With Apple’s upcoming fiscal Q3 earnings call just around the corner, analysts are predicting the company sold as many as 40 million iPhones during the quarter that ended last month. That’s on the high side of estimates complied by Fortune, however. Estimates from a poll of 26 analysts includes predictions ranging from 31.8 million to almost 40 million units. The average of estimates comes in at 35.88 million. Expand Expanding Close
Live from the Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine interview at the Code Conference, Cue is sharing some of the latest stats for iTunes and other services and noted that Apple just crossed 35 billion songs sold this past week. That’s up from the 25 billion songs purchased and downloaded that Apple announced in February of last year. Cue said sold, but we’re assuming that 35 billion number includes both purchases and downloads like Apple’s stat did in its press release last year.
Cue also noted that iTunes has around 800 million customers total and around 40 million iTunes Radio listeners in the U.S. and Australia with a lot of growth coming internationally. Iovine also shared some stats confirming previous reports that Beats Music is now at around 250,000 subscribers from a total of 5 million downloads. Iovine claimed conversions from downloads to paid customers would have been a lot higher if Beats Music was using Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism.
Remember Quark? The developer of popular publishing software QuarkXPress has been sold to merger and acquisition firm Platinum Equity, and, according to a report from Techcrunch, the company is already focusing on finding a new home for the Quark’s IP. In the midst of heated patent battles between smartphone makers, what might the patents and technologies owned by Quark have to offer Apple?
Magazine and newspaper subscriptions are a big focus for Apple, it’s clear with the introduction of Newsstand in iOS 5, an app dedicated to helping manage digital subscriptions. Quark recently launched their QuarkXPress 9 publishing software that will allow publications to “design for and publish to digital devices in a variety of formats”, specifically the iPad, “without requiring the services of a programmer.”
Apple has helped Quark in the past, offering their services to get the publishing platform working on Mac OSX.
The majority of large publications have millions in funding behind them when creating the digital version of their magazines for the iPad. However, if Apple were to integrate Quark software into an SDK specifically for publishers, the subscriptions market on iOS devices might closer resemble the ecosystem currently in place for games. In other words, giving developers without millions in funding the “tools to convert existing layouts to rich, interactive content — or create new iPad content from scratch” may bring with it a rush of quality content with subscription models much more attractive to users than those offered by the larger publications.
Apple is clearly making digital subscriptions a focus in iOS 5 with Newsstand Kit, which provides the ability update issues in the background and auto-update subscriptions, but the SDK certainly falls short of everything Quark software could offer publishers. Expand Expanding Close
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