With apps ranging from free to as much as a few dollars in price, companies can have the chance to rake in millions upon millions due to the vast amounts of apps available.

The following list displays and details just a few of the many, more expensive apps you can purchase; warning these prices may cause your wallet to cry.

Agro for iPhone and iPad ($999.99)- Available to help argonomists create and distribute field inspection reports. Specially designed for those in such fields as farming, orchards, vineyards and other similar soil management areas.

MobiGage for iPhone and iPad($999.99)- this is a meteorology app that measures materials in manufacturing plants using a Leica laser. It can be used in the production of airplanes, cars, etc. . . PC versions of this software can cost as much as 25,000 dollars

BarMax for iPhone and iPad ($999.99)- This app is a prep course for either the New York or California state bar exam. It comes with test prep questions from actual past tests, essays and also comes with audio lectures. The company that makes the app is currently working on the app for other states as well.

iStutter for iPhone ($999.99)- For those who struggle with with the speech problem of stuttering, this app is intended for you. According to the app’s description It “analyzes vocal fold activity and selectively provides delayed auditory feedback when the user’s speech is too fast or the user is stuttering”.

iVIP Black for iPhone ($999.99)- this is cool app caters to those who have at least a net worth of 1 million dollars and you have to be able to prove it. The app gets you special treatment at select luxury events, hotels, clubs, etc… It allows you to book private jets, yachts, private islands and more.

Engine Connect for iPad ($999.99)- Meteorologists, sportscasters and news anchors alike can manipulate animations like weather maps and other illustrations live on screen as viewers watch.

Android users don’t have to feel left out, they have a couple of expensive apps as well; although they are pretty pointless.

Black Diamond ($200)- Buy this app and you have your very own black diamond…as a wallpaper. Yeah, that’s right, it’s just a pointlessly expensive wallpaper for your homescreen. I say pointless because the nearly same Blue Diamond app is available for the astonishing price of…free.

Vuvuzela World Cup Horn Plus ($200)- Download the app, shake your phone and boom, you have your own Vuvuzela horn. Shake it to stop. Again, all for a ridiculous 200 bucks.

The telephone market is dominated by Slim Telefonos de Mexico A.K.A. Telemex which provides nearly 80 percent of the services, while billionaire Carlos Slim controls around 70 percent of the cellphone market with America Movil.

Dionisio Perez-Jacome, minister of Communications and Transport had this to say, according to one source:

“This is a critical study…that exposes the weakness of the telecommunications sector in Mexico.”

In the year 2008, Telemex had a profit margin of nearly 50 percent, while countries like Canada and the UK only had close to 30 percent. Mexican Government is, in the mean time, trying to increase broadband speeds in mexico, which apparently they feel will soften the blow of thee high prices. Evidently in their opinion broadband speed trumps ridiculous price.

In your opinion, does speed outweigh price or do steep prices steer you elsewhere? Should speed and price equal each other? With this economy who can afford expensive internet anyway? Leave your opinions in the comments section

I’ll wait til you stop hyperventilating.

Available now at the App Store, Viggle is a free app. Once you install the app, you tap the screen and the app listens to what you are watching on TV, recognizes it as TV, and gives you 2 points for every minute you watch of TV.

Once you rack up 7,500 points (62.5 hours), you get a $5 gift card from retailers like iTunes, Best Buy, and Starbucks. Meh.

But, there are ways to collect bonus points, too. Watch an ad, get more points. Watch certain shows, get extra points. You get 1.500 points for just signing up. You get 200 points for getting friends to sign up.

Since you’re already thinking up ways to game the system, there are some rules. You have to watch a show for at least 10 minutes. You can’t watch the same ad over and over.

Now, there’s bound to be someone out there with a DVR, a wide network of friends willing to help with a social experiment, and someplace to sell iTunes cards. The clock is ticking.

In the midst of Google’s announcement about their results for the 2011 fiscal year, they nonchalantly dropped a pretty juicy piece of info concerning their social networking site:

“Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year. Full year revenue was up 29%, and our quarterly revenue blew past the $10 billion mark for the first time,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago. By building a meaningful relationship with our users through Google+ we will create amazing experiences across our services. I’m very excited about what we can do in 2012 – there are tremendous opportunities to help users and grow our business.”

Did you see what Larry Page did there? “Google+ now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago.” In three months, Google grew over 200% and is, I think we can officially say, booming. Page included a transcription of his remarks on his Google+ page, where another interesting bit of fact was shared:

I’m also pleased to announce that there are over 90M Google+ users — well over double what I announced just a quarter ago on our earnings call. Engagement on + is also growing tremendously. I have some amazing data to share there for the first time: +users are very engaged with our products — over 60% of them engage daily, and over 80% weekly.

Yup. Definitely booming.

Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google, remarked upon the “stunning statistics” from Page’s talk:

On behalf of the Google+ team, I wanted to thank you for using Google+. Four months ago, when we opened to the public, we were not sure what kind of reception we would receive. Your feedback has helped us build this service, and we can’t thank you enough for your enthusiastic support.

We deeply believe in the power of people. Google can be about pages and people, about information and individuals.

This past quarter we began to simplify the Google experience. Gmail, Android, Chrome, Search, Ads, and YouTube are in the early stages of having deep support for your identity and your relationships. Expect us to deliver something truly beautiful. We’ve only just begun to work on that promise.

Other items of note from Page’s talk:

Say what you want about the ubiquity of Facebook in our lives or the mystique that shrouds the “cult” of Apple/Mac, but Google is stirring so many pots – and very deftly, at that – that they appear to be on track win 2012 and it’s only January. Throw in the fact that as early as next year the sale of Android devices very may well eclipse PCs and you’ll start to believe that, in a few years, these “fiscal earning reports” will simply be called the State of the Union Address by the President of the United States of Google.

The add money from a check feature was added to the iPhone last fall. It’s unclear what took so long to bring the functionality to Android (possibly the intricacies of the ecosystem and large amount of different devices – see Netflix issues), but as Android has such a significant share of the smartphone market, this is a huge win for PayPal users.

PayPal’s Shimone Samuel says it’s only because the iPhone has been around longer. “On average, about a million dollars per month have been uploaded since we launched mobile check capture on the iPhone,” he says. “That’s a lot of people skipping the ATM, depositing a check with their phone and not paying any fees for the privilege.”

“From a personal perspective I love the check transfer feature, I use an online-only bank and until this feature was added my only option was to mail checks for deposit,” Samuel adds. “Now I snap a picture and add them directly to PayPal. I can leave the balance in my PayPal account or withdraw it to my bank.”

As the competition heats up in the mobile payments space, the addition of the check depositing feature seems like a no-brainer, especially as the feature is becoming much more common among bank apps.

PayPal is already looking to kill the wallet. Eliminating trips to the bank is always helpful for consumers as well.

Atop the heap is Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu, who added $20.5 billion to his fortune, more than any other billionaire. The telecom mogul, who gets 62% of his fortune from America Movil , is now worth $74 billion and has pulled far ahead of his two closest rivals. Bill Gates, No. 2, and Warren Buffett, No. 3, both added a more modest $3 billion to their piles and are now worth $56 billion and $50 billion, respectively. Gates, who now gets 70% of his fortune from investments outside of Microsoft, has actually been investing in the Mexican stock market and has holdings in Mexican Coke bottler Femsa and Grupo Televisa.

The top 20 are:

1. Carlos Slim Helú & family
2. Bill Gates
3. Warren Buffett
4. Bernard Arnault
5. Larry Ellison
6. Lakshmi Mittal
7. Amancio Ortega
8. Eike Batista
9. Mukesh Ambani
10. Christy Walton & family
11. Li Ka-shing
12. Karl Albrecht
13. Stefan Persson
14. Vladimir Lisin
15. Liliane Bettencourt
16. Sheldon Adelson
17. David Thomson & Family
18. Charles Koch
19. David Koch
20. Jim Walton

View the slideshow here.

While Facebook may have spawned six billionaires, as Forbes says, none of them made the top 20 – Mark Zuckerberg included. He was named the youngest self-made billionaire last year, however. He also pledged to give the majority of his wealth to charity.

Comments

Here is a quick recap of the formula used to calculate the valuation:

1M impressions x 2 posts x 30 days = 60M impressions
60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000
$300,000 x 12 months = $3.6M
$3.6M / 1M fans = $3.60

Using this same formula, I did some quick research and found 10 high profile brands and calculated their fan value. You will be surprised and some of the results:

• Coca Cola – $0.96 cents (5.3M fans and posted 16x in the last month)
• Youtube – $1.92 (4.8M fans and posted 32x last month)
• Pringles – $.030 (3.1M fans and posted 5x last month)
• Adidas – $2.40 (2.7M fans and posted 40x in the last month. Also sharing links to their e-commerce store so one would assume that their fan value is much higher)
• Red Bull – $1.14 (2.5M fans and posted 19x in the last month)
• Starbucks – $1.20 (6.8M fans and posted 20x in the last month)
• Pizza Hut – $0.30 (1.2M fans and posted 5x in the last month)
• McDonalds – $0.24 (2.1M fans and posted 4x in the last month
• NBA – $8.22 (2.1M fans and postes 137x in the last month; but this makes sense since it’s the Playoffs.  I am sure the value of fans decreases in the off season)
• PUMA – $0.84 (1.5M fans and posted 14x in the last month

Now for those of you who are deficient in math like myself, you will notice that the value of each fan is solely based on the assumed $5 CPM and the frequency of monthly posts.  The value doesn’t change if you have 50,000 fans or 6,000,000 fans.

Also, in analyzing each of each of these fan pages, I am most impressed with the NBA.  They are doing polls, asking questions, posting videos; wallpaper downloads, linking to their e-commerce store, and their fans are extremely engaged.

If you work for a brand and have a stagnant fan page or if you are thinking about launching one; here are few pointers which might be useful.

Disclosure: Starbucks is an Edelman client.

Comments

As a result of the legal settlement announced today with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel Corporation adjusted its fourth-quarter financial expectations to reflect the impact of the $1.25 billion settlement payment. Intel now expects spending (R&D plus MG&A) in the fourth quarter to be approximately $4.2 billion, up from $2.9 billion. In addition, the effective tax rate is expected to be approximately 20 percent, down from 26 percent. All other expectations are unchanged.

Original Article: According to reports, technology giant Intel has agreed to pay $1.25 billion to settle multiple disputes with rival chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices or AMD. These two companies have been feuding for years. Actually, decades. The Wall Street Journal notes that the two companies have had disputes as far back as the 1980s.

In 2005, AMD filed a suit against Intel, claiming that Intel was engaging in unfair competition by offering rebates to Japanese PC makers, who in turn would eliminate or limit purchases of microprocessors made by AMD or Transmeta. Here’s a little more history about the current dispute (via Wikipedia):

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware in June 2005. The court date, originally scheduled for April 2009, has been pushed back to February 2010. One delay was due to the Korea Fair Trade Commission issuing Intel a fine of US$25.4 million. Some of the manufacturers involved in the case are Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, Fujitsu, Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi.

In February 2009 it was reported that Intel had spent at least US$116 million to date on legal representation on the antitrust suit. This was inferred from a US$50 million lawsuit filed by Intel against one of its insurers; the lawsuit disclosed that Intel had already exhausted US$66 million in coverage from two other insurers while fighting the antitrust lawsuit.

It appears that everything is now square between Intel and AMD, at least financially. The New York Times reports that the $1.25 billion settlement will resolve all of AMD’s regulatory complaints worldwide as well as suits in Delaware and Japan. In addition to the hefty sum of money, Intel has also agreed to abide by certain terms with regards to business practices.

Earlier this year, the EU fined Intel a record $1.5 billion. According to the NYT, the EU’s commissioner says the company’s settlement with AMD will not affect the EU’s decision on that fine.

Ouch.

Related Articles:

> EU Fines Intel A Record $1.45 Billion

> NY AG Hits Intel With Antitrust Suit

> Intel Apparently A Google Chrome OS Partner, Too