The Trump administration wants to eliminate “untrusted” Chinese apps from the App Store as part of a multiphase “Clean Network” plan to cut down on potential security risks from China.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the United States will crack down on apps with parent companies based in China. The two specific apps mentioned are TikTok and WeChat. However, Pompeo simply used these to illustrate the kinds of apps that could get the boot.
Spending on mobile games in the App Store grew significantly over the past quarter, despite the coronavirus pandemic, a new report by Sensor Tower claims. Across the App Store and Google Play, global spending grew 27% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2020 to hit $19.3 billion.
Of the total revenue, the App Store made up $11.6 billion to Google Play’s $7.7 billion. That’s even though the App Store only making up a tiny 2.7 billion of the overall 15.1 billion app downloads in the quarter. As ever, the App Store is where the lion’s share of profits is to be made!
Apple now offers a gift card that can be used at the Apple Store to buy hardware and also at the App Store to buy software. And iTunes is included as well.
Previously, the company sold separate cards, one for iTunes/App Store and another for the Apple Store.
Apple agreed to halve its App Store fee for Amazon so the company would bring its Prime Video app to iOS and Apple TV, emails reveal (.pdf).
Apple exec Eddy Cue and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos personally negotiated the deal in 2016, it was revealed during Wednesday’s antitrust hearing looking into tech giants’ business practices. They agreed that Apple would get a 15% revenue cut from day one for customers who signed up through the app. Apple normally gets a 30% cut for the first year of an app’s subscription. It then claims a 15% commission for subsequent years.
Apple’s 30% commission on certain apps is one of the main areas Apple CEO Tim Cook was grilled on during Wednesday’s U.S. House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee hearing.
However, according to internal emails revealed as part of the inquiry, Apple previously considered increasing its cut from 30% to 40% in some cases.
Apple CEO Tim Cook will argue that his company does not dominate any market in which it does business when he appears before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee Wednesday, according to his opening statement released ahead of time (.pdf).
While Cook will say that “scrutiny is reasonable and appropriate,” he will assert that Apple refuses to make “concession on the facts” by agreeing that it is a monopoly. If anything, Cook will argue that Apple is no gatekeeper, but, through the App Store, has actually opened the gate to developers.
When Apple CEO Tim Cook takes questions from Congress on Wednesday, he’ll surely get an earful of software developers’ complaints about how the App Store operates. Chief among the criticisms will likely be the fact that Apple charges a percentage of revenue earned from in-app sales.
There’s not a bit of justification for any of these highly publicized complaints. They come from companies that want to have their cake and eat it, too.
Airbnb and ClassPass are the two latest companies to clash with Apple over the tech giant’s demands for a percentage of in-app sales.
According to the The New York Times, the two companies — reeling from the effects of COVID-19 on their businesses — are upset that Apple demands a 30% cut of sales for their sale of online experiences.
There might be more streaming services than ever, but Netflix seems like it’s continuing to maintain momentum in the age of Disney+, HBO+, and others.
According to a new report by Sensor Tower, Netflix was the second-most downloaded iOS app in the App Store. The number one streaming video app? YouTube, of course.
Microsoft President Brad Smith reportedly raised concerns to the U.S. government about Apple’s management of the App Store, which he considers anti-competitive.
The two companies’ infamous rivalry has cooled somewhat since its 1990s peak, but Apple and Microsoft aren’t exactly BFFs either.
Worldwide app downloads have boomed over the past three months, hitting an all-time high of 37.8 billion downloads, a new report by app analytics platform Sensor Tower claims.
Of that number, 9.1 billion were from the App Store. The remaining 28.7 billion was from the Google Play store for Android users. Both saw considerable growth versus last year. That’s despite the effects of coronavirus and the subsequent economic downturn.
Apple eliminated upward of 2,500 games from its China App Store in the first full week of July, a new report from app analytics firm Sensor Tower notes.
Mobile gaming regulations in the country mean that all games must receive a license from China’s National Press and Publication Administration prior to release. Regulators had promised a crackdown on offending apps since 2016. However, they were slow to act. In the meantime, unlicensed games continued to be published in the App Store.
Lawmakers from the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Reform want Apple and Google to investigate where third-party apps are storing their data.
In two letters sent Tuesday, Stephen Lynch, chairman of the National Security Subcommittee, wrote to Apple and Google that certain non-U.S. apps could pose securities risks.
Update: Layton: Lost Future HD is now available for $13.99 in the App Store. A discounted bundle ($10 off!) of all three games is also available.
Classic Nintendo DS puzzle game series Professor Layton continues to make its way to iOS slowly but surely.
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, the last installment in the original trilogy, which launched on DS a decade ago, is coming to the App Store July 13. Complete with some swanky updated HD graphics for your troubles!
Today, the App Store is a part of every iPhone owner’s life — but it almost didn’t happen. Get the story behind that near-miss, plus some other fascinating App Store factoids, in this week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine.
It’s free, and it also packs the latest Apple news and how-tos. Plus, this week we’ve got reviews of three new Apple TV+ offerings, including Tom Hanks’ World War II movie, Greyhound.
Download it now and enjoy it on your favorite iOS device. (Or use the links below to read in your browser.)
Do you remember the world of software distribution before the App Store? It was a fragmented nightmare that made it very difficult for many companies, particularly smaller ones, to get their products out. The App Store changed all that, while also showing the world that the iPhone could have a different “killer app” depending on the user.
With today marking the App Store’s birthday, here are 10 factoids you (probably) didn’t know about Apple’s mobile app marketplace.
TikTok enjoyed another month at the top of the App Store charts in June, becoming the most downloaded non-gaming iOS app, according to a new report from Sensor Tower.
The leading app analytics firm says the Chinese social video app was installed more than 87 million times last month on iOS and Android. That represents an impressive 52.7% increase from June 2019.
Reddit is fixing its iOS app after an iOS 14 beta tester discovered that the app was copying the contents from users’ clipboards.
The clipboard copying appears to have been an accident. In a statement to The Verge, a Reddit spokesperson blamed the problem on a dodgy line of code:
Total App Store spending surged to a massive $32.8 billion in the first half of 2020, combining money spent on premium downloads, subscriptions, and in-app purchases, a recent blog post from app analytics firm Sensor Tower suggests.
Not only is that an enormous amount of cash, but it’s also close to double the estimated gross revenue spent in the Google Play store, despite the bigger market share enjoyed by Android. User spending on Google Play reportedly hit $17.3 billion in the first half of the year.
Another developer is speaking out about Apple’s controlling behavior in the App Store by saying it had an app update rejected because it refused to auto-charge users for its service following a free trial.
“[Apple] can choose to steal from their customers who forget to cancel, but we won’t do the same to ours,” yoga app Down Dog wrote in a recent tweet, saying that this is a line it would not cross.
Apple is running another awesome promotion that offers shoppers free money when they top up their Apple ID. Simply add funds to your account before July 10 and you’ll get 10% extra. Here’s how.
The Department of Justice is considering a possible antitrust probe of Apple, according to three sources who spoke with Politico, the publication notes in a report published Wednesday.
Like the European Union, which recently launched an antitrust investigation of Apple, the DoJ is reportedly focused on Apple’s control of the App Store. Multiple companies have complained that the App Store raises prices and reduces options for customers.
Apple will allow developers to challenge its app review process, and also end its current practice of blocking bug fixes due to minor violations of its rules, Reuters reported Monday.
Apple has not yet revealed the details of the mechanism devs can use to appeal rulings, and an Apple spokesperson declined to comment. However, the feature is supposedly on the way.
Apple is set to begin a deep clean of the App Store in China, removing “thousands” of games that don’t have the proper government approvals, a report by Bloomberg claims.
Developers and publishers have reportedly been told that they will need to secure licenses to continue selling their games starting next month. While regulators have been promising such a crackdown since 2016, they have been slow to push through rules. As a result, unlicensed games were still being published in the interim.
Microsoft’s president Brad Smith has seemingly joined the number of voices criticizing Apple for taking a 30% cut of app revenue.
The Microsoft executive said that the policy is far more anti-competitive than the complaints that led to the Microsoft antitrust case of the early 2000s. The antitrust case against Microsoft helped reshape the tech landscape 20 years ago.