I'm not aware of them outright buying any apps, but they did make a deal with the ITV Player people to make the newest versions of that app Samsung device specific for a pretty substantial period of time.

Of course, I've never even heard of ITV Player until that deal became public and it is a two-star app on the app store, so I'm not sure that matters much in the great scheme of things.

Well, the pretty substantial period of time is until August 31 and is almost a betatesting period according to ITV themselves:

"ITV says it's offering the app exclusively to Samsung "for an initial period while we endeavor to optimize and improve the experience before releasing to other device manufacturers.""

http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/09/samsung-itv-player-androi...

Wow, I had not even seen that. I do not know how I feel about this.

ITV is one of the biggest TV stations in the UK and their mobile player being Samsung only is pretty aggravating:

"Our intention is to extend this supported device list to as many Samsung devices as we can and to that end, we would appreciate your feedback."

Am I now a second-class citizen on android for having an (LG) Nexus device?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.ITVMobileP...

For the UK this is more significant than you may be aware of based solely off its app/rating. ITV is the biggest independent TV network here.