According to Bloomberg Agency, software developers creating mobile games for Apple iPhone operating systems will be able to sell to users subscriptions to their games for the certain period.

In April 2011 Apple presented the service that allows iPhone app developers to introduce a paid subscription for regular updates into their apps.  At this Apple charges 30% from the profit. Some publishers of e-magazines and newspapers have already offered their readers the similar periodic subscription for updating the content.

The Big Fish Games Company became the first game development company that obtained from Apple the right to offer the access to all its releases for $6.99 per month. So far users have paid gaming apps only once when they download it to their devices.

However, the service has got one clear drawback – if the downloaded game requires the Internet connection only for downloading updates, the subscribed gaming service presupposes the wi-fi network availability at least. Moreover, most popular games at the App Store are available either for free or for some small price (for example, the price for the application Angry Birds is $ 0.99), so that’s still a question whether user are ready to pay for the gaming service.

Nowadays software development services have received another one. Starting the launch of the iOS 5 platform and the iCloud service deeply integrated into it, Apple set up a special website iCloud.com. Now users can enter the new iCloud.com and create an iCloud account using their own Apple ID, the identifier used for purchasing in the Apple App Store.
After entering the system, the user will be offered to choose a language and a time zone, then they will have to choose from five options. A user can check its mail, view his contacts, calendars, use the function «Find My iPhone» and get the access to the web version of iWork.

With starting iCloud, the documents from the Apple iWork application for iOS (page layouts, tables, presentations) will be stored online and will be constantly updated. Thanks to this, users will be able to get access to the latest versions of documents irrespective of the device they are using at the moment.

The iCloud service will replace its predecessor MobileMe. In comparison with MobileMe, the usage of iCloud will be free for all iOS 5 and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion users who will be offered 5 5GB of free ‘cloud space’ (additional space is paid).

Software developers have been testing iCloud together with the apps for iOS 5 and Lion for the last several months. At present iCloud is available for wide usage.

The debut of iCloud took place simultaneously with the release of the iOS 5, however, iCloud started functioning a few hours earlier. The new operation system iOS 5 is available for downloading for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users.

Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and other famous people from Apple often call their products ‘magic’ and in some respects they are right. In many cases Apple is ahead of the market for years, it manages to create really incredible devices that change the world — isn’t it magic?

Do you need examples? Here you are. Let’s remember iPad — What’s this? What for? Who needs this ‘iPod on steroids’? And it turned out we need it! Step by step this strange toy is being transformed into an extremely convenient and user friendly tool for professionals and can be a gaming console, an internet tablet, an e-book and many other things as well.  The fantasy of iPad app developers is not limited and it means that iPads opportunities also. Isn’t it magic?

Or let’s take, for example, iPhone. Look at the market of smartphones today: Android, webOS, Windows Phone, many various sensor devices, Nokia smartphones based on Microsoft OS — they are the result of releasing the first Apple phone in 2007. Without it today the market of would be completely different. Isn’t it magic?

Last year Apple presented MacBook Air of the second generation and this year Intel has introduced the concept of ultrabooks which are Windows analogues of that very ‘air’ macbook. Plagiarism? Piracy? No, that’s the natural development of the market when consumers win and the Apple magic was the impulse for this development.

Thus, every software development company tries to conquer this magic and design and develop something new, exciting and magical.

Many iPhone users complained that their alarms hadn’t gone off on the first days of New Year. People all over the world faced New Year with a malfunction of their iPhone devices, which entailed disruptions in working schedules and holiday plans.
This bug was reported to have affected iPhone4 and earlier versions of Apple’s handsets with software updates and caused a glitch only for single set alarms. Apple administration admits the existence of software errors and advises to set recurring alarms to avoid iPhone malfunctioning until this software bug is absolutely tackled by Apple’s developers.
The iPhone owners express their outrage in various social networks and blogs complaining that they had to bear excessive expenses for travel fares or were late for work because they had failed to wake up on time. The users are even more irritated as it was not the first time that a similar glitch took place. In November when clocks changed in order to switch to a daylight saving mode, many iPhone users were affected by the same malfunction in the gadget’s alarm and overslept their planned raising hour, which caused lots of inconvenience.
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said that the company was working on tackling the problem and promised that it would be fixed by 3rd January, though some users still claim that their iPhone alarm doesn’t go off. Despite the recent events iPhones still remain one of the dominating powers on the mobile phone and mobile app development market.

The distribution of Android OS is going on with a frightening speed. Already at the beginning of August, according to the general director of Google Erick Schmidt, the number of daily activations in the world was about 20,000. Since that time, the popularity of Android among the users of mobile devices has increased by 50%. According to the recent data, published in Twitter by the vice-president of Google Andy Rubin, now in the world about 300,000 Android smartphones are activated. This tendency can also be followed in the Android market where mobile application developers place their apps and the number of them is really high.

In comparison with this, every day 157,000 iPhones find their owners. Apple reported that the October sales of the company’s gadgets including iPhone smartphones, iPads and iPod Touch were 230,000.

Thus, Google has overtaken Apple mobile devices all together.

If the Android based smartphones are sold with the same speed, in a month the sales will reach 9 mln smartphones. Annual sales will be equal to 108 mln gadgets.

By 2012 Google platform is likely to become the dominating platform in the world.

Soon after QNX purchase and BlackBerry 6.0 OS release it was announced that new changes are about to come. BlackBerry mobile devices are going to be enhanced as a result of RIM’s collaboration with The Astonishing Tribe (TAT).
BlackBerry manufacturer strives to catch up with its main competitors on the mobile devices market – Apple and Google. Currently iPhones and Androids are more desirable among mobile users who prefer these devices twice more often than business-oriented BlackBerry smartphones. Thus, BlackBerry producer lays its hopes on the new partner in an attempt to gain enough share on this lucrative market and raise its sales.
TAT is a Swedish company that specializes in the development of visually appealing and intuitive user interfaces for various mobile gadgets. It has extensive experience in working with such well-known manufacturers of mobile devices as Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. The company has also worked on UI solutions for Androids.
New BlackBerry solution is mainly aimed at developing 3D-based design and enhancing user interfaces. The mobile manufacturer believes that this software company will help it raise BlackBerry brand popularity. Recently RIM has also introduced some changes to its app store, which gives better opportunities to mobile app developers to showcase their BlackBerry-based apps.

The American company Apple is accused of violating the copyright law in China where the local manufacturer of computer monitors claims that Apple doesn’t have rights for using the trademark iPad. The Chinese company Proview Technlogy Co claims that it registered the brand name iPad in China in January 2000 and since that time it has been using it at the Chinese market.

According to Beijing News, the Chinese company has all the required documents and the local player is planning to protect its right for the brand. Apple started selling its tablet computer iPad in China last month, although ‘grey’ iPads have been selling in China practically from the moment of iPad release in the USA.

Some reliable sources say that earlier the companies negotiated the issue of transferring the trademark but didn’t reach an agreement. Now the reasonable price for the trademark iPad is about $800,000. In the official statement Proview Technology states that the decision on launching the sales of tablets under the name iPad was illegal from Apple’s side.

Nobody knows how it will influence the device itself but mobile application developers have already liked this device and have already created hundreds of devices for iPad.

Now users can reproduce Flash content even on Apple iPhone 4. The port was developed by Comex which is also the author of the JailbreakMe tool, reports the Redmond Pie website.

Flash plug-in can be installed only on jailbroken iPhones. The developer of the plug-in tested its efficiency only on iPhone 4, however, it doesn’t exclude the possibility that it will work also on the devices of the previous generations and on iPod touch. The installation of the plug-in is performed in several steps with the installation of software on the computer and on the mobile device. It can be difficult for simple users.

Apple blocks the usage of unofficial applications offered by mobile application developers as well as the launch of Flash Player on their devices because, according to the company, it’s not good enough for this (high requirements to hardware, high consumption of battery charge). Earlier, Flash was ported on iPad which doesn’t have this technology officially.

If Apple allows official porting of flash player, iPhone application developers will be able to produce even more interesting applications.

According to some experts, Apple pays more attention to its financial ecosystem rather than Google. At the same time the analytics from Royal Pingdom say the whole concept of Android presupposes openness and wide availability mainly of free applications.

The number of mobile applications at the Android Market is more than 10 000 and mobile application developers are going are increasing this number practically every day. Only some part of these applications is paid.

Recently the Internet has become flooded with hacking systems for paid Android mobile applications. “That’s logical when people want something but can’t buy it, they simply steal it”, say in Pingdom.

Google seems to understand it also as a few weeks ago they announced the new security system of the Android Market which provides additional security methods for paid applications. On the other hand, for expanding the payment options of the Android Market Google has entered into the negotiations with the internet auction Ebay owning the payment system PayPal.

Apple has updated practically all iPod players. The new iPod shuffle got a more compact case and a touch control system. The built-in battery provides up to 15 hours of autonomous work. iPod shuffle of the fourth generation will cost $49.

iPod nano has also reduced in size considerably. This player has become 46% smaller and 42% lighter. Moreover, iPod nano got a sensor display with multitouch technology support and the time of autonomous work of 24 hours. iPod nano of the fourth generation will cost from $149 to $179, depending on the memory size.

iPod touch has become more compact and thinner. This model got the sensor screen Retina Display and the processor А4, similar to the one in the new iPhone. The main innovation in the new iPod touch is built-in cameras. The forward-mounted one is intended for video while the rear one allows recording HD-video. The cost of iPod touch in the USA will be from $229 to $399, depending on the memory size.

The main innovation in iTunes 10 is a built-in musical social network Ping which Apple calls a sort of hybrid of Facebook/Twitter and iTunes. Ping shows the activities of the users as well as his friends. Ping has started working with the new version of iTunes which is already available at the official site of Apple.

No matter that all these devices have become smaller in size, mobile application developers will definitely increase the number of mobile applications for them.