I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. In fact I was going to mention in this morning’s post that Apple’s just asking for the FTC to come take a look. They have taken the stick out of Flurry’s hands and are now swinging it at the beehive that is the U.S. Federal Government.

While Flurry definitely made a serious error by pissing off Steve Jobs, Apple doesn’t want to go and do the same with the bigger kids on the block.

Federal antitrust regulators reportedly plan to investigate whether Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) fledgling iAd mobile advertising network unfairly restricts rivals like Google from extending their own mobile marketing efforts across the iPhone platform. Citing sources familiar with the probe, The Financial Times reports the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice are presently in talks to determine which unit will spearhead an investigation into Apple’s mobile ad initiatives in the wake of the computing giant’s decision to rewrite its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to effectively block third-party analytics firms from collecting iPhone application user or device data to improve ad targeting.

Apple has now pissed of AdMob, which we all know is now owned by Google, a much bigger, and badder,  boy on the block. And as a business, the only one scarier than the FTC, is the IRS!

The developer license update is widely perceived as an attempt to stymie mobile advertising network AdMob, acquired by Apple’s archrival Google for $750 million following an FTC antitrust investigation into the deal. "This change threatens to decrease–or even eliminate–revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers," wrote AdMob founder Omar Hamoui on the firm’s blog Wednesday. "The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money.  And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well." Hamoui added AdMob plans to speak to Apple "to express our concerns about the impact of these terms."

So bring it on. Us little guys will let the big guys fight it out and see who is left standing.  Since the release of the iPhone, Apple has been pushing the “antitrust” envelope. Everywhere from the proprietary iTunes store, to the AT&T only network, to the ban on analytics, Apple has been seeing how far they can take it.

So, “Let’s get ready to rumble……”

Well according to Fierce Mobile Content, it is official. The following language is in section 3.3.9 of the revised developer agreement with iOS 4.

“You and Your Applications may not collect, use, or disclose to any third party, user or device data without prior user consent, and then only under the following conditions:

“The collection, use or disclosure is necessary in order to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application. For example, without Apple’s prior written consent, You may not use third party analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party for aggregation, processing, or analysis.

“The collection, use or disclosure is for the purpose of serving advertising to Your Application; is provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads (for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent); and the disclosure is limited to UDID, user location data, and other data specifically designated by Apple as available for advertising purposes.”

It’s still not very clear to me, but one thing is.

may not collect, use, or disclose to any third party user of device data

Running a software app on your servers that provides info on how your app is being used is NOT a violation of this provision. It is  not clear though if Apple has a problem with the tracking of handset type and OS version when that data is not shared. I assume not since developers often need these details to tailor their apps for specific handsets and capabilities. But if that is the case, we will simply remove that data from being collected in AppClix. Knowing what OS they are on, or what handset is not really that important.

You may not use third party analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party for aggregation, processing, or analysis.

More details from the Wall Street Journal can be found here.

In the next few days we are going to being beta testing AppClix standard, our single server, developer installed solution for iPhone app analytics.

Since Apple and Steve Jobs’ have made it “Crystal Clear” that they do NOT want analytics data stored on a third party service, we have decided to move away from the shared hosted model completely, except for demo, development and free trial purposes. It will not be used in production applications.

AppClix standard can be installed on either a Windows server, or under Linux running Mono. Using one of the Cloud providers such as Amazon EC2 or GoGrid, you can get a server for less than $100.00 per month. You can also get physical servers from The Planet and other providers for close to that.

Using AppClix on your own controlled infrastructure is no different that having your own application that keeps track of your users and how they use your app. Apple would have a hard time saying otherwise. We are simply a software vendor, and do not have access in any way to your data.

What is bothering Apple is the fact that free analytics providers are harvesting your users’ data and using it as a product to sell to others. They are creating reports and getting trends from your data that is shared with companies completely unaffiliated with you. Announcing that the iPad was showing up in their analytics was purely a way to bring more attention to Flurry and get free PR. Unfortunately it backfired. They got too much attention. http://blog.flurry.com/bid/30019/Apple-Tablet-The-Second-Stage-Media-Booster-Rocket

This is why those services are free. You can be sure that since Apple has specificall banned there developers from using a service that does this, that companies like Flurry will start to charge for their service. Well when you start paying for it, you realize it’s not really worth the price compared to other paid solutions such as AppClix.

And all this is assuming that Apple lets developers use the service that stores their data at all.

We are offering the AppClix license as a one time purchase, or as a monthly lease for those developers that want to start off with a smaller investment. We are also offering “pre-built” Amazon EC2 AMIs that can simple be “turned-on” and used. All you need to do is setup an Amazon EC2 account for free, and you pay them a monthly fee for the server and our license. All billing is done through them, and you can be running in minutes.

For more info on our offerings, visit our iPhone Analytics Pricing page, or contact us.