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.

Once again I make clear. AppClix is not a third party analytics software that sends device data to a third party for aggregation, processing or analysis.

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

Tags: appclix, flurry, apple, iphone+analytics, apple+third-party+analytics

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 9:16 am and is filed under Mobile Analytics, iPhone Analytics, iPad Analytics, iPad. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.