On the Profitability of iOS Game Development

post from Daring Fireball on 27 June 2012 10:03:06 PM. © Daring Fireball

Aaron Souppouris, writing for The Verge:

At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in Taipei today, TimSweeney, CEO of Epic Games, told the audience that the iOS titleInfinity Blade is “the most profitable game we’ve ever made — interms of man years invested versus revenue, it’s more profitablethan Gears of War.” The mobile franchise passed the $30 millionmark this January and Infinity Blade II made over $5 million inits first month on the App Store. Sweeney said he was “very, verysurprised to see how fast smartphone and tablet devices areimproving,” adding that the pace was faster than Moore’s law.

Interesting, to be sure, that a game that sells for $5.99 would prove so profitable.

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[Sponsor] Tapstream for iOS, Mac, and Android

post from Daring Fireball on 27 June 2012 07:03:11 PM. © Daring Fireball

Tapstream is a new tool for iOS, Mac, and Android app developers. It bridges the information gap between who your web visitors are and those who actually install your app. For the first time, you can measure if Facebook or Twitter visitors are more valuable to you, which Google AdWords ads brought in more users, and which referring sites generate the best traffic. All it takes is a snippet of JavaScript and our tiny SDK in your app. And this week only, Daring Fireball readers who install our SDK get a lifetime Pro account for free ($40/month value).

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NPD study: TV-watching on tablets has more than
doubled

post from Apple on 27 June 2012 06:03:22 PM. © Apple

Use of digital tablets to watch television has more than doubled in the last year, according to consumer surveys conducted by the NPD DisplaySearch in 14 regions around the globe.

Surveying around 14,000 TV owners worldwide, NPD found that 10 percent of consumers reported using their iPad or Android-based tablet to watch video, up from 4 percent a year ago.

Video-watching on tablets is particularly high in urban China, where nearly 35 percent of respondents say they use the devices to view television. NPD says the fastest growing region is Turkey, which has seen the tablet-viewing behavior spike to 16.5 percent from 3.1 percent in just one year.

Overall, NPD adds, 70 percent of survey respondents say they’ve watched TV on a device other than a TV.

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doubled/

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T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm Suddenly Resigns

post from Daring Fireball on 27 June 2012 04:02:34 PM. © Daring Fireball

I sure hope it wasn’t because he read that bogus Gizmodo story yesterday.

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When buying an iPhone, AT&T, Verizon
customers stay put

post from Apple on 27 June 2012 03:03:43 PM. © Apple

Once an AT&T or Verizon customer, always an AT&T or Verizon customer? That seem to be true of people shopping for a new iPhone.

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners drilled down into their own most recent research data about the major U.S. carriers to find out how each wins or loses buyers looking for Apple’s smartphone. Their client report was published on Friday.

Here are some of the basics gleaned from these two matrices:

CIRP

AT&T and Verizon keep their customers looking to buy an iPhone: on both carriers 94 percent of iPhone owners purchased through their current carrier.
Sprint customers looking for iPhones are slightly less loyal to the last of the big three carriers to get the iPhone — it has an 88 percent retention rate.
When T-Mobile customers want an iPhone, they head over to the original iPhone carrier. Sixty-five percent of their customers go to AT&T.
Sprint gets more new iPhone customers than the rest (16 percent) from “other” carriers, meaning regional or pre-paid carriers.

To be sure, the iPhone is the best-selling smartphone for each of the carriers, at least as of the end of the first quarter of this year. But Verizon and AT&T have obviously established themselves as the place to go for an iPhone — Sprint, as the newest of the three, hasn’t had the same amount of time to establish itself in that same manner.

But Apple, unintentionally or not, may not be giving it the same chance as the others. It’ll be interesting to see how Sprint does now that Apple is on a mission to spread the iPhone far and wide in the U.S. After making a deal to offer the iPhone 4S on C Spire last fall, in the last month Apple has announced that the iPhone will be or is available on Cricket and Virgin Mobile. Seems like good incentive to stay put, rather than move to Sprint or any other post-paid plan if it’s not necessary.

CIRP

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Looks like Apple will make a big bet on clean
power in Reno, too

post from Apple on 27 June 2012 03:03:43 PM. © Apple

Apple is producing enough clean power, through solar panels and fuel cells, at its data center in North Carolina that it says it can cover 60 percent of the total energy needs of the data center. Will the tech giant be doing the same thing at its new planned $1 billion data center just outside of Reno, Nevada? While details are few at this point, it sure looks like Apple is looking to have a significant amount of its data center power needs met with clean, and grid-independent, power.

If it gets approval, Apple plans to build its data center at Reno Technology Park, a new 2,200-acre business property being developed by the Unique Infrastructure Group. The CTO of Unique Infrastructure Group KC Mares confirmed the deal on his Twitter feed. Mares is a data center industry infrastructure player that has been working on energy efficient data center plans for years.

According to this Data Center Knowledge article from a few years ago, The Reno Technology Park plans to provide 300 MW of on-site power generation from natural gas, as well as potentially another 140 MW from clean power. That clean power could come from 100 MW of wind power, 20 MW of solar panels and 20 MW from geothermal energy. I’m not sure on the latest plans for clean power at The Reno Technology Park. Nevada has a lot of solar and geothermal resources.

The Reno Technology Park is also within a mile of the utility NV Energy’s power island which has 540 MW of grid capacity, said Data Center Knowledge. Greenpeace says that NV Energy has an energy mix of 62 percent natural gas, 20 percent coal and 6 percent clean power — not great, but not terrible for a standard utility.

The unusual part of The Reno Technology Park is the addition of ample grid-independent power. Apple could potentially have the ability to go off the grid. Mares told Data Center Knowledge back in 2010 that the key differentiator for the Reno site and others is “the project?s approach to energy, which enlarges the traditional role of the data center builder to act as both landlord and electric utility.” Mares also estimated that the on-site power would be able to provide customers’ energy for 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour. In comparison North Carolina’s Duke Energy can offer power for between 4 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour.

Greenpeace, citing a study commissioned by Apple, estimates that Apple’s data center near Reno will use about 35 MW of power in its first five years of life, and will require a total of 70 MW of power when it reaches full capacity after ten years. Greenpeace also quotes the study as stating that ?after year five they [Apple] would begin producing their own power through alternative sources.?

Greenpeace says it will re-score Apple for its How Clean Is Your Cloud? ranking system based on Apple’s announcements about clean power for its North Carolina site and this Reno site.

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The Samsung tablet ban: What it means and what
happens next (in plain English)

post from Apple on 27 June 2012 02:02:21 PM. © Apple

Apple enjoyed a triumph this week when it persuaded a federal judge to ban a tablet computer that Apple claims was “slavishly copied” from its famous iPad. Is this a game changer that will allow the iPad to dominate for a long time to come? Here’s a simple explanation of what happened and what comes next.

What is this iPad impostor and how did Apple ban it?

In 2011, Korean electronics maker Samsung began selling a device called the Galaxy 10.1, which Apple said infringed its patents. Since a patent can allow an owner to exclude others from the market, Apple sought a ban in the form of a preliminary injunction.

What do Apple’s patents cover?

Apple’s lawsuits threw everything but the kitchen sink at Samsung, but the iPad maker ultimately prevailed on a special type of a patent called a “design patent” that covers the look and feel of an invention (you can learn about Apple’s design patents here). Apple is also hitting the Samsung Galaxy with a separate suit based on conventional “utility patents,” but for now the design patents have done the trick.

I thought the judge said Apple’s design patent was invalid?

She did. In a widely reported episode last fall, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh waved both tablets in the air and said she couldn’t tell the difference — meaning that Samsung had infringed the design patent. But she also said it didn’t matter because Apple’s patent was likely to be found invalid on the grounds that it was an obvious design based on earlier tablets. This is why she refused in December to grant Apple an injunction. You can decide for yourself whether the iPad design was obvious based on the earlier tablets:

Apple appealed Koh’s conclusion that the iPad design was obvious. The appeals court sided with Apple, suggested the design was not obvious and sent the case back to Koh to decide if an injunction should be granted. This week she agreed to grant a temporary one.

So what happens now?

Koh’s temporary injunction goes into effect as soon as Apple can scrape together a $2.6 million bond. Once it does (we imagine Apple can find the money), Samsung has to pull its tablets off of store shelves.

Why does Apple have to post a bond?

Apple has to post the bond because the injunction is just preliminary — something to protect it until the case goes to a full trial and a court can decide whether or not to impose a permanent injunction. But in reality, a court only grants a preliminary injunction if a party is likely to win in the long run. And, more importantly, by the time the case gets to trial, both tablets in question will be obsolete.

Can Samsung appeal the preliminary injunction?

Yes, and it already has. Samsung has almost no chance of winning, however, because appeals courts are very reluctant to disturb a temporary order. The company could also file for an emergency stay but that would likely fail as well.

So is this a crushing blow to Samsung’s tablet ambitions?

Here’s the catch. The temporary injunction only applies to Samsung’s 10.1 tablet which, according to my mobile expert colleagues, is already out of date and was vanishing from Best Buy even before the injunction. Meanwhile, Samsung is selling a new model, the Galaxy Tab 2, of its tablet for a lower price on Amazon (meaning the offending 10.1 tablet is basically irrelevant). And, according to our Kevin Tofel: ”GT 2 has a visual difference: speakers around the bezel, making it look less like the iPad.”

Bottom line is that Apple won the preliminary injunction but it won’t really matter in the marketplace.

So did Apple just spend tens of millions in legal fees for nothing?

Yes and no. On the legal front, it has nothing to show but a symbolic victory — the injunction on the out-of-date Galaxy 10.1 won’t really hurt Samsung, which is free to sell its later bottles.

On the other hand, Apple has won a big PR victory. It can use Judge Koh’s decision to burnish its reputation as an innovator and also serve notice (yet again) to Samsung and other would-be competitors to stay away from the iPad design.

I just can’t get enough of this patent stuff. Where can I learn more?

Given the money at stake in the patent fights, some companies have stooped to paying ethically challenged bloggers who write propagandized news stories without revealing who is paying them to do so. For honest coverage, you can rely on wire services like Reuters and Bloomberg whose reporters are not paid by the companies they cover. For more in-depth coverage about patent law in general, you can read leading blogs like Patently-O or the IPKat that are written by real lawyers.

(Image by Maxx-Studio via Shutterstock)

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Apple presses play on iTunes, Apple TV expansion
in Asia

On Wednesday Apple made a push to expand its content business in Asia. iTunes is now available in 12 new markets, and its Apple TV set-top box, which is basically a delivery method for selling iTunes video content, is now on sale in four new markets in the region.

Apple TV arrives in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, as MacRumors noted. For iTunes, it’s adding Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

For Hong Kong and Taiwan and the others that are new to iTunes, Apple has done something of a reverse launch: while all of them have had access to the App Store for purchasing apps from Apple, they hadn’t been able to buy music or videos until today. Apple says that local artists from both major and independent labels will be available.

Apple is clearly making Asia a priority lately. Opening iTunes sales in Hong Kong and Taiwan, which are considered part of the Greater China region, are particularly important. Growth in the area has been crucial to Apple’s app and mobile device sales, and is critical to the company’s future success, as CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly acknowledged. Apple has recently begun targeting Chinese-speaking customers specifically, with localized search and sharing functions both in the new versions of iOS and Mac OS X, which are expected to be released in fall and summer, respectively.

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The Resale Market for Kindle Fires

As we wait for the Google I/O 2012 day-one keynote address to begin, it might be worth noting the resale market for the current market-leading 7-inch tablet, the Kindle Fire. A DF reader in New York searched Craigslist for Kindles for sale, and found that the going price is well under $100. (Screenshot, for posterity.) Kindle Fires retail for $199. E-ink Kindles suffer no such indignity — it’s hard to find an e-ink Kindle for sale for much less than the retail price of a new one. Same is true for iPads, unsurprisingly.

So is the problem that 7-inch tablets are a bad size, or that the Kindle Fire is simply a bad 7-inch tablet? Or both?

Update: On Twitter, Carl Anderson suggests another possibility: that these cheap Kindle Fires on Craigslist are scam. Certainly possible, but then why aren’t there similar scam listings for e-ink Kindles and for the far more popular iPad?

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