Here is your daily Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock news and rumors for December 9, 2010. It now appears that the Mac App Store will not make it in time for the holiday season, with a new report that puts the digital storefront’s release into the middle of January. In other news, key staff has left Apple’s iPhone Game Technologies division, leaving some to question who will fill their shoes. Finally, Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) releases a new app for their casual and social games web portal Pogo.com on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
Mac App Store Pushed to January 2011: Mac enthusiasts excited for next week’s rumored release of Snow Leopard OS X update 10.6.6 and the launch of the new Mac App Store for Apple’s desktop and laptop computers need to prepare for disappointment. According to Jim Dalrymle of The Loop, Mac owners will have to wait until January 2011 for the new expansion of Apple’s profitable digital storefront. Dalrymple thinks that Apple’s announcement of launching the Mac App Store within 90 days of October’s “Back to the Mac” event means that the company will be stretching out their launch window as much as possible to guarantee a content-rich launch. His sources inside Apple are corroborating that theory.
iPhone, iPod and iPad Video Game Head Leaves : After one year with the company, the man who helped propel Apple’s handheld devices to worldwide success as gaming platforms has left the company to pursue independent game development. Game designer Graeme Devine was hired by Apple as a consultant and overseer for the development of the iOS platform for game creation. Devine described his role with the iPhone Game Technologies division as the person whose was to “basically make gaming on the iOS devices fantastic” by helping optimize software to take advantage of the device’s disparate technologies like motion-based and multi-touch control. Apple did not comment on Devine’s departure and neither he nor his former employer have said who will fill the vacant position with the company.
Pogo.com Games Come to Apple Items Thanks to Electronic Arts: Casual and family-friendly web game portal and Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) subsidiary Pogo.com will be bringing selections from their addictive library of video games to Apple’s iOS platforms in the immediate future. A Bloomberg article announcing the launch of a Pogo app, available as a free download from the App Store, gives iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users access to games like Sweet Tooth 2, Turbo 21, Mahjong Safari, and Poppit. These games are playable for free with ad support. The app also supports Pogo.com’s premium subscription service Club Pogo. Annual subscriptions, which are $39.99 and provide access to subscriber-only content, and Pogo profiles are supported across the new app, Pogo.com, and Pogo’s Facebook portal. The move will continue to strengthen EA’s prospects in both the social and web game markets. Electronic Arts announced yesterday that they are going to be offering paid Pogo games through the newly announced Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Chrome store as well.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
