More info from mobile developers on the ad revenues associated with iAds and AdMob.  All in all, the jury seems to be on the side of free apps. But will it last?

The SoC Summit started yesterday with a series of interesting talk, including one given by Geogad. The promise of SoC (System on Chip) is to continue to standardize electronics, this time at the level of large system blocks both on the chip and in the library and driver software. It will help build new powerhouse of tech and in addition to more powerful devices. Because of the advantages of SoC, the new devices will be built from reusable semiconductor blocks and software code that can lead to faster design and construction times for mobile devices.

SoC will result in better, more advanced devices with a faster time-to-mmarket. Mobile has gotten even more interesting.

Geogad hosts two local Silicon Valley meetup called the Informal Android Developer Meetup and the Informal iPhone Developer Meetup. New mobile developers at these meetings often ask which mobile platforms are worth their time to learn. Sometimes it’s a matter of money and the perception of which app stores have the best sales. Other times, it depends on a developer’s previous programming background.

TheFierceDeveloper newsletter actually addressed this question with more substantial info provided by a marketing report from VisionMobile. The most interesting part of the report to me was the estimates of the length of time required to learn a new mobile platform. To quite FierceDeveloper quoting VisionMobile,

…according to the report, coders require 15 months or more to figure out Symbian, compared to an average of 7.5 months across rival platforms. Android is considered the easiest platform to learn, with 22 percent of respondents claiming they absorbed its intricacies in under a month.

It is nice to see that some of the platform are relatively easy for new programmers to pick up. It should make for an exciting experience for mobile apps.

Megan from MobClix spoke at the iPhone Dev Meetup last night and had the most interesting things to say about iPhone apps. Based on the market research done by MobClix, there are 65K paid apps and 19K free apps. Mobile phone users are certainly getting used to paying for apps! But the point that Megan made is that it is easier to get your app noticed on the iPhone App Store if it is free than if it is grouped with the paid apps.

Of course, many of these free apps are actually “lite” versions of paid apps. Now that Apple allows free apps to upsell the customer, I would imagine tha more free apps will be coming into the store.

Since Geogad has its Android-powered travel app on the Android Market and also hosts the Informal Android Developer Meetup, I am sometimes asked about the pricing difference between the Android Market and the iPhone Apps Store. Usually, this question comes from developers who are trying to decide between learning to program Android or iPhone first or from iPhone developers who are considering porting their iPhone apps to Android.

I really don’t have any direct knowledge of pricing on the various stores since all of Geogad’s apps are free and since Geogad makes its content available for free with ads over all of its various delivery channels.

However, I did spot this timely news article from fiercemobilecontent.com.  It quotes a report published by Distimo that says that apps are priced about the same on both stores. The article did point out two slight differences in the gaming category.

The most popular Android games typically cost between 99 cents and $5.95, with most selling for $2.99, while most App Store titles sell for 99 cents, with a few offered between $6.99 and $9.99.

…games remain the App Store’s best-selling category, with more titles in the premium Top 15 than in the free Top 15. Classic games are particularly popular in Android Market, where three out of the Top 15 are emulators. (The App Store does not approve emulators.)