FriendCaller Blog

FriendCaller 3 Pro is now available for free on iTunes App store for a limited time period only. We had a very good year 2009, received funding, experiencing strong growth and had lot of support from our users for new features and suggestions. Their input has helped a lot to shape www.FriendCaller.com and the the FriendCaller iPhone app available on the iTunes App store. It is not only free calls and cheap calls to phone numbers that our users were looking for but the capabilities to use the call-me link as browser based web-phone on all Java platforms. Looking back on 2009 we did deliver pretty much all but one feature: Multi Language support.

So it is really nice to see that just when Apple iTtunesconnect came back from their Christmas break to have our latest FriendCaller 3 and FriendCaller 3 Pro updates approved featuring multi language support! Our first additional language is German but there will be more coming soon.

Not only the app is free, any FriendCaller iPhone user who confirms his or her registration by opening the confirmation email we sending out to new users receives immediately a call credit to call any phone number for free. We want all users to try and experience the high voice quality for these cheap international calls. If you want to add more credit, FriendCaller 3 Pro has the convenient inApp purchase feature, adding call credit is easy and no credit card has to be provided, all payments are made through the user’s iTunes account.

Please tell your friends, share the news!

We have seen several changes in iTunes App Store policies this year. When inApp purchase was first introduced  it was only available for paid apps, so developers had to distribute a free version for best proliferation and a paid version to utilize inApp purchase; essentially doubling the number of apps and the work load for Apple’s approval team. Once everybody had his paid version out, some like us after a rather long wait for the approval to be precessed, you guess it right: Policies changed and free app could feature inApp purchase.

The next move was rather frustrating, I believe all developers suffered, the store designed changed to a new cool design but the same time the store entrance page changed and there was no more category view, it was replaced by “Top Grossing” and it became and still is difficult to navigate the app store. Not all is lost, click on http://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/mobile-software-applications/id6005?mt=8 and most likely you still get a proper category view.

Now, and that’s why I wanted to write this entry, you see yet another trend. The most exciting time for a developer is when his app is first launched. It will show up on the new release page and will usually attract an immediate peak in downloads. But until few weeks ago every app-update did show up on the new release page and so you have seen developers frequently updating their apps with “bug fixes”.  Another approach was to release 150 “localized” apps to all app store globally, apps like the-best-car-wash-location-in-Seatle, the-best-car-wash-location-in-Denver. Once we got swooshed off the crucial new-release page in 15 minutes or so by such tactics. I have not seen an official reaction from Apple (to our complains) but these app have stopped coming.

So what is the latest trend? Updates do no longer show up on the new release page! Now we see the influx of new-releases in the sense of the-best-car-wash-places app gets and overall new release as the-best-car-wash-and-polish-places add. So the number of app will again double or triple in a short time before Apple will react.

We reached almost end this year, overall we see things on the App store have getting better, particular the approval process has been apparently improved dramatically over the past few weeks. We will keep you posted, the iTunes App Store is never boring!

I write this blog entry to get permanent link for a standard reply to one question all new iTunes App Store users searching for our FriendCaller app ask us: “Why aren’t you listed in the category ‘communication’?” That is a very good question. FriendCaller is a web based VoIP service provider so when our users looking for our FriendCaller app on iTunes they naturally look for the category VoIP or Communication or Telecom… OK, the answer is: There is no such category. So we are found under the category Social Networking, same is true for Skype, Fring and Truphone and other VoIP providers.

Apple has changed its attitude over time for the better of the consumer and gradually opened up for VoIP applications. We actually were admitted to iTunes a week before Skype. Now there is only one question left: “Why is there no category communication, Telecom or VoIP?” It’s about time to open a category suitable for VoIP. At the other hand, now I have this permanent link…

For a brief moment today I was wondering if we were in for a nice treat, our FriendCaller App store pages suddenly changed to a nice new layout. Could it be, we finally had we been featured by Apple Inc.? Then I realized that the design for all apps catalogue pages have been changed… Still, it is nice to see your iPhone apps presented with the new layout.

FriendCaller 3 Pro

In the past most mobile operators and  some ISPs have been refusing VoIP services executed through their networks worrying revenue losses, blind to the huge potential for new applications, new business models and revenue streams for them.

Now strategies seems to have changed, once operators straight forward denied their customers the right to use VoIP over 3G/Edge attracting regulators attention like FCC investigation in the US and FCC-equivalents in Europe. So under pressure operators announced their opening up their networks for VoIP and public and regulator’s interest vanished.

Some actually did opened up but as we learned from customer feedback some quietly blocked the required VoIP port 5060 that is commonly used by VoIP services including FriendCaller.

So we are glad that Apple Inc. approved our new multi port FriendCaller app versions that automatically find open ports when port 5060 is blocked. All 3 of our FriendCaller apps support now multi port probing.