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Android apps and games are mostly free, and ad-supported. Mobile developers quickly learned that piracy on Android is much larger problem than on iPhone and that they couldn't just sell their software. That was the reason they started offering games for free and getting the revenue from advertisements. It goes well along the lines with Google too, who also recently bought the largest mobile advertising house AdMob.

This also means that people of course download way more apps too.

Or, in other words: they track you, for advertising purposes.

iAd uses random IDs that are generated twice a day on the iPhone. Impossible to track you with this.

But I would surely like to have that cleared up. Especially what the anonymous collecting of location data actually means in detail.

Personally I think that the part of the privacy policy you quoted is just a general list of things that Apple may collect for many different things (the Unique Device ID will be needed at least for DRM purposes with the iTunes store, for example) and that this does not mean that anonymous location data is tagged with the Unique Device ID. I just can't see Apple going to such lengths to ensure anonymity with iAd and then needlessly collect location data in a less anonymous way.

Still, I'm pretty sure we will here more of this in the coming months, not only from Apple.

By the way, here's the privacy policy for AdMob Mobile Services (Google), which in no uncertain terms says what AdMob collects here:

"AdMob will automatically collect and receive information about those visitors such as, but not limited to, browser identifiers, session information, browser cookies, device type, carrier provider, IP addresses, unique device ID, carrier user ID, geo-location information, sites visited and clicks on advertisements we display."

You're quoting the bit about Location Services, and when you turn those on, your phone's location is identified for ad services. What Apple is saying here is that the ad services never get to know who they're serving to, and Apple does not store this data either. They could, based on uid, but they say they don't..

They even couldn't. The ID iAd sends along with the location data is a random ID that gets generated twice daily on the iPhone. This is just enough to serve the right iPhone with local ads, but that's it. It's not a user ID and not a phone ID and it changes twice a day.

Now, AdMob (Google):

"AdMob will automatically collect and receive information about those visitors such as, but not limited to, browser identifiers, session information, browser cookies, device type, carrier provider, IP addresses, unique device ID, carrier user ID, geo-location information, sites visited and clicks on advertisements we display."

Don't ask for companies you can trust. Ask for implementations of privacy-related technologies that don't require you to trust them.

No argument there, but for the OS/Hardware manufacturer to be encouraging this (and no doubt skimming the profits)?

Implicit in your posts is that in addition to not previously knowing about iAd, you also don't know about Admob. Google both creates Android and owns Admob.

Since neither the summary nor the story link to the actual source:
Mobile advertising and the iPhone

Also:

the head of Google's mobile ad service, Admob,

Really? Google acquired AdMob only a little over two weeks ago.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the smartphone market. Symbian phones account for 3 times the market share Apple has, and Blackberry phones account for 1.25 times the market share.

You're right, I gave similar figures to the responder above you in my response to him. Apple's iPhone is growing in marketshare though, in May the market share of the iPhone increased from 30.3% to 32.8%, and Androids increased theirs from 5.3% to 6.2%. I've made mistakes in this thread but this is a big one I didn't make: Android Stealing Symbian & WinMo Market Share, but that's from last year, ie old. Looking for recent data I found 2 articles of interest, April 2010 Mobile Metrics Report and Apple iPad Catching Up On Android In OS Market. And the iPad uses the same OS as the iPhone does. However it's not a phone.

Falcon

BTW, Nokia's dead in the water and sinking fast.

Got any evidence to go with that assertion.

Even if they sell a large percentage of handsets, there aren't many people who are buying apps or particularly enthusiastic about their Nokia hardware.

Despite Nokia making a profit on every sing bit of hardware sold. Nokia is not big in the US but they own half of Asia and are well respected in Europe and Australia. The E71/72 is one of the best selling business phones in Australia and Symbian phones account for over 60 of ad traffic from Asia whilst Nokia makes up 47% of the market compared to Apple's 16%. What you'll also notice is that Apple's market share includes Ipods. Unfortunately my own nation of Australia has been skewing these statistics and for that I am deeply ashamed. Source Admob Metrics(PDF warning)

Nokia also consists of more then just mobile phones, they have significant sales in infrastructure and corporate phone systems (PBX's). Not to mention all the R&D Nokia does into telecommunications, the GSM patents Nokia has alone will keep the company well and truly afloat. Almost any phone you purchase will have hardware developed in part or in full by Nokia (including the Iphone).

So you're wrong on both counts, Nokia enjoys significant sales world wide and they aren't dependent on selling applications (although Nokia is doing quite well with Navigation since they bought Naviteq and started offering it as a subscription service on their phones).

"Android gone nowhere? Are you just making stuff up? Google's Android's market share compares well with Apple's iPhone [computerworld.com] And that's from May, as in before the Droid hit the market"

Are you misreading the article?
"What is interesting here is that we are only five months and a million devices into the life of the Android. At month five, the iPhone had sold around two times as many devices."

Same time frame and iPhone sold twice as many, and remember the first 5 months was the worse sales the iPhone has ever had.

And if you look at this Dec 2009 chart it's pretty clear the iPhone is dominating the competition. Only regions the iPhone isn't the majority is Africa and Asia where Symbian still rules, but then Symbian has been out since 2001. Let's see how the iPhone's doing after being out for 9 yrs instead of two and half years.

"Android gone nowhere? Are you just making stuff up? Google's Android's market share compares well with Apple's iPhone [computerworld.com] And that's from May, as in before the Droid hit the market"

Are you misreading the article?
"What is interesting here is that we are only five months and a million devices into the life of the Android. At month five, the iPhone had sold around two times as many devices."

Same time frame and iPhone sold twice as many, and remember the first 5 months was the worse sales the iPhone has ever had.

And if you look at this Dec 2009 chart it's pretty clear the iPhone is dominating the competition. Only regions the iPhone isn't the majority is Africa and Asia where Symbian still rules, but then Symbian has been out since 2001. Let's see how the iPhone's doing after being out for 9 yrs instead of two and half years.

It's amusing that this sort of mindless consumerist jingoism should be spewed by someone from the USA, which has until recently exhibited such drastically low subscriber ARPUs and unit penetrance that pretty much all manufacturers and cellcos didn't even bother to release any of their high-end phones in that country. Relegated to a backwater in the global mobile business, the USA would probably have remained so for many years had Apple's success with its high-end featurephone not encouraged them to begin to accelerate deployment of better models within the USA. However, because US consumers are still markedly stingy when it comes to paying for services, the USA's selection of phones and services is still quite poor. Why do you think all the large billing and distribution companies are EU or Asian? That's where the real money is. Half a billion high-spending EU consumers, 2 billion high-spending Asian consumers. The USA can muster up 300m low-payers, and many of them are effectively locked into multi-year hire-purchase schemes by incumbent and regional cellcos. Just not that attractive a proposition.

Also, I believe that the "Japan" thing you are rferring to is, again, not based on sales, but in fact the recent impression monitoring and market research by Admob (now part of Google). The same surveyors also found that only 22% of Japanese mobile consumers wanted to carry a "smartphone", with just under 50% saying that a simple call phone was "enough". Also, the recent Japanese growth of 350% in mobile Safari impressions is coming from a long period of virtually no growth, and a tiny installed base. It's easy to show 350% growth in one quarter if your installed base is tiny. Maintaining that for a full year will prove more difficult. Even with the sales boost, Japan's Iphone consumers still represent only 3% of total global Iphone consumers. By comparison, the UK accounts for 8%.

I'm sure you're going to counter these statements by some ill-informed personal assertion without anything in the way of links of reason. However, I am done with this line of debate. The links speak for themselves.

It's the #4 smart phone in the world. Not too bad for only being out for ~4 months.

http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-Aug-092.pdf

Oh, and the citation:

http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-Aug-092.pdf

The Pre is not exactly selling like hot cakes.

Nonsense. How is this insightful? Not only is the Pre selling well, it has already made it to the top 5 list of smart phones and webOS is now at 4% market share since release. http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-Aug-092.pdf