Here are your daily Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock news and rumors for September 27, 2010. While Google and Apple continue their strong partnership on AAPL devices, Apple is taking away serious revenue from the technology company in other sectors. A new report says that iAd, Apple’s recently launched mobile advertising platform, will be neck and neck with Google’s mobile advertising business by the end of the year. In other news, Target will begin selling Apple’s tablet computer at their retail locations next month.
iAd to Tie With Google for Controlling Share of Mobile Ad Market: That was fast. Since it launched on July 1st, Apple Inc.’s mobile advertising platform iAd has managed to seize nearly a quarter of the mobile ads market. According to estimates from IDC published in Business Week, APPL’s iAd will control a 21% share of the mobile advertising market, equaling previously dominant market force Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and outpacing both Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) by a wide margin. When iAd launched last summer, Google controlled 27% of the mobile advertising market. While Apple is falling somewhat short of Steve Jobs’ prediction that the service would take 50% of the mobile ads market by the end of 2010, iAd’s success is still impressive, especially considering how tightly APPL controls the service. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz recently called out iAds saying that Apple’s service was “going to fall apart on them” because advertisers wouldn’t stand for such rigid control. IDC is expecting Yahoo’s share of the mobile ad market to fall from 12% to 9% by the end of the year.
Google and Apple Extend iOS Search Deal: While Google and Apple are at each other’s throats competing for smartphone buyers and mobile platform advertisers, they are continuing to play nice elsewhere. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a recent interview with Business Week that Google Inc. has extended their agreement with Apple to keep Google’s Web search technology the default search engine running on Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch mobile devices. Schmidt also discussed his company’s strange relationship with Apple, as they are both partners thanks to the ubiquity and quality of Google’s search and map tools, and also competitors thanks to Google’s Android operating system and its growing presence as the go-to software for smartphones and tablet PCs alike. It was rumored earlier this year that Apple would make Microsoft’s Bing search engine, itself based on Yahoo’s technology, the default search tool on iOS platforms. While Bing is available on iOS, Google remains the default under the new extension.
Target Begins Selling the iPad This October: Target (NYSE: TGT) announced at a press conference this morning that they will begin selling Apple’s tablet computer, the iPad, starting October 3rd. All six versions of the iPad will be sold, including the 16GB, 32GB, 64GB 3G-enabled and WiFi only models of the popular device. The iPad will be stocked in Target’s “Digital Audio” department that also stocks Apple’s iPod Touch and the Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Kindle e-reader. Target joins Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) as the second big box retail chain to sell the tablet in brick and mortar stores. Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) hopes to begin selling the iPad before the end of the year.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
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