https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xAJmdhQzJ4&feature=youtube_gdata
Golf aficionados — or viewers agog about Tiger Woods’ emergence from hibernation — might have noticed a curiously new AT&T in a TV spot during the start of the PGA Masters in Augusta on Thursday.
OPINION: Steve Jobs saved the most important part of his iPhone 4.0 announcement today till last — the new in-app advertising system, called iAds.
The iAds system is important because it allows the App Store to create a completely self-sustaining app economy that is sealed off from the wider Web.
Tech guru Tim O’Reilly says the App Store is already becoming a rival to the web itself. The App Store, he says, is “the first real rival to the Web as today’s dominant consumer application platform.” Consumers will have no need to visit the web on their iPhones and iPads if they get everything they need from apps, which is bad news for companies like Google.
“This is a new phenomenon,” Jobs said about apps at today’s presentation. This is the first time this kind of thing has ever existed. We never had that on the desktop, so search was the only way to find a lot of things.”
The App Store economy is already pretty well developed. There is the app purchase mechanism itself through iTunes, and in-app purchases, which allow consumers to buy stuff from inside apps themselves. But there was a big hole: advertising. Ads are already a big part of the app economy, but clicking on them typically takes consumers out of the app and into the browser, an experience Steve Jobs describes as jolting.
But now Apple has built a sophisticated ad-serving mechaninsm right into the iPhone (and iPad, natch), which will make the App ecosystem like AOL in the early days — a walled garden. And one that has it’s own economy: in-app purchases, and now in-app advertising. There will be no need to go to the wider web anymore — and that cuts out Google.
“What’s happening is that people are spending a lot of time in apps,” Jobs said today. “They’re using apps to get to data on the internet, rather than a generalized search.”
No wonder Apple and Google are at war. Google swooped in a bought AdMob just to keep it out of Apple’s hands (so Apple snapped up Quattro instead). Of course, Google isn’t on the ropes yet. Android is Google’s attempt to keep it relevant in mobile, and so far it’s holding its own against the iPhone.
But if early numbers are any indication, the iPad is going to be an iPhone-sized hit. Combine the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and that’s a lot of mobile devices in Apple’s walled garden.
Well, looks like that purchase of Quattro really paid off. Steve Jobs just announced iAd, Apple’s own mobile advertising network for app developers.
According to Jobs, an average person spends 30 minutes in an app each day. If an ad is served every 3 minutes, it’s ten ads a day. Multiply that by 100 million devices, and it’s a billion ads a day.
iAds will function in-app. You click on them, but you never get pulled to a browser: they work like innate features of the app. You can even make them games.
It’s a great idea: ads can be freely explored without stopping what you’re doing or psychologically breaking up the experience of an app with getting information.
This is such a simple innovation, but it’s huge. Apple’s done something truly unique here: they’ve figured out a compelling way to compete with Google in the mobile advertising space. I didn’t think it can be done.
And what do developers get out of this? 60% of the revenues, after Apple has sold the ads.
Holy cow. I think iAds just made “Free” the new “$0.99” on the App Store.
[image via Gizmodo]
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd_IDvDMeQE
The “Get A Mac” series may be over, but Apple’s app-centric iPhone campaign is still as effective as ever. In the latest ad, “Shopper,” a husband explains how he used his iPhone 3Gs and the RedLaser price comparison app to get his wife a new espresso maker.
Unlike other iPhone ads, this one is unique in that it focuses on a sole app, but these ads still really hit the right note to me: they’re down-to-earth messages aimed at the every man focusing on the one indisputable thing the iPhone still does better than every other smartphone out there: software.
Current iPhone users will likely stay iPhone users, indicates new research released Wednesday. More than 9 in 10 iPhone owners stay Apple fans, an analyst said.
“While we believe that this retention can change rapidly, anecdotally during our survey we even received emails from three respondents asking when the next iPhone will be available,” wrote UBS analyst Maynard Um. Um expects Apple will announce 7.5 million of the iconic handsets were sold during the first three months of 2010.
A curious report emerged Tuesday surrounding the seeming never-ending attempt by Verizon Wireless to break into the exclusive U.S. iPhone market. While previous reports have used anonymous sources in the will they, won’t they soap opera, the latest voice heard came from Verizon’s CEO.
Ivan Seidenberg, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations, said his company has told Apple it would like to sell the iPhone, according to the AP. Although Seidenberg provided no details, such as when Verizon made the request or Apple’s response, the CEO did use a recent Wall Street Journal article to peg his hopes. The WSJ reported that Apple was developing two new iPhones – including one compatible with the CDMA technology used by Verizon.
We kick off today’s round of daily deals with a trio of Apple hardware. First up is a 160GB Apple TV unit for $189. Next is a deal on a no-contract 8GB iPhone 3G for $360. We round out the top trio of deals with a 500GB Apple Time Capsule for $179.
Along the way, we check out a DLO hard shell case for the 3G or 3GS, along with a new batch of App Store price drops (SimCity is priced at $2.99 — a $2 savings.) As always, details on these and many other bargains are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
It’s a small change, but a nice one: Apple has just modified the App Store to make it easier to browse for iPhone and iPad apps, and distinguish universal binaries from iPhone-only apps.
It’s a simple change. Previously, iPhone and iPad apps were combined on one page, with only the Top Charts section offering the option between switching between iPhone and iPad view.
Now if you go to the App Store in iTunes, you’ll now see a couple of small tabs at the top of the page that allow you to switch between iPhone and iPad app browsing. Universal binaries will be listed under both headings, but non-universal apps will be exclusively listed under the iPhone heading… pixel doubling just does not an iPad app make.
[via TUAW]
According to tech apocrypha, after Commodore International released their revolutionary PET 2001 home PC, a couple of scruffy young men named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak plopped down in Commodore’s offices with a cardboard box full of circuit boards and tried to pitch the more established electronics company the first Apple II prototype, a revolutionary home PC with far more advanced color, graphics and sound capabilities. Jobs and Woz had no money, and they wanted Commodore to push the Apple II to market.
Instead, Commodore balked, following up the PET 2001 with the VIC-20 in 1980, and then finally bringing to market the computer they would become best known for: the Commodore 64. Largely thanks to a sub-$200 price drop, It went on to sell 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer of all time with an astonishing 30-40% market share between 1983 and 1986. The computer was such a success that was only discontinued in 1994.
Oh, how things change. Now, Commodore International is basically dead, and the company Commodore shuffled out the door is one of the most profitable computer companies on Earth. But after sixteen years, the Commodore 64 has finally raised a mottled hand out of the grave. Can it compete with Apple once more?
Less than a week after a report leaked that Google is deeply involved in creating a TV service, a prominent Apple analyst now says Apple could revamp the HDTV market in the next two to four years.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors Tuesday Apple is “uniquely positioned” to enter the HDTV market with what he calls a “premium all-in-one” alternative to the high-definition sector. Munster believes Apple could sell a product for $1,999 that would replace the HDTV, the Blu-ray player, your digital video recorder, cable box and game console.
