App Store

There will be a lot of people complaining about price rises Apple just announced for apps and in-app purchases in the UK (along with India and Turkey). Once the price rises kick in over the next week, App Store prices will be literally pound for dollar.

But while some are complaining that Apple is price-gouging Brits, this isn’t actually the case …

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According to Reuters, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled that users have the right to sue Apple over allegations that the company has created a monopoly in the app industry by only allowing iOS users to install applications from the first-party App Store.

The ruling is a reversal of the decision reached by a lower court in 2013, which sided with Apple.

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Not even a week after being requested to pull The New York Times app from the Chinese Apple App Store, both Apple and Google will have to pull the LinkedIn app from their respective app stores. According to The New York Times, the removal comes after a court ruled that LinkedIn had violated Russia’s data protection laws.

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Towards the beginning of last year, Apple’s iBooks and iTunes Movies services in China were shut down by a government agency. Now, Apple is again facing problems in the country, this time due to third-party applications by The New York Times. According to a report from the publication, Apple has removed the NYT news apps from the App Store…

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As it does every year, Apple today has put together its end-of-the-year “Best of” sections on the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store. The sections are meant to highlight the best content of the year across various categories. For instance, Apple has named photo editing app “Prisma” as the iPhone App of the Year.

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Netflix has long been one of the most popular iOS apps, but over recent months, the company has seen its revenue from the mobile increase exponentially. As noted in the latest data from analytics firm SensorTower, Netflix recently cracked the number spot on the Top Grossing charts in the United States for the first time ever.

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Games developers say they have detected significant abuse of Apple’s refund policy on apps, and are being forced to take their own steps to hit back after Apple refused to help.

At least four developers cited in The Korea Times say that the problem is that people are repeatedly purchasing games and in-app content, asking Apple for a refund – which is normally granted without question – and then continuing to use the content. It is not easy for developers to block access to the content because Apple refuses to reveal the identities of those who have been refunded …

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Apple is reportedly planning to change how it handles subscriptions for video streaming services via the App Store. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple will cut the percentage of revenue it takes from streaming video apps in an effort to improve its relationship with those in that industry…

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After announcing in September that it would begin “removing problematic and abandoned apps” in an effort to clean up the App Store, new data shows Apple is now fulfilling that promise with removals dramatically increasing around 238 percent last month.

The data below from research firm Sensor Tower (via TechCrunch) shows around 47,300 apps were removed in October, around 3.4 times more than the average month for the App Store prior to the new purging initiative.

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Apple has published a developer update aimed at making it easier for developers to share direct links to tvOS apps. Originally when developers wanted to share tvOS apps, they would have to instruct users to manually search through the App Store on the Apple TV. Apple’s update today includes an update to the iTunes Link Maker where tvOS apps can now also be searched for and linked to directly.

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When you launch an app designed to alert you the moment a crime is reported in your immediate vicinity, you’re asking for trouble if you name it Vigilante, as app developer Sp0n quickly discovered.

The app is designed to allow people to report crimes, and for anyone close by to receive an instant alert. Less than a week after it went live in New York, Apple has pulled it from the App Store …

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There have been predictions for years that China would eventually be a larger market for Apple than the USA. The weak Chinese economy means that it hasn’t yet happened in hardware, but the latest App Annie data says that it’s already got there on the software side.

The highlight of this report is certainly China overtaking the U.S to become the largest market in the world for iOS App Store revenue — earning over $1.7 billion in Q3 2016. We predicted in Q1 that China’s rapid iOS revenue growth would drive it right past the U.S well before year’s end — China is now leading the U.S by over 15%.

The rapid growth in Chinese spending – a 500% increase in two years – is in line with earlier predictions. The stats also illustrate the importance of games in driving App Store sales …

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Earlier this year, Apple introduced a handful of changes to the App Store, one of which being the inclusion of ads in search results. The capability was included in iOS 10 when it went into beta, but now Apple has officially launched Search Ads and opened them up for any developer to purchase.

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