Looking at the “All-Time Top iPhone Apps” charts Apple updated earlier today, I noticed two interesting numbers worth to be shared: Apple is listing the actual number of free and paid iPhone apps available in the App Store. There are 306,554 iPhone apps available, and 201,635 of them are paid apps. These numbers are noteworthy as Apple rarely provides official stats of the iPhone App Store: they announced the 300,000 apps milestone on November 22 with the release of iOS 4.2 but there never was an easy way to instantly check on the exact number of apps available in the Store. Read more
Ahead of 10 Billion Downloads, Apple Updates “All-Time Top Apps” Page
The clock’s ticking on the 10 billion app downloads countdown, and Apple has updated its “All-Time Top Apps” page to reflect the changes that have occurred in the App Store in the past 12 months. The iTunes pages that showcase “All-Time Top Paid iPhone Apps” and “All-Time Free iPhone Apps” are available here and here, respectively.
Unsurprisingly, games are among the top paid apps. And by games, we mean Doodle Jump, Angry Birds, Pocket God and Flight Control. Actual “apps” in the top paid list include SoundHound (the music scanning / discovery tool), I Am T-Pain from Smule, Air Sharing from Avatron and Awesome Note. The list is huge as it basically sorts any iPhone app ever released by popularity and sales in the App Store. It is nice, however, to see gems like 1Password, Convertbot and Hipstamatic in the first page.
As for free apps, the usual Facebook, Pandora, Google and Shazam are the most downloaded apps of all time. Paper Toss, Bump, Skype and AroundMe are in there, too, together with dozens of other games in the first page.
These charts give us an idea of the trends in the App Store, and the kinds of apps that people want to buy or download for free. Where by “apps” we mean games. [via iSpazio]
Happy Politicians with iPads In German Parliament [Photos]
In October, we reported that the German parliament lifted the ban on tablets and announced members were allowed to replace papers with Apple’s iPad. Today, German newspaper Spiegel posted photos of iPads in action in the Bundestag, and is reporting nearly every member of the Parliament has adopted an Apple iPad. Chancellor Angela Merkel was the first one to get an iPad during her trip to California last year, and after her several others got one, which comes free of charge with refunds from the German government. Sounds like a deal.
Unsurprisingly, the iPad’s form factor seems to be the most important aspect among members of the Bundestag: the screen makes it easy to send and read emails, browse the web and quickly check on documents. According to the Spiegel, the iPad “looks like it was made for the Parliament”.
The fact that Saarland’s premier Peter Müller was spotted playing chess on his tablet during a meeting doesn’t come as a surprise either. With an iPad in your hands and access to thousands of apps, it’s hard to resist the temptation of games, like Angry Birds and well, chess. Check out more pics of happy politicians with iPads in the Parliament below. Read more
Quick! Download AirView Now, It Turns Your iOS Device Into An AirPlay Receiver
AirView is a universal application available for free in the App Store that does something iOS users have been asking since the original release of AirPlay: it turns any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch into AirPlay receivers capable of playing videos streamed from another device. With AirView, in fact, video can be streamed from iOS device to iOS device (iPhone to iPad, iPhone to iPhone) or from iTunes, something that Apple only does with the Apple TV 2nd generation.
AirView must be running on a device in order to show up as receiver on a local network. The app doesn’t enable music streaming, a feature we managed to activate in the past with a jailbreak hack. Photos aren’t supported either.
AirView is a neat little app that we guess Apple will soon remove from the App Store. When used in combination with Erica Sadun’s apps that extend AirPlay’s functionalities, it can become a quite powerful tool. Go grab it here now.
Analysts and Bloggers Share Q1 2011 Predictions
With Apple’s financial results for Q1 2011 only a few hours away, Fortune has posted its usual chart of predictions from professional and amateur analysts regarding Apple’s sales for the last quarter. To give it a bit of context, in the last quarter (pre-holiday season) Apple sold 3.89 million Macs, 14.1 million iPhones, 4.19 million iPads, 9.05 million iPods. The company posted record revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion.
Looking at Fortune’s chart, it appears that most analysts are predicting revenue between $23 and $27 billion, 14 to 16 million iPhones sold and 6 to 7 million iPads sold. Horace Dediu from Asymco, for instance, is predicting $25.50 billion revenue, 16.16 million iPhones sold, 18.87 million iPods, 4.30 million Macs and 6 million iPads.
Official numbers will be provided by Apple later today. An audio-only webcast of the conference call will be available here.
Reminder: Apple Q1 Financial Results Today – 5 PM ET
Later today starting at 5:00 PM ET (2:00 PM PT) Apple will hold the Q1 2011 earnings call to announce their financial results, shortly after the markets close. An audio-only live streaming will be available at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq111/. We will offer a breakdown of the results and have a post in the homepage with continually updating notes from the earnings call.
Apple is expected to post blockbuster sales from the holiday season, with iPads and iPhones to lead and the new MacBook Airs to follow. In the last quarter, Apple posted record iPhone and Mac sales with 14.1 million iPhone sold, 3.89 million Macs and 4.19 million iPads.The company posted record revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced yesterday that he’s taking another medical leave of absence to focus on his health.
Creators Of “The Glif” Share The Story Behind Their Popular iPhone Accessory
The Glif is a tripod mount / stand for the iPhone we have covered on MacStories quite a few times in the past months. Several accessories are announced and released every day; none of them goes from idea to the market in 5 months. None of them comes from an idea of two guys with no marketing, retail or manufacturing experience.
The Glif quickly jumped from cool Kickstarter project to Internet all-star thanks to the dozens of blogs and publications that thought the accessory was cool and deserved to be noticed by people in order to be manufactured and then sold. The creators have now posted an interesting “behind the scenes” article with all the details, pictures and videos of the Glif, from idea to actual product.
From the beginning, it was clear that simplicity was going to be a key tenet of our design. Not just for philosophical reasons, but to keep the design focused, and quite frankly, achievable. We knew that any complication to the manufacturing (moving parts, assembly, etc.) would make the project less likely to succeed.
After a round of sketching, we arrived at the general shape rather quickly: something that affixes to the corner of the phone and runs along the long edge, with a tripod screw roughly centered on that edge. One key component of our early design was a small peg located inside the shoe of the Glif, meant to be inserted into the headphone jack for extra stability. We were both in love with this feature, but in an example of killing your darlings, realized the design was better served (and more versatile) without it.
In case you haven’t considered a Glif yet, go check out the website here. This neat accessory with double functionality can be yours for just $20.
During Steve’s Absence, Apple Will Be Just Fine
News broke earlier today that Steve Jobs is taking another medical leave of absence to focus on his health. And just like the last time, he has appointed Apple COO Tim Cook as the head of day-to-day operations. This time around, though, Steve Jobs will maintain the CEO position. Long story short: Steve Jobs has to focus on his health and personal life, something you would expect from a man who beat cancer in the past and successfully underwent a liver transplant. Apple employees will have get used to not seeing Jobs on campus or in his office for a few months. But I don’t want to speculate on Jobs’ conditions, habits and role at Cupertino. Instead, I would like to point out how out of this complex and much-talked story Apple as a company will be doing just fine. Read more
Apple to Newspapers: No More Free iPad Access For Print Subscribers
According to various reports posted over the weekend, Apple has reportedly contacted several newspapers to inform them that they can no longer offer free iPad access to existing print subscribers. Many publishers, in fact, frustrated with Apple’s lack of recurring subscriptions with access to subscribers’ data, have put in place systems that allow print subscribers who have an iPad to get free access to apps using their previously created accounts. These systems, as you can guess, leave Apple’s standard 30% revenue cut of the equation as app access is offered for free. Read more