One thing I almost forgot to mention about LaunchPad is that we announced a couple of key partnerships.
On the gaming side, we’ve partnered with PapayaMobile to offer developers a fast and easy way to reach 22 million users across the globe especially in Asia. As part of this partnership, we’ve integrated their SDK into Corona. As part of that process, we’ve unified the game network API’s under a single “gameNetwork” library interface. In addition, there will be opportunities to promote your app on Papaya’s network such as being featured as their “App of the Day.”
Last but not least, we’re introducing a new monetization option — ads!
Now, I know we took a long time to get this to you and so thank you all for hanging in there. We wanted to make sure that if you put ads into your app, you’d be able to succeed in monetizing. It requires your app to reach a lot of eyeballs (that’s where the other LaunchPad services come in) and it also requires the ad network to serve up quality ads.
So we partnered with InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network. They serve over 36 billion mobile ad impressions monthly across 165 countries. We seeded the new library to a couple of developers and the preliminary data suggests that InMobi could generate up to 3x more revenue than AdMob!
To get started with the new “ads” library, go to the Ads Guide.
To infinity and beyond!
We’re incredibly excited about what’s coming ahead. There are a lot more exciting things coming down the pipe. I can’t say too much but our goal is to enable you in every sense of the word from creating great apps to reaching a broad audience to even building a career.
A lot of you have told us that our work on Corona has changed your life. Well, I want to close by saying that the feeling is mutual. We built Corona so that you could build the best apps on the planet — and have fun doing it. And from what we’ve seen, you’ve surpassed our wildest expectations. The quality of apps, games, and eBooks we’ve seen is so inspiring that sometimes we do a double-take.
Your success is our success. Thank you for helping us make Corona the best mobile platform on the planet!
Walter
Carlos Icaza, Ansca Mobile
I want to also say thanks to all of you for your trust, and for the apps you have developed with Corona SDK. There are two things I want to highlight, as Walter did a great job in letting you know what is in the truly action-packed release.
Notice how Walter now calls Corona the best mobile platform in the planet – and that is because you have gotten us here and also, unlike our competitors, our success lies within your success. I receive countless emails from you, direct Twitter messages, and even messages from you to my personal e-mail account — all sharing how great Corona is and how it has allowed you to break into the mobile app development market(something you previously thought was possible only after countless hours of reading and learning Objective-C or Java).
The one message that was loud and clear from all your feedback was “How do I get my app exposed?” In other words, “app discovery.” We started by doing some co-marketing with some of you; we did some press releases and other initiatives to get you exposure — some of it worked, some of it didn’t. But one thing that we collectively knew was that Corona as a tool lived up to its challenge. But after your app was done, it was like “Then what?”
And that’s what led us to LaunchPad.
In order for us to better engage with you and your apps, and for you to become successful and have your apps break above the fold, LaunchPad was born. It is not about if I had xyz feature, I’d be successful — it is about exposure. And via LaunchPad and the partnerships we have now formed, we believe we are well-positioned to help your app reach new heights.
That’s why we call Corona a platform. We are no longer just a tool, but a combination of the best damned tools on the planet and the best customer service we can provide to you, as a company, for better app discovery. If we succeed at making you successful, then we are successful. It is, a win-win scenario for both you and us.
The other thing I want to mention is that we are open to working with you at any level, from exploring joint ventures into uncharted territories (i.e. untested mobile platforms) to working closely with you about other potential monetization venues. In the coming weeks, we will be reaching out and engaging with you more about what is ahead in all aspects of app discovery.
I echo Walters sentiments about how much you have entrusted us and how much you have told us how Corona has changed your life. And with that, go code the next #1 app! 
We are here to help and we will make it happen.
And stay tuned, we are not done yet. More fun things to come…
Jcfinnerup
Its amazing as you read through the text, the whole thing just gets more exciting. Can’t wait to try launchPad, which is probably gonna end up being one of the best things about corona SDK, cause afterall lots of SDKs can make great apps but few have even a decent way to monotize it’s success.
- jcfinnerup
treser
you guys been hard at work…. definitely lives up to the hype!
Joe
Great work! Awesome stuff. Our team is still in prototyping — evaluating whether corona fits the requirements of our huge project (or if we have to implement our new ‘product’ natively). Developing with corona is really efficient, productive, more than any other SDK/programming language. And the results are ‘speedy’ and eye-candy. That’s for sure and proven. I really don’t want to switch back to objective-c and such… but corona is still missing graphic functionality: 2.5D transitions, e.g. flipping an image around, causing shadows programmatically… things I — in the meanwhile — can do on the web with CSS3.
M
Can’t say more than “This is what is called success”
Altaf
congratulations! we just got our first app on the appstore today. Thanks to corona and the team.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/funwithabc/id452565682?mt=8
regards
Javier Rincon
Awesome
Congratulations, you have made my day, and it’s just starting up!, many thanks for all the effort, i hope we can get all things going up quickly and get all the new features in our software fast.
See ya i have to change some code!
Etienne
cannot access ad guide altough i am a suscriber. only me?
Nick Nebelsky
Congratulations Carlos! It’s very exciting to be a part of something so grand! I love Corona and look forward to a long-lasting and successful relationship! Cheers! ‘Opening Rome’ and all my future endeavors wouldn’t be where it is without your great software!
LEONARDO AGUILAR
Hi Carlos and the Corona team.
As a developer one of the most important things is to feel the support of the company that provides the tools, but in the case of Corona we feel more supported, I feel you are trying to help us a lot of small developers who try to start our own company’s. That is very encouraging and I appreciate the effort you are making, many companies think about the economic but anscamobile also think on people and I think that is a great virtue of business. Keep up many successes. Leonardo Aguilar. Costa Rica
Walter
@Etienne, can you try again? There was a permission issue.
MikeJ
Yep, definitely lived up to the hype! I love the analytics feature, that is invaluable. Will that be automatically built in as our apps are compiled or is there an api for that? I have to agree with some of the previous comments, I have rarely seen a company support the developers as much as you guys do. The others talk about community but rarely live up to it (I know this because I have spent thousands with those guys only to leave because of the lack of community). It almost seems like a family with Carlos as the Papa. When a co-founder will get on a chat and joke around and help their customers that’s a company that you want to support. Just don’t get too big, go public and forget about us.
In times when it seems like the main initiative of global companies is based on money and greed, you guys set an example.
Mo
Hello Carlos
WOW! This really pushed him over the edge. As soon as I get a Mac Mini the next thing will be to subscribe! App disovery is huge for me. Even more than any API. What is the point of having a a great app is nobody knows about it!
In any event this is a great new! The next BIG next thing for small developers like us need is help with original/cheap/legal assets (images, sounds and music). I know there are a lot of “free” stuff out there but making sense of licenses and so on is a nightmare for a develloper who only want to code with the great Corona SDK. What it will be great is setup some type of assets market. I think Unity has one. Why not us? A lot of time is wasted looking for assets insteading of coding….
In any event, Congrats Carlos and your team!
Mo
Ed Johnson
Congratulation and way to go, Walter and Corona team!
What an Action-Packed release!
Those new Corona LaunchPad, Marketing/App Discovery/Analytics, App Monetization are making Corona SDK simply irresistible!
ymmt
Hello Walter&Carlos Corona Team
Congratulations! That’s awesome. You make the Summer 2011 more exciting than ever.
ChunkyApps
Awesome! I love me some Corona!