Author: Erica Ogg

Mobile app makers need to do a much better job of informing consumers what they are doing with their data, the Federal Trade Commission said in a report on consumer app privacy released Friday. Among the chief proscriptions for companies developing for the iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone platforms, the FTC said it wants much more disclosure about how personal information of users is accessed, stored and used, and it should be very easy to understand.

“The mobile world is expanding and innovating at breathtaking speed, allowing consumers to do things that would have been hard to imagine only a few years ago,” recently resigned FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement accompanying the report. “These best practices will help to safeguard consumer privacy and build trust in the mobile marketplace, ensuring that the market can continue to thrive.”

The report is based on a workshop convened in May 2012 to elicit recommendations from players in different parts of the consumer mobile industry on how to better prioritize users’ privacy.

Among its findings, the FTC said 57 percent of app users have either didn’t install or uninstalled an app because they didn’t want to share their personal information, and that “less than one third of Americans” feel like they have control over how their personal information once input into their mobile device.

The next steps

The chief recommendations for mobile platforms owners:

• Ask before accessing a user’s location.
• Ask before accessing contacts, photos, calendar, or recording sound or video.
• Make each app have a “dashboard” that shows users what each app has access to.
• Develop an icon that will show users every time their personal data is being transmitted.
• Offer a Do Not Track option (like Apple’s Limit Ad Tracking feature in iOS) so users can choose to block advertisers, ad networks or developers see how they’re using apps on their phone.

For app makers:

• Make your privacy policy accessible via the app store it’s sold in.
• Ask before accessing personal information.
• Know how ad networks are accessing your users’ info.

For ad networks:

• Communicate how your tracking works to app makers, and help platforms develop Do Not Track tools.

The FTC report came out the same day as the commission came to an $800,000 settlement with iOS app Path over the illegal access of children’s personal information and violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protections Act (COPPA).

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• The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile
• Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013
• Analyzing the wearable computing market

For the first time ever, the iPhone was the most popular phone in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2012. Apple sold 17.7 million smartphones during the quarter, just barely edging out Samsung, which sold 16.8 million mobile phones during the same quarter, according to Strategy Analytics’ Wireless Device Strategy report published Friday. All told, 52 million phones were sold in the U.S. between October and December, and Apple and Samsung dominated the competition: together they sold two out of every three phones.

The iPhone’s distinction as most popular phone during the quarter comes on Apple’s strength: holiday sales. However, for all of 2012 Samsung still bested all others including Apple — for the fifth year in a row — selling 53 million handsets, and maintaining a 32 percent share. Apple’s full year share of sales was 26.2 percent.

You’ll note that this chart is, somewhat unusually, only comparing three vendors: Apple, Samsung, LG and then “others.” But that essentially sums up the state of the U.S. smartphone market: Apple versus Samsung, and that’s about it.

Apple’s 34 percent share of U.S. smartphones — all Apple phones are considered smartphones — sales during the fourth quarter is not likely to be a pattern we’ll see repeated outside non-holiday quarters: Samsung puts out many different models of phones throughout the year, compared to Apple’s single annual refresh, and barring something catastrophic happening at Samsung, it’s is likely to continue as the biggest mobile phone vendor in the U.S. for 2013.

What could boost Apple’s chances of overtaking Samsung outside of holiday sales is if Apple started releasing multiple models of iPhones to reach many more new customers, either through more price options, new subscription options, as T-Mobile is planning, or more screen size choice — as some estimate could start as soon as this year.

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• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Confused about the wireless markets? Here’s a breakdown
• Siri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”

Two years after arriving in iOS devices, HBO may be coming to Apple TV. Apple is said to be in talks with Time Warner to bring its HBO Go app to its set-top box, according to a report from Bloomberg on Thursday. It could arrive by sometime around the middle of this year.

HBO Go, which requires a subscription, is only available to users who get HBO from their cable provider, so it’s not a solution for cord cutters to simply pay for a la carte HBO programming separate from cable or satellite. But it’s a boon for HBO subscribers that who want to access the provider’s backlog of content: HBO Go makes every episode of every season of every HBO show available to subscribers.

Apple has been reportedly in discussion with U.S. cable companies, including Time Warner, for many months about ways to bring cable content to its set-top box. The news that HBO Go could arrive by mid-2013 is the most significant sign that the two are making headway in the negotiations yet.

This would not be the first time Time Warner has made HBO Go available on a set-top: it’s already on Roku set-top boxes and on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. Neither is it a first for Apple customers. HBO Go has been available as an app on the iOS App Store since 2011.

But it would be a possible selling point for Apple as it continues to figure out what it wants to do with its television strategy. Though it sold 2 million set-top boxes during the final quarter of 2012, the company’s leadership won’t commit publicly to what the future holds for the device. CEO Tim Cook has moved from calling Apple TV a hobby to “an area of intense interest.”

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• How consumer media will change in 2013
• What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG
• Takeaways from connected consumer’s second quarter

On March 1, Apple has to stop selling the Mac Pro in Europe because of new safety regulations that will soon go into effect. Apple just informed its European resellers of this news. While Apple has to stop selling new Mac Pros as of March 1, its local resellers in EU countries can keep selling their remaining stock until they run out.

Here’s the text of the email Apple sent its resellers:

As of March 1, 2013, Apple will no longer sell Mac Pro in EU, EU candidate and EFTA countries because these systems are not compliant with Amendment 1 of regulation IEC 60950-1, Second Edition which becomes effective on this date. Apple resellers can continue to sell any remaining inventory of Mac Pro after March 1.

Apple will take final orders for Mac Pro from resellers up until February 18th for shipment before March 1, 2013.

Countries outside of the EU are not impacted and Mac Pro will continue to be available in those areas.

This is not the kind of decision that’s going to have many consumers up in arms: the vast majority of Apple computer buyers go with a notebook or the more consumer-friendly all-in-one iMac. And Mac Pro buyers have gotten used to the lack of attention to the product line: Apple’s last update to the Mac Pro was June 2012, and even then it was incremental.

In simply stopping shipments of this desktop to EU countries, it’s clear Apple is gearing up for something newer and better later on. Last summer CEO Tim Cook told a group of Mac Pro users in an email that Apple is “working on something really great for later next year.”

In the meantime, Mac sales have slowed for Apple: in the fourth quarter of 2012 Apple sold 4.1 million Macs, 22 percent fewer than the same quarter in 2011.

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• Google and the Ghost of Silicon Valley Past
• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015
• How consumer media will change in 2013

A popular iOS photography app that was removed by Apple last week amid complaints of pornographic images, is back in the iOS App Store Tuesday. 500px has been updated with three fixes requested by Apple’s app reviewers, including a tweak that will prevent queries for explicit image searches from producing results, adding a function for users to report inappropriate content, and put a 17+ age rating on the app.

The incident was one of the most high-profile in recent memory of an iOS app being booted over inappropriate content and — combined with the concerns over explicit imagery on Twitter’s Vine app released just days later — served to highlight the inconsistency with which Apple sometimes applies its App Store reviews process.

“It’s been a very intense week,” COO Evgeny Tchebotarev told me by phone on Tuesday. In the days since 500px was removed, he said his team has worked very closely with Apple to address the company’s concerns and get the app back online as quickly as possible.

The app has millions of downloads, and has been on the iOS App Store for several years. But it was seemingly caught off guard by Apple’s public comments last week that not only was the app in violating of Apple’s strictures on any pornography, an Apple spokesman said Apple had received complaints about pornographic images involving children, which caused Apple to remove the app immediately.

Tchebotarev said Apple has still not given his company any evidence of explicit images containing children, nor has Apple given any examples of the complaints cited. In the last week 500px performed its own internal audit and found nothing, he said.

“This is something we are waiting to hear from Apple, if they can send us anything becuase this is a serious issue, criminal activity” that his company would report to the proper authorities if found, said Tchebotarev.

While 500px does not allow pornography to be posted on its app or on its website — users who do post it have their accounts deleted and images removed — it does allow “photos of an artistic nature that contain nudity.” 500px has always come with a safe search option by default that filters any images with nudity. But at Apple’s request, 500px is now filtering searches as well. “We made it harder [to find]. If you search ‘porn’ or ‘nudity’ you get zero results,” said Tchebotarev.

If 64GB isn’t enough storage space for you to deal with on your iPad, Apple’s got another option for you. Starting next Tuesday, Apple will begin selling a 128GB iPad, the company announced Tuesday. It will come in black or white and will be available with Wi-Fi only for $799 or Wi-Fi + Cellular for $929.

It’s unusual to move from an Apple rumor to actual product in the course of just a few days, but that’s what happened this week. In a press release, Apple framed the move to release its biggest-ever capacity mobile device as a way to help professionals in a variety of industries replace their traditional computers with the iPad; it mentioned the need for designers, the recording industry and professional athletes to use software on their iPads that requires a lot of storage space.

“With more than 120 million iPads sold, it’s clear that customers around the world love their iPads, and everyday they are finding more great reasons to work, learn and play on their iPads rather than their old PCs,” said Philip Schiller, Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement. “With twice the storage capacity and an unparalleled selection of over 300,000 native iPad apps, enterprises, educators and artists have even more reasons to use iPad for all their business and personal needs.”

The best-known site for online restaurant reservations will acquire one of the original food photo mobile apps, Foodspotting, both companies announced Tuesday morning. OpenTable will get the three-year-old San Francisco-based company for $10 million in cash.

“We’re so happy to have found a home for Foodspotting where our community can continue to thrive while our entire team continues to focus on creating great dining experiences,” Alexa Andrzejewski, co-founder and CEO of Foodspotting, said in a statement. “While working with OpenTable as partners we realized we could create more intelligent, seamless and beautiful experiences if we had the opportunity to integrate our products more deeply.  We look forward to contributing our mobile, social and design expertise in ways that will delight both diners and restaurants.”

Andrezejewski will join OpenTable as a lead user interface designer. Foodspotting, currently available for iOS, Android and Blackberry users, will remain a standalone product.

In his own statement, OpenTable CEO Matt Roberts said he looked forward to using Foodspotting to add ”more visually compelling content to help people decide where to dine and discover dishes they’ll love.”

OpenTable and Foodspotting first worked together starting in May 2012, when Foodspotting added the ability to book restaurant reservations through OpenTable from within the Foodspotting app. In recent months, Foodspotting appeared to lose its original buzz, as dozens of food-related apps and mobile photo networks like Instagram became the go-to app for snapping and sharing pictures of food. OpenTable appears a good fit for Foodspotting’s original mission, however: to find the best dishes in a given city.

In joining OpenTable, Foodspotting brings 10 employees and 3 million dishes spotted since the app first went live in 2010.

While the promise of Passbook was intriguing, the first release of Apple’s mobile ticket, gift card, coupon and loyalty card repository in September was an underwhelming user experience. It wasn’t listed as a new addition in the release notes, but I was pleased to see in the iOS 6.1 update on Monday that Apple has addressed one of my biggest concerns: helping people understand what Passbook does, why they would want to use it, and where they can find apps that work with Passbook.

Apple has thankfully restored the Welcome screen to Passbook that explains what it does as well as the vital link “Apps for Passbook” that takes users to a special page in the App Store listing apps that are Passbook compatible. There you’ll find apps from companies like Sephora, Fandango and United, that were available upon launch. But Apple has many more available for download now.

The change is that Apple has kept this page and accompanying link around permanently: in the initial version of iOS 6, after you downloaded your first Passbook app, the link to the section of the App Store with Passbook-enabled apps disappeared. Simply searching the App Store from the iPhone itself for “Passbook apps” yielded nothing, however. The release lacked Apple’s typical attention to detail, which is why it stuck out as a particularly bad experience.  (For users who already understand the utility of Passbook and want to delete this Welcome pass, there’s also now a button to do that.)

It’s a small thing, but if Apple truly wants to get its users used to paying for coffee or boarding planes or scanning a baseball game ticket with their iPhone, it’s important to guide them through it.

Apple kicked off this week with its first big update to iOS 6 since it was released in September. iOS 6.1 includes several feature updates related to LTE coverage, Siri, iTunes in the cloud, and advertising.

The updates:

• More LTE carrier coverage. CEO Tim Cook announced this was coming on Apple’s earnings call last week.
• Purchase movie tickets via Siri. You could previously search for movie times via Apple’s voice interface, and get showtime results via Fandango — now you can buy tickets in the same interaction.
• iTunes Match subscribers can n download individual songs from iCloud.
• A new button that allows users to reset the Identifier for Advertisers. In iOS 6, Apple tried to wean advertisers off of UDIDs with the new IFA. It also gave users more control over whether their in-app behavior was transmitted to app developers or advertisers.

The update is available via iTunes or over the air update. iOS 6.1 is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users.

Apple’s role as moralistic gatekeeper of its App Store is well known: co-founder Steve Jobs famously called it Apple’s “moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.” And when it comes to third-party apps that violate App Store rules of this nature, like making it easy to search for any pornographic content, Apple is pretty quick to take those apps down. We saw this just last week with the high-profile example of 500px. But it’s not clear how consistently Apple is willing to enforce those rules when one of those apps in violation is from a trusted partner company.

Twitter’s recent relaunch of Vine — an app that lets users upload short, looping videos and share them in tweets — has attracted a bunch of attention for the platform’s ability to use the short videos for pornographic content. And there are plenty of examples. See these recent headlines:

• Vine has a porn problem because of course it does
• Only a few days old, Twitter’s Vine becomes a porn hangout

So far, Apple has not only let it slide, it featured the new Vine app in the App Store as an Editor’s Choice last Friday. There are plenty of appropriate uses of Vine, and it seems most are using the service without violating Apple’s rules. But the situation Apple is facing with Vine shows the perils of trying to enforce a set of rules that are basically impossible to apply consistently across an App Store of nearly 800,000 apps.

The situation leads raises two questions: How different does Apple treat its partners versus regular developers? And shouldn’t Apple care more about Vine displaying porn, since Twitter is integrated into both iOS and OS X?

I’ve reached out to Apple for comment about Vine and will update this story if I hear back.

As investors continue to punish Apple stock — even after the company posted its best revenues and profits ever on Wednesday — Apple’s run as the world’s most valuable publicly held company has come to an end. Exxon Mobil’s market cap hit $416.1 billion Friday morning, as Apple’s slipped to $414.7 billion. It’s not a surprise to those watching Apple’s stock the last few days. The symbolism, however, is bigger than Apple: it’s significant that a tech company is no longer perched atop the business world.

This is the first time Apple and Exxon have switched places since last January, when Apple overtook the oil company in market capitalization.

But Apple shares have been on a rollercoaster since September when they hit their peak at $702.10. This week Apple’s stock has dropped precipitously after posting its highest-ever revenues ($54 billion) and profits ($13 billion) and all-time best iPhone and iPad sales of 48 million and 22 million, respectively, during its fiscal first quarter of 2013. Shares are currently valued below $440, after being priced above $510 going into earnings on Wednesday.

Investors are deeply worried that Apple’s profits are no longer growing as fast as they once were and fear Apple is losing ground too fast to competitors like Samsung in both smartphones and tablets. Apple CEO Tim Cook used his time on the company’s earnings call this week to try to instill confidence into analysts that the company’s future is bright and that Apple knows what it’s doing when it comes to making products people will buy and pricing them appropriately and that it has a product pipeline that is “chock-full” of innovative ideas. Thus far, however, his speech does not appear to have had the calming effect he intended.

It’s been a year since a New York Times investigation put the labor practices of Apple’s manufacturing partners under close public scrutiny, and the company is still rooting out human rights violations in its supply chain. In its 2013 Supplier Responsibility Report, Apple revealed that it ended a contract with a circuit board supplier that repeatedly contracted workers younger than 16.

Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co. makes a circuit board component that Apple uses. “Our auditors were dismayed to discover 74 cases of workers under age 16—a core violation of our Code of Conduct. As a result, we terminated our business relationship with PZ,” Apple’s report reads.

It’s not clear which device or devices used the PZ circuit board. Apple said a third-party labor recruiter was bringing in underage workers to PZ. In the report, Apple said it reported the supplier to the proper authorities in China, and also regularly makes suppliers aware of agents or recruiters known to hire underage workers.

PZ is the only company terminated for labor violations named in the report. Apple also noted it “found no cases of underage labor at any of our final assembly suppliers.”

The 2013 report was a wider-ranging audit of its supply chain than Apple has done before. Apple says there were 393 audits (72 percent more than 2011) performed in 14 countries, covering 1.5 million workers.

The full report is available here. (PDF)