Here are your daily Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) news items and rumors for Wednesday: CNN names the company twice in a list of tech failures, iTunes is no Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX)-killer, and a game creator touts the iOS mobile platform.
Tech Fail: CNN.com’s Doug Gross published a list of 2010’s top tech “fails,” detailing the biggest miscalculations by major technology manufacturers. Despite a year of record-breaking sales and ever-rising share prices, Apple made the list twice. At No. 10, was the company’s iTunes social network Ping. Launched in September, alongside the fourth-generation iPod Touch and iTunes version 10, Ping was intended as way to capitalize on consumer’s Facebook addiction.
As Gross points out, however, it was the failure to agree with Facebook on an integration strategy that kept iTunes users from widely using the service.
Topping the list at No. 1 was “Antennagate” — referring to the iPhone 4’s well-publicized poor antenna and casing design as well as the PR fallout that followed the iPhone 4’s June launch. The mess seemed like it would be a major blemish on Apple’s year. But as Gross points out, the iPhone 4 has been a runaway success even after Antennagate.
iTunes Rentals 10% the Size of Netflix: Earlier this year, News Corp.’s (NYSE:NWS) Fox, Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) ABC, and General Electric’s (NYSE:GE) NBC all balked at the idea of letting Apple offer rentals of their television content for 99 cents via iTunes. But according to Gleacher & Co. analyst Brain Marshall, the networks don’t need to worry about losing too much revenue through Apple’s digital media storefront. In a note to investors on Wednesday, Marshall estimates that there are only 475,000 television and movie downloads through iTunes everyday. Video rentals on Apple’s service are 10% of those on Netflix, which launched an instant streaming-only subscription service in November, and generates 5.1 million downloads a day. Marshall estimates that iTunes television and movie rentals generate just $60 million a quarter.
Mobile Game Exec Sees Apple Dominance: Rovio Mobile executive Peter Vesterbacka, one of the people behind the runaway mobile game hit Angry Birds, told Tech N’ Marketing on Tuesday that he expects Apple’s iOS mobile operating system to be the leader in mobile software platforms for the foreseeable future. “Apple will be No. 1 for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right,” said Vesterbacka, “And they know what they are doing, and they call the shots.” Vesterbacka also highlighted the increasing complexity of Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system as a hurdle between that platform and success when compared to Apple’s iOS. Rovio’s Angry Birds has been downloaded 50 million times on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch since it was released in December 2009.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
