Samsung Electronics co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun said at an industry forum in Seoul this week that S4 shipments will top 10 million in a few days. This, less than a month after the device’s debut in some 60 countries.

“We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week,” Shin said, according to the Korea Times. “It is selling much faster than the previous model S3.”

Great news for Samsung, but news that comes with an important caveat: The company here isn’t talking about retail sales to consumers, but sales to carriers. Reached for comment, Samsung confirmed to AllThingsD that Shin was indeed referring to shipments into the channel when he offered that 10 million unit number.

Ten million handsets shipped into the channel in such a short time is still a hell of a milestone. But there’s a big difference between that and consumer sales of 10 million. The S4 may well be selling much faster than its predecessor, but not so much faster that there will be 10 million units in consumer hands next week. Some will still be sitting on carrier shelves awaiting purchase.

It’s worth noting that Samsung is not alone in reporting smartphone “sales” this way. Many companies do — including Apple. When the company posts quarterly earnings, it reports iPhone “sell in” numbers — numbers that include products it has shipped to retail partners like AT&T, Best Buy and Walmart, but not necessarily sold to end consumers. From Apple’s latest earnings statement:

The Company recognizes revenue when persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, delivery has occurred, the sales price is fixed or determinable, and collection is probable. Product is considered delivered to the customer once it has been shipped and title and risk of loss have been transferred. For most of the Company’s product sales, these criteria are met at the time the product is shipped. For online sales to individuals, for some sales to education customers in the U.S., and for certain other sales, the Company defers revenue until the customer receives the product because the Company retains a portion of the risk of loss on these sales during transit.

Now, Apple has some 400 retail stores worldwide, and they — along with the company’s Web sites — sell a lot of iPhones directly into the hands of consumers. But they didn’t do that for every one of the 37.4 million the company sold in its recent quarter. Indeed, during Apple’s last earnings call the company said it had 11.6 million iPhones in channel inventory during the period.

Those were devices “shipped” to retail partners. But for Apple’s purposes, they were “sold.” Same story for Samsung.

In announcement issued Friday morning, the agency said it has granted iOS devices running iOS 6 FIPS 140-2 certification and STIG approval, granting them the same security clearances it issued to BlackBerry and Samsung last week. A crucial endorsement, and one that should open the door to lucrative contracts from customers in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance.

Certainly, Apple views it that way and used DOD’s announcement to plug the inroads its iOS devices have been making in enterprise lately.

“With iPhone and iPad being tested or deployed in almost every Fortune 500 company, Apple continues to scale across enterprise with nearly 30,000 companies globally developing and distributing iOS apps for corporate use by their employees,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD. “The FIPS 140-2 certification and STIG approval demonstrate our ongoing commitment to deliver a secure platform to our enterprise and government customers around the world who deploy iOS devices on their networks.”

Research outfit Raymond James says that the debut of BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system and the two handsets on which it runs have gone a long way toward repairing the home-turf market share erosion the company has suffered over the past few years. In the fourth quarter of 2012, BlackBerry’s share of the Canadian market topped out at a dismal 6 percent. But by the first quarter of 2013 it had more than doubled, rising to 13.5 percent.

The reason? The BlackBerry Z10, the company’s new all-touch handset — one that finally gave it table stakes at the smartphone game from which Google and Apple had ousted it. The Z10 had a strong Canadian launch, according to BlackBerry, which said the device’s debut was more than 50 percent better than any other launch day in its history in the country. Evidently the device has retained enough of that early momentum to drive continued market-share gains.

And now, with BlackBerry’s second BB10 handset — the Qwerty-keyboard Q10 — recently introduced in Canada, the country’s largest technology company may be poised to reclaim even more ground in its homeland.

“I think the Q10 will see much better demand than the Z10, as I have to believe the primary reason users are still on BlackBerry is for the physical keyboard,” Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt told AllThingsD. “That being said, a lot of that demand may get stretched out over a few quarters, as it will take time for enterprises to adopt BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, which is needed to support the Q10.”

Make no mistake, these days Canada is more an iPhone nation than anything else — Apple’s smartphone claimed 40.1 percent of the market in the first quarter of 2013. But that’s down from the 44 percent share it captured in the fourth quarter of 2012. If that trend continues, maybe BlackBerry can reclaim not only the market share it lost in the country, but its national pride, as well.

As Andrew MacLeod, BlackBerry’s managing director for Canada, told the Financial Post earlier this: “Canada is incredibly important to [us.] It is our home market, but it is also a very strategic market for us. We are very strong here, and I think we have a very unique relationship here with Canadians, that we treat with an endless amount of respect, attention and resources.”

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Not that Cook won’t have some good answers prepared. In the past, Apple has dispatched questions about its shifting of profits offshore by noting that it remains one of the largest taxpayers in the United States despite that practice; the company paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012. Apple is currently sitting on about $145 billion in cash, only $45 billion of which is available in the United States, according to analysts. And that’s led plenty of critics to accuse it of dodging its U.S. liabilities.

This time, however, the company is taking a more proactive approach to the issue. It has armed Cook with some recommendations for tax reforms that might encourage companies like Apple to repatriate their offshore cash.

“If you look at it today, to repatriate cash to the U.S., you need to pay 35 percent of that cash,” Cook told the Washington Post in an interview ahead of the Tuesday hearing at which he’ll appear. “And that is a very high number. We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that. But I don’t view that. But I think it has to be reasonable.”

Cook declined to offer further detail about Apple’s proposed reforms, but the Post characterized them as a “dramatic simplification” of corporate tax laws.

Asked for comment about Apple’s tax conduct, spokesman Steve Dowling deferred to Cook’s remarks speaking directly to that issue.

“I can tell you unequivocally Apple does not funnel its domestic profits overseas,” Cook told Politico. “We don’t do that. We pay taxes on all the products we sell in the U.S., and we pay every dollar that we owe.”

Apple recently submitted plans to San Francisco’s planning commission for a brand-new retail store at Stockton and Post on Union Square — home to many of the city’s luxury retailers. The new building (currently a Levi’s flagship store, which is moving to Market Street this summer) will be 24,819 square feet, about 45 percent larger than Apple’s current store at Stockton and Ellis. Apple figures it will require about 400 employees to operate, 50 more than its predecessor. And, as you can see from the embedded images, the store will boast a fresh design — big, open floors and lots of glass (imagine a massive, translucent Mac mini).

No word yet on a start date or even a ballpark timetable for the project.

“We’re thrilled to be working with the city of San Francisco on a new Apple retail store at Union Square,” Apple said in a statement to AllThingsD. “Our store on Stockton Street has welcomed over 13 million customers since it opened nine years ago, and we look forward to serving them in an amazing new location when this project is complete.”

According to new research from IDC, Microsoft’s mobile operating system accounted for 3.2 percent of global smartphone shipments in the first quarter. That’s a significant gain from the OS’s performance in the first quarter of 2012, which saw it capture a market share of 2 percent. And it was enough for Windows Phone to unseat BlackBerry from its third-place spot and claim the rank for its own.

Admittedly, ousting BlackBerry wasn’t exactly a difficult task. In the first quarter, the struggling handset maker saw its share of global smartphone shipments halved year over year. In Q1 of 2012, it claimed a 6.4 percent share. This year, BlackBerry managed to snag only 2.9 percent.

An unfortunate loss of momentum for BlackBerry, though one that’s not entirely attributable to the ascension of other platforms and a lack of interest in its own. BlackBerry is in the midst of a transition to an entirely new OS, BlackBerry 10. Right now, the company has just two smartphones that use it. The bulk of its handset portfolio continues to run on its older OS. And according to IDC analyst Kevin Restivo, that’s almost certainly having an effect on sales.

“Windows Phone is clearly gaining momentum,” Restivo told AllThingsD. “But BlackBerry’s decline this quarter really has more to do with the lag between sales of its old handsets and its new ones than anything else. Sure, Windows Phone is ahead now, but there’s no guarantee that it will maintain its third-place ranking in upcoming quarters.”

And, as I’ve noted before, third place in the current smartphone OS rankings doesn’t mean much. According to IDC, Google and Apple captured 92.3 percent of all smartphone shipments with their Android/iOS duopoly (Android: 59.1 percent; iOS: 23 percent). In other words, Windows Phone and BlackBerry are so far behind the two leading mobile platforms that their ranking is really just a moot point, anyway.

That’s an excerpt from an email sent by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corporation (which owns this site) that figures prominently in the Department of Justice’s looming e-book price fixing case against Apple. The DOJ claims it’s clear evidence that Apple conspired with Murdoch’s HarperCollins imprint and other publishing companies to raise e-book prices and undermine Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing model. And, taken out of context, it might be.

But put in context, with the other dozen or so sentences in the message that contained it, that line seems a little less damaging. Certainly, it doesn’t quite imply that the two execs are about to embark on a “caper.” Read as a whole, Jobs’s email doesn’t have quite the conspiratorial tone the DOJ suggests. The late Apple co-founder doesn’t seem to be presenting $12.99 and $14.99 as hard and fast prices, but as price caps in broader pricing tiers. And he openly concedes that the agency model he’s proposing may well fail and that publishers who opt against it may succeed.

“We simply don’t think the e-book market can be successful with pricing higher than $12.99 or $14.99,” Jobs wrote. “Heck, Amazon is selling these books at $9.99, and who knows maybe they are right and we will fail even at $12.99. But we’re willing to try at the prices we proposed. We are not willing to try at higher prices, because we are pretty sure we’ll all fail.”

Now, this is but one piece of evidence in a much larger case. And the DOJ does claim to have other evidence that reflects poorly on Apple, specifically testimony that suggests it used its prowess in the apps market to push reticent partners into signing its e-books deal. But in this particular case, it does seem to have cherry-picked a quote for maximum effect.

In the end, it will be up to the court to decide which interpretation to embrace. Below, Jobs’s email, and below that, the full exhibit from which it’s taken.

Jobs-Murdoch-exchange –

Evidently, Apple feels much the same way about the DOJ’s charges.

In an 81-page April 26 filing that was made public today, Apple pointedly denied federal prosecutors’ accusations, saying the discussions they’ve painted as collusion were simply tough business negotiations and that their end result — an “agency” e-book pricing model where publishers, not retailers, set prices — made the e-book market more competitive, not less.

“Apple did not conspire to fix e-book prices,” the company said in its filing. “The evidence proves that Apple acted independently, to further its own legitimate business goals, in negotiating agency agreements with the publishers to enter the e-book market.”

Apple disputes the DOJ’s view that it was the “ringmaster” of a publisher conspiracy to eliminate price competition and raise e-book prices. Instead, it claims it was simply a new entrant in a market that was “roiled by a public conflict between publishers and Amazon” — a market that was already considering the agency pricing model currently at issue.

“Amazon at the time sold 9 out of every 10 e-books, and many publishers publicly disagreed with Amazon’s uniform, below-cost pricing strategy for New York Times bestsellers,” Apple said in its filing. “This tumult in the industry inspired the second largest e-retailer, Barnes & Noble, to push for agency agreements with the publishers. And Amazon used an agency-like model for small publishers and self-published authors. In other words, Apple did not introduce agency to the e-book industry; it was simply the first to reach an agency agreement with the industry’s largest publishers.”

And for a new entrant to the e-book market, as Apple was at the time, the agency model was a logical one. The company was looking for a 30 percent commission on every sale; it was hardly going to get that from publishers at the $9.99 price point Amazon had established.

Which is not to say that it was opposed to $9.99. According to its filing, it wasn’t. As long as it was able to collect that 30 percent commission, Apple said it didn’t particularly care what price publishers sold their books at. Yes, it required a “Most Favored Nation” agreement from publishers that gave it the right to lower prices to match low prices offered by competing retailers, but it argues it did this to remain competitive with Amazon, not to influence its business model.

“The evidence shows that Apple told the publishers that they were free to remain on a wholesale model with other retailers, even as the publishers sold e-books on Apple’s bookstore under an agency arrangement,” Apple argues.

And that’s Apple’s broader point in this filing: By negotiating for an agency pricing model with publishers, it was simply seeking to enter a new market and offer competitive prices. It wasn’t colluding to push e-book prices higher. It wasn’t attempting to change Amazon’s business model. It was just conducting business — legitimately. To Apple, the DOJ’s allegations that it was doing anything else, let alone engaging in an “illegal conspiracy” that “increase[ed] the retail prices of trade e-books” is “demonstrably false.” And the company insists the facts are on its side:

Average prices for trade e-books have fallen, and output, whether measured in the number of sales, the number of titles, or the types and quality of e-books offered, has increased substantially. These facts are undisputed.

Apple also fundamentally transformed the e-reading experience, leaving rudimentary, black-and-white, and expensive single-purpose e-readers (e.g., the Kindle) in the dust. The e-book world changed dramatically when Apple launched its iBookstore on the iPad in April 2010. At the time, 400,000 e-book titles were available to the consuming public; today, readers can download more than 1.7 million e-books. Apple has also created or spurred a number of the most important e-reading hardware and software innovations, such as full-color, interactive, and vivid digital e-books.

The bottom line, said attorney Orin Snyder of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, is that “Apple should be commended, not sued. Apple injected much-needed competition and innovation into the eBook business. … The DOJ’s case is based on fictions and incomplete quotations. The actual evidence proves that Apple did not conspire to fix prices in the eBook business. We look forward to trial.”

The DOJ’s case against Apple is currently scheduled to go to trial on June 3 in a New York District Court. Apple’s filing in full is below, and there’s more on the DOJ’s view of the case here.

Apple’s Pre-Trial Memorandum of Law _as Redacted_ –

That’s the gist of a new U.S. Department of Justice filing against Apple in the agency’s upcoming lawsuit against the company. According to the DOJ, Apple was the “ringmaster” of a plan that raised mainstream e-book pricing well above the $9.99 price point Amazon had established by shifting the industry from a wholesale model, where retailers set prices, to an agency model where publishers set prices. Among the agency’s evidence supporting that allegation:

• An e-mail from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corp. — parent company of HarperCollins — that reads in part, “Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”
• A comment Jobs made to biographer Walter Isaacson, explaining that Apple “told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway.’”

According to the DOJ, those statements are clear evidence of collusion. “Apple knew that the plan it was proposing involved a ‘dramatic business change’ for publisher defendants,” the agency argued in its filing. “Accordingly, Apple kept each publisher defendant aware that it was orchestrating and coordinating a common approach for all of them.”

Apple is now the lone holdout in the DOJ’s lawsuit, originally brought against the company and five major publishing houses last April. HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster have all since settled. But Apple, the alleged “ringmaster,” continues to dig its heels in.

“Apple did not conspire to fix eBook pricing,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said in a statement. “We helped transform the eBook market with the introduction of the iBookstore in 2010 bringing consumers an expanded selection of eBooks and delivering innovative new features. The market has been thriving and innovating since Apple’s entry and we look forward to going to trial to defend ourselves.”

Below, the DOJ’s latest filing:

apple7 –

This week, Apple — ignoring a federal judge’s request that it reduce the number of infringements in its second patent suit against Samsung — requested permission to add the Korean company’s latest marquee phone, the Galaxy S4, to a list of 22 devices it believes infringes on its patents. But, so as not to raise the court’s ire, it proposed a swap. If the court approves its request, “Apple will eliminate (without prejudice) one of the Accused Products named herein, so that it will continue to accuse only 22 products of infringement at this stage of the litigation.”

In other words, Apple is proposing a sort of “one in, one out” accused-product policy as a means of dragging Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone into the suit.

Not a bad strategy, given the commercial significance of the device, though it remains to be seen if the court will agree to it after encouraging both companies to limit and simplify their lists of accused products.

Samsung, too, has submitted a list of 22 products — one that essentially spans Apple’s entire portfolio. So there’s a lot at stake here when the case finally goes to trial in March of 2014.

Below, both companies’ lists of accused products:

Apple

1. Admire
2. Captivate Glide
3. Conquer 4G
4. Dart
5. Exhibit 2 4G
6. Galaxy Nexus
7. Galaxy Note
8. Galaxy Note 10.1
9. Galaxy Note II
10. Galaxy Player 4.0
11. GalaxyPlayer 5.0
12. Galaxy Rugby Pro
13. Galaxy SII
14. Galaxy SII Epic 4G Touch
15. Galaxy SII Skyrocket
16. Galaxy S III
17. Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
18. Galaxy Tab 8.9
19. Galaxy Tab 2 10.1
20. Illusion
21. Stratosphere
22. Transform Ultra

Samsung

1. iPhone 3G
2. iPhone 3GS
3. iPhone 4
4. iPhone 4S
5. iPhone 5
6. iPad
7. iPad 2
8. iPad 3
9. iPad 4
10. iPad mini
11. iPod touch (fifth generation)
12. iPod touch (fourth generation)
13. iPod touch (third generation)
14. MacBook Air
15. MacBook Pro
16. iMac
17. Mac mini
18. Mac Pro
19. iTunes
20. iCloud
21. Apple TV (third generation)
22. Apple TV (first generation)

At issue here are a pair of cases born out of autocomplete searches that associated individuals with words like “Scientology” and “fraud,” and “prostitute” and “escort.” Google insists it has no control over autocomplete suggestions, which are automatically generated according to the frequency of keyword searches. And while the court agreed, it determined that the company has an obligation to remove defamatory suggestions when they are brought to its attention.

“We are disappointed with the decision from the German Supreme Court,” a Google spokesman said. “We believe that Google should not be held liable for terms that appear in autocomplete as these are predicted by computer algorithms based on searches from previous users, not by Google itself. We are waiting for the written grounds to review the decision in detail.”

As a pioneering mobile device company, one would think that “mobile first” is a redundant call to arms for BlackBerry. And of course it is. By making that remark, Heins was offering a broader point about BlackBerry’s view of the mobile space. As he said later, “We believe in a single element of mobile computing: The one on your hip.”

It’s BlackBerry’s view that the smartphone is not simply a handset, but also a mobile computing engine that can drive the other devices we use during our daily lives — our entertainment systems, the tech in our cars and other connected peripherals. And it’s Heins’s opinion that there will soon be another disruption in mobile computing as the industry more broadly adopts that view.

“Mobile has become a fundamental part of our lives, and the next decade will see a major shift in how it impacts our lives,” Heins said. “It will be as monumental as the shift from wired to wireless.”

And BlackBerry is positioning itself to take advantage of it. Said Heins, “We will show the world that BlackBerry understands the mobile world better than anyone else.”

Big talk for a company still struggling to turn itself around. But that’s what these keynote events are all about — victory laps and optimism. And after a few years of floundering, BlackBerry does finally seem to be crystallizing its view of the space in which it competes and how best to succeed in it.

“Drilling down from desktop experiences and trying to fit them in the mobile space just doesn’t work,” Heins said. “People don’t want the desktop experience in a mobile device. Mobile devices need a mobile experience. Putting the desktop paradigm on them doesn’t work. Our only focus is mobile. We are the original mobile-first company.”

So that’s the big pitch. And now that Heins has made it, BlackBerry has to begin the difficult work of delivering on it. A daunting task when Apple and Google continue to so thoroughly dominate the mobile computing space. But BlackBerry has managed to hang on this long after the upheaval of 2012. Who’s to say it won’t scramble back.

“Some people told me last year that BlackBerry World would be the company’s last conference and my first and last time on the stage,” Heins said. “Well, I’m happy to say they were wrong. Not only are we still here, we are firing on all cylinders and we are definitely in the race.”

We already have money, it’s called money.

– Developer and filmmaker Garrett Murray on Amazon’s Coins virtual currency

Come summer, BlackBerry will release BBM as a standalone app. Initially, it will be targeted at Apple’s iOS 6 and Android Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and above, and will provide a basic feature set. But CEO Thorsten Heins said the company intends to flesh it out further in the months that follow.

“We’re committed to making the BBM experience on other platforms as fully featured as we can,” Heins said. “We’ll start with messaging and groups, but we’ll add voice and screen share later on. … BB10 is such a strong platform that we are confident it can become an independent messaging solution.”

A big move, far too long in coming.

Arguably, BlackBerry should have done this years ago. BBM is a tentpole feature of the company’s OS, and remains in wide use today. As Heins observed this morning, the service has about 60 million users, who send and receive some 10 billion messages every day — about half of them are read within 20 seconds of receipt. That’s a big installed base with serious engagement.

Sadly for BlackBerry, some strong cross-platform messaging solutions emerged during the years that it withheld BBM from iOS and Android. WhatsApp, which recently appeared at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference, is bigger than Twitter, which officially claims 200 million monthly active users. The company’s daily message tally: Eight billion inbound and 12 billion outbound. Then there’s Kik. And Apple’s iMessage, which, despite its problems, is pretty popular.

That’s not to say that BBM is going to have a tough time making inroads on iOS and Android, just that it would have had a far, far easier time of it a few years ago.

Designed for emerging markets, the Q5 is intended to flesh out the lower end of BlackBerry’s new handset portfolio. Details are slim, but the device seems to be the rumored R10 that has been stoking chatter on gadget sites for months now. The Q5 features a Qwerty keyboard and a 3.1-inch touchscreen. BlackBerry is offering it in four colors: Red, white, black and pink. The company expects to bring the Q5 to market sometime this summer; price has yet to be disclosed.

Also announced this morning: BlackBerry 10.1 for the BlackBerry Z10 — which will begin rolling out to U.S. carriers later this month — and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10.1.

Today, BlackBerry is in a far less precarious position. It has finally managed to ship BlackBerry 10 — along with a couple of handsets on which to run it — and all have been generally well received. The company’s touchscreen smartphone, the Z10, set launch-day sales records in Canada and the U.K.; its Qwerty sibling, the Q10, has been garnering positive reviews; takeover rumors have gone quiet; the company reported a surprise profit in its most recent quarter, and its shares are up some 25 percent since the beginning of the year. While BlackBerry hasn’t yet escaped the skepticism that mercilessly dogged it last year, it has provided investors and developers — and really anyone with an interest in the company — some reason for cautious optimism, despite the still daunting challenges ahead of it.

There’s a lot riding on BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins’s keynote address at BlackBerry Live tomorrow morning, but the company is in a far better place to deliver. So what can we expect from Heins when he takes the stage tomorrow?

• An update on BlackBerry 10 handset sales volume and momentum. Heins has previously said he expects to ship “tens of millions” of BlackBerry Q10 handsets. Is that still the goal? What are the company’s expectations for the Z10?
• Perhaps, the unveiling of BlackBerry 10.1 for the Z10, which brings a number of new features to the device, including the ability to install Skype.
• An update on developer support for BlackBerry 10, the current tally of apps in BlackBerry World, and perhaps the announcement of some new and much-needed marquee apps.
  As I’ve previously reported, Netflix and Instagram have both declined to build native apps for BlackBerry 10. BlackBerry has said it is committed to bringing both of them and other top titles to its new platform. Heins’s keynote would be an excellent time to announce a few victories.
• Further insight into BlackBerry’s view of the tablet market. Heins recently made headlines for some bearish remarks about the future of tablets, saying, “In five years, I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.” If that’s the case, what is BlackBerry’s overall view of the future of mobile computing?
• An update of BlackBerry’s promised portfolio of BlackBerry 10 devices. What does the lineup look like beyond the Z10 and Q10? When will the rumored R10 ship? The company has already hit the market’s high end, presumably it plans to hit its middle and lower ends as well. What sort of device is it planning for emerging markets?

So, lots of issues to talk about, all of them speaking to a common theme. Now that Heins has seemingly succeeded in righting BlackBerry’s listing ship, where is it headed? And how is it going to get there?

Horace Dediu/Asymco

Asymco’s Horace Dediu has done the math and come up with a number: About $40 per year, on average. Seem low to you? Does to me, but that’s from my own cord-cutter perspective. But taken together with all gross content revenues — including services & software — Apple’s iTunes business cleared over $5.5 billion in the last quarter (Caveat 1:That big number is as large as it is thanks to significant growth in app sales; Caveat 2: iTunes’ sales growth may be slowing).

Not bad for what Apple conceived as a “break-even” business, one that it doesn’t yet view as a leg on its three-legged stool. Perhaps it’s time for the company to upgrade that analogy to four-legged chair — or throw in the iPad as well and make it a recliner …

That’s $5 worth of Coins each, a promotion Amazon says will cost it “tens of millions of dollars.” That’s a lot of real money to spend to generate buzz for yet another virtual currency, but Amazon has good reason to do so.

Like other virtual currencies — Facebook credits, for example — Coins is notional, which makes it easier to spend. As in gambling, the abstraction of converting real money into virtual money makes it harder to keep track of how much of the former you’re actually doling out. And, of course, once you purchase Coins from Amazon, it becomes the only place to redeem them. (Note: When you buy an item with Coins on which Amazon is required to charge sales tax, Coins are used to pay sales tax.)

The implications of that are interesting. Right now, Amazon accepts Coins for apps, games and in-app purchases, but the company has plans to extend beyond that. Said Amazon VP of apps and games Mike George, “We will continue to add more ways to earn and spend Coins on a wider range of content and activities.”

Is the master plan here to extend Coins beyond digital goods to all purchases on Amazon.com? If the company is able to use the currency for virtual and digital goods, surely it’s capable of using it for real-world ones as well. Will it? We’ll see in the months ahead.

* Amazon will continue to accept traditional forms of payment for apps and games.

In addition to feeding the tireless AllThingsD news machine, our editors also dropped by a few other outlets this week to talk about lots of things, including the fate of long-form journalism in a short-attention-span world and how to restore the Start Menu on Windows 8 until Microsoft decides whether or not to restore it for you. Here’s a rundown of those appearances:

• Kara Swisher spoke with Bloomberg West about her recent article for Vanity Fair magazine chronicling the rise of Instagram and its sale to Facebook:

• Kara also dropped by “Marketplace” for a chat about the place of long-form journalism on small-screen devices. Her take: Mobile devices offer plenty of room for both in-depth journalism and short-form “listicles” like those popularized by BuzzFeed:

• Walt Mossberg appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s “Digits” program to discuss his review of Start8 and Pokki, two third-party utilities that restore the Start Menu to Windows 8:

• Finally, Peter Kafka joined “On The Media” to discuss the future of digital advertising as streaming online video grows in popularity: