Bill Ray:
When it comes to advertising, some information can be gathered with the user’s permission, but only if the company doing the gathering is “an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads” – our emphasis. Just in case there’s any doubt the clause continues: “An advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent”, leaving just about everyone else out in the cold.
This may draw another anti-trust probe, not that I think it will amount to anything.