Is Apple cleaning up the App Store?
The company has ousted two of its cheesiest iPhone developers. It's time to finish the job.
Some Brighthouse Labs apps. Source: iappphone.com
Last summer, Apple (AAPL) made headlines when it revoked the license of one of the most prolific third-party iPhone developers, a Pakistani operation called Perfect Acumen that managed to get 943 apps past the App Store review process before somebody noticed that most were nearly worthless and dozens contained blatant copyright violations. (See here.)
On Monday, Apple struck again, pulling the plug on the 1,011 apps published by Molinker, a Chinese developer that had been caught gaming the App Store ratings system, allegedly by offering free programs to users who agreed to give the apps five stars. (See here.)
Is Cupertino getting its store in order in advance of the big holiday sales season?
Life takes virtual currency
Living in the post-Visa world
By Roger C. Wood, CEO, ORCA Inc.
Wood: Currency is a-changin'. Photo: ORCA
When I was contemplating moving from the wireless sector to the Web sector, I read just about every column Nick Negroponte wrote as a columnist for WIRED Magazine. His departing piece, entitled “Beyond Digital” was published in December 1998 and served as an inspiration to me. After reading it, I left my role as general manager of the International Division for the consortium of mobile start-ups (Voicestream, Omnipoint, Aerial and Powertel) that became T-Mobile USA and joined Reebok International to launch the first multi-national interactive division of any Fortune 1000 company, launching e-commerce sites in 36 separate countries. This opinion piece is an ode to that pivotal article.
Nine-year-old Boy #1 – “I like Fusion Fall. It’s kind of a mission game; it’s not like a chatting game. Sometimes I like to play chat, that’s why I like Club Penguin. But now I like Fusion better, mostly it’s just more fun to earn Taros and Nanos and Fusion Matter. I like spending Fusion Matter because I can get more HP and cool clothes. And, it loads my clothes super fast.”
Nine-year-old Boy #2 – “I hate Adventurequest because it’s just an RPG and it looks like no one else is there. I like to earn prestige and HP. I get hurt all the time, so I need to buy HP all the time. I haven’t figured out all of the shopkeepers in Fusion Fall, but there are different types. The power shopkeeper seems like the best.”
“Load my clothes”? “Prestige and HP”? “Power shopkeeper”? If you have no idea what these kids are talking about, welcome to the post-VISA world of virtual currency. The very nature of basic transactions will be transformed by this generation and this piece of a kid’s conversation is just the beginning.
No matter what you call it – virtual currency, s-commerce, contextual payments, in-apps buying or stored value – young people want to pay for things in little pieces without leaving the entertainment experience. More
Tech giants that 'get' small business
Tech's top vendors see small companies as a big opportunity.
Software giant Microsoft (MSFT) tops a new ranking of technology companies effectively serving small businesses online by providing a rich, educational web experience for small companies.
Compass Intelligence, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based consulting firm, analyzes the websites of dozens of tech companies – and interviews small business owners and executives – to come up with its rankings, which it publishes twice each year.
Microsoft leaped to the No. 1 ranking from No. 6 in the first quarter of 2009, essentially switching places with computer maker Dell (DELL) which slipped to No. 6 from the top spot in the first quarter. (Remember, the Compass rankings look at just one part of the tech company's small-business strategy: online reach. All these companies also work through resellers, local affiliates and even have direct sales folks marketing to and servicing small entities.)
That said, the top ten, in order, are: More
Seagate joins the flash party with Pulsar
Seagate's Pulsar drive uses single-level cell NAND flash, and is the first of what analysts expect will be many solid-state products from the storage giant. Image: Seagate.
Flash memory – the stuff that stores data in consumer gadgets like phones and digital cameras – is also finding its way into more corporate data centers. It turns out that while flash is still far more expensive than trusty old hard drives, it uses less power and serves up information quickly. That makes it well suited for tasks like data mining, business information and any other situation where time is money.
That’s why Seagate (STX), the world’s largest manufacturer of hard drives, is getting into the flash game. Seagate today is expected to unveil Pulsar, a new flash-based storage product that looks like a hard drive and holds up to 200 gigabytes of data. The drive is designed for a mainstream server – the kind that handles e-mail and basic databases – and is the first of many flash-based products Seagate hopes to release soon. More
iPod, shmyPod: Most consumer tech companies aren’t that innovative
Apple’s gadgets win adulation, but research shows the sector needs a jolt if it wants to grow
By Wouter Koetzier, global managing director-Accenture’s Innovation Performance Group, and Adi Alon, North American managing director-Accenture’s Innovation Performance Group
Large consumer technology companies are underperforming in the global innovation battle.
The culprit: Widespread flaws in how they manage and invest in innovation.
If tech companies want to grow, they need to invest in breakthrough, high-impact innovations and more systematically and rigorously manage their innovation processes.
This conclusion is based on our daily interactions with clients and recent Accenture research in which we interviewed research and development decision-makers at leading consumer technology companies in North America, Europe and Asia. Collectively, the executives represent companies that generate almost two-thirds of global industry revenue.
The data revealed that innovation is a top priority for companies seeking to grow. But shortcomings in managing innovation, such as not having uniformity of command, are resulting in poor returns on innovation investments.
Accenture believes these poor returns can be turned into profitable, sustainable growth by systematically managing innovation end-to-end — with the same rigor and discipline as other major business processes. More
The iPod touch generation
Is Apple's iPhone-without-a-phone the McDonald's Happy Meal of mobile communications?
Click to enlarge. Source: Flurry Analytics
Peter Farago of the mobile analytics firm Flurry uses data from its November report to make the case that Apple (AAPL) is quietly — and successfully — using the iPod touch to lock in a loyal base of under-age users who will eventually become the next generation of iPhone buyers.
"While it is clear that the iPhone has significant short-term revenue value for Apple," he writes in a report issued Sunday, "Flurry believes that the iPod Touch holds more long-term strategic value for Steve Jobs and team."
"In terms of Life Stage Marketing," Farago writes, "the practice of appealing to different age-based segments, Apple is using the iPod Touch to build loyalty with pre-teens and teens, even before they have their own phones (think: McDonalds' Happy Meal marketing strategy). When today's young iPod Touch users age by five years, they will already have iTunes accounts, saved personal contacts to their iPod Touch devices, purchased hundreds of apps and songs, and mastered the iPhone OS user interface." (link)
The evidence that Apple's strategy is working, Farago says, can be seen in a graph of end-user sessions recorded over the past six months.
MC Hammer goes for the gold
The rapper-turned-entrepreneur sees cash money in the commodity's boom.
MC Hammer has had many professional careers: he’s been a preacher, a rapper, and a tech entrepreneur.
Now the pioneer of the parachute pants has an equity stake in Cash4Gold, a Pompano Beach-Fla., refinery. Customers who send in their gold—grandma’s necklace, dad’s watch—will receive an estimate of its worth. If they’re happy with the estimate, they get a check.
With the price of gold hitting new highs, it’s hardly surprising that pawnshops are flourishing. Cash4Gold claims to be the first such service to operate fully online; indeed, its backers include a handful of tech venture capital firms, including Luxembourg-based Mangrove Partners ( an early backer of Skype) and Boston’s General Catalyst and Highland Capital Partners. More
The Gray Lady visits the App Store
Apple's controversial software emporium gets a sympathetic hearing at the New York Times
Photo illustration: The New York Times
Apple (AAPL) only opens its doors to reporters when it needs something from them — like glowing reviews for a glitzy new gadget.
What it needs right now, apparently, is a friendly account of what's going on at the iPhone App Store, a runaway hit galloping so fast that even Apple — a company that knows a thing or two about control — is having trouble holding on to the reins.
And a sympathetic ear is what it got from Jenna Wortham, a former Wired freelancer who joined the New York Times two years ago to cover Web start-ups and mobile communications for the paper's Bits blog.
Apple granted Wortham interviews with two senior vice presidents — Phil Schiller, who supervises the App Store approval process, and Eddie Cue, who runs iTunes — which she supplemented with material from Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty, Flurry's Peter Farago, a handful of developers, and Apple's major competitors.
Her 3,000 word piece is the lead story on the front page of the Sunday Business section, and Apple PR should be pleased. Among the highlights:
Techmate: With Bing, Twitter, Foursquare and more, location tech is hot [video]
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Ad wars: Droid manly; iPhone girly
Motorola targets young men with its most testosterone-heavy TV commercial yet
Screen shot from Droid ad. Image: Motorola
Someone had fun writing this ad copy:
Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast? Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It's not a princess. It's a robot. A phone that trades hair-do for can-do.
The new Droid commercial that debuted in prime-time Thursday night (and is pasted below the fold) opened a new front in Motorola (MOT) and Verizon's (VZ) $100 million ad campaign to take market share from Apple's (AAPL) iPhone
Earlier commercials had appealed to the fragile male ego with icons of masculinity: stealth bombers, heavyweight fighters, rock-crushing machinery.
This one goes after the competition by painting it — and its users — as effeminate.
