mocoNews

Apps Are 'Huge' For Barnes & Noble

Laura Hazard Owen — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:19:59 PST

Seeking to advance the narrative that the Nook Tablet is a true multimedia tablet and not just a big expensive e-reader, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) CEO William Lynch said in an investor call today that apps are the company’s fastest-growing content area, and “within apps it’s entertainment, movies, Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), games, kids.”

Apps are “huge,” Lynch said in the call following this morning’s earnings report. Angry Birds is still the company’s most-downloaded app, while Netflix “toggles between #2 and #3.”

When asked if Barnes & Noble will release a tablet with a larger screen—as it is rumored that Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) will in coming months—Lynch declined to discuss specific form factors, but said the company “will innovate in the areas we think we can add value. There’s a lot of innovation left in digital reading.” One comment could be seen as a hint at a digital video service: “We’ve always sold a lot of products in entertainment and we’ve had a big DVD business in our stores.”

Lynch said that customers who buy Nooks also spend more on print books, echoing the sentiment expressed by B&N’s Jim Hilt at Digital Book World last month. “They not only buy the hardware, accessories, warranties and, more meaningfully from a margin standpoint, the digital content,” he said, “but they also continue to buy phsyical books. The idea that people who are digital readers just stop buying physical books is…not true.” This contradicts recent Bowker research suggesting that the majority of e-book “power buyers” switch to digital books exclusively within a year.

Lynch wouldn’t say whether Barnes & Noble is taking a loss on its new $199, 8GB Nook Tablet. (According to market research firm IHS iSuppli, each $199 Kindle Fire costs $209.63 to manufacture.) The $249, 16 GB version is “gross margin positive,” he said. “We feel good about this product as well.”

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Barnes & Noble Misses Estimates, Though In-Store Sales Rise Slightly

Laura Hazard Owen — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:49:33 PST

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) hopes to advance a narrative of momentum and the power of bricks-and-mortar bookstores in its third-quarter earnings report this morning, which coincides with the launch of a $199 Nook Tablet. The Nook business is struggling to compete against Amazon’s Kindle, and despite some gains it missed analyst estimates.

Revenues were $2.4 billion, up 5 percent from last year, with earnings of $52 million on $0.71 per share—lower than analysts’ estimated $1.01 per share but, according to B&N, “impacted by the dilutive impact of the convertible preferred shares held by Liberty Media.” The company also deferred income from textbook rentals. Without those effects, B&N says, earnings would have been $0.99 per share—roughly flat with earnings of $1 per share this time last year.

Sales: In-Store And Digital In-store sales increased 2 percent over last year, to $1.49 billion, though comparable store sales grew more slowly than this time last year—up 2.8 percent compared to 7.3 percent a year ago. Physical book sales in retail stores were up over 4 percent over last year.

Sales at BN.com increased 32 percent over last year, to $420 million, and consolidated Nook business increased 38 percent to $542 million. Nook unit sales were up 64 percent over last year—not surprising since Barnes & Noble introduced both the Nook Simple Touch e-reader and the Nook Tablet since that time—but the company did not break out that figure in dollars. Digital content sales, including e-books, digital newsstand and apps, increased 85 percent on a comparable basis but again were not broken out in dollars. In its holiday sales report, the Nook Simple Touch’s sales were so bad that Barnes & Noble actually downgraded its projected full-year earnings, to $150 to $180 million. That range remains the same with this earnings report.

Textbook rentals negatively impacted Barnes & Noble’s College sales, which declined 3 percent to $525 million. As noted above, the company says deferred income from textbook rentals also affected its earnings per share, “the majority of which will be realized in the fourth quarter.”

E-Book Market Share Appears Flat Including the 8 GB Nook Tablet launched this morning, Barnes & Noble has released three new devices since its 3Q 2011 earnings report, yet it is not gaining much market share against Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN). “According to some of the largest U.S. publishers, we maintained or slightly gained share in the e-book market during the third quarter,” Lynch said in the press release. He did not say what Barnes & Noble’s e-book market share is, though he has said in the past that it is around 26 percent (compared to Amazon’s estimated 55 to 60 percent). He may say more in this morning’s earnings call.

Spending On Nook EBITDA fell 12 percent overall, to $150 million, with particular losses on the BN.com side “as the company continued to invest in its rapidly growing Nook business, including advertising costs and personnel.”

In its holiday earnings report, Barnes & Noble said it might spin off its Nook business, which it believes is undervalued, but did not mention that in this report. The company is also reportedly seeking to unload Sterling Publishing.

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B&N Comes Down To Kindle Fire's Level With 8 GB, $199 Nook Tablet

Laura Hazard Owen — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:04:34 PST

Hoping to compete against the $199 Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) has a new $199 tablet, the not-so-catchily-named Nook Tablet—8 GB.

With the release, which coincides with Barnes & Noble’s Q3 2012 earnings report this morning, the company drops the older Nook Color’s price to $169. The Nook Tablet—16 GB, released in November, remains $249.

The launch of the $199 device is a sign that Barnes & Noble is struggling to compete against Amazon’s Kindle business. At the Nook Tablet’s November launch, B&N CEO William Lynch stressed that the Kindle Fire is “deficient” and that customers should choose the Nook Tablet because it offers more storage, a faster processor, more third-party entertainment and a better display.

Yet shoppers have not been convinced. So Barnes & Noble is trying a price drop. The new 8 GB Nook Table matches the Kindle Fire in terms of storage and processor RAM (512 MB on both the Nook Tablet 8 GB and the Kindle Fire, compared to the Nook Tablet 16 GB’s 1 GB of RAM). Barnes & Noble would presumably say that the display is still better, but in terms of third-party entertainment the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire are quite comparable, with both offering Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Hulu Plus, Pandora (NYSE: P), Rhapsody and Flixster.

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paidContent 2012: New Date, May 23; Same Location, NYC

Amanda Natividad — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:28:53 PST

Our acclaimed one-day event, paidContent 2012, returns to The TimesCenter in New York City on May 23. Yes, we’ve moved the date—to take full advantage of joining forces with GigaOM. The result will be an even stronger flagship conference with the same sharp focus on what works when it comes to making money from digital content.

We’re pleased to announce that Jon Miller, the chief digital officer of News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS), and Fred Wilson, Managing Partner, Flatiron Partners and Union Square Ventures, have joined a great lineup—with more on the way.

Register today to join us at paidContent 2012, where we’ll look at the most pressing issues and opportunities in digital media—what’s happening now, what’s to come, and what it all means.

Contact us if you’d like to suggest speakers (please read this first), if you’d like to advertise with us, or if you have general questions.

Check out coverage of paidContent 2011 and paidContent 2010.

» Amy Banse, Managing Director & Head of Funds, Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) Ventures
» Brian Bedol, Founder & CEO, Bedrocket Media Ventures
» Jim Guerard, Vice President & General Manager, Professional Video & Digital Publishing, Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) Systems
» Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director, FT.com
» Larry Kramer, Adjunct Professor of Media Management, Newhouse School of Communication, Syracuse University
» James L. McQuivey, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
» Jon Miller, Chief Digital Officer, and Chairman and CEO, Digital Media Group, News Corp.
» John Paton, CEO, Digital First Media
» Bob Sauerberg, President, Conde Nast
» Vivian Schiller, Chief Digital Officer, NBC News
» Liz Schimel, EVP & Chief Digital Officer, Meredith (NYSE: MDP) National Media Group
» Jonathan Shar, GM, Digital Newsstand & Emerging Content, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), BN.com
» Fred Wilson, Managing Partner, Flatiron Partners and Union Square Ventures

Is Twitter A Newspaper, Or Is It The Phone Company?

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:35:43 PST

Is Twitter a publisher and distributor of information like a newspaper, or is it just a dumb pipe like a telephone network? Lawyers in Australia seem to believe that a case could be made that Twitter is a publisher, like a newspaper, and therefore it can be sued for defamation as a result of a single tweet. That may be a stretch — especially in the United States, which has legislation that protects online commentary from such lawsuits — but it highlights the difficulties that Twitter could have as it tries to expand around the globe and into different legal environments.

Read the full post on GigaOm...

Report: Barnes & Noble To Release Lower-End Nook Tablet On Feb. 22

Laura Hazard Owen — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:51:51 PST

When Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) released the Nook Tablet in November, CEO William Lynch called the Kindle Fire “deficient” in part because it had only 8 GB of storage space. Now, it seems, the company has changed its tune.

According to a report from the Verge, Barnes & Noble is releasing a Nook Tablet with less storage space—and, presumably, a lower price—on Wednesday.

The Nook Tablet released in November costs $249 and has 16 GB of storage. According to the report, the new Nook Tablet has 8 GB of storage, the same as the $199 Kindle Fire.

If the report is correct, then the 8 GB Nook Tablet will likely match or beat the Kindle Fire’s price. The lower-end Nook Color, with 8 GB of storage, is currently priced at $199, and that price would presumably also drop.

The Verge doesn’t explain quite where its report came from but shows part of what looks like a photocopied memo and says “All we know for sure is that Walmart plans to launch this new device at 12:01AM on Wednesday, February the 22nd, and deliveries of the 8GB Tablet should be arriving in stores already.”

Last month, the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) reported that Barnes & Noble was working on a fifth e-reading device to be released in the spring.

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Magazine Publishers Running Ahead Of Auditors With UK Digital Editions

Robert Andrews — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:24:27 PST

Magazine publishers who publish digital editions have found those editions hit 1.7 percent of circulation in the UK - but auditing criteria mean some of the best examples are not yet counted.

Digital editions reported through ABC (UK) clocked 96,589 from 72 titles during the July-to-December period, four times more titles than reported in the previous year.

Sales were led by Men’s Health, T3 and GQ.

The ABC began auditing UK “digital editions” in August 2011 but, to satisfy the definition, content can only vary from print counterparts by five percent.

So Future Publishing (LSE: FUTR) took it upon itself to commission its own, “industry-first” independent audit of its flagship T3 magazine, which has a unique UI for the iPad. When this edition is included, it doubles the ABC-stated figure 7,327 T3 standard digital editions (through newsstands like Zinio) to 14,223.
Likewise, Dennis’ Evo magazine also falls outside the threshold, so it said independently it has seen 300,000 Newsstand downloads, from which it has found 6,000 iPad subscribers.

Publishers think including their best products is important because they want to demonstrate reach to advertisers.

ABC, which had already updated its digital reporting restrictions three times in 2011, will from June 2012 let publishers like Future use a new digital-only certificate to report circulations for iPad editions which contain little or no resemblance to print counterparts.

The July-to-December digital edition circulations issued this week also do not include the full iTunes Newsstand uplift. Since Apple’s service was only online for three of the six months, its effect is averaged out amongst the ABC‘s six months.

Future itself reports 150,000 Newsstand sales across its portfolio, including digital editions and apps - over 40 percent of which are subscriptions.
Dennis says it sold over £1 million worth of magazines and Magbooks via iTunes store in the six-month period.

Total print and digital magazine circulations reported by ABC for the half year were 1.4 percent down on the 2010 equivalent.

Google On Defensive Yet Again In Snafu Over Ad-Tracking In Safari Browsers

Tom Krazit — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:37:24 PST

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) continues to find itself in compromising positions in 2012: the latest comes after an investigation by The Wall Street Journal which found that the company was tricking Apple’s Safari browsers on the iPhone and the Mac into dropping their ad-tracking protections in order to promote Google+.

The report shows that Google inserted code into display ads shown by its DoubleClick subsidiary that got around the default setting in Safari that prevents cookies—the basic building block of web advertising—from being installed on computers and letting ad companies track your movements across the Internet in order to show you ads they believe are relevant to your interests. Safari makes an exception for websites that ask you to submit a form, allowing them to install cookies. Google simply added code to certain ads that mimicked a form submission in order to determine whether Safari browsers were also logged into Google+ so that those users could “+1” ads and share them with their Google+ contacts.

Google acknowledged using the code (which Facebook actually considers a “best practice” for its developers, according to the WSJ) and has stopped using it, but claims it did nothing wrong. “The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why,” Google said in a statement accompanying the report. “We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It’s important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.”

So what really happened here? Once again, you, the user, are a pawn in the fight for data among giant computer companies.

Google (and a large part of the web advertising economy, points out Federated Media’s John Batelle) depends on these types of cookies to sell relevant display advertising, allowing it and other web publishers to provide many services for free. Safari ships with cookie-blocking technology enabled by default, which Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) believes is a privacy protection but is not necessarily something that iPhone users have agreed is in their best interest. And since it is a default setting, it’s safe to assume a fair proportion of iPhone users never even checked those settings.

But bypassing those privacy controls—willingly enabled or not—is a sneaky move that again shows how willing Google is to compromise some of its core principles in order to get Google+ off the ground. Is there really a huge percentage of Safari users who are desperate to “+1” web advertising in order to share those ads with their friends but just can’t figure out why that function isn’t available? I find that hard to believe.

For Apple’s part, it can contend that the Safari settings offer greater protection to its users, but as Batelle also points out, it reinforces the notion that Apple users belong to Apple and no one else. If traditional web advertising methods are not an effective way of reaching iOS users, then those advertisers might just have to go to Apple and its iAd in-app advertising system to promote their interests. And denying Google that data makes Google a less effective advertising machine, slowing its growth and its ability to invest in other mobile products, like Android, that threaten Apple.

But you have to wonder exactly what was slipped into the water in Mountain View over the 2011 holiday break, with Google how having managed to shoot itself in the foot multiple times during 2012 with clumsy and ill-advised attempts to promote its services.

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Two Become One: How Magazines Will Ape Their Apps

Robert Andrews — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:01:04 PST

In a reversal of today’s content publishing model, print magazines pretty soon could start looking a lot like their app equivalents.

“The next redesign of our titles will see them redesigned with our tablet versions in mind,” magazine publisher Future’s tablet editor-in-chief Mike Goldsmith told an industry forum this month.

As publishers extend their print titles to iPad, they can choose either to repurpose the paper originals, which can seem lazy and ill-suited to the touch screen, or to custom-produce interactive apps with a native interface in mind, which is expensive.

If he did that for Future’s 60+ titles, he would “bankrupt the company”, Future’s Goldsmith said. So, today, only three Future titles have the shiny iPad treatment.

But re-imagining today’s disparate print and tablet production workflows in lock-step from the start, making tablet requirements less of an extension, could cut costs. And that could make it feasible for publishers to out their entire portfolio as full iPad editions, as well as in their core printed form.

Already, one Future title, Tap!, is sized to match iPad dimensions. That was a no-brainer (after all, Tap! is all about apps). But many other magazines, too, are now published in a secondary, miniature form factor that increasingly references the tablet’s own.

And upcoming revisions at Future will borrow further stylistic conventions, as a recent iPad-inspired refresh to Future’s flagship gadget magazine T3 suggests. T3 has begun conceiving some editorial in fragments - swiped through on screen to satisfy readers’ fingers, as well as broken up in short, boxy segments in print. Nowadays, print must satisfy the shorter attention spans of a generation hooked on fragmented and intimate, tactile engagement.

This ironic repurposing of apps back in to print could, in time, significantly re-shape the discipline of magazine design. But that’s something many readers may now be ready for. So potent is the agency users feel when controlling their screen with their fingers, growing numbers of them are catching themselves pinch-zooming a printed leaf in the expectation of interaction.

Other publishers are approaching the same possible solution, but weighing up factors. “Tablet engagement metrics almost perfectly mirror what you see in magazines,” Hearst president David Carey tells paidContent. “We’re looking to do tablet and magazine as efficiently as possible.

“How much interactivity and enhancement is right for the reader? In the first wave of devices, every page had something (interactive). That got a little tiresome. So we’re looking to find the right balance. If they (Future) are trying to design their magazine to fit this screen, those are pretty dramatic differences.”

What, No Fist Bump?

Om Malik — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:40:47 PST

Call me a sucker for cool networking tools, but I love Bump and wrote about the Mountain View, Calif.-based back in August 2010. The company’s audacious goal – to bridge the physical and digital world – made a lot of sense to me. Investors, too, liked the company and have pumped in over $20 million into the company.

Read the full post on GigaOm...

CBS And Turner Flip The Pay Switch For March Madness Mobile Streaming

Daniel Frankel — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:18:57 PST

Streaming March Madness tournament games next month won’t be as free and easy as it was last year, with broadcast partners CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Turner announcing a tiered plan featuring an authenticated pay wall for personal-computer viewing and a $3.99 premium charge for all mobile access.

Last year’s free-to-view March Madness on Demand was wildly popular for CBS and Turner, which in 2010 teamed on a 14-year, $10.8 billion broadcast license for the premiere post-season event for collegiate basketball. In 2011, usage across platforms for early-round games was as high as 3 million unique users daily.

This year, however, the newly christened “March Madness Live” distribution plan will more closely resemble the TV Everywhere authentication model being championed by Turner parent Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Corp.

Games broadcast on CBS will still be available for free on CBSSports.com on Macs and PCs, but there will now be pay walls on other digital viewing.

Turner will stream all tournament games shown on both networks on personal computers through the TV Everywhere authentication model, with subscribers to all major TV service providers except Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) able to access games shown on TBS.com, TNT.tv and truTV.com

Mobile viewing will require a premium payment.

For $3.99, consumers will be able to access all tournament games not just on Macs and PCs, but iPads, iPhones and Android devices.

It’s not the first time mobile users have had to pay a premium—before it defrayed much of its March Madness licensing costs by partnering with Turner, CBS in 2009 charged iPhone users $4.99 to stream live video of tournament games.

The $3.99 all-access price is being criticized by media analysts, who note that loyal cable and satellite subscribers actually pay more for authentication and don’t have the benefit of mobile device access.

“We would like to have seen CBS/Turner offer a much higher fee for non-authenticated subscribers ($20 or more) who want the full March Madness on Demand with the authenticated price at $3.99,” wrote BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield. “Turner/CBS should want to enhance the value perception of a multichannel video subscription in consumers’ minds and at the same time put extreme pressure on MVPDs like Time Warner Cable who are not yet authenticating.”

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Google Deems Mobile Web Ads Ready For Prime AdSense Real Estate

Tom Krazit — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:34:21 PST

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) thinks that mobile Web advertising has gotten to the point where it should be part of AdSense, the company’s lucrative engine for third-party Web sites to make some money from Google ads. Starting Thursday Web publishers will be able to choose mobile ad formats through their regular AdSense account.

Before the change, publishers had to choose AdSense for Mobile as a completely separate option and many of those ads were designed for older mobile browsers. The new code will automatically adjust to different smartphone browsers and publishers will see the option for mobile ad units appear alongside other standard ad unit options in their AdSense consoles.

More information is available on Google’s site. While in-app advertising through AdMob is certainly one of Google’s main mobile ad opportunities, a shift toward mobile Web usage and the tendency for those in developed markets to focus less on apps and more on local Web sites means there are significant opportunities for mobile Web ads, according to research from MobiThinking.

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With iMessage And Notifications, OS X Mountain Lion Looks More Like iOS

Erica Ogg — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:30:45 PST

Another version of Mac OS X? Yes, just seven months after Mac OS X Lion was introduced, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is releasing its first developer preview of what comes next for its big cat-themed desktop operating system, to be called “Mountain Lion.” And just like Lion before it, Apple’s desktop OS is starting to bear more than a passing resemblance to iOS, especially with the new incorporation of iOS features like iMessage, Game Center, Reminders and Notifications into the software.

Read the full post on GigaOm...

Goliath vs. Goliath: Patent Beast Intellectual Ventures Sues AT&T

Jeff Roberts — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:12:48 PST

A controversial investment fund run by a former Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) executive just added more fuel to the tech industry’s runaway patent wars by filing a new suit against AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S) and T-Mobile.

In court papers filed in Delaware federal court, Intellectual Ventures said the telco companies are infringing on 14 separate patents that have descriptions like “Transmission of Multimedia Messages between Mobile Station Terminals.” The suit was announced on the company’s IV Insights blog.

Verizon is not named in the suit which means the country’s other major telco has probably agreed to license the technology. The lawsuit also confirms that the company is intent on going after big fish as well as small ones. The company began filing lawsuits in 2010 and is now involved in dozens of cases, including ones against Canon and Motorola.

Intellectual Ventures occupies a special place among patent holding companies. The company has for years been amassing thousands of patents and inviting companies to become “investors” in its investment funds. Critics say the practice amounts to extortion and describe I.V. as a giant patent troll.

Companies like Microsoft, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) are reported to be among Intellectual Ventures’ investors.

(Update: An IV spokesman provided the following statement: “Our investor group comprises both technology companies and institutional investors and foundations who have invested purely for financial reasons.” A full list of the company’s investors can be found here via the company’s website).

The company was founded by Nathan Myhrvold, a brilliant polyglot physicist who argues that his giant patent trove will bring about a new era of innovation. For now, it is uncertain if Intellectual Ventures is benefiting inventors or even its own investors. The company’s most high-profile work so far has involved the use of chemistry techniques to cook a hamburger.

The America Invents Act, passed last fall, has made it more difficult for patent plaintiffs to sue. But the law doesn’t affect existing patents and the last year has brought increase in patent lawsuits brought by major investment funds.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month on how the cream of the country’s patent bar are leaving their firms to join entities like Round Rock, a shell company backed by billionaire investment funds.

Note: This story corrects an earlier version to say IV began filing suits in 2010, not 2009. IV was an intervenor in a 2009 case but did not itself bring the suit.

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Book Discovery: How Many 'Touchpoints' To Purchase?

Laura Hazard Owen — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:38:00 PST

Social reading site Goodreads says the primary way its users discover new books to read is through search.

Goodreads presented new data about the habits of its 7 million users at Tools of Change this week. Goodreads users added 110 million books to their virtual shelves in 2011, and they are adding 14 million more every month. They’ve added 63 million books to their “to-read” shelves, and Goodreads considers those the books they’ve discovered.

Goodreads defines discovery as “all the touchpoints in the mind of the consumer it takes them to decide to purchase and read a book.” That can be conversations, e-mails, tweets, Facebook posts, IMs, blog posts, pins, comments and so on. And Goodreads says it takes about six to twelve touchpoints in the mind of the consumer
to get to a purchase.

Often, discovery is through search on the site. Nineteen percent of Goodreads users said their primary mode of discovery was search—when they hear about a book somewhere, search for it and add it to their to-read list. Search gets the “long tail,” less popular books:

Thirteen percent of Goodreads users primarily found books through the site’s recommendation engine, which uses data based on the books they’ve read and rated to deliver new suggestions. Goodreads Recommendations are “designed to hit the mid-list sweet spot,” books that are not big, popular titles. “Avid” readers—which Goodreads defines as people who read at least 49 books per year, or about one a week—are more likely to discover books through Goodreads Recommendations than “casual” readers, who read a book a month or less.

That’s why Goodreads recommends that publishers of mid-list titles “focus on marketing to readers of your comparable titles. They will put your book on the right lists and ensure the recommendation algorithm picks it up.”

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More Stores In China Being Told To Remove iPads In Apple Trademark Dispute

Tom Krazit — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:19:11 PST

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is no stranger to legal disputes around the globe over its mobile products, but it’s running into a problem that has nothing to do with patents. Chinese retail stores are being told to take iPads off their shelves in response to a trademark dispute between Apple and Proview Technologies, potentially hurting sales in what Apple CEO Tim Cook considers one of Apple’s most important markets.

Reuters reported, citing Chinese media reports, that stores carrying the iPad in cities like Shanghai and Qingdao have been told to stop selling iPads until the dispute can be resolved. Proview Technologies claims that it owns the rights to the “iPad” trademark in China, and while authorities in Qingdao said they hadn’t ordered a halt to sales, authorities in other cities have intervened on Proview’s behalf, including the town of Shijiazhuang earlier this week.

Apple told China Daily (via 9to5Mac.com) that it had actually purchased the rights to use the trademark from Proview in the past, but that Proview is refusing to honor that agreement in mainland China despite a court ruling in Hong Kong in Apple’s favor. Given that the “one country, two systems” policy means mainland China operates under different rules, Apple may have trouble keeping one of its fastest growing products ever launched on store shelves in one of the biggest consumer electronics markets in the world, one cited as vital to Apple’s future growth by Cook in comments to financial analysts earlier in the week.

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Google: Android Won't Share Personal Info With Apps Unless You Let It

Tom Krazit — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:43:20 PST

In response to the uproar over how mobile iOS applications have had access to address-book data without having to inform the user, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) was all too happy to confirm Wednesday that its development model for Android applications makes it impossible to share personal data with an app developer unless you agree to do so before installing the app.

Tim Bray, Google’s head of Android developer relations, addressed Android’s take on the Path-inspired mess that forced Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) to acknowledge that it should have done a better job policing apps that uploaded address-book data from users without explicit permission. “Reading contacts on Android requires explicit OK,” he said on his Twitter feed, pointing to two Android development articles that address how Android deals with granting permission to access personal data.

A Google representative confirmed that Android can’t access any personal information on a user’s handset unless the user consents before the app is installed through any means, whether through the Android Market, a third-party app store, or side-loaded onto a phone. “A basic Android application has no permissions associated with it, meaning it can not (sic) do anything that would adversely impact the user experience or any data on the device,” Google wrote in one of the development articles cited by Bray.

When an Android user goes to install an application they are presented with a list of permissions that the app developer has requested the user grant the app for various reasons, most of which are benign. For example, when you try to download Path on Android, you’re asked to confirm that you’re willing to allow the application to “prevent phone from sleeping,” access “coarse (network-based location, fine (GPS) location,” and “read contact data.” The more detailed description of that last permission says that you’re allowing “an application to read all of the contact (address) data store on your phone. Malicious applications can use this to send your data to other people.”

Unless you agree to all grant the app those permissions, you can’t install the app. “No checks with the user are done while an application is running: it either was granted a particular permission when installed, and can use that feature as desired, or the permission was not granted and any attempt to use the feature will fail without prompting the user,” the company said in that article. (emphasis Google’s)

There’s still the matter of how those applications store data that users have agreed to share with developers, as Twitter raised a few eyebrows by asserting it would store address-book data shared with its service for 18 months. Google responded to those inquiries by pointing to a blog post from 2010 that declared “if you have to handle user data, ensure that the data remains on the device whenever possible. … Sending data outside the phone, even if done for the user’s benefit, tends to draw suspicion.”

To be clear, those are merely guidelines: the free-for-all environment that is Android development means that anyone can create an app that sends data off a device without encryption, even if Google frowns on such practices. Android users are much more susceptible to malware than iOS users, especially if they don’t read the fine print associated with those applications. And if you’ve rooted your device, you’re kind of on your own.

Still, it seems that assuming they actually read the permissions screen provided to them before they install an app, Android users shouldn’t be surprised by what their apps know.

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Updated: Time For Apple To Fix How iOS Handles Contact Data

Tom Krazit — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:21:03 PST

A week after mobile social network Path found itself in the tech industry spotlight for uploading iOS contacts without explicit permission, it’s becoming clear that the problem is more widespread. And while companies who sneak things past their users deserve scorn when caught, it’s also clear that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has failed to treat address book data with the same safeguards it employs for other personal data.

Several reports confirm that other mobile app companies that depend on social connections—most prominently Twitter and Foursquare—also deserve scrutiny for their policies around the handling of address book data. Companies want this data to make it easier for their users to find other friends on the service, as users with wider social networks tend to be more active on those services and to share more data with others.

The problem, as demonstrated by Path’s debacle, is that they haven’t always done a very good job telling their users that they are accessing this data. Path now explicitly asks its users for permission to access their address books and has deleted data it obtained before tweaking its app, but it wasn’t alone: Foursquare also uploaded address book data without telling its users (although it didn’t store the data) upon the creation of an account, according to The Verge, and it has since apologized and inserted a clear notification. (The Verge identifies several other mobile apps with differing policies on how they handle such information.)

Twitter drops hints that it is accessing address book data, but doesn’t tell users that it is actually uploading that data and that the company reserves the right to store that information on its servers for 18 months, according to The Los Angeles Times. It plans to tweak the language involved in the “Find Friends” feature to make it clear the data is being sent to Twitter and that it is being stored.

In the end, it’s Apple’s fault. Apple has always said that its very strict app review policy is in place to prevent iOS users from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous developers, and in fact it prohibits this kind of activity in the guidelines that govern iOS development. But Apple doesn’t force the application to ask the user to grant permission for access to address book data, something it does each and every time when an app wants access to location information, for example.

So these apps should have been rejected for violating Apple’s guidelines, but the company also needs to treat address book data with the same degree of sensitivity that it does other personal data. This probably isn’t too complicated a fix on Apple’s part, but it’s still an oversight.

Two members of Congress sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook Wednesday asking for more information on how this was allowed to happen, so expect an iOS update with a fix sooner rather than later.

And perhaps it’s time to see exactly how Android apps treat this kind of data.

Updated: Apple has responded to inquiries regarding this issue, telling AllThingsD: “Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines. We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”

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MTV's Music Meter App Out Of Beta For Both iOS And Android

Tom Krazit — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:05:21 PST

Believe it or not, MTV actually does still care about music: its Music Meter mobile application has shed the beta tag with its 2.0 release, allowing users to see which artists are generating the most buzz across social-media networks and streaming sites. The new version is available for download Wednesday.

The app allows those to check out what’s happening in the world of music during the commercial breaks for Jersey Shore by ranking a top 100 list of artists and providing biographical information, song samples, and information about touring dates. Shannon Connolly, vice president of digital music strategy for MTV, says the app was downloaded 1 million times after it launched last year, “introduced millions of viewers to music they may not know they love yet.”

Like trending lists on Google (NSDQ: GOOG) or Twitter, MTV’s app merely measures which artists are enjoying a surge in interest over a given day, as to not permanently ensconce Justin Bieber at the top of the list. It is available for both iOS and Android and the latest version features the ability to sort artists by genre.

A publisher like MTV that has to operate at scale might be a prime candidate for a mobile Web strategy, but MTV is still focused on app development for now, said Mark Mezrich, senior director of product development. That being said, MTV’s mobile Web site incorporates some HTML5 technology and the apps are just the first installment in creating “a mobile experience around the artist experience,” he said.

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Apple Said To Cut iAd Pricing Once Again

Tom Krazit — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:18:53 PST

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has once again cut prices on its iAd system for rich in-app advertising on iOS applications, according to a report, as ad buyers continue to balk at the up-front cost of participating in Apple’s vision of how mobile advertising should work.

AdAge reported Tuesday that Apple is now asking advertisers to commit just $100,000 in order to place advertise within iAds, down an enormous amount from the $1 million required when the program was first unveiled in 2010 and a significant discount from the $500,000 spend that Apple was asking for as recently as last year. According to the report, Apple also now plans to let developers keep 70 percent of the revenue they generate through advertisements within their ads and has dropped a cost-per-click charge, reverting to the familiar cost-per-thousand-impressions model.

iAd was a compelling idea when it made its debut. Mobile advertising has a ton of promise but ad formats created for other devices don’t necessarily work on the small screen found on the iPhone. Apple’s iAd allowed advertisers and brands to create compelling ad experiences with video and rich graphics, but the simpler quick-and-dirty in-ad formats favored by companies such as Google’s AdMob (coupled with the ability to spend limited amounts as advertisers experiment with mobile) has proven more compelling.

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