TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid makes the most cogent case I’ve seen against Apple’s new policy of mandating that apps that offer content make it available through the App Store, and charging a 30% distribution fee when they do so.
Tag Archives | Smartphones
ZOMG! Has Verizon Only Doubled iPhone Sales?
There’s almost a degree of absurdity to the amount of armchair quarterbacking going on when it comes to Verizon iPhone sales. It appears as if nothing short of armies of consumers descending on Apple and Verizon stores would stop the opining masses from predicting doom and gloom.
BGR has what it claims are internal numbers showing that the launch of the iPhone on Verizon has “failed” to meet expectations. Here’s the numbers from five selected Apple stores (including two “prominent” locations): Continue Reading →
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Rhapsody Isn't Rhapsodizing Over Apple's New App Store Rules
How are content providers going to react to Apple’s new App Store rules, which mandate that providers of music, video, e-books, and other stuff sell their wares using Apple’s in-app purchasing and subscriptions–at least as an option–and give Apple a 30 percent cut when they do? Music purveyor Rhapsody is the first company I’ve seen to respond in public. And it’s taking an almost-hard line–it doesn’t say it’s pulling out of the App Store, but it does call Apple’s 30 percent fee “untenable” and says it “would not be able to offer” Rhapsody under Apple’s new terms.
It issued this statement by Rhapsody’s President, Jon Irwin:
Rhapsody is the leading digital music subscription service in the U.S.,with 750,000 subscribers. Music fans can access the service using free apps from any Internet-connected device, be it on an Android, Sonos, Tivo, BlackBerry, iOS or personal computer. Today, Rhapsody subscriptions are available for purchase exclusively via Rhapsody.com.
Rhapsody offers a content-based subscription service that makes millions of tracks available to fans pursuant to longstanding partnerships with thousands of rights holders, all of which then distribute revenues to artists and other creators.
Our philosophy is simple too – an Apple-imposed arrangement that requires us to pay 30 percent of our revenue to Apple, in addition to content fees that we pay to the music labels, publishers and artists, is economically untenable. The bottom line is we would not be able to offer our service through the iTunes store if subjected to Apple’s 30 percent monthly fee vs. a typical 2.5 percent credit card fee.
We will continue to allow consumers to sign up at www.rhapsody.com from a smartphone or any other Internet access point, including the Safari browser on the iPhone and iPad. In the meantime, we will be collaborating with our market peers in determining an appropriate legal and business response to this latest development.
Sounds like someone’s going to have to call someone’s bluff here: Either Apple reduces the fee, or Rhapsody pulls out (unless it chickens out and stays in). That’s assuming that the reference to “appropriate legal…response” doesn’t turn into a lawsuit.
Apple says that content companies need to abide by the new policy by June 30th. It’s going to be an interesting four and a half months…
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The Known and Unknown of Apple's New App Store Subscriptions
This is one of the more significant moments in the history of the iPhone and iPad: Apple has announced its system for selling subscription-based content through its App Store. As with apps and one-time purchases such as game content, it’ll take a 30% cut of the sale.
The company’s announcement says that content owners will be free to sell their wares outside the App Store as well–no 30% fee to Apple involved–as long as they provide the same (or better) offers within the App Store. That’s a relief. But it also says this:
In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.
That means that the current content-acquisition system used by Amazon’s Kindle and numerous other apps–which all happens in the Mobile Safari browser, not the app–is now verboten. Continue Reading →
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I'd Buy It–But Steve Jobs Surely Wouldn't
I love the idea of an iPhone with a physical keyboard–as far as I’m concerned, a handset that had the upcoming HP Pre 3’s hardware and Apple’s iOS would be nearly perfect–but I have trouble believing that this Taiwanese rumor about a possible keyboarded iPhone is anything but…an impossibility.
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Windows Phone 7 Will Get Competitive in 2011
A couple of Windows Phone 7 updates, coming this year, will give Microsoft’s smartphone operating system some much-needed parity with other platforms.
The first update, which according to Ina Fried at All Things D will be out by March, adds copy-and-paste, performance tweaks and support for the CDMA networks of Sprint and Verizon Wireless, clearing the way for new handsets from those carriers.
A meatier update is due in the second half of 2011, and will add Internet Explorer 9 Mobile (with HTML5 support), Twitter integration into the People Hub, support for SkyDrive online storage and — wait for it — third-party multitasking. As VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar reports, Windows Phone 7 will use a card-like interface for multitasking, kind of like HP’s WebOS and Research in Motion’s Playbook tablet. No word on voice-guided Bing Maps navigation or custom ring tones, though. Bummer.
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Four Reasons Why a Cloud-based iOS is Ridiculous (For Now)
While there’s good business in posting Apple rumors, sometimes one comes along that is just so out there that you have to think, where do they get this stuff? The latest is that the newly rumored “iPhone Nano” will sport a cloud-based OS. While “to the cloud” has become a popular idea in tech, the mobile world is not ready to join it just yet.
Why wouldn’t a cloud-based OS work for the newest Apple iPhone? There’s a multitude of reasons, and all seem to indicate that Cult of Mac’s sources (the originator of this rumor) may be a little off base.
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Is the "iPhone Nano" Really an iPhone Shuffle?
As Jared reported on Thursday, rumors are back that Apple is working on an “iPhone Nano”–a smaller, cheaper phone designed to be sold without a carrier contract. (The idea dates back to at least 2008, but the media outlets writing about the latest version–including The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg–give it new credibility.)
Now Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac is reporting a new twist: The “iPhone Nano” supposedly has no storage, and instead streams entertainment from the cloud, using the technology Apple picked up when it bought (and shuttered) LaLa.
As Leander says, the notion of an iPhone having no storage doesn’t make sense. But maybe it has the bare minimum it needs to function, rather than the massive amounts–4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB–that are mandatory for phones that store music and movies locally.
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The Xperia Play's Stopgap: Tweaked Android Games
The Xperia Play has been Sony Ericsson’s worst-kept secret since the PSP Go. The first rumors popped up in August, and photos and videos followed in December. Engadget got its hands on the Xperia Play before Sony Ericsson even acknowledged the phone’s existence.
But until this week’s official announcement, Sony Ericsson has managed to keep a lid on the most important aspect of all: the games that the Xperia Play will support. At launch, there will be 50 of them, but many won’t come from Sony or even fall under the Playstation brand. Instead, publishers such as Gameloft and Electronic Arts are retooling some of their existing Android games to work with the Xperia Play’s slide-out set of buttons and thumb pads. That was unexpected.
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The Glorious Minimalism of the Backside of the Verizon iPhone
At the moment, I’m walking around with two iPhone 4s in my pocket: my personal AT&T phone, and a Verizon iPhone lent to me by Apple for review. (More thoughts on it coming up.)
As everyone reading this knows by now, the two flavors of iPhone are close to identical. So much so that I keep getting confused about which one is which–at least until I turn them on, whereupon I can check out the carrier identifier in the upper left-hand corner.
Without turning the phones on, I could examine the slightly different placement of the antennas and mute switches. But there’s a more obvious difference that I’ve found quite handy: The Verizon iPhone has way less fine type on its back, and is missing an entire row of regulatory logos.
By happy coincidence, I just read an Ars Technica piece by Casey Johnston that explains the stuff on the back of iPhones, and helped me figure out why there’s so much less of it on the new Verizon model.