Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: AT&T Defends Itself Against App Scandal

Written by Erin Barker

Thursday, July 30. 2009 at 11:40 AM EDT Post a comment

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After it emerged this week that Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) had rejected all Google Voice-related applications from its App Store, the Web was rife with speculation that its iPhone partner AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) was behind the move. But now AT&T is defending itself.

Glenn Lurie, AT&T's president of emerging devices and resale, released this statement to TechCrunch:

"While we're very proud to offer the iPhone 3GS along with the thousands of apps available through the App Store, AT&T does not manage the App Store – and we are not involved in the approval process for apps in the App Store. I recommend in this particular case that you express your concerns to Apple."

Others, such as Om Malik, have also defended AT&T, arguing that, after all, AT&T hasn't banned Google apps from BlackBerry devices that run on its service. Daring Fireball's John Gruber, on the other hand, also defended AT&T at first, but then posted this cryptic update: "Well, so much for my speculation. A reliable little birdie has informed me that it was indeed AT&T that objected to Google Voice apps for the iPhone. It's that simple."

In other news:

Though we haven't heard much about virtual worlds lately, it turns out they are booming, according to research from kzero.co.uk. Membership of virtual worlds grew by nearly 40 percent in the second quarter of 2009, to about 579 million. This growth came almost entirely from children.

Perhaps the more talked-about -- but so far less lucrative -- Facebook and Twitter Inc. should take a page out of the books of virtual worlds like World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe, Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, and Second Life, which are all profitable "because their business models are based on the digital elixir of subscriptions and micropayments," the Guardian's Victor Keegan writes.

On a related note, 12 percent of Americans purchased a virtual item -- that's an item that does not actually exist in the real world -- over the past 12 months. The sale of virtual items cuts across several demographics, with different age groups, ethnic groups, and genders all relatively even. "As Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, put it to me, the boys are getting virtual swords for their MMORPGs, while the women are buying virtual flowers on Facebook," GigaOm's Wagner James Au writes.

Tags: Apple, AT&T, iPhone

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