Here are your Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) news items and rumors for Monday: Skype announces a new voice chat application, a new GPS-based social-networking tool for iPhones, and some pricing confusion with Virgin’s iPad magazine.
Skype Guns for FaceTime: The western world’s most recognizable Internet-based phone service, Skype, already has widespread popularity on Apple’s iPhone 4 and iPod Touch thanks to Skype’s voice-chat applications. But at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in January, Skype will try to convince Apple-device users that Skype’s apps are superior to Apple’s own FaceTime video-chat software. A report on Friday from tech blog Engadget said that Skype will make “a series of video-related announcements” at CES, including unveiling its own video-chat software for Apple devices. Skype also sent an email Friday advertising a new support document that tells users how to make video calls on an iPhone. Skype already offers limited voice-chat service on Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) N900 phone.
Patent Points to iPhone Tracking: An application by Apple for a patent titled “Push-Based Location Update” was made public by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office late last week. The software described would allow users to share data with each other’s iPhones using an application called “Friend Locator.” The app will update a user on another user’s physical location using the push notification service in current iPhones. (Push notifications provide iPhone and iPad users with simple information updates, like when they’ve received a new email or text message, while using other applications.) Friend Locator would let users link phones with a devoted “Friend List.” The software will be positioned as a direct competitor to other GPS-based social network tools Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google Latitude.
Virgin’s Free Project: The interactive, iPad-only magazine from British firmVirgin, Project, debuted at the end of November for $2.99 an issue, but that price wasn’t expected to last into the magazine’s second issue — it was anticipated that it would shift to Apple’s rumored new subscription-based app sales model. Expected to launch on Dec. 9, iPad and iPhone users would be able to download a single app and subscribe to weekly and monthly content updates. The new sales model would launch at the same time with Apple and News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) joint project, the iPad-only newspaper The Daily. However, Dec. 9 came and went with no announcement, throwing Virgin’s plans for Project into disarray. As a stopgap strategy to promote it, the first issue of Project is available as a free download. The promotion ends Dec. 29. The current rumblings are that The Daily will debut on Jan. 17. Whether or not it comes with the new subscription-based sales model for Apple platform apps remains to be seen.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
