We saw the Android-iOS duopoly coming last summer. Now, the effects of this incredibly tight chokehold are becoming painfully evident to virtually every handset maker sans Apple and Samsung. According to a fresh NPD survey from this morning, during the fourth quarter of 2011 Android and Apple together accounted for over 90 percent of smartphone sales in the United States. No wonder RIM is sliding fast. The remaining 10 percent is up for grabs.
Apple, which seized the No. 1 crown from Samsung last quarter, and leapt past Samsung and LG to become the best-selling U.S. handset brand, according to NPD. The iPhone maker grabbed 43 percent of all U.S. smartphone sales, while Android devices accounted for 48 percent of devices. First-time buyers prefer Android (57 percent) to iPhone (34 percent). Smartphones in Q4 represented 68 percent of all cell phones in the U.S., up from 50 percent in the year-ago quarter.
Some perspective: HTC today reported fourth-quarter results and blamed Samsung and Apple for a 26 percent income drop. What’s more, HTC devices are nowhere to be seen on NPD’s list of the top five best-selling devices in the U.S.
As part of the Mac OS X 10.7.3 update released earlier this week, Security Update 2012-001 [release notes] for Snow Leopard broke compatibility with several Rosetta Power PC programs. The issue, as described onTidbits, MacInTouchand on Apple Support Communities threads (here, here and here), causes some third-party programs to crash unexpectedly under Snow Leopard. This includes popular applications such as Quicken, Filemaker 7, Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office 2004 and X. There is a workaround solution that helps alleviate the issue, at least until Apple addresses it with another update, explained right after the break.
MacMall is offering 9to5 readers an additional 3% off of their already lowest prices on Mac Minis and iMacs this month yielding the lowest prices you’ll find anywhere (by as much as $50) with free shipping via this link. The 3% is deducted at checkout and MacMall doesn’t charge tax in most states.
All discounts, including higher end models listed below:
In the future, hitting the gym along with your iPhone-toting pals could spur competitiveness in ways unlike ever before. Apple’s mobile devices run a variety of fitness apps and third parties provide useful accessories ranging from casual jogging to some serious working out. Not content with resting on its laurels, Apple is looking to ratchet it up a notch with a new patent filing titled “Interfacing Portable Media Devices And Sports Equipment” that surfaced Thursday in the United States Trademark and Patent Office database.
It outlines new fitness technology letting you share performance data with your friends in real-time, as you are working out. Mentioning that traditional sharing through a third-party website is so last century, the filing goes on to describe immediate data sync between friends exercising on a similar equipment. Moreover, unlike Apple’s fitness center app patent or this fitness freak filing, it does not even pretend to mention Nike+. This suggests Apple could be developing its own solution that might some day augment or even replace Nike’s technology with numerous bells and whistles.
Fancy yourself working out on a treadmill next to your boss and being able to brag about your lower heart rate and blood pressure all the while covering greater distances. Heck, you could be even working out at your local gym while boss is running on a treadmill at his office in Tanzania.
Right on the heels of yesterday’s release of Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 that includes Safari 5.1.3, Apple seeded its developer community with Safari 5.1.4 for Mac and Windows. Apple advised developers to update their test machines to OS X 10.7.3, because it is a requirement for Safari 5.1.4 for Lion. Release notes and download links are available after the break.
Among the various topics, like the new employee discount program, discussed at a recent all-hands Town Hall session with Apple employees was something seemingly very important to CEO Tim Cook: Charity. Unlike cofounder Steve Jobs who thought his company should focus on maximizing shareholders’ value so they can donate their own wealth, the new boss is adamant that Apple must do more on this front.
According toThe Verge, the Town Hall meeting saw Cook shed more light on Apple’s charitable contributions that totaled $150 million (versus a cool $97.6 billion they had in the bank last quarter):
According to our sources, Cook said that Apple has donated a total of $50 million to Standford’s hospitals, split into $25 million for a new main building and $25 million for a new children’s hospital. Cook also spent quite a bit of time talking about Apple’s status as the leading contributor to Project RED, and expressed pride that Apple’s given over $50 million to the effort since it started.
According to Apple’s website, the Product Red initiative generated more than $180 million for the Global Fund since its inception. As 9to5Macfirst reported back in September, one of the first important moves (anti-Jobsian, perhaps?) of then newly appointed CEO was a company-wide charity matching program for donations made by Apple employees up to $10,000 a year.
A number of users flooded Apple Support Communities forums following yesterday’s release of the Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 update to complain about dreaded CUI errors. In addition to a bunch of minor issues, some people reported being greeted with unexpected app crashes after rebooting into 10.7.3. For them, attempting to launch any application would produce the above (and below) prompt saying:
The application unexpectedly quit after trying to restore its windows. Do you want to try to restore its windows again?
Log files reveal that the affected users are often unable to use their computer normally as a large number of crashes are being logged. Luckily, there are several easy workarounds to fix this annoying bug… Expand Expanding Close
Robin Burrowes, the person in charge of Xbox Live marketing in the EMEA region, left Microsoft for Apple and is now charged with heading the App Store marketing initiatives for iTunes Europe. Burrowes led Xbox Live marketing for seven years and were responsible for product, business and marketing management as well as planning, strategy and leadership of Xbox Live across regions, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to joining Apple, the executive was involved with Microsoft’s MSN online operation as events/B2B marketing manager, British retail chain HMV (promotions manager) and Tennent Caledonian Breweries (brand marketing manager).
Burrowes graduated from University of Strathclyde in 1991. Apple fashionably would not comment on its new hire. Hiring yet another games veteran indicates Apple’s desire to expand on iTunes gaming initiatives in Europe. Apple’s business in the region and around the world is booming on strong iPhone sales. Interestingly, a recent job listing on Microsoft’s website for a software development engineer possibly hinted at Xbox Live games for iOS devices. A spokesperson for the Windows maker toldForbes they are “working to extend a few of our Xbox experiences and titles to other platforms.”
Today only, until 7 pm ET, Best Buy takes 20% off iTunes eGift Cards, as listed below. At up to $20 off and no shipping, each is tied with our mention from four weeks ago and at or near the lowest price we’ve ever seen. Sales tax is added where applicable. The gift cards will be emailed for redemption so those overseas with US iTunes accounts can take part.
Japanese blog Macotakara has a satisfying accuracy score in the Apple rumor business, and it was widely quoted earlier this month on a claim that Apple’s contract manufacturers Foxconn Electronics and Pegatron Technology issued orders to begin assembly of next-generation iPads for an early-March launch. Today, Macotakarareported that Apple would announce the iPad 3 in a media event due in March— ahead of the launch.
Previously, the blog claimed that a special Apple event to announce a new iPad was due in February and that the device was meant to go on sale the following month. Weirdly enough, Macotakara also said it heard from sources from Apple’s supply chain that the company will indeed hold an event this month, which was described as “strange.”
According toMacRumors’ Arnold Kim who contacted the author of the Macotakara report, “The February event would not be a product event.”
Update: MIC Gadget says that there is a shutter/overexposure problem with the 1.3 Megapixel camera shutter that Apple is working on and they expect a April-ish type of time frame. We typically put less weight in piggybacking-type reports
Here is more evidence that Apple was (is?) prototyping an iPod nano with a camera on the back and the accompanying hole on the clip. Leaked by the Japanese blog Apple.pro, which leaked a similar set of images in April of last year, the new shots further indicate that Apple could be working (or at least was researching at some point), a next-generation iPod nano with an alleged 1.3-megapixel camera on its back, while still keeping the current model’s size and display.
The hole on the clip looks like it could house camera lens. Such a solution would theoretically separate the camera hardware and electronics inside the diminutive main casing from the optics and sensor hardware integrated on the clip. The clip hole looks very similar to an Apple patent filing published in May 2011, with one of the drawings depicting a belt clip with a hole in the exactly same place as on these spy shots. Two more shots are available after the break.
Piper Jaffray’s resident Apple analyst Gene Munster is arguably the most vocal proponent of an integrated high-definition television set from Apple, the mythical iTV. His old predictions were picked up by the press lately thanks to that vague Apple HD TV hint in Walter Isaacson’s authorized Steve Jobs biography, gaining more credence with both Sony and Samsung dissing the idea as old news.
Now, last we heard from Munster was in November of last year when he predicted an Apple television set within a year, costing double a comparable set. In a note to clients issued Tuesday, the analyst warned that his original timing “remains uncertain” but underscored he is still targeting “a late 2012 launch.”
More interesting is Munster’s claim that a “major TV component supplier” told him last month Apple was inquiring about “various capabilities of their television display components,” which sounds a lot like this skepticalNew York Times report from October 2011. However, “Without a revamped TV content solution, we do not think Apple enters the TV market,” Munster wrote. Remaking the user interface is easy, but getting Hollywood on board will be tricky, as the Wall Street Journalwarned in December.
With that in mind, Munster offers three content scenarios for the Apple television, as quoted by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS9sUm5Y0sg] last year’s
The iPhone maker is many things to many people and it is easy to overlook Apple’s powerful marketing amidst the popularity of its gadgets. Yet, the two are inseparably intertwined. No wonder well-known names in business are (again) taking cues from Apple’s marketing cookbook, including United States specialty retailer of consumer electronics Best Buy that uncharacteristically decided to break away from the usual Super Bowl advertising featuring celebrities, which seems to be norm these days.
Instead, its new approach calls for celebrating technology innovators, a concept Apple popularized back in 1997 with the “Think Different” campaign. According toBloomberg, the retailer opted to feature Silicon Valley inventors, such as Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom and camera phone pioneer Philippe Kahn who will help bring home the message at Sunday’s big game. From the mouth of Best Buy’s Marketing Chief Drew Panayiotou:
Big brands like to hire celebrities. We looked at everyone from George Clooney to Stephen Colbert. We believe the inventors are more than enough. I give those 125 million viewers a lot of credit. I think they’ll appreciate the story. […] They may not be at the same level as Steve Jobs, but they created some amazing stuff.
Eagle-eyed readers could point out that the retailer last holiday season aired Apple-focused adverts promoting its store-within-a-store displays, seen below. However, Best Buy’s latest creative concept marks a departure from its past Super Bowl campaigns that tapped celebrities, such as heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne and teen heartthrob Justin Bieber. Meanwhile, a Taiwanese vendor is treading the fine line between originality and a display of disrespectfulness by featuring a Steve Jobs imitator to drum up excitement for its upcoming Android slab. Check it out that commercial in a clip included right after the break.
Today only, MacConnection has Apple’s Thunderbolt Display for $899.99+ free shipping. That’s $100 off list and the lowest price we’ve ever seen by almost $50. It features a native resolution of 2560×1440, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 12ms grey-to-grey response time, 375 cd/m² brightness, built-in iSight camera, 3-port USB 2.0 hub, Thunderbolt port, and Mini DisplayPort connectivity. Expand Expanding Close
“Most of you aren’t hearing it the way it’s supposed to sound,” Dr. Dre said in a Beats Audio promotional video. “And you should — hear it the way I do.”
“What we’re trying to do here is fix the degradation of music that the digital revolution has caused,” he said. “It’s one thing to have music stolen through the ease of digital processing. But it’s another thing to destroy the quality of it. And that’s what’s happening on a massive scale.”
You would be forgiven for thinking that the late Steve Jobs enjoyed digital music on his home stereo through his iPod or MacBook. Quite the contrary, though, despite him single-handedly taking the music industry by storm with the iPod and the online iTunes digital music store a decade ago, Apple’s cofounder preferred listening to vinyl. In an interview with Walt Mossberg and Peter Kafka at the “D: Dive into Media” conference, musician Neil Young said the digital age “degraded our music” quality-wise.
A better techology is needed, Young cried. Conceivably, only one man would have been up to the task:
Steve Jobs as a pioneer of digital music and his legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve got to believe that if he’d lived long enough, he would have done what I’m trying to do.
Bloomberg expands on that saying that Jobs was actually working on a high-fidelity music service:
Musician Neil Young said he worked with Steve Jobs on a high-fidelity music service before Apple (AAPL) Inc. shelved the project.
While chief executive officer of Apple, Jobs sought to offer uncompressed music digitally, Young said today at an AllThingsD.com media conference in Dana Point, California. Apple “pretty much” has stopped working on the project, said Young, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who is known for the songs “Harvest Moon” and “Heart of Gold.”
Apple and Foxconn are continuing to work on bringing that $12.5 billion iPad plant in Brazil online (there have been no iPads “Made in Brazil” seen yet, unlike iPhones). Meanwhile, the country’s Secretary of Planning and Development of the State of São Paulo Julio Semeghini revealed today that Apple’s favorite contract manufacturer will build up to five factories in Brazil with a thousand employees each.
According to a local report by Folha.com, Foxconn of Taiwan (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.,) will leverage the additional plants to build notebooks and PCs, electronic components, connectors, batteries and precision machine elements. The plants should be located in Jundiai; São Paulo and business negotiations will resume when the Chinese New Year wraps up, according to the secretary.
The development could indicate plans to assemble an even greater portion of Apple products in Brazil, not just iPads and iPhones. Even so, poor machine-translated text suggested the secretary said, “The parts produced here will also help in the assembly of Apple products,” as “the company starts to import kits for assembly in Brazil iPad and iPhone.”
UPDATE: A Foxconn representative refuted the story, dismissing it as “pure speculation” amid what appears to be a power struggle over the Taiwanese firm’s billions of dollars in potential greenfield investments in the country. Foxconn, which already operates six plants in Brazil, wouldn’t acknowledge that iPhone or iPad production is taking place in any of the existing facilities.
UPDATE: Reader MarckOliver has submitted the following translation:
Parts produced in Brazil will aid in assemble of Apple products, said the Secretary. For now the company will import those kits from China to assemble in Brazil.
Reader Renato Selman concurs, telling us that while Foxconn will just assemble Apple gear using imported parts, “in the future Foxconn will use other components produced in Brazil”.
[vodpod id=Video.16028592&w=425&h=350&fv=pid%3DA15fgfffkgihmohhnil053%26amp%3B] Thousands apply for jobs at Foxconn factories in China. Expand Expanding Close
Update: Apple has published a white paper entitled “Final Cut Pro X for Final Cut Pro 7 Editors” to detail the differences between the two apps and smooth the transition for professional users.
Apple updated its Final Cut Pro X video editing software this morning with some much-needed improvements. It is a significant update, because Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.3 now appeases to pro editors with two new features, including multicam editing that automatically syncs up to 64 angles of video and photos, and broadcast monitoring. The software also advances XML 1.1 support for better plug-in compatibility, and it supports media re-linking while boasting enhanced chroma keying with edge quality, light wrap and color sampling. Users can also finally import layered Adobe Photoshop files.
Multicam editing is done in a typical Apple fashion, and besides taking advantage of the time code to sync camera angles, Final Cut Pro X can also sync scenes using audio waveforms to provide great accuracy. Users also no longer have to export to a motion graphics application to view results with real-time playback, and the broadcast monitoring feature lets an editor connect to waveform displays, vector scopes, and calibrated, high-quality monitors to ensure the projects meets broadcast specifications. Broadcast monitoring requires a Mac Pro with a PCIe card or a Thunderbolt device. In the case of the latter, customers will be able to monitor their project live while on a shoot.
Interestingly— broadcast monitoring is releasing as a beta feature, which is unusual for Apple. Then again, the iPhone 4S digital secretary Siri is also in beta, so perhaps these features mark a change in Apple toward getting new products out of the gate as soon as possible and smoothing out the rough edges over time.
The Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 update is free for anyone that owns Final Cut Pro X, a $299 download from the Mac App Store. By the way, if you are stuck with a current Final Cut Pro 7 project, there is now a new app called “7toX by Assisted Editing” that is a $99 value and lets you easily convert old files to Final Cut Pro X projects.
Other updates include Compressor 4.0.2 that lets you customize output settings, work faster with distributed encoding and tap into a comprehensive set of delivery features and Motion 5.0.2 which allows users to customize Final Cut Pro titles, transitions and effects, with 2D/3D animations using real-time feedback.
European Union regulators today announced the launch of a formal investigation of Samsung over mobile patents to determine whether the South Korean conglomerate breached EU antitrust rules in its legal dealings with competitors. The investigation is focused on so-called FRAND patents, a common rule that stipulates a patent applying to the standard must be adopted on “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms” (FRAND). According to the press release, EU regulators want to figure out whether Samsung “used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets, in breach of EU antitrust rules.”
The Commission reminds that Samsung a decade ago promised to let rivals license its mobile patents under FRAND terms. The full-blown investigation comes in the light of the lawsuits Samsung filed against Apple at courts in Germany, France, the Netherlands and other countries around the world, asserting copyright infringement related to patents essential to wireless telecommunications standards.
The case is “a matter of priority,” the document reads. Patent blogger explained, “The European Commission can’t wait until Samsung finally wins a ruling based on such a patent and enforces it, potentially causing irreparable harm.” The full text of the European Commission Antitrust Commission announcement can be found below.
Apple has implemented an interested system to fight those pesky scalpers who spoiled a recent iPhone 4S launch in Mainland China. A newly set up page on the Hong Kong Apple online store has a lottery system of sorts for iPhone reservations that appears to target scalpers employing bots from snatching up all the iPhones everyday. Rather than reserve their iPhone on a first-come-first-serve basis, customers are now required to provide full details, including a government-issued photo ID matching the name and ID number.
In addition, this lottery seems to be valid during a three-hour window each day. Those who “won” a reservation spot will be informed by email before 9 p.m. Interestingly, Apple specifically said it will not be selling iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S to walk-in customers. Previously, the reservation system would open at a random time and it would often fail as bots kept pinging the server all day, meaning reservations would be gone in less than a minute.
Perhaps Apple is keen on implementing this system in Mainland China and possibly elsewhere? Apple’s full message is included after the break…
It appears another tethering app snuck into the App Store. QuasiDisk ($1.99) purports to be a file manager for the iPhone, but it appears that in the most recent update over the weekend, it stealthily got the ability to tether via proxy. Apple is usually pretty quick to pull these, so you might want to jump on this app if you want some tethering without a carrier plan.
Nova offers its MacSuperbundle Winter Deal for $49. We are picky about our bundles, but Parallels alone makes this one worth noting. There are some solid extras here as well.
Valued at over $470 if purchased separately, the nine software titles and exciting bonus app in the new 2012 Mac SuperBundle are available for just $49, an 89% savings, and offer innovative solutions no Mac user should be without. Nova’s biggest bundle to date and best consumer deal yet features the award-winning and #1 selling virtualization software Parallels Desktop® 7 for Mac, (a $79.99 value alone), and includes essential Mac maintenance tools and organizational apps, plus audio, video and digital creativity software and much more. The Mac SuperBundle launches on January 25th, 2012 and will be available for 14 days only.
Ron Johnson, Apple’s former head of retail, pioneered the concept of the Apple Retail Stores and the Genius Bar a decade ago. As you know, he is also yet another established Cupertino executive to use experience at Apple and tap his peers in an effort to transform an industry and rethink a company. Another one: The iPod Godfather Tony Fadell whose intelligent thermostat made quite a stir among the technophiles. Not everyone succeeds, as evident in the case of former Apple hardware chief Jon Rubinstein, who just left Hewlett-Packard following a series of missteps with webOS and Palm.
Due to take over CEO post at the American mid-range department store chain on Feb. 1, Johnson on Wednesday shed more light on a new strategy for an ailing JC Penney, and boy, does it draw from everything he learned during the Apple gig. He conveniently kicked off his presentation with a slide adorned by an Apple logo, which was immediately followed by another “What Were You Thinking?” slide.
Johnson then launched into an appraisal of Apple, likening the iPhone maker to a prime model of lasting brand experiences. Johnson, who left Target for Apple in 2000, recalled that at the time: “There wasn’t one positive believer who thought an Apple retail store could work.” He then put up a slide depicting the Grand Central outlet, a massive new Apple store built inside New York City’s landmark Grand Central Terminal.
Reiterating how he built Apple Stores on experiences, not commissions, the executive noted:
It’s not about buying. It’s about enriching someone’s life. […] The magic of the store that makes everyone want to come is all the stuff you get beyond the transaction, ’cause at Apple, the relationship doesn’t end when you buy. That’s where it begins. And we’re going to do that at JC Penney.
