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Flurry Blamed for Change in iPhone SDK Analytics Terms of Service

Tuesday June 1, 2010 7:53 pm PDT by Arnold Kim

One of the recent changes in Apple's iPhone SDK terms of service was limitation on collecting and sending analytics data. Many had speculated that Apple may be trying to limit competition from other ad networks, however, Steve Jobs is blaming analytics company Flurry for the change.

According to Jobs, it was a privacy issue:

Well we learned this really interesting thing. Some company called Flurry had data on devices that we were using on our campus -- new devices. They were getting this info by getting developers to put software in their apps that sent info back to this company! So we went through the roof. It's violating our privacy policies, and it's pissing us off! So we said we're only going to allow analytics that don't give our device info -- only for the purpose of advertising.

The incident that Jobs was referring to is likely a report from January in which Flurry pinpointed approximately 50 "tablet devices" that were being used on Apple campus.

Using Flurry Analytics, the company identified approximately 50 devices that match the characteristics of Apple's rumored tablet device. Because Flurry could reliably "place" these devices geographically on Apple's Cupertino campus, we have a fair level of confidence that we are observing a group of pre-release tablets in testing. Testing of this device increased dramatically in January, with observed signs of life as early as October of last year. Apple appears to be going through its cycle of testing and polish, which is expected from any hardware or software company as it nears launch.