer online, 48% more likely to purchase from the retailer offline, and 67% more likely to recommend the retailer to others. And analysis of top e-retailers in the United States has shown that, on average, a one-point change in website satisfaction was found to predict as much as a 14% change in revenue generated on the web.

That’s a good thing because Google+ missed the starting gun. And its ”invite only” launch strategy saw all its disconnect users flailing independently. But in the long run that might not matter much, because Google+ doesn’t need a critical mass or tons of engagement. It needs signups so it can get its identity layer under users of its other products. That way it can turn everyone’s searches, mapping, email, and more into fuel for its ad targeting engine.

While the 62 million count cited today by analyst Paul Allen might not sound like much, it’s a start, and the projected 293 million count by the end of 2012 is important. Our writer Eric Eldon breaks down that Allen’s count is of total users, not active ones. That’s worse, but the good news for Google is that the sign up rate is increasing. Its variety of in-roads to the service including the top navigation bar across Google products are work.

With enough cajoling, users are registering even if their social network needs are already being met by Facebook and Twitter.

Google may never beat those services in terms of engagement with a content stream. That’s even while taking a differentiated macronetwork approach of letting you efficiently manage Circles of any type of relationship from best friends, to loose acquaintances, to followed celebrities. But that’s fine because Google isn’t a dedicated social company out to make the world more open and connected.

At its core, Google is an online advertising company that offers a range of features to draw your time and data. It cares a lot about making great products, but they don’t drive the business directly. In that vein, Google+ doesn’t need to have the best news feed, it just needs users to sign up once and stay signed in.

If it takes Google 4 years to start catching up to Facebook in terms of user count, so be it. The company has plenty of money to burn so it can take this long-term approach. What matters isn’t when, but if if it can eventually grow its registration base large enough for Google+ to produce ROI.

As Larry Page said on the 2011 Q3 earnings call, by “baking identity into all of our products… you’ll have better, more relevant search results and ads.” When Google’s average user can be served high CPC ads for lawyers while they search for nearby restaurants because yesterday they searched for lawyers, then the journey is complete.

Google+ now has more than 62 million users, according to Paul Allen, Ancestry.com founder and unofficial traffic analyst for Google’s social network. That’s not 62 million active users, though — a point that everyone covering these numbers seems to have missed. It’s just the number of total users. And specifically, it’s the number of new surnames that Allen’s team has tracked being created on the service.

Because Google has aggressively integrated G+ into many other properties, including its top navigation bar and the OneBox, one would expect a certain baseline amount of sign-ups from among the hundreds of millions of people using other Google products.

The real question is how many people are returning after creating their accounts, which Allen doesn’t try to answer.

But there’s support out there for Allen’s latest numbers, from someone trying to answer the usage question. Last week, comScore told us that G+ had grown to 67 million monthly unique visitors in November, up 2 million from October. That’s significantly more than the 50 million total users that Allen reported at the end of the month.

The reason could be that the web measurement firm’s methodology includes sampling browsing habits from people who have monitoring software installed on their computers. It has been measuring traffic to plus.google.com, meaning it counts anyone who clicks through within a given month, but not G+ related traffic elsewhere. Thus, while it does show active usage, it is not measuring users, just visitors.

What can we take away from Allen’s new data, given the remaining question? Growth could be accelerating: more people are signing up now than in previous months, with nearly a quarter of the total user base in December alone, and around 625,000 new users per day at this point. One assumes that at least some of that acceleration is due to engagement (people using the service and inviting new friends to join, who then also start using it regularly. Coupled with comScore’s numbers and you can guess that the site is growing both in total size and engagement.

Allen’s big conclusion, based on the most recent growth increases, is that the service could reach 400 million users by the end of 2012. If that turns out to be the case, I’m sure active usage will also be increasing. But the question remains the same: how many G+ users stay active?

Next up in the G+ traffic saga: product head Bradley Horowitz has promised new numbers that are going to shock everybody. Let’s hope they includes monthly active user counts and not raw sign-up totals like the 40 million number Google previously released in September.

[Graph via Paul Allen.]

If you got a digital camera for the holidays, or already own one, take a moment and write down the serial number. That way GadgetTrak’s new CameraTrace service can help you recover it if it’s ever stolen. Launching today, for a one-time fee of $10 CameraTrace lets you register your camera’s serial number. If you later report it lost or stolen, you’ll be notified by email if anyone else tries to upload photos from it. You can also search CameraTrace’s serial number database of 5 billion photos for free. Both tools could help you track down unauthorized uploaders and get your gear back. Camera thieves beware, there’s a new sheriff in town.

The way it works is that almost all digital cameras imprint their serial number on the photos they shoot, which CameraTrace can detect when they’re posted online. Law enforcement can then be alerted to investigate.

The official launch of CameraTrace comes after several years of beta testing. Back in August, we wrote about how GadgetTrak reunited a professional photographer with over $9,000 worth of property. The company also offers a recovery service for laptops and phones that detects when they connect to the Internet.

For the launch, CameraTrace upped its crawling capabilities. Its database now includes 11 million cameras of 300 different models, and every photo uploaded to Flickr since 2006. CameraTrace stays up to date by scanning newly uploaded pics each day with CPUsage grid computing technology. GadgetTrak‘s CEO and founder Ken Westin tells me its database of photos is an order of magnitude larger than that of competitors like Stolen Camera Finder. This makes CameraTrace the best place to go if you ever get jacked.

The premium service includes a physical lost and found tag that can be applied to your camera. It features instructions so anyone who finds it can notify you through CameraTrace, and it also serves as a theft deterrent. Another advantage of the CamerTrace: it can help photographers locate where their copyrighted photos are displayed without permission.

But remember, all of CameraTrace’s services only work if you have have a copy of your serial number. It can typically be found on a camera’s base plate, inside the battery case, or in the box. Westin’s final tip? A huge number of cameras are stolen through auto break-ins, so lock your gear in the trunk.

Here in the States we’ve been chatting it up with Siri on the iPhone 4S for months, but the folks over in mainland China — the biggest mobile market in the world, mind you — have yet to hear that 42 is the meaning of life. The 4S launched in Hong Kong just last month, and since then we’ve heard that it would show up on the mainland in December.

People’s Daily is now reporting that a phone with the model number A1431 has passed the final hurdle in its Chinese certification. That’s the same model number that Apple used to get a network entry permit for the 4S from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on December 6, so all signs point to iPhone.

Considering the timeline, that means the iPhone 4S will likely launch in China before the Chinese New Year on January 23, which is the equivalent of our Black Friday.

Seeing that the iPhone is basically a smash hit in China — over 10 million iPhones are in use on China Mobile’s network (even though it isn’t an official iPhone carrier) — Apple will likely be breaking even more records with the iPhone 4S come 2012. Especially if the alleged talks between China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier, and Apple lead to something a bit more official.

Bored? Yeah, me too. Which is why I just killed nearly 30 minutes doing mindless web surfing on Facebook, Reddit and Amazon. But it looks like YouTube would like a little of my holiday downtime clicks – and yours, too. The company just blogged about YouTube Slam, a game that involves pairing up two videos and voting for your favorites.

I guess you could call YouTube Slam a “Hot or Not” for videos. Except in this case, you’re not picking the hottest/sexiest face, you’re picking the funniest clip (Comedy Slam), the best dancer (Dance Slam), the cutest kitten (Cute Slam), best music (Music Slam) or weirdest video (Bizarre Slam).

Here’s how it works:

Click on the category of videos you want to watch. View them both and vote for your favorites.

Wow, that was hard.

The top-rated videos are then featured on the “slam leaderboard,” which is great, but nothing like getting onto the YouTube homepage, of course.

The site was cooked up by YouTube with folks from Google Research, and has actually been around since this fall, when Google Research used it as the output destination of a machine ranking project. The project analyzed “singing at home” videos and attempted to surface those that belonged to truly talented musicians. The results were then spit out to YouTube Slam to help crowdsource the discovery of the “hidden gems.”

So there you go: mindless web surfing. For science! Slam away.

When GoDaddy publicly recanted their support of SOPA last week, many were quick to point out that such an act didn’t really mean much. As far as the Judiciary Committee overseeing SOPA was concerned, GoDaddy was still a supporter.

That’s been changed, it seems. In the latest version of the US House Of Representatives’ SOPA Supporters list (heads up: it’s a PDF), GoDaddy’s name is nowhere to be found.

Does this mean that everyone should immediately resume throwing money at GoDaddy? Of course not; if you’re genuinely interested in only handing your greenbacks over to companies that are either neutral towards or against SOPA, it’s important to keep an eye on the company’s actions in the coming weeks (once the scalding hot and blindingly bright spotlight has moved on.) Plus, it’s not as if there aren’t plenty of alternatives just begging for your business.

What’s more important, however, are the the names still on the list. ESPN? Scholastic, Inc.? Visa? Even if you can’t find a way to stop supporting most of the SOPA-friendly companies with your wallet (GoDaddy was quite easy in this sense, which is presumably a big part of why the Internet’s rallying against them moved so quickly), it’s important information to keep in the back of your mind.

Group task manager startup Asana launched its first native mobile app last week. It’s mostly a straight port of its existing mobile web app, so the main benefit at present is that switching back and forth with other apps is much faster than dealing with Safari.

The company says it’s planning to invest in native apps more over time, but the version available is already useful for me since I’ve been dumping all of my story ideas into Asana since I started at TechCrunch in November… because I’m on my phone all the time, and checking Asana to see what I need to do next while I’m also trying to do three or four other things.

If you’re not familiar, the stand-out feature of Asana’s mobile experience is that the projects, task lists and individual task windows from the web app now appear as layers within the home screen.

The left-hand projects bar forms the bottom layer. If you press on one of your projects, its task items slides in from the right to appear as the next layer. If you touch any task, its pane then comes in to form the third layer.

To navigate back from lists or individual items, click on mostly submerged window on the left. The overall feeling is so natural that after a few days of using it I had to stop myself from pressing on my computer monitor to simulate the same experience.

The main downside to the mobile experience, at least for now, is that you can’t create or reassign tasks to others. Instead, any task you create just defaults to yourself and you’ll need to change it on the web site later. Expect everything to improve rather quickly, though. The company iterates fast, recently adding a repeat-event feature to tasks that others and myself had been wanting, for example. (Although it still hasn’t added time of day, which would be helpful for those of us who need to manage a lot of tight deadlines).

Overall, yes, there are dozens and dozens of other task manager type apps out there, and I know because I’ve tried using many of them over the years. Asana is approaching this consumery-enterprise space the right way, by not trying to add in too many features or forcibly define how people can to use it. I’m including Basecamp in the “other” category, as I’ve always found it to be overwrought (or as designer Damian Madray put it, ”Basecamp is to Asana as Android is to iPhone”). Instead, Asana focuses on nailing a few features right then adds on the right extras on top, as my friend Dan Kaplan explored in this recent article. It also does what many competitors don’t, which is provide a seamless user experience across web and (supported) mobile devices.

You can download the iPhone app here.

[Screenshots via Asana, because I don’t want to show everyone what I’m working on next]

Banjo, the creepy/awesome cyber-stalking app (I mean social discovery service) that shows you who’s nearby based on their Facebook and Foursquare check-ins, geotagged tweets, TwitPic and Instagram uploads, is now a web app, too. In case you haven’t yet download the iOS or Android application to your mobile device (or are some kind of Windows Phone-using rebel), you can check out the service via the recently updated Banjo website instead.

To use the online version, you just type in any city or zip code to explore what people are saying and doing there in real-time. And if you’re using a modern browser that supports geolocation, you can also use the online service to see those who are near your current location. The website is designed replicate the native mobile experience as closely as possible – and sure enough, it looks like a big ol’ iPhone app right there on the screen.

According to Banjo Co-founder Damien Patton, the app’s adoption has surpassed the team’s expectations. They were aiming to reach 400,000 downloads by year-end, but ended up achieving the 500,000 downloads milestone before the year was out, six months post-launch. (Note: that’s iOS/Android combined downloads).

Patton adds that the company has also seen over 1 million friend alerts in its first month as well, referring to the newer feature that pings you if friends you’re connected to on social networks are nearby.

Banjo is live in over 175 countries, which is why the company is now focusing on adding support for additional languages. It recently added Spanish, and has just added Turkish and Italian to the Android app, too, with the iPhone to follow in January.

There has been an explosion of these “social discovery” apps this year, many of which leverage existing social networks in an effort to connect you with those around you. In Banjo’s case, its closest competitors are apps like Sonar, ntro and Mingle, which are more focused on introductions and networking than Banjo is.

You can check out the newly web-ified version of Banjo here.

It was a very Android and iOS Christmas. Mobile apps research form Flurry released estimates on how many Android and iOS devices were activated on Christmas day, as well as how many apps were downloaded. On a combined basis, 6.8 million devices were activated, up 353 percent from the 1.5 million average activations a day over the first 20 days of December. And that number from 2.8 million combined activations on Christmas, 2010, the previous record.

Flurry doesn’t break out the split between iOS and Android. But you can triangulate the numbers with other publicly available stats. Android chief Andy Rubin recently noted just before Christmas that Android activations surpassed 700,000 a day. So that leaves between 700,000 and 800,000 a day for iOS devices (iPhones iPads, and iPod Touches), roughly speaking.

The big unanswered question is whether that 50/50 split continued on Christmas Day, or whether one OS or the other prevailed as the choice Christmas gadget gift. My guess is that Android was beating iOS in total daily activations up until Christmas, but the pull of Apple’s marketing might have evened things out on Christmas Day.

In terms of apps, a record 242 million total apps were downloaded across both platforms, a 125 percent jump from the daily average earlier in December. Last Christmas, the number of combined downloads was 150 million.

Flurry expects a billon apps to be downloaded between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

With Microsoft and Nokia making a pronounced push to expand Windows Phone’s reach, they need the support of their app developers to give the platform some staying power. Fortunately, it looks like Windows Phone is picking up steam on the app front — All About Windows Phone reports that 50,000 apps have been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace ahead of their initial predictions.

There is, as always, a bit of catch — the number only refers to the number of apps that have been published, so you won’t find all 50,000 apps available for download in your neck of the woods. All About Windows Phone figures that nearly 6,000 apps were published in the marketplace and were subsequently pulled either by Microsoft or the developers themselves. Even so, Windows Phone has hit the 50,000 app mark in just 14 months — it took Android 19 months to hit that milestone, while iOS only took 12.

Even if the exact number is a bit sketchy, there’s one thing that nearly all sources can agree on: the platform is growing. Back when the Windows Marketplace hit 40,000 apps, new submissions happened at a rate of about 165 per day, while today’s milestone sees daily submissions hovering around the 265 app mark. That Windows Phone is being embraced by more developers is heartening, but there’s still the question of quality to contend with.

The Windows Marketplace is no stranger to spammy submissions that often buried better apps, although Microsoft has taken steps to make it less of an issue for developers on the up-and-up. Even so, the practice of mass uploading near identical apps continues: take rkg4u, for example.

This developer has had 20 apps released into the Windows Marketplace yesterday, and all of them essentially aggregate content from different sections of CNN and the BBC’s websites. Are these apps useful? Arguably. Do they add anything new or novel to the Windows Phone experience? Absolutely not. And lest you think that I’ve cherry-picked that example, take a look at the marketplace’s new apps section — for every useful app you’ll find, there are likely to be 10 feed readers surrounding it. Now the issue of app quality isn’t one that’s unique to Windows Phone, but in a time when Microsoft is fighting for market and mind share, it certainly isn’t helping.

While Microsoft tries to make it easy for Windows Phone users to sift through all the junk, the state of their app store could be a ticking time-bomb for them and their users. While potential customers may be swayed by the right hardware and the right OS at the right time, a bad balance between compelling and crappy apps could ensure that those who gamble on Windows Phone may not stick around for the long haul.

What we need now are killer apps for Windows Phones, the ones that make Android and iOS users look on with unabashed envy. Consider this a rallying cry for all you Windows Phone devs out there — make something great, and let us all know about it.

If you take a look at Techmeme right now, you’ll notice that the top conversation in the tech blogosphere is about Windows Phone, and more specifically why it has failed to catch on compared to Android smartphones in particular (according to Charlie Kindel, former GM of the product division). I’ve read people’s different views on this with great interest, but I feel like something’s missing: the opinion of an actual Windows Phone owner and user with no real skin in this game. Enter, well, me.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to stop using my HTC Sensation (Android 2.3) and iPhone 3GS (iOS 5) in parallel and made the switch to Nokia’s Lumia 800 (Windows Phone 7.5). As you can tell, I’m not exactly married to any company or product – it’s just not in my nature. I switched to Windows Phone mainly to see if it can hold its ground when used intensively.

So far, it’s been a surprisingly pleasant ride, so I haven’t entirely dismissed WP7 as others appear to have done (even if most of them haven’t even used a decent Windows Phone yet).

As most who’ve experienced the Windows Phone platform will attest, Microsoft offers something truly unique in terms of OS design and on-screen interaction, and I’m extremely glad to see the company not adopt a copy-paste innovation strategy as they’ve done more than a few times in the past. Say what you will, but Windows Phone offers a superb user experience, indeed far superior to most if not all the Android smartphones I’ve used in the past. You can call me a fan of the Metro UI.

I already wrote up why I absolutely love the Nokia N9 (which sports nearly the same hardware as the Lumia 800 but with a different OS, namely Meego) but that no one will buy it mainly because the platform has no future, and there aren’t enough decent apps to even begin comparing the handset to an Android or iOS phone. I mean, I don’t see developers rushing to build Meego apps anytime soon.

There are more WP7 apps, but that doesn’t mean the platform isn’t struggling on this front, too.

While Windows Phone Marketplace appears to be steadily growing, most of the third-party WP7 applications I’ve tested genuinely suck. Of course, this is true for Android and iOS too (it’s a law of large numbers if you know what I mean) and at least the ‘essential’ applications – People, Messaging, Xbox Live, Mail and also Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – behave really well.

The reason Windows Marketplace frustrates me is that even the ‘good’ applications that I use regularly (Rdio, Foursquare, Kindle, Pulse, and more) have weird quirks, or are downright unusable – I sense a lack of attention given to those apps by their own developers. Getting cash in exchange for making a Windows Phone app is one thing, but you should be proud of what you do – better not to build an app for the platform than to deliver a crappy one that will make you look amateurish.

But all in all, a really amazing phone and platform with lots to offer, and I have no doubt that improvements will come quickly, and aplenty. That doesn’t necessarily mean customers will be lining up to buy Windows Phone handsets en masse, but there’s no reason they couldn’t grab more marketshare (and mindshare) in the future if Microsoft is willing to go the distance. Everything I’ve seen so far indicates that the company realizes that there’s not really an option – they have to matter in the mobile space.

If Kindel is wondering why Windows Phones haven’t exactly been selling like hotcakes, I doubt you’ll find all the answers by looking at the business models and goals of the many industry players. Alignments can change. Kindel does nail the problems with Android and its absurd fragmentation issue, but I get the feeling he’s making excuses for Windows Phone far too soon in the game.

Microsoft did enter this market extremely late, and, as I mentioned, there’s still a major app problem. Those are very big barriers to successful entry, but they can surely be overcome by a company the size of Microsoft, and as far as I’m concerned they still have a fighting chance.

In fact, I’m hoping Microsoft manages to put enough time, money and effort into Windows Phone to turn it into a viable competitor to iOS and Android. At the end of the day, this will be decided by users and app developers foremost, not carriers, manufacturers and retail salespeople, but one can hope.

What it will require is a lot more great phones, ‘big and bold’ marketing, UI consistency, far better apps and yes, more time. That’s no guarantee for success, but let’s give Windows Phone a chance.

The reason I’m hoping Microsoft succeeds in ‘getting there’ is because I happen to think more choice will bring more progress and more technological advancement, rather than more fragmentation, feature-chasing and patent warfare. I’m not rooting for Microsoft, per se, but I don’t see anyone within striking distance of becoming this ‘third major player’ and we shouldn’t discount the talent of Microsoft’s vast army of engineers and developers, and the mountain of cash the company sits on, and notably continues to generate quarter after quarter after quarter.

It’s still early days, and if the past few years have taught us anything it’s that industries can transform quite rapidly, and that it’s never a zero-sum game. No one knows what the future holds, but I can guarantee you the world will look be different – again – at the end of next year.

Sent from my Windows Phone, gladly.

Today, Italy’s antitrust body has fined Apple, Inc. $1.2 million (900,000 euros) for pushing customers to buy its AppleCare Protection Plan without adequately disclosing the support that already comes with their device. In Italy, companies are actually required by law to provide two years of free support to customers, which, according to the Italian Antitrust Authority, was not clearly explained to Apple customers either online or at the point-of-sale.

The report, available via a news blip on Reuters or as the full press release translated from Italian here, specifies that the fines are being leveraged against three of Apple’s local divisions: Apple Italia, Apple Sales International and Apple Retail Italia.

400,000 euros of the fine is for failing to inform customers of their right to two years’ free support provided by Italy’s Consumer Code law, instead only recognizing the one-year manufacturer warranty. This practice occurred on the websites at store.apple.com and apple.com and at the point-of-sale, says the group states. In other words, customers were sold the AppleCare service even though that protection would overlap with the guaranteed free support provided by law.

The remainder of the penalty (500,000 euros) was for selling the AppleCare service itself, after failing to properly disclose the protections, as noted above.

Italy says that Apple will need to update its website within 90 days with information about the existence of the two-year guarantee.

This is not Apple’s only legal trouble in the EU. The company is also involved in patent litigation with Samsung and in a price-fixing case with e-book publishers.

They have been fighting against the concept of making customers pay for extra game content for years, but as previously reported, Nintendo has now changed its strategy. According to a report by Japanese business daily The Nikkei, Nintendo has chosen Fire Emblem as the first game on the 3DS to offer paid download content.

Fire Emblem: Kakusei, the latest title in the classic RPG series, is scheduled for release in Japan in spring 2012 (it has been announced earlier this year).

The Nikkei says that players will be able to download additional content for “several hundred yen each time” (100 yen currently translate to US$1.30), payable via pre-paid cards available in various Japanese electronics stores or via credit card. In the case of Fire Emblem, buyers can get additional levels after completing the game, for example.

If the report is to be believed, Nintendo is already planning to release more 3DS games supporting the new billing functionality from summer next year. Apparently, the Wii U (the successor to the Wii that’s set to debut in 2012), will be getting paid download content as well.