Tag Archives: App Store

New App Store Rules Take Effect Tomorrow

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Tomorrow could see several reader apps leaving the App Store due to Apple’s new rules banning linking to purchase content outside of the Apple App Store.  This may cause a lot of controversy for users because Amazon’s Kindle App is the most popular reader out there, selling more e-books than paper books lately.  Apple’s Reader App does not have as many books as Amazon as well, and you can not read books from Apple on non Apple devices which for me is a deal breaker.   Several companies such as Pandora have complained that Apple’s 30% cut model is not feasible because it leaves them with no profit.  When a company’s profit margin is in the single digits that does not leave them anything to be paying a 3rd party, and I do agree a 30% cut off the top vs a percentage of profits is really harsh to some.  Also Apple’s demand that you give App Store customers the same deals you give them on your website prevents app makers from passing the costs on to the consumer as well.

I think tomorrow we may see lawsuits filed from a group of companies that this impacts, the silence from Pandora, Amazon, and several others has been profound.  They made their dislike of this policy known several months ago and even after Apple changed some things about the policy after playing chicken with the Financial Times and losing, they still did not change things enough to please other app makers.

Apple App Store Surpasses 400,000 Apps

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It should be no surprise during Steve Jobs WWDC 2011 Keynote, that he will probably claim that the App Store has surpassed 400,000 apps between iPhone/iPad/Mac apps.  According to statistics from AppShopper there were roughly 401,440 apps available with the biggest share to iPhone apps at 361,277 followed by iPad apps at 97957, and 5075 Mac Apps available.  Despite Android sales beating the iPhone, the App Store will be the main destination and selling point for any of Apple’s products due to superior design from a more coherent system provided by the Xcode framework.  Apple apps “Just Work” where some Android apps suffer from release problems, incompatibility of certain chipsets, and several cases of Malware posing as apps.  As Apple opens up more carriers to be able to carry iProducts, then the market share should grow organically.  T-Mobile and Sprint are prime candidates to sell phones to and if the recent stampedes in China are any indication, the iPhone and iPad will do very well there.