This week in mobile app business news:

Apple says apps and in-app purchase sales were $1b for the 2 week holiday period. This set new&nbsp;weekly records for traffic and revenue back to back.

http://mobiledevmemo.com/memo/app-store-games-bring-in-1b-in-revenue-during-december-as-clash-of-clans-tops-the-charts/?d=e

iOS shipped more units than windows last year.&nbsp;The 2 year refresh cycle of mobile devices was a contributor to this, as well as the decline in Windows PC sales.&nbsp;Also mentions that iOS 9 is now on 75% of devices.

http://mobiledevmemo.com/memo/iphone-shipments-overtook-windows-in-2015-for-the-first-time-ios-9-adoption-hits-75/?d=e

Apple is killing iAd. This article mentions that iAd would continue as a self-serve ad platform, but that is not the case. iAd is closing completely.http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnpaczkowski/apple-iad?utm_term=.ybAWv0brb#.nbX9dp8j8


Apple continues to push in to the education sector by allowing multiple user accounts on iPads with ios 9.3:https://www.apple.com/education/preview/


There is talk of Apple killing the headphone jack. Over 200,000 people have signed a petition against it.http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/08/over-200000-people-have-signed-a-petition-to-stop-apple-from-killing-the-iphones-headphone-jack/

App Business News - 18 January 2016

Today we're speaking with Rachel Cook, founder &amp; CEO of tech startup&nbsp;Seeds.
Seeds is an incredibly interesting new platform that creates a real win-win-win situation for mobile app developers, entrepreneurs in developing countries, and Seeds.
Seeds helps 'compel spending on mobile through the power of social good'. Or put another way, they help you sell more in-app purchases by contributing part of the IAP cost to micro-loans that help entrepreneurs in developing countries. App users are more inclined to complete an in-app purchase if they know a portion of the money is contributing to social good, so they end up buying more stuff.
We haven't seen anything like this before. You really need to listen to the entire interview to get an idea of how powerful this might be for developers. Download the episode now to learn more about Seeds.
You can also learn more over at their website, playseeds.com

Interview with Seeds Founder and CEO Rachel Cook

This week in mobile app business news:

Gordon Ramsay partnering with Glu, the company behind Kim Kardashian's hit app. Glu has a history of partnering with celebrities to build successful apps and it seems Ramsay is next in line.

http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/19/gordon-ramsay-joins-kim-kardashian-in-glu-mobiles-gaming-stable/

App Annie have released their 2015 Retrospective. The report looks at key data from across the mobile app industry in 2015. Lots of great insights in this one.

http://blog.appannie.com/app-annie-2015-retrospective/
&nbsp;

An ecommerce platform has just released a new mobile app that is designed to support black owned businesses by ramping up the ability to purchase from them. The app is called Purchase Black.

http://mobilemarketingwatch.com/first-ever-all-black-marketplace-mobile-app-debuts-from-purchaseblack-com-64774/
&nbsp;

Venturebeat's take on the App Annie 2015 Retrospective. The key takeaway from this one is the fact that Google had 2x more downloads than Apple, but Apple had 75% higher mobile app revenue.

http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/20/app-annie-2015-google-play-saw-100-more-downloads-than-the-ios-app-store-but-apple-generated-75-more-revenue/
&nbsp;

More acquisitions in the mobile space with Spotify acquiring two social messaging apps. They purchased NY based company 'Cord Project', and Dublin based 'Soundwave'.

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/01/20/spotify-snaps-startups-cord-project-and-soundwave-bolster-its-social-media-messaging
&nbsp;

Pinterest to ad video ads, following the lead from Facebook &amp; Instagram

http://digiday.com/platforms/pinterest-puts-new-video-ads-plan-motion-sources-say/
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

Pollen VC will now offer a user acquisition service. Pollen help mobile startups with cashflow by providing payment for app revenue almost instantly, instead of waiting 1 month+ to receive revenue from Apple/Google. Funds can now be used to acquire new users.

http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/18/pollen-vc-launches-user-acquisition-service-for-mobile-game-and-app-makers/

Eric Seufert shares what he sees as the 'User Acquisition Mega-Trends for 2016'

http://www.slideshare.net/EricSeufert/3-mobile-user-acquisition-megatrends-for-2016
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

App Business News - 25 Jan 2016

Huge news this week with the announce that Parse is to shut down on January 28, 2017! Download the entire episode now to listen to our thoughts on the announcement plus lots more.
Here's a quick look at the app business news items we covered this week:
&nbsp;

There could be a new 4 inch iphone coming in March

http://mobiledevmemo.com/memo/iphone-5se-could-be-new-4-inch-handset/?d=e
If this rumor is true it means developers will have to continue to support 4 inch screens indefinitely.
&nbsp;

iPhone sales slowing drastically according to&nbsp;analysts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/iphone-sales-growth_us_56a78bb1e4b0b87beec5f8e2?ir=Technology&amp;section=us_technology&amp;utm_hp_ref=technology
A few interesting points from this article:
Apple sold 75.5m iphone in the October-December quarter, a 1.3% increase over previous year. Slowest previous quarterly growth was 6.8% in 2013.
Apple reported a quarterly profit of $18.4 billion, the largest in history.
But the company predicted revenue will decline next quarter, its first drop in years.

Parse is shutting down!

http://blog.parse.com/announcements/moving-on/
Unbelievably, Parse have announced that they will retire all services from January 28, 2017.
They are offering a database migration service to move from parse to any Mongo DB database + &lsquo;Parse Server&rsquo;, which lets you use the Parse API on your own node.js server.
ABP listener Reinder de Vries wrote a killer guide to migrating from Parse.com to MongoDB on Heroku.
&nbsp;

Facebook audience network now for Mobile web.

http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/26/facebook-updates-audience-network-to-include-support-for-mobile-web/
Previously, the Audience Network was Facebook's in-app advertising network. Now they are expanding into the mobile web. Is desktop web next?

Paid content in Apple News App?

http://9to5mac.com/2016/01/26/apple-news-pay-wall-subscriptions/
&nbsp;It seems that Apple will allow paywalls inside it's news app. That means that companies like the NY Times will be able to offer free content + subscription only content inside the news app.

Facebook expanding &ldquo;Live&rdquo; (sharing live videos)

http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/01/expanding-live-video/
Facebook's live video streaming technology is being rolled out to all users, starting with the USA.

McDonalds had 7 mil downloads of McD coupon app in 1st 3 mths:

http://mobilemarketingwatch.com/mcdonalds-sees-massive-success-with-mobile-coupons-64956/
A great demonstration of how a mobile app can directly increase revenue for companies.
&nbsp;

Paypal Announces Venmo will be available for in-app purchases:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/27/10854626/venmo-in-app-purchases-apple-pay-competitor
Venmo is a payment processing service that lets you quickly make purchases in apps using payment info stored by Venmo. It's similar to Apple Pay and now a direct competitor.
&nbsp;

Facebook shows impressive MAU and DAU&nbsp;numbers. &nbsp;More than&nbsp;90% of users access FB through mobile at some time, and 50% only ever use FB on mobile

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