iPod touch

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

Apple clobbers estimates, iPad sales fall short

Sales were up 83% and earnings up 92% on 18.65 million iPhones and 3.76 million Macs

As expected, Apple (AAPL) reported record second quarter earnings Wednesday, blowing past its own guidance and Wall Street's expectations in everything but iPad sales.

"With quarterly revenue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95 percent, we're firing on all cylinders," said Steve Jobs in a prepared statement that said nothing about those iPad numbers. MORE

iPad: Not just for Apple 'fanboys'

A comScore survey of iPad owners finds some surprises in their pockets

"Though it's frequently assumed that the Apple user base is composed of dedicated Apple 'fanboys'," writes comScore' Mark Donovan, using a term demeaning to Apple (AAPL) users of both sexes, "there's not a tremendous amount of overlapping mobile device access among these users."

That second part takes some unpacking, but its meaning is a little clearer in the spreadsheet at MORE

How many iPods did Apple sell last quarter?

In this category, the pros are more bullish than the amateurs

iPod unit sales, despite seasonal spikes, have been drifting down since Christmas 2008, when they peaked at 22.7 million for the quarter (Apple's fiscal Q1 2009).

That quarter also represented the low point in iPod average selling price (ASP) per unit, $148. That's because Apple's (AAPL) business model was shifting from selling dedicated music players to selling more expensive hand-held computers, MORE

The Nintendo 3DS: Hit or miss?

The gaming company's latest money-making handheld offers solid 3-D graphics in an oddly traditional package.

It's been more than five years since Nintendo released its Nintendo DS mobile gaming platform -- or less than two if you count those slightly tweaked upgrades with smaller (or bigger) form factors or video cameras. True to form, the clam shell-type device with two screens and a stylus didn't offer cutting edge graphics, but it MORE

Where is Amazon's "Appstore"? - updated

It opened Tuesday, despite the trademark infringement suit Apple filed on Friday

[UPDATE: Sometime after 7:00 a.m. EST, the Amazon Appstore went live. Looks like Apple will have to go back to court and start specifying those unspecified damages it was seeking.]

Okay. It's Tuesday morning, and according to the New York Times, Amazon is supposed to enter the mobile app business today with a splash -- giving away a free copy MORE

iOS 4.3 has landed

As predicted, it arrived a couple days early, for the iPad, iPhone* and iPod touch

For a summary of the new features, see Apple's (AAPL) press release.

Between downloading, backing up and re-syncing, the procedure took me nearly 20 minutes to update my iPad. When I checked, iMovie and Garage Band had not yet appeared in the App Store.

* For AT&T (T) iPhones only. Apple has not yet said when iOS 4.3 MORE

Dueling iPad software update rumors

The Boy Genius had it coming Tuesday; MacRumors says Wednesday

According to Apple's (AAPL) press release, iOS 4.3 was scheduled to be available Friday as a free update. This morning, the Boy Genius Report -- a tech blog with a better-than-average track record on such matters -- spread the rumor that it was coming today (Tuesday) at 1 p.m. EST (10 a.m. PST).

MacRumors had a different version. iOS 4.3 was coming MORE

Can Apple corner the display market?

According to iSuppli, that's the purpose of a $3.9 billion investment revealed last month

When COO Tim Cook mentioned during Apple's (AAPL) Q1 2011 earning call that the company was going to spend $3.9 billion over the next two years for unspecified component pre-payments, most analysts assumed he was talking about touch screen displays for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

On Tuesday iSuppli -- now part of IHS -- issued a MORE

108 apps per iPhone

A new survey charts the behavior of iPhone owners who use their apps 84 minutes per day

Appsfire's Ouriel Ohayon has put together an infographic, copied in full below the fold, based on data from more than 1,000 Apple (AAPL) iOS devices registered and synchronized with his application discovery service.

The results, he says, should settle once and for all the debate about "who wins" -- web apps or native apps (the MORE