App Store

Why Apple blinked

An analyst offers three reasons Apple relaxed its rules for App Store subscriptions

RBC's Mike Abramsky was the first analyst out of the gate Friday to comment on Apple's (AAPL) decision to make it easier for publishers and other content partners to offer in-app subscriptions.

In a note to clients, Abramsky lists three reasons he thinks Steve Jobs blinked:

Apple realized it had gone too far. "Apple has been criticized for its heavy-handed MORE

Apple blinks. Rewrites rules for Netflix, Amazon, publishers

Some of the most draconian restrictions in its App Store subscription rules have been lifted

Last February, when Apple (AAPL) announced the rules by which publishers and other content providers could offer subscriptions through its App Store, Steve Jobs made them sound like the most reasonable thing in the world.

"Our philosophy is simple," he wrote. "When Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when MORE

Why it's harder to make money on Android than on Apple's iOS

Out of 72,000 paid apps in Google's Android Market, only two have sold more than 500,000 copies

The Utrecht-based analytics company Distimo generated some catchy headlines last month with a report suggesting that Google's (GOOG) Android Market was rapidly catching up to Apple's (AAPL) App Store and might surpass it by July.

What that report didn't mention, as Roughly Drafted's Daniel Eran Dilger pointed out in a pungent analysis entitled "Distimo polishes MORE

Talking Tom is rich: Outfit7 wants to turn smartphone characters into Saturday cartoons

The App Store is turning into a proving ground for Saturday morning cartoons, which means the screeching cat and his friends could soon be on a TV, cereal box and onesie near you.

FORTUNE -- Andrej Nabergoj has spent the last year turning a $60 cat into a millionaire. He's the CEO of Outfit7, the company that makes the talking-character apps your three-year old has likely been teething on for the MORE

What price for Square's cool features?

Jack Dorsey is trying to make it hip to use Square's new Register and Tabs features, and he's taking a page from Apple on premium pricing.

FORTUNE -- Jack Dorsey's startup, Square, gets a lot of attention from the media. After all, Dorsey is also the co-founder of Twitter, which means plenty of people in Silicon Valley want to know about his every move. But Square's high-profile status doesn't mean its MORE

Apple's iTunes store: 500,000 iOS apps and counting

Less than three years after it opened for business, the App Store hit the half-million mark

Here's a nice round number likely to be trotted out at the Apple's (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Sometime after midnight Tuesday morning,  the iTunes team pushed through a batch of app submissions that sent the total over a six-figure milestone. In 34 months, Apple has approved more than 500,000 iPhone, iPad and iPod touch MORE

Today in Tech: Facebook wants Skype, Cisco reorganizing

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Facebook and Google are each reportedly negotiating a partnership with Skype, though Facebook is also considering buying the free calling app-maker altogether. Any such deal would hypothetically be valued at between $3 to $4 billion, significantly more than the $1 billion Skype's impending initial public offering (IPO) would MORE

Today in Tech: iPhone 5 ships September, RockMelt mobile sneak peek

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

If you've ever want to call your Facebook friends directly via FB and not uh, you know over your cell phone, now you can. T-Mobile introduced Bobsled, a calling feature integrated into Facebook chat that lets users call one another for free, as well as leave private and MORE

iPad ad as mission statement

Apple uses a 30-second TV spot to sell not just a gadget, but a philosophy

"This is what we believe," begins a gravely voiced narrator over an understated piano in the new Apple (AAPL) TV spot that debuted Saturday (and is available here and below the fold).

"Technology alone is not enough. Faster, thinner, lighter; those are all good things. But when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes MORE

Bubble babble

The only thing more important than whether there is a tech bubble: why we're so obsessed with one.

FORTUNE -- I'm calling a top to the pundit bubble. All week, spurred by Color's gaudy valuation, the tech and economic punditry have continued their months-long monologue about whether or not we're in a tech bubble. Back and forth they went, inflating nothing but their own self-importance as they jostled to be the one MORE