The App Store and controversy go hand in hand. There have been several apps which have been rejected from the App Store for the most weirdest reason and several weird one’s which have been approved, and have left people scratching their heads as to how they got in.

It looks like Apple is upping the App Store ante a bit and going all after their main challenger, Google, by asking a developer to remove the word “Android” from the app description.

The app in question is Flash in Genius, who were a finalist in the Google Android Developer’s Challenge and had mentioned about it in their app description as seen in the screenshot above. However, the folks at Apple were less than happy about this and sent a email to them which you can read below.

Dear Flash of Genius, LLC,

Thank you for submitting Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 to the App Store.  During our review of your application, we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections.

Providing future platform compatibility plans or other general platform references are not relevant in the context of the iPhoneApp Store.  While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate  to remove “Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!”  from the Application Description [Emphasis added].

Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 on the iPhoneApp Store.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

According to the email, Apple has threatened the developer to remove the Android mention or face the removal of the app from theApp store. Agreed that Apple makes good business for developers, but this incident definitely says much about them and how they treat competition.

This makes me wonder if Apple allows their own employees to use a Nokia or Android based phone in their work environment? Or will they send employees a sack notice because they use one?

[via Techie Buzz]

To stay ahead of AT&T and Apple, Verizon is placing a big bet on Android smartphones and other new gadgets

Can Verizon Wireless keep its spot as the leading wireless company in the U.S. if it doesn’t have the industry’s hottest phone?

Lowell McAdam, the company’s chief executive, is trying to make the case that it can. Two years ago, Verizon Wireless passed on the chance to become the exclusive U.S. distributor of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and pushed Apple into the arms of rival AT&T (T). Since then the iPhone has become a megahit, helping AT&T close the gap with Verizon. In the most recent quarter, AT&T added 2 million wireless subscribers, bringing its total to 81.6 million, while Verizon Wireless added 1.2 million, for a total of 89 million.

Now, McAdam is launching a slew of products designed to keep Verizon ahead. In the fourth quarter the company is rolling out its largest new-product lineup ever: 14 devices, vs. half that number a year ago. Among those will be two netbooks and five smartphones, including the Droid phone from Motorola (MOT), a sleek device with a touchscreen and keyboard that runs on Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system. The new products are backed by an unusually aggressive marketing campaign. In one TV spot, Verizon takes direct aim at Apple with a series of “iDon’t” quips that explain all the things an iPhone can’t do. “The Droid can compete head to head” with the iPhone, says John Stratton, chief marketing officer of Verizon Wireless.

Too Many New Offerings?

Verizon’s strategy is bold but risky. With the Droid and another phone from HTC, Verizon is placing a big bet on the unproven Android. The software is popular with techies and has attracted enough support from developers that 10,000 apps are available for download to Android phones, but it hasn’t yet caught on with consumers. In addition, Verizon risks confusing customers with the sheer number of devices it’s introducing. “Greater choice is not a guarantee of a greater quarter,” says Richard Doherty, research director at Envisioneering Group.

McAdam and Stratton are firing up Verizon’s marketing machinery to win over consumers. The Droid will be backed by Verizon’s biggest marketing campaign ever for a single device, and total marketing spending will increase 5% to 10% in the current quarter from last year. Stratton says the anti-Apple vibe will be toned down in favor of ads that underscore the features of its phones and the reliability of its network compared with AT&T’s. Verizon has said it is still interested in selling the iPhone if Apple is amenable.

Verizon is experimenting with new marketing approaches. For several weeks in November, the company has rented time on two huge electronic billboards in New York’s Times Square that will show real-time results of searches people make on their Android phones. Verizon is also planning to transform Droid, the moniker for the Motorola phone, into a brand name for a whole lineup of Android devices.

Google Could Be the Key

Verizon’s success may ultimately depend on how the partnership with Google works out. As cell phones become more sophisticated computing devices, wireless companies need Silicon Valley firepower to compete. Google has helped boost the number of wireless applications available on Android phones, but analysts say it has to step up its marketing of Android to gain ground on Apple. “When the iPhone was associated with Apple iTunes, that really meant a lot to consumers,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at researcher Gartner (IT). “You want to know that the [Android] app store is being run by Google.”

By Spencer E. Ante

[via BusinessWeek]

If you haven’t seen it yet Verizon’s new Android commercial is awesome!

Check it out here

embedded by Embedded Video

The smartphone market seems to be shoe-in: Apple has momentum in the space reminiscent of its takeover of the MP3 player market years prior with the iPod. Despite this momentum, the discerning media planner working on mobile for something six months out should take note — Google’s Android is poised to crash Apple’s party.

Why? Three reasons:

Android Clones:
While the iPhone had Chinese imitation devices, Android will literally have a clone army. The open-source system will live on a handful of devices by the end of this year, and dozens of devices by the end of 2010. So while the system seemed to languish when the only Android device was the G1, with phones like the HTC Hero and myTouch 3G, Android will traverse carrier networks and handset manufacturers.

Specialized Versions:
Android can be customized, and many of the handset manufactures are doing just this. HTC has built the Sense UI, a prettier and contextually aware revamp of the Android operating system, and Motorola is working on their Android-based UI “Blur.” With the ability to customize the flavor of Android for devices, it creates a competitive marketplace among handsets to vie for custom features while expanding the overall Android market share. While the iPhone has to try to juggle between enterprise users, multimedia users and social network users, Android can have a tailored version for phones segmented to each individual market niche.

Killer Apps:
There’s been some controversy lately about Apple’s AppStore rejection policies. A number of Google applications were rejected from the phone. On one hand, this hurt Google’s ability to roll out those services, but it also gave Android a handful of killer apps.

Google Voice is an extremely powerful concept — it allows users to unbridle their phone number from telecoms, using Google to route calls to a single number to any number of phones. It does the same for text messages and turns voicemails into text. If Google Voice routed to a VoIP service running on a carrier data network, it could overnight replace the need for voice and text message packages.

Google Latitude, meanwhile, is a location based social tool which allows location reporting to run in the background and send location data to contacts a user specifies. Each of these pack a ton of potential utility in a single application, which the iPhone doesn’t have.

Apple’s position in the market is too well-rooted to be driven away without a very tough fight. But Android is very much poised to stifle the iPhone’s growth while extending its own roots. Keep an eye on the friendly green robot — behind that guise he’s waiting patiently, and planning carefully.

[via AdvertisingAge]

Back in July, the FCC sent letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google asking about the rejection of the Google Voice for iPhone app.

Today Google released a statement saying:

“When we submitted our letter on August 21, we asked the FCC to redact certain portions that involved sensitive commercial conversations between two companies — namely, a description of e-mails, telephone conversations, and in-person meetings between executives at Google and Apple.

Shortly afterward, several individuals and organizations submitted Freedom of Information Act requests with the FCC seeking access to this information. While we could have asked the FCC to oppose those requests, in light of Apple’s decision to make its own letter fully public and in the interest of transparency, we decided to drop our request for confidentiality. Today the FCC posted the full content of our letter to their website (PDF).

We continue to work with Apple and others to bring users the best mobile Google experience possible.”

You can now read the full filing on the FCC website here.

Jason Calacanis writes a long but thoughtful article on why he is done with Apple and their monopolistic practices. He’s not alone as many other devoted iPhone users are speaking out as well like Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Peter Rojas of GDGT.com and the founder of Engadget.

Summary: About six years and $20,000 ago, I made the switch to Apple products after a 20-year love affair with Microsoft. That love affair started with the humble PCjr and ended with an IBM ThinkPad. From DOS to the first version of Windows (the run-time version that only loaded one program), and on to Windows 95 and XP, I dealt with the viruses, driver incompatibilities and other assorted quirks of Microsoft’s wildly open ecosystem.

The Love Affair Ends

Steve’s a great guy, and the love affair has been wonderful, but I’m starting to look past him and back to Microsoft for a more healthy relationship that is less–wait for it–anti-competitive in nature.

The Case, The Five Parts

I’d like to discuss four major issues around Apple’s current product line that I believe are stifling the industry, consumer choice and pricing. Instead of just giving a simple solution to the problem, I thought long and hard about the opportunities for Apple to be less controlling and more open. For example, if the iPhone was available on more carriers, Apple would sell many, many more units, which would inevitably lead to people switching from Windows desktops to Macs (which is what happened with the iPod).

1. Destroying MP3 player innovation through anti-competitive practices

There is no technical reason why the iTunes ecosystem shouldn’t allow the ability to sync with any MP3 player (in fact, iTunes did support other players once upon a time), save furthering Apple’s dominance with their own over-priced players. Quickly answer the following question: who are the number two and three MP3 players in the market? Exactly. Most folks can’t name one, let alone two, brands of MP3 players.

2. Monopolistic practices in telecommunications

Apple’s iPhone is a revolutionary product that has devolved almost all of the progress made in cracking–wait for it–AT&T’s monoply in the ’70s and ’80s. We broke up the Bell Phone only to have it put back together by the iPhone. Telecommunications choice is gone for Apple users. If you buy an Apple and want to have a seemless experience with your iPhone, you must get in bed with AT&T, and as we like to say in the technology space, “AT&T is the suck.”

3. Draconian App Store policies that are, frankly, insulting

Like lemmings, we fell for your bar charts extolling the openness of the iPhone App platform and its massive array of applications. We over-paid for your phone–which you render obsolete every 13 months, like clockwork–and then signed our lives away to AT&T. The way you pay us back is by becoming the thought police, deciding what applications we can consume on the device we over-paid for!

4. Being a horrible hypocrite by banning other browsers on the iPhone

Opera is a fantastic browser built by a company in Oslo, Norway. In fact, a decade ago, I had a speaking gig there and got to interview the CEO of the company for Silicon Alley Reporter. (Sidebar: Man, do I miss being a journalist. I wish I could split 50% of my time being a journalist and 50% of my time being a CEO.) For over a decade, Opera has been making lighting-fast, lightweight and quirky browsers. Long before Apple launched Safari, with the goal of designing the fastest browswer on the Web, Opera was already there.

5. Blocking the Google Voice Application on the iPhone

Apple took Google’s innovative and absurdly priced phone offering, Google Voice, out of the App Store and is currently being investigated by the FCC for this action. This point is similar to the browser issue, in that Apple wants to own almost every extension of the iPhone platform. How long before Apple decides to ban a Twitter client in favor of an Apple Twitter-like product? Seems crazy, I know, but by following Apple’s logic you should not be able to use Firefox or Google Chrome on your desktop.

In Summary

I’m not a huge fan of government involvement in business, so I would rather see Apple resolve these issues for themselves.

[Read Full Story Here]

At the end of July I declared my intention to quit the iPhone and AT&T, port my mobile phone number to Google Voice and use any mobile device that I pleased (or lots of them at once) in the future. Like others, I will no longer blindly follow all things Apple. Today I’m pleased to report a status update on those efforts: complete. I am no longer a member of the Cult of iPhone.

Porting my phone number to Google Voice was a three day process, which I was pre-warned about. The mobile carriers in the U.S. have made the porting process between them fairly easy, and it occurs over a couple of hours. But they are in no hurry to help customers move their phone numbers to Google Voice, and so it took a few extra days. Also, I’m one of the first people to port their phone number to Google Voice, and there are always a few hiccups when you’re a guinea pig.

A week ago I was an unhappy AT&T iPhone customer. I couldn’t get cell phone reception here at my house and so I was always missing important calls.

Today I’m a happy Google Voice customer. My old mobile number, which all of my contacts already have, now rings simultaneously on my home Vonage phone and the TMobile myTouch 3G Android phone that I’ve started using (and, by the way, TMobile works just fine here at home, too). If I want to start using a new phone, I can make a switch in the settings at Google Voice and calls will ring through to that instead. no carrier will ever have a stranglehold on me again.

Not only are calls being sent to both of my phones simultaneously now, but all my voicemails are now aggregated at Google Voice and immediately transcribed and emailed and SMS’d to me. And since I’m using the Google Voice application for the Android, all my outgoing calls appear to be from my existing phone number, not the one assigned to the phone.

Single best feature of Google Voice: Call blocking. Someone spams my SMS or calls me too much, I click a button and they can never call or SMS me again.

So what’s the downside?

I had to pay the AT&T termination fee of $175. But that’s it.

And this myTouch phone (which TMobile has supplied to me for free for a test period) is an excellent piece of hardware. I believe it is superior to the iPhone 3GS – it loads the camera app and video app faster, and web pages load in about 2/3 the time it takes on the iPhone/AT&T (likely more AT&T’s fault than the iPhone). The Android apps are far more interesting because they have the ability to integrate with any native function (so, for example, Google Voice, banned on the iPhone, has taken over the myTouch native dialer). And I can run persistent apps in the background like Google Talk, which lets me keep a chat window open to contacts all the time.

Google Voice really is nearly perfect. The only thing that would be better is if they became a MVNO and offered mobile services directly as well. And tethering would be a nice feature. But for now I’m extremely happy with my mobile situation. And I plan to never do business directly with a carrier again.

Want to port your mobile number to Google Voice and do what I’ve done? You can’t just yet, but porting will be released later this year publicly. Prepare yourselves, and don’t sign any new long term contracts with your carrier. Life will soon be good for you, too.

by Michael Arrington

“HEY APPLE!!!…F-U” -Love, Google

Apple rejected Google Voice almost two weeks ago, removing it from the app store. Now under investigation by the feds, AT&T has pointed the finger at Apple for the rejection. In an exciting move, Google is moving its rejected application online in an effort to essentially negate any attempts by Apple to police the application.

You will be able to link to it with a shortcut icon on your home screen. The specially crafted iPhone-shaped web page will offer all the features of the original app. They could be accomplishing this with HTML 5 app caching. In other words, in a move akin to flipping the bird to Steve Jobs, Google has essentially highlighted a way for app developers everywhere to easily publish their rejected content.

The move could usher in a new era of freedom for iPhone users. Freed from what Apple dictates are fit and proper apps, the phone’s true potential could finally be achieved. Rejected apps like eBook readers (rejected en masse over piracy concerns) could simply move online. As the New York Times’ Dave Pogue puts it, “What’s Apple going to do now? Start blocking access to individual Web sites?”

Google’s decision to defying Apple is an exciting development. And one thing’s for sure — Apple’s likely not happy and is likely trying to scheme how to stop them.

Android users on the other hand have had seamless Google Voice service as soon as they download the app from the Market.

Android got off to an admittedly rocky start when it first debuted on the T-Mobile G1. Since then the OS has proved to be popular and a strong contender in the marketplace. More phones are being introduced that run Android than most other operating systems right now.

Android is also starting to gain ground on the class leading iPhone for apps according to Flurry. According to the research firm the iPhone owns 79% of the applications market on a platform basis while Android holds 15% of the market and Blackberry holds a mere 3%.

The iPhone has 74% of the developers working on its platform compared to 22% of them working on Android and a scant 3% working on Blackberry apps. The company also says that Android users are more loyal than those using the iPhone are. Application user retention on Android devices is 83% within 30 days and only 63% for iPhone users after the same period. Android consumers used their applications significantly more frequently than their iPhone counterparts. 37% of iPhone consumers who downloaded applications used those applications fewer than 5 times per month (”superlight users”) with Android having only 11% in the superlight usage category. Toward the other end of the spectrum, 35% percent of Android users can be defined as “heavy users,” using applications more than 50 times per month, compared to only 15% on the iPhone.

Does this mean Android users are more sophisticated than iPhone users? After all most people I know, that have an iPhone, is because it’s trendy. They don’t even really use the thing other than as a phone and texting device.

[Read the full story on Flurry]