The DoJ has filed an antitrust suit against Apple and most eBook publishers for price-fixing. At issue is the term in iTunes’ terms and conditions that require all eBooks sold through Apple to be sold elsewhere at the same price. Most publishers have settled with the DoJ for undisclosed terms. link
GroupM has predicted Twitter’s self-serve advertising product could generate $300M to $400M in addition to the $250M in forecasted direct sales. link
Nearly 32 % of U.S. households are now served exclusively by cellphones, double the percentage from 2008.
Adobe/Efficient Frontier released a study that found SEM spend increased 16% y/y driven by an increase of paid clicks, rather than rising CPCs. link
Video game sales fell 25% in March to $1.10 billion according to NPD, continuing the steady slide in sales of consoles and games at the hands of mobile gaming. link
Mobile advertising revenue rose to $1.6 billion in 2011, up 150% y/y. link
Mobile demand side platform (DSP) Fiksu released a study indicating composite device fingerprint and the open UDID are the most likely standards to replace Apple’s proprietary UDID.
Amazon Web Services launched CloudSearch, a white label search component that uses Amazon.com’s search technology. The offering will compete directly with Google Customized Search Engine. link
YouTube has added pay-per-view functionality to its live streaming product as the company moves further toward becoming a long form content hub and store. link
Adobe has integrated Docusign’s technology into Adobe Reader, which it acquired earlier this year. Users can now sign documents electronically for free. link
Nokia’s new phone, the Lumia 900, has become Amazon’s best-selling phone. The Lumia runs Windows Mobile. link AT&T will spend more to promote the Lumia than the iPhone, an indication of the worry that carriers face with the iPhone’s sales dominance. link Nokia announced that smart phone sales have fallen 52% y/y and overall phone sales have fallen 29%, leading the company to report a $1.8B loss for the year. link
Amazon has released its In App Purchase functionality for mobile developers releasing content for the Fire. Unlike other stores who charge a flat revenue share on prices set by the developer, Amazon’ store retains the right to change the price of the application and pay the developer 70% of the purchase by the consumer, net Amazon discounts. In an about-face, Amazon has promised developers will always receive a 70% revenue of the list price for in app purchases, no matter Amazon’s applied discounts. link
Company AnnouncementsYahoo has reorganized into three groups: Consumer, Regions and Technology. Consumer includes Media, Connections aka Social, and Commerce. Regions is the direct sales organization. And Technology comprises engineering/infrastructure teams. link
Microsoft’s XBox 360 console revenues fell by 48% q/q and Kinect sales fell 33%. The only area of growth for the entertainment division was XBox Live revenue. link
Foursquare confirms 20M users and 2 billion check-ins. link
BranchOut announced 25M users. link
Kickstarter raised $119 million and generated $6 million in commission in 2011, its third year of operation. link
GoodReads, the social network for book lovers, announced 20M MAU. link
Spotify confirmed the company has lost $96M in its 2 years of operations. Additionally, profitability doesn’t seem achievable in the near future – likely a result of the music licensing terms imposed by the music labels. link
TalentBen Ling has left Google to join Badoo, a social dating site, as COO. link
Separately, Phil Mui, head PM for Google Analytics was named chief product manager at Acxiom. link
LiquidityFacebook Targets May 17th For IPO Date|Facebook Targets May 17th For IPO Date | TechCrunch link
Enterprise data software company Splunk ended its first day on the stock market with an amazing 108.7 percent bump in price from its $17-per-share IPO.|Splunk ends incredible IPO day with 109% jump in share price | VentureBeat link
