Mobile News Asia

Apple’s ban on some sexually-suggestive content in the iTunes App Store was due to an increasing number of complaints from women’s and parent groups, a top exec tells the NYT. But the policy is selective, as not all apps featuring scantily-clad women have been bannished. For example, Sports Illustrated’s free Swimsuit app is still available for download—though Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) asks that users certify they are over 17 years of age before loading—as is a related game app. Playboy (NYSE: PLA) has several paid apps still on sale in the App Store.

While millions of people were tuned into the opening ceremonies and first weekend of the Winter Olympics, the National Basketball Association was racking up some winter sports numbers of its own during NBA All-Star Weekend 2010 in Dallas: an NBA-record 17 million-plus video streams, up 20 percent over the 2009 weekend—including 4.95 million streams served on Feb. 15; nearly 30 hours of live streaming and original content on NBA.com/TNT Overtime; and a 146 percent uptick for NBA Mobile.

As SVP/GM of NBA Digital, the partnership of Turner Sports and the NBA, Bryan Perez is responsible for NBA TV, NBA.com, WNBA.com, NBADLeague.com, NBA League Pass, broadband and wireless. While the NBA kicked off All-Star Weekend, Perez sat in a red,white, and blue leather recliner in the “living room” section of the NBA TV booth for the paidContent video interview embedded below. We discussed the league’s digital activities; advertising and subscription revenue; the use of social media; its mobile app blitz; and the Turner-NBA partnership. (Look fast during the video and you’ll see TNT’s Ernie Johnson prepping for the live show he was about to do from the open set.) Some highlights:

I wondered how long it would be before print media pointed at the BBC’s new smartphone apps plan as another example of expansion in to their commercial territory. The answer: just 24 hours…

The Newspaper Publishers Association, in an emailed statement, says its members believe BBC apps “will undermine the commercial sector’s ability to establish an economic model in an emerging but potentially important market … This, over the long term, will reduce members’ ability to invest in quality journalism.”

Has Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) upstaged Google (NSDQ: GOOG) at this year’s Mobile World Congress? Almost without exception, reviewers have praised Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 series—but on Tuesday Google got its own chance in the spotlight as CEO Eric Schmidt took the keynote stage. Schmidt’s speech was thinky; holding a piece of paper with his notes, he referred to the rise of cloud computing and faster connectivity speeds as driving mobile adoption. “A device that is not connected is not interesting, it is literally lonely. An application that does not leverage the cloud isn’t going to wow anybody,” he said. “It’s like magic. All of a sudden there are things you can do that we’ve never even (thought of) because of this convergence.”

Through some quirks of scheduling, I got my first taste of Olympics action on a laptop through in-flight wireless—not the big screen in our living room—and watched the winning ski jump late at night on demand using the NBC Olympics iPhone app. The 2010 Winter Olympics may not be the “everything online live” Olympics but it’s close to the “everywhere” Olympics—as long as by everywhere in the U.S.,you mean on NBCOlympics.com.

The network, which expects to lose money on the Vancouver games, is trying a feat as tricky as some of the moves in pairs skating: produce a social media-centric Olympics without allowing video sharing or embedding. Perkins Miller, SVP of digital media for NBC Sports, makes no apologies for the decision. It’s all part of a strategy to make every one of the 17 days count for every second. Key elements include keeping all the video on NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) sites; making highlights freely available; and limiting online access to more than 1,000 hours of video on demand and 400 hours of live competition streaming to users who already pay for video via satellite, telecom or cable.

So far, it seems to be working—although it’s hard to say how much higher traffic might be if users could watch marquee events live online. Through the first two days, the network says NBCllympics.com traffic was up 350 percent from the Torino Winter Games in 2006 with 4.5 million uniques compared to Torino’s 1.02 million. NBC also says the site has delivered 4.5 million video streams, up nearly 700 percent over Torino. (NBC is also using autoplay so it’s hard to know how many of those were initiated directly by users.) No word on how many times the iPhone app has been downloaded but it’s the top free app now (it’s also a featured app, which helps) and had 5.3 million pageviews Saturday, compared with 2 million for opening day.