More Evidence Suggests That iPhone App Store Doesn't Really Sell That Much...

from the ain't-looking-so-good dept

Among people who really, really want to believe that there's a huge market out there for selling content directly, the iPhone App Store has recently become "Exhibit A." The thinking is that all you have to do is slap together that perfect Steve Jobsian user interface that just makes it so easy to buy, and people will start forking over their money. It was part of David Carr's argument when we debated newspaper micropayments. Except... there really isn't that much evidence to support even the claim that the iPhone App Store really sells that much. We were a bit skeptical of the early reports that people claimed offered "proof" that people would buy all sorts of apps. Then, earlier this year, we suggested that it was an early warning sign that so many apps on iPhones were never used at all or were used once and abandoned. Basically, that meant that people would test stuff out when they first got the phone, but sales would likely dwindle after that. More evidence was provided by an analyst firm that figured out how little money Apple was making from app sales (which is fine -- Apple is in it just to sell hardware, but it suggested that app sales weren't quite as amazing as people were claiming).

Newsweek is presenting some more evidence -- albeit anecdotal -- that the iPhone App Store isn't making very many people very much money at all. There are, certainly, a few folks at the top who are doing okay, but for most people there just aren't that many sales -- or the cost of getting those sales greatly outweighs the revenue that came in from them.

This isn't to say that the iPhone App Store is a failure. In fact, I'd argue it's been a huge success in making the iPhone significantly more valuable. But as evidence that there's a huge market out there of people willing to pay for content if it's just packaged up nicely? There's just not enough there to be convincing.

28 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Apple's Google Voice Rejection Wakes Up A Dormant FCC; Investigation Begins

from the whoops dept

We've had a bunch of stories about Apple's rather arbitrary nature in rejecting iPhone apps it doesn't like -- including ones where it claims that they're not allowed because they compete with Apple. However, Apple's recent decision to reject Google's Voice application didn't just attract general public interest in Apple's policies, it appears to have awoken the latest crop of FCC bosses. Yes, the FCC has requested more info from Apple, AT&T and Google concerning Apple's rejection of the Google app. I wonder how the random Apple drone who made that decision is feeling right now?

Either way, this isn't good for anyone. The FCC's reasoning is that it:

"has a mission to foster a competitive wireless marketplace, protect and empower consumers, and promote innovation and investment."

That's actually a bit of a stretch on the FCC's actual mandate. And as ridiculous as I think Apple's actions are here, having the FCC get involved doesn't seem good for anyone either. The FCC shouldn't be involved in deciding what applications get put on phones. Apple's decision has angered a bunch of people, with some swearing off the iPhone because of it. In those cases, those people have other options and other phones to go to. The situation doesn't require the FCC to get involved. It should just require Apple coming to its senses and getting rid of its silly policy of outright rejections of apps it doesn't like.

77 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Apple Says No To Google Voice On The iPhone

from the shameless dept

As we wait to hear if Spotify's mobile app gets approved (I heard a rumor that it was, but have seen no proof yet), we hear of another questionable Apple iPhone rejection: the Google Voice iPhone app has been forbidden from the iPhone, though the reasons aren't entirely clear. Still, it does show that Apple doesn't care who you are, or how big a name. If it doesn't like your app, too bad. Once again, this seems like an argument for why more open solutions will win out in the end. Not only do users not have to worry about arbitrary rejections like this, but innovation will happen much faster on open platforms where each innovation doesn't need to be approved by a mercurial secret cabal.

64 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Will Apple Allow Spotify On The iPhone?

from the one-to-watch dept

Having used Spotify a bit, I can definitely see how some people think it could potentially replace iTunes completely. It basically acts like an iTunes that has access to millions of songs at no additional cost (and, yes, it's all licensed and legal). The songs are streamed, but you almost never notice it. It really does feel just like iTunes, while also having "Pandora-like" features for creating specialized stations or sharing others' playlists. Unfortunately, it's only available in the UK for now, though the rumor is it will be available in the US before the end of the year. However, where things could get really impressive is with Spotify's mobile app. For a few months, there's been a YouTube video of Spotify Mobile on Android:

The demo highlights the fact that you can sync any playlist for "offline" play, solving the biggest question about weak mobile signals on the go, or how you use it on a plane or somewhere without wireless access. With offline syncing, it's basically everything that an iPod can do -- with access to 6 million songs without having to pay for each individual song. But, of course, Android is still a limited platform. The big fish these days is the iPhone App Store, and Spotify has now submitted an iPhone app for approval, which raises all sorts of questions. With Apple's history of rather arbitrary rejections -- including ones for things Apple has deemed "competitive" -- will it block Spotify as a rather direct competitor to iTunes? That would be very unfortunate, and again demonstrate the risk of a closed platform.

That said, the initial reviews of the iPhone app seem quite strong. Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired loves the syncing feature, and warns that "you'd have to pry it out of my cold, dead iPhone before I'll delete it from my phone." Meanwhile Music Ally points out that Spotify has uploaded a video of the iPhone app as well: It really does look pretty slick. So now the ball's in Apple's court. I have no idea if Spotify can survive as a business (and I suspect that the royalty rates the music industry wants will make that difficult), but it is great to see more innovation in the space. Now we get to see how Apple feels about that sort of innovation.

15 Comments | Leave a Comment..

The Reality: Not As Many Actual Apps In The iPhone App Store As You're Told

from the pumping-up-the-numbers dept

Years ago, when I worked for a company that was trying to do digital distribution of software apps, we had a competitor that used to claim that it had agreements to distribute 300,000 apps. We, on the other hand, had agreements for more like 3,000 apps, which certainly made us look at lot smaller. The problem? There weren't even 300,000 apps out there at the time. The other company had done some deals with clip art providers, and the counted each piece of clip art as an "app." But, in the numbers game, it really looked good (and bad for us).

I'm reminded of that story as Om Malik digs a bit into Apple's claim of 65,000 apps in its iPhone App Store, and points out how misleading this is, because a few providers are uploading bulk apps. These are really one app but they're differentiated by pulling different content from the web in each implementation:

These are typically local search or travel apps written by a single publisher. Molinker is one such example. It pulls content from Wikipedia and Flickr for a country or travel destination and renders it for viewing offline. Molinker offers more than 800 of such applications, at 99 cents a pop. Another bulk apps provider is GP Apps; it has 380-plus apps, each of which essentially takes a search word and marries it to Google Maps.

In reality, each of these is one app, with a single distinct instruction concerning what content to pull. But Apple gets to count them as a separate app to puff up the numbers (which is useful, given the growing competition from other phone app stores). But Om is correct. Such apps should be counted as a single app and the numbers of apps in the store should reflect that. Otherwise, someone could (for example) create an RSS-reader type app, where each one pulls a specific RSS feed. Then upload each one with the millions of different RSS feeds out there, and you could boost the app store's app count to million in no time. But that would be incredibly misleading.

26 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Do Morons In A Hurry Play Games On Their iPhones?

from the use-in-commerce? dept

A whole bunch of people have been sending in the story of a guy named Tim Langdell, who claims to own the trademark to the word "edge" when its used in the name of any video game, and has used that to force a popular iPhone game, called EDGE, out of the app store. As the article points out, Langdell's last game was released in 1994, which makes you wonder if the name is still being used in commerce (a requirement for a trademark claim). And, of course, there's the question of confusion. Considering how few people have heard of Langdell's company, was there really any chance that "a moron in a hurry" would confuse a fun block game with Langdell's title's like "Snoopy: The Case of the Missing Blanket." Kotaku points out that Langdell appears to spend a lot more time these days talking to people about how he owns the word "edge" in any video game than producing or selling video games...

17 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Apple Drops Another Arbitrary Rejection On An E-Book App, Because Somebody Might Read The Kama Sutra With It

from the know-it-when-i-see-it dept

Apple's double standards in deciding which iPhone apps to reject have hit plenty of developers. Apparently it's fine to access any sort of content through the device's web browser, but if you have an app that accesses anything Apple deems objectionable, it's obscene and therefore blocked. The latest rejection along these lines is of an e-book reader which lets people download and read books from Project Gutenberg, a trove of digitized public-domain works. One book in its collection is the ancient Indian sex guide The Kama Sutra; in Apple's eyes, the ability to access the book from the app is grounds enough to reject it. The app is simply designed to access Project Gutenberg, and users select which titles they want to read. The developer says he wasn't even aware that The Kama Sutra was in Gutenberg's archives, but he also points out that several other e-book apps can access it, while, of course, it's also available on the web. The guy has now created a version of the app that specifically blocks access to The Kama Sutra, in hopes Apple will deem it acceptable. Fair enough, since he just wants to get the app out there. But it doesn't make Apple's arbitrary approval process -- and the stupidity it regularly displays -- any better. Update: And, once again, following a bit of press coverage, Apple caves. Still, it really shouldn't take press coverage to force Apple to fix situations like this.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

62 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Will Apple's Low Revenues Slow Down The App Store Phenomenon?

from the loss-leader-redux dept

Apple triumphantly announced a little while back that iPhone and iPod Touch users had downloaded more than a billion applications from its App Store in under nine months. But a research firm said last week that it estimated Apple had only earned a maximum of $45 million for itself from all those downloads. The figure was extrapolated from research into the pricing of apps, and isn't based on anything Apple has disclosed about App Store revenues, but it does illustrate how Apple's using the App Store: just like the iTunes Music Store, as a means to drive hardware sales rather than generate significant direct revenues. The App Store adds value to iPhones and iPod Touch devices, making the hardware more desirable, just like iTunes does for other iPod devices. That's the real value for Apple, and is measured in strong device sales, rather than direct revenues.

Will these figures and their implication put the brakes on the app store craze that's tearing through the mobile industry? If Apple's already garnered more than a billion applications, and only has a max of $45 million to show for it, it would seem to call into question the widely held belief among mobile operators and other device vendors that app stores offer a valuable new direct revenue stream. Perhaps Apple's experience demonstrates that the real value of app stores is in extending the capabilities of hardware with new software and services, and using this to make the hardware more attractive, and in turn driving sales. But will the other players see app stores in the same way, or try to exploit them as revenue streams? Apple's shown with the iTunes Music Store that it is willing to use loss leaders as a tool to sell hardware. Will operators and other vendors be prepared to do the same?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

21 Comments | Leave a Comment..

How To Fool Apple's Arbitrary App Censors: Make Your App Look Cute

from the it's-all-about-appearances dept

Chris Wilcox, from Alkali Media, sends in (without a link, forcing us to go searching...) his story about his company created a somewhat crude iPhone app called (appropriately) "Crudebox." The app is nothing special -- just a sound box of semi-crude noises, not unlike some other apps out there. They were a bit surprised when the app was rejected for "objectionable" material. So, they reskinned the interface, to make it look a lot nicer, called it Prudebox and resubmitted it. The actual app (and all the sounds) were identical. And... of course, in Apple's arbitrary wisdom, they approved the new app and added it to the iPhone App Store.

So, apparently the lesson for those of you who have had Apple's arbitrary app censors reject your app: just reskin it to make it look less threatening.

30 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Google Routing Around The iPhone App Store?

from the sneaky-and-smart dept

With all of the iPhone App Store press love these days, it's almost easy to forget that Apple refused to allow any outside apps on the phone when it first launched -- instead, telling developers that anything they wanted to do can and should be done via a browser, creating mini-apps that were all web-technology-based. Of course, now that the App Store gets so much attention, plenty of folks have forgotten about designing web-based apps for the iPhone... but not everyone. Google has designed a new version of Gmail that routes around Apple's command-and-control App Store process by going direct via the web. While the article linked here seems to make this out to be a big deal, it seems like the only really big deal is the fact that everyone forgot this was the way Apple originally planned for apps to be handled on the phone.

7 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Pre-Brief Of The Upcoming CTIA Conference

from the Too-Soon-For-A-De-Brief dept

With the US mobile phone industry's leading conference kicking off in Las Vegas, I thought it might be fun to write a small "pre-brief" of the trends to expect from the show. This CTIA Show comes close on the heels of the huge, Europe-based Mobile World Congress, and I would have dropped a blog post from there...if my Netbook hadn't been stolen! Here's what to expect from the CTIA show:

App Stores: What was innovative about Apple's App Store? It is a single point of sales, it's trusted, compatible, it offers tested apps, and it gives a large (70%) revenue share to the application developer. Nothing new there, but damn, what a success. Once again, Apple succeeded by (not doing anything revolutionary, but) using a simple recipe that makes sense and motivates all stakeholders. Sadly, a similar 'imode' app store has been done by DoCoMo in Japan since 2000, but North American carrier imitations usually neglect being remotely 'open' and don't offer a large revenue share to developers. Turns out, this is fairly important if you want to stimulate a large, diverse offering of useful, high-quality applications. Anyway, all those companies that didn't copy imode are now copying Apple, so expect to see more news around Microsoft's store, RIM Blackberry's store, the Android store, and more. The trend is good, since it will get more money in developers' hands, and should help some phone owners find applications that make their devices more valuable.

Mobile Broadband/Embedded Broadband: There will be lots of talk and probably a bunch of announcements about mobile broadband access at the show. I am referring specifically to the use of cellular broadband modems in devices that are not phones, such as Netbooks, Laptops, cameras, readers, media players, etc. I am moderating a panel on this subject at the CTIA show, and I'm thrilled to be doing it, because it is such a major trend. The two driving forces to this trend are the 3G networks that are already in place, and carrier willingness to sell new kinds of service plans. Carriers have been somewhat stuck in a rut of thinking of mobile access as "one phone, one contract, $60/mo." But recently, their thinking has been changing, and the notion of wholesale businesses of selling connections to devices like Amazon's Kindle is gaining steam. Expect to see more news of daily connection plans for laptops (like Wi-Fi Hotspots), and wireless data bundled in the price of other consumer electronics. 

Femtocells: A femtocell is a small box that looks like a Wi-Fi router, and similarly plugs in at your home or small office. But instead or routing laptops to the Internet, a femtocell routes telephone calls from your mobile phone to your carrier. Put one of these in a home or office with poor cell reception, and instantly get four bars. That's good for you and the carrier, who gets to keep you as a customer. But what also benefits the carrier is that your phone's traffic is now carried over your broadband connection, saving their towers from having to allocate capacity to you. Sprint has it, T-Mobile uses a special variant, Verizon has recently launched it, and AT&T is piloting these devices. I expect femtocells to successfully creep into the marketplace, and we'll hear a fair bit about femtocells at the show, but also other new ways of delivering cellular service like Distributed Antenna Systems, Repeaters, and such.

Backhaul: Wireless data use is taking off. Driven by flat rates, popular and easy to use phones like iPhone, and supplemented by growing use of cellular modems to laptops and Netbooks, people are finally exchanging significant amounts of data traffic from cell towers. But these towers were initially put in place for highly compressed, narrowband voice traffic. As such, each tower was often connected by a meager T1 line. The connection that the towers have to the core network is called "backhaul," and yesterday's backhaul is woefully inadequate for tomorrow's data traffic loads. The short-term solution was to just add more T1s...but the costs of this rapidly become prohibitive. So the long-term solutions that will be discussed at length in Las Vegas are point-to-point microwave wireless relays, metro Ethernet, and fiber optic connections.

The Palm Pre: I'm not sure when the bandwagon is going to hit the trail for this device, but I'm saddling up right now. I've been negative on Palm for a while, but I saw the Pre at CES in January and was pleasantly surprised, but unfortunately didn't allocate much time to Palm. Subsequently, I spent some time with the Pre at MWC in February, and was very impressed. Of all the phones I have seen since the iPhone came out, this is the first one that I think may be better -- and I am very fond of the iPhone. I use a very powerful HTC Windows phone, and when I see the Pre in action, I find myself repeatedly saying "I wish my phone could do that." 'Synergy,' the Pre's ability to pull together your contacts, emails, calendars into one consolidated view, is a favorite element. But what really struck me was the User Interface, which is very visual, very touch, and very intuitive. I felt the same way I felt when I first saw the iPhone in action. The Pre is not an evolution of previous Palms. It is a new starting point, and like the iPhone, it seems devoid of classic silo thinking and lousy UI baggage. I can't predict whether the developer community will rally around the Pre, or whether Sprint and Palm will be successful in selling big volumes, but I want to call this one early: the Pre is a great smartphone.

More iPhone "killers": We've seen handset vendors offer so-called iPhone Killers at every turn since June 2007. I have found almost every such claim to be unfounded over the past 2 years. I have written that a touch screen and square icons do not an iPhone Killer make. But quarter-by-quarter, the competitors' claims get more and more credible. While HTC, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, and LG make incremental progress to matching the iconic device, I think Palm has the real bomb to drop, if they manage to get the Pre to market on time.

Android: The past year was almost devoid of Android handset announcements. Barcelona was strangely silent on that front. In fact, we haven't heard much about new Android handhelds since the T-Mo G1 was announced early in 2008! But there's enough rumors floating around to suspect a batch of Android announcements this week. Let's wait and see. 

Google Voice: Google recently announced their Google Voice service, and it has created quite a stir in the industry. The fixed carriers have long felt threatened by Google, although the search giant had yet to fire a shot across the mobile carriers' bow. So long as it stayed in search, email, web VoIP, advertising, and location services, Google was only a thorn in the cellcos' side. But with the addition of Google Voice (GV), Google is now going straight at the heart of the carrier's core service. GV is essentially a disintermediation play, where users will use just one phone number, provided by Google, and can intelligently route and manage their phone calls to desk, cellphone, voicemail, email, etc., by using a web dashboard interface. By using a Google phone number, users needn't even tell anyone their cellular or landline numbers -- the carriers become pipes for the Google Voice customer. Expect to see and hear some responses, which have already started from other newcomers like Skype, or classic solution vendors like AlcaLu.

Meet Huawei: If you are not familiar with this company yet, better learn how to pronounce the name. Huawei is the leading example of the next generation of telecom infrastructure providers out of China. They have been selling competitive equipment for years, but carriers in Western countries have been reluctant to adopt their products based on a perceived quality gap with leading vendors like Ericsson, Nortel, Motorola, and Alcatel-Lucent. But the winds are shifting. Tougher economic times, paired with some successful Huawei reference cases in Leap Wireless, Cox cable, and Canadian telcos, prove that Huawei can compete on quality and price. Huawei is growing its presence in the US, recently opening offices here in Silicon Valley. Could a major US carrier deal be in the making?

Derek Kerton is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Derek Kerton and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

6 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Up Next, The Subaru App Store

from the click-click-vroom dept

Mobile-phone makers and operators are falling over themselves trying to launch their own application storefronts following the success of Apple's iPhone App Store. But they're not the only ones: Hughes Telematics, which makes in-car communications and computing systems, says the next generation of its technology, scheduled for release in 2010, will let people install apps in their cars. Ideas being kicked around now include a carbon-footprint calculator and remote-starting and monitoring software. There are lots of interesting possibilities here, but there's one stumbling block: most cars don't come with any ability to connect to the internet, making distribution difficult and limiting the apps' utility. Solving that issue would be huge, and open up a enormous opportunity for all sorts of new apps and features: streaming audio, traffic information, in-car music downloads and so on. Just as other platforms like mobile phones and computers have benefited from the addition of mobile data connectivity, so too will cars.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

18 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Apple Shuts Off Loophole For Podcaster App Developer; He Switches Over To Android

from the pissing-off-developers dept

We noted that Apple had recently started banning any kind of competitive app from the iPhone App Store, saying that various iPhone developers must be eagerly awaiting the launch of Google-powered Android phones. And, indeed, that seems to be the case for the developer of the Podcaster app, who has announced that he'll now develop the app for Android phones instead. The final straw, apparently, was Apple closing the workaround he was using to get the Podcasting app to users -- and doing so with no communication or explanation whatsoever. Apple may believe it can get away with treating developers this way when there's no serious competition in the marketplace, but they may discover that pissing off your developer community has pretty long-term negative consequences when that competition actually arrives.

30 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Apple's Podcaster Block Backlash Getting Louder

from the not-so-good,-Apple dept

Apple is getting an awful lot of attention for blocking a podcasting app from the iPhone App Store because it competes with iTunes, and the more details come out, the worse it looks for Apple. In the original post on it, I had wondered, as an aside, if the app had useful functionality that Apple refused to provide -- and, indeed, that's the case. CNET is pointing out that the app is much more useful, since it lets you download podcasts directly to the iPhone -- something iTunes doesn't currently allow. Yet, Apple has no incentive to add this very useful feature, because it can just block out anyone who tries to do it for them. In the meantime, the developer of the app is forced to use a very limited workaround to offer the app to folks who want it (knowing that Apple could just come in and shut it down). Again, these moves are all well within Apple's right to do -- but it's going to piss off developers (and customers) if these sorts of activities keep up.

20 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Apple Now Banning Potentially Competitive Apps From The iPhone

from the pissing-off-developers dept

Yet another day and yet another odd attempt by Apple to arbitrarily control what's in the App Store for the iPhone. A bunch of folks have submitted the news of a podcasting app that's been blocked because Apple claims it competes with iTunes. This should, of course, scare of iPhone developers even more than previous bans. After all, it means that should an app get particularly popular, Apple would most likely just create its own competing version and remove the popular app from the store.

While some are decrying this as being an abuse of power, Apple certainly has the right to do it. It's just not a particularly good long term strategy -- and likely to backfire badly. Pissing off your developers or making them worry isn't going to get very many good apps written going forward. Also, limiting competition is actually going to hurt Apple, because it no longer has anyone driving them to be better. What if this podcasting app had certain features that were really cool and useful -- and not available in iTunes? Right now, Apple has no incentive to include that functionality, thus making its own software worse.

In the meantime, you've got to imagine that a number of iPhone developers may be eagerly awaiting the launch of Google's Android platform which won't have such arbitrary restrictions.

30 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Should Apple Really Be Determining What Is Useful?

from the steve-jobs:-the-decider dept

Ten years ago, if someone told you that they were going to create an encyclopedia that anyone could edit, at best, you would have decided the site would be of "limited utility." Five years ago, if someone told you that they were going to create a service to let people write 140 character updates, you would have decided the site would be of "limited utility." How about a site that will let you sleep on a strangers couch? The Internet has bred success stories because it allows inexpensive experimentation; in amongst the rickrolling and other dribble that fills the tubes are sometimes deceptively compelling ideas. These aren't ideas that come through corporate meetings or product development; they come from the edge. Yet, Apple continues to stifle innovation in their App Store by rejecting and removing applications. Now, the company is ejecting applications based on the rather vague rational of "limited utility." While I agree that the application in question has little use, this is a dangerous precedent that could easily have been used to ban Wikipedia, Twitter or CouchSurfing.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

33 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Will The Android Market Be More Appealing To Developers Than The App Store?

from the let-freedom-ring dept

In the past month, it has become clear that Apple, through their App Store, is going to exercise a lot of control over the programs that iPhone users download. The list of removed App Store downloads include Tetris clones, harmless but expensive novelties, movie listings and useful wireless applications. Although many have sung the praises of the new system, this trend of contingent generativity - Jonathan Zittrain's term for intermediaries exerting control over new creativity - has some worrying implications. An ecosystem with perfect enforceability of rules will come to preempt the creativity which comes from the edge (and even piracy). If developers worry that their applications will be shut down by an overzealous enforcement organization (there is no evidence Apple is pulling applications after anything more than a third-party complaint), then innovation will stagnate.

Google seems to understand this. In announcing their competing service, the Android Market, the Android team notes "We chose the term "market" rather than "store" because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available." Application creators will be as free to post information as videographers are to post to YouTube. Although the lack of review before posting doesn't mean Google will not remove applications if complaints are made, their ethic of freedom suggests they see mobile applications in the same light as the Internet: creators will build unanticipated, useful applications if given the chance to experiment freely.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..