market

Google is rebuilding Android Market.

The Internet giant, looking to create a more comprehensive source for movies, apps, music, and e-books, is folding Google Music and Google eBookstore into one store, now renamed Google Play, according to Jamie Rosenberg, director of digital content for Google. The changes go into effect today.

Google Play marks a radical departure from Android Market, which has been a fixture of the company's mobile platform since the debut of Android more than three years ago. The move is a tacit admission that offering apps, games, and e-books--the main features of Android Market--isn't enough … Read more

Is the Apple the U.S. job market's savior?

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company today released the findings of a study conducted by the Analysis Group that found that it has either "created or supported" 514,000 jobs across the U.S. That figure includes 304,000 current jobs across a wide array of industries, including engineering, manufacturing, and transportation. The balance comes through the so-called "iOS app economy."

"Throughout our history, Apple has created entirely new products--and entirely new industries--by focusing on innovation," Apple said today on the new "Job Creation&… Read more

For Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, stasis is bliss.

In February's worldwide usage statistics, IE largely held at bay its top challengers, Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome, according to Net Applications' latest measurements. IE has done so for a few months now, a big improvement for Microsoft compared to years of losing share.

IE dipped from 53.0 percent of global usage in January to 52.8 percent in February among desktop browsers; Firefox and Chrome stayed level at 20.9 percent and 18.9 percent, respectively. Safari popped up a notch from 4.9 percent to … Read more

NEW YORK--Facebook is on a tear ahead of its IPO. Today here at fMC, its first-ever marketing conference, it announced a number of features to help brands better engage with their audiences.

The social network hopes to drive advertisers away from broadcasting static messages, instead encouraging them to build dynamic conversational marketing pieces. While conversational media isn't exactly a new concept (companies like Federated Media have been doing it for years), the scale and personality that Facebook adds is unprecedented.

The goal as planned is for brands to be perceived as people who engage in meaningful dialogs. While many … Read more

It's that time of year again: tax season. For many of us, the constant visits to the IRS Where's My Refund site are in full swing, checking to see when our refund is going to be deposited into our bank account.

Early last year the IRS released a mobile app, allowing people to track their refund status while on the go.

From the mobile app users can track the status of their refund, view videos on the IRS YouTube channel, request old tax records, and contact the IRS directly with any questions.

To track the status of your … Read more

SecondMarket, which runs a market for trading stocks in private companies, is moving into regional and community banks.

That's quite a shift for the New York company, which since 2008 has created a booming business making a marketplace for people looking to unload private shares of hot tech startups such as Twitter, Yelp, and Facebook.

Surely the driving force behind this strategy is the resurgent tech IPO market. More specifically, Facebook, which is aiming to go public this Spring in what is expected to be the biggest Internet IPO in history. Facebook has been the most actively traded stock … Read more

Android has gotten a lot of negative buzz for its susceptibility to malware. But a new study from Juniper Networks suggests that iOS could also be at risk.

Scanning hundreds of thousands of applications across the mobile landscape for its 2011 Mobile Threats Report, Juniper uncovered more than 28,000 pieces of malware last year, a rise of 155 percent from 2010.

As expected, Android was the post popular target.

Malware aimed at Google's mobile OS surged to 13,000 samples at the end of last year from only 400 in June, an increase of 3,325 percent. The … Read more

Setting a lock code on your smartphone is highly recommended to protect your personal information, but sometimes a lock code can be a bit inconvenient.

What if you could do away with the device lock code, instead locking only the apps you want to keep private? An Android app named App Lock let's you do just that. That's not to say you can't use App Lock in addition to the lock code on your device, adding an extra level of security to your information.

App Lock, free in the Android Market, allows you to set a lock … Read more

Apple's iOS share of Web traffic is higher than Mac OS X's, according to a study Chitika conducted across its online advertising network.

Chitika announced today that iOS has surpassed Mac OS X in total Web market share for the first time. The swap occurred this month, as iOS hit 8.15 percent, and Mac OS X slipped to 7.96 percent.

"To quantify this study, Chitika Insights analyzed several data sets composed of a series of US traffic taken from August 2011 to February 2012 out of the Chitika Ad Network (covering hundreds of millions of … Read more