App Store

And the prize for Best App Ever (2012 edition) goes to ...

The results of the "People's Choice" app award are announced at Macworld|iWorld

A record 1.5 million votes were cast earlier this month in the fourth annual Best App Ever contest, more than three times as many as last year. Created in 2008 by 148Apps -- a smartphone app-tracking website named after the maximum number of apps that could be installed on Apple's (AAPL) original iPhone -- its purpose, according to founder MORE

How much do the Chinese love their Apple iPads?

A lot. Despite delayed launches, they download nearly as many iPad apps as U.S. users

Consider this:

The original iPad didn't go on sale on mainland China until September 2010, five months after its U.S. launch.
The iPad 2 arrived in May 2011, two months after its U.S. launch, and even then just in Wi-Fi-only versions.
The 3G iPad 2 finally launched in China in September, six months after it was available in the MORE

Apple: 500,000 apps, 18 billion downloads, 100 million for Mac

Cupertino responds to a Google milestone with a flurry of nice round numbers

Last Tuesday, Google (GOOG) announced that Android users had downloaded more than 10 billion apps from the Android Market and that the number of downloads was growing by 1 billion per month. To celebrate the milestone, Google was going to make a new set of "awesome apps" available on the store every day for the next week for only 10¢ each.

The week MORE

Piper Jaffray: Android app revenue is 7% of iPhone's

Apple to retain a 70%+ share of mobile app dollars, despite Android's 50%+ market share

Using data from Apple's public announcements and AndroLib (an Android app discovery tool), Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster has analyzed the mobile app market and determined that:

Since its inception, Google's (GOOG) Android Market Place has generated about 7% of the gross revenue of Apple's App Store.
Apple (AAPL) has about 85% to 90% market share of the total MORE

Android's malware problem is growing exponentially

Reports of trojans, spyware and other malicious programs are up 472% since July

Several warnings have been issued over the past year about the growing problem of malware on Google (GOOG) Android smartphones (see here, here and here), but none as dire or as sharply worded as the report issued Wednesday by Juniper Network's Global Threat Center.

Not only did Juniper's annual threat report see a 400% increase in Android malware between 2009 and the MORE

Bizzaro valuations: Amazon (P/E = 100) vs. Apple (14)

Even after Tuesday's free-fall, Amazon's shares cost seven times more than Apple's

It's never been adequately explained to me why Amazon's (AMZN) shares are so expensive and Apple's (AAPL) so cheap.

Both stocks were punished after reporting their most recent quarterly earnings. Apple fell $23.62 (5.6%) last week when the company came in with iPhone sales that were lower than analysts expected, reducing profit growth to 54%. Amazon fell $10.46 (4.4%) Tuesday MORE

Today in Tech: Apple promotes another exec

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

* According to 9to5Mac, Apple (AAPL) iTunes chief Eddy Cue was promoted to Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services. Cue will report directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook and will oversee all of the company's cloud services, from iTunes and the App Store to the impending iCloud. (9to5Mac)

* MORE

How Apple drove Amazon's Kindle from the App Store

The new Kindle Cloud Reader paves the way for others to sidestep Apple's 30% tax

Steve Jobs made no friends on Publishers Row last February.

After flying to New York City in early 2010 to sell book and magazine publishers on the wonders of the iPad as a reading device (see Enter Steve Jobs with top hat and iPad), he announced subscription rules a year later that he said would "delight" readers MORE

Did AOL just out-Flipboard Flipboard?

The company's new news app aggregates content based on your interests, reading habits and your friends -- and it takes the digital magazine concept to the extreme.

By JP Mangalindan, writer-reporter

FORTUNE -- In the year since Flipboard debuted at last year's Brainstorm Tech conference, the news app space has exploded. Users looking for help sifting through online content have a number to choose from: Pulse, FLUD, Zite, News360, and the recently MORE

Today in Tech: Facebook buys e-book publisher

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day. 

* Facebook bought up Push Pop Press, a small iPad book designer, raising questions over whether the social networking champ plans to enter the e-book business. "Although Facebook isn't planning to start publishing digital books, the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook, MORE