Weekly news recap – April 22, 2016

The latest news of the week. A round-up of the news over the past week so you can be sure of staying up to date with what’s happening in the world.

Apple will offer a paid promotion of applications in the App Store

According to some reliable sources Apple has a “secret team”, which is looking into possible changes in the App Store. Among other things, the experts are thinking about a modification of the search results in the App Store. The idea is as follows: the developers will be able to pay to have their products displayed at the top of the search result.

This change will significantly influence the search results in the App Store. For example, for some fee, the developer of navigation maps will be able to place its product in the search results for the query “maps” above the popular Google Maps and Waze. Such a move is beneficial not only for developers, but also for Apple, which will create a new source of income.

According to Bloomberg, about a hundred people are working over the innovation, including engineers from advertising service iAd. The head of the iAd Todd Teresi was appointed as a Project Manager. It is also noteworthy that in January this year, Apple has promises to offer new job vacancies to employees of iAd App Network, which will be closed in June 30, 2016.

Apple earned $40 million on the devices recycling

According to the report of the company for 2015 Apple has recycled more than 38 thousand tons of materials. This includes precious metals, on which Cupertino earned more than $ 40 million, considering that the market price for ounce is $1229. In addition to the gold, Apple got from older devices more than 25 thousand tons of copper, aluminum and zinc. All of these materials are used in the chip manufacturing for devices – in aprticular, gold has a low electrical conductivity and less subject to corrosion than copper. Fairphone resource also estimated that every Apple smartphone has estimated about 30 mg of gold.

The last presentation of the company showed that environmental protection takes not the last place in the life of Apple. Which, by the way, is already preparing for Earth Day with its campaign to raise funds for the World Wildlife Fund – appropriate banners and offers are already posted on the official website and on the App Store homepage.

Earthquake in Japan may harm the iPhone 7 development

On Saturday, a powerful earthquake in the prefecture of Kumamoto significantly harmed the production facilities of international corporations. And Apple also suffered. The fact that cataclysm affected Sony’s plants, which is engaged in manufacturing sensors for the iPhone camera. In addition, the Japanese – only corporation that makes light sensitive matrix for the Apple smartphone. Unfortunately, both of Sony factories are located directly in the proximity to the epicenter of the earthquake.

According to analysts, the delay in the production on the part of the Japanese corporation can significantly affect the Apple launch schedule of new iPhone 7. Lately Cupertino tried to minimize these risks by increasing the number of suppliers. But in this case, this scheme doesn’t work – Sony is the only company that is engaged in CMOS sensors.

Apple is preparing to dramatically change the App Store

One of the biggest assets of Apple is its App Store. Already running for many years, now it seems to be time to remodel completely and introduce new forms of integration. To carry out this work, Apple has already highlighted a 100 technical staff so that the new App Store will become a reality soon. In addition to the change in the search, Apple also wants to change the way users navigate and use the App Store, improving usability and how content and applications are available.

The App Store is present since 2008 and has more than 1.5 million applications available. Since it was launched have already been downloaded 100 billion applications and its importance is great, which generated a considerable part of the 20 billion dollars that the company declared for services.

Apple announced the date of the WWDC 2016

Nobody expected and here once again – Intelligent Assistant Siri leaking Apple’s secret information even before its release. Last night, for the question “When is WWDC 2016” Siri began to give an exact answer – from June 13 to 17 in San Francisco. Later this information was confirmed in Cupertino, launching the website with registration and tickets sale. The price – $1,600. Registration will be open from 10 am Pacific time on April 22.

On this event will be featured iOS 10 and new OS X, which is likely to be renamed to MacOS and much more.

App Store brings twice as much revenue than Google Play

For Apple and Google, the number of downloads and earnings from the App Stores is critical. Nevertheless, between the amount of downloaded programs and the actual earned amount from their sales, there is a huge difference. This was particularly noticeable in the first quarter of this year.

According to analyst company App Annie, for the first three months of 2016 from the Google Play have been downloaded almost twice as many applications than from the App Store. Although App Store brought 90% higher revenue.

The number of downloads from the App Store and Google Play in the first quarter of 2016

Revenue earned from the App Store and Google Play in the first quarter of 2016

According to the report, for the year Apple profits from the sale of applications in China increased by 2.2 times, mainly due to the in-game purchases. The main role is played by “a legion of Chinese gamers”, thanks to which profits from sales in China exceeded revenues in Japan.

Apple has released the second public beta version of iOS 9.3.2, OS X 10.11.5, watchOS 2.2.1 and tvOS 9.2.1

Apple has provided developers and registered participants in the beta program the opportunity to install and test a new beta version of iOS 9.3.2 operating system, OS X 10.11.5, watchOS 2.2.1 and tvOS 9.2.1. Updates are available for download.

All four updates will not bring any significant changes to the functionality or appearance of the operating system and aimed exclusively at the elimination of the existing bugs.