Apple keeps third-party analytics ban in revised developer rules

The new regulations were published in the wake of CEO Steve Jobs’ appearance at the All Thing Digital D8 conference last week, in which he explained that Apple’s position on third-party analytics was prompted by one company’s decision to use its analytics platform to peek at the iPad while it was still in testing.

Jobs told the conference: “If a developer needs to put some analytics in their app that sends some information out to an advertiser so they can make some money… they can do that. But they can’t send data out to an analytics firm who’s going to sell it to make money and publish it to tell everybody that we have devices on our campus we don’t want people to know about.”

The full wording of the relevant section of the Apple development agreement is as follows:

The second part of the agreement – where it says data can be provided to “an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads” – should come as a relief to companies like Medialets and Millennial Media, which operate both advertising and analytics platforms, though the more pure-play analytics companies like Flurry – the target of Jobs’ iPad ire – may struggle to operate within the scope of the rules.

Also seemingly barred under the agreement are companies like AdMob, a potential rival to Apple’s own iAd platform, but which is owned by Google and thus falls foul of Apple’s independence test (Google develops the Android mobile operating system).

In a blog post yesterday, AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui said: “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.”

He adds: “We’ll be speaking to Apple to express our concerns.”