9to5 Staff

This Saturday, Apple is opening a new international store at the Carré Sénart shopping mall south of Paris.

Last week, Apple opened three new retail spots in the United States, England and Spain and this week the company continues its ambitious retail expansion with three grand openings scheduled Saturday in France and America, ifoAppleStore reports. The publication says two new stores will open in American states of North Carolina and Arkansas. The latter is interesting because it will be Apple’s first store in the state of Arkansas, found in Little Rock’s Promenade at the Chenal mall. Another store is set to open for business at the Northlake Mall in Charlotte, North Carolia. Apple has also been operating the Southpark store in the area since 2004. The publication sums up Apple’s retail gains in the US:

With the addition of Arkansas, Apple now has stores in the District of Columbia and 44 states. Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, West Virginia and Vermont are still without an Apple store. 

A new store in south of Paris will also be interesting, found at the Carré Sénart shopping mall south of Paris and seen in the above shot. “The store will be the fourth store in the region and the ninth in the country”, ifoAppleStore writes. Apple is also set to open its priciest store ever in Hong Kong next month and has inked a ten-year deal on ‘world’s biggest’ store that will be integrated right inside New York’s landmark Grand Central Terminal station. A pair of new stores is also set to open in Germany’s City-Galerie and Jungfernstieg and three in Spain.

And in Bologna, Italy, Apple has changed the shape of some windows and the roof in order to uniform the store building in the city center, as seen in the “before” and “after” photographs courtesy of SetteB.IT. The Bologna store is most likely to become Apple’s ninth retail spot in the country, following planned store openings in Marcianise in the province of Caserta, Misterbianco in the province of Catania and Campi Bisenzio in the province of Florene, which opened August 13 as Italy’s sixth store.

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Reuters this morning ran a story sourced from “two people with knowledge of the matter” who confirmed that Apple in fact is gearing up to launch an inexpensive iPhone model alongside a new fifth-generation iPhone in “late September”, which 9to5Mac was first to report on with the September 29 pre-order date. The cheapo one? An 8GB version of iPhone 4, expected to launch “within weeks”:

Asian suppliers to Apple Inc have begun manufacturing a lower-priced version of its hot-selling iPhone 4 with a smaller 8 gigabyte flash drive, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The flash drive for the 8GB iPhone 4 is being manufactured by a Korean company, one of the people said Tuesday, declining to name the company. Apple currently sources its flash drives from Japan’s Toshiba and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics.

There has been some talk as of late that Apple has begun sourcing Samsung parts from other suppliers amid a nasty patent spat with the Korean consumer electronics maker. It is therefore entirely possible that Apple bought the 8GB NAND flash model from Toshiba, but with the price being paramount for this cheap iPhone 4 we wouldn’t be surprise if the chips came from Samsung, if the price was right. The Reuters report also describes iPhone 5 as sporting an improved antenna, a bigger screen and an eight-megapixel camera on the back. Surprisingly, the sources insist iPhone 5’s form factor is similar to its predecessor, which contradicts the rumor-mill and recent case leaks that point to a slimmer, redesigned appearance.

Apple currently offers iPhone 4 in 16GB and 32GB flavors for $199 and $299, respectively, after a two-year service contract. It is unclear whether Apple will remove the two-year old iPhone 3GS from market this Fall and replace it with the 8GB iPhone 4 at a similar asking price or perhaps free? The story corroborates our own speculation that September will see Apple launch two iPhones, a major upgrade that is the iPhone 5 and an inexpensive model for emerging markets that could either be this 8GB iPhone 4 or even a re-worked iPod touch with 3G connectivity added.

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Reader Elaine sends us this scene from a Costco

So I imagine there is a marketing meeting at the Sony Bravia offices a few months ago where they are brainstorming new ways to market this 46″ TV.

Someone steps up and says Apple is about to release a new OS and all of their boxes are going to have this ‘Galaxy Swirl’ thing on the cover.  Perhaps we can confuse a few people into thinking this is Apple/type/quality products.

Sure, its a different angle and view, but it is pretty clear what the intention was.  While this is probably legal and will certainly fool a certain part of the population, those who follow tech have to feel a little sorry for the once-great Sony, which is rapidly turning into an also-ran knock-off artist.

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iTunes icon by Louie Mantia

Apple has posted the iTunes 10.4.1 incremental update on its servers. The update, which is available via Software Update from the Apple menu, contains several improvements that make the program more nimble in certain situations, in addition to fixes for known issues such as adding artwork to songs and videos. Standalone iTunes 10.4.1 installers for Mac and Windows are available from the iTunes download page. Full changelog right after the break…

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Earlier today my colleague Jordan Kahn told you about a story ran by the Japanese hit-and-miss blog, Macotakara, which in a nutshell calls for a brand new Mac product family. It is being described as radically “different from current products”, so much different in fact that Apple might market the mysterious products under a new product name. Well, Intel’s hearing those rumors as well! Their Ultrabook director Greg Welch specifically told CNET they’re very well aware of the reports  involving MacBook prototypes rocking Apple’s own silicon based on ARM’s processor blueprints:

We hear the same rumors and it would be remiss of us to be dismissive. We endeavor to innovate so they’ll continue to look to us as a supplier.

We wouldn’t bet on the “continue to look to us as a supplier” part. So thought IBM until Apple ditched the PowerPC architecture and made a bold switch to Intel processors in 2005. So, is 2012 going to be like 2005? Only time will tell, but it’s intriguing that an Intel executive would actually comment on the rumors, don’t you think?

That, in and of itself, is significant enough to warrant a post for the sake of the discussion. If you do believe your rumors, Apple’s testing ultra-thin MacBook prototypes that sport ARM chips and might not contain Intel’s Ivy Bridge platform at all. The benefits?

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After teasing a big Apple hookup and delivering on the promise with the announcement of the brand new Square Register for iPad and hinting at Card Case, the latter app finally went live on the App Store. The 12.9MB download is provided free of charge and is “the easiest way to pay at your favorite local merchants”. Use it to browse daily menus integrated with merchants, store digital receipts and pay with your name. It’s sure the closest thing to a rumored NFC-enabled iPhone thus far and with iPhone owners most open to mobile payments, it should be off to a nice start.

Additionally, paired with the Square Card Reader dongle and this app, your iPhone becomes a powerful mobile payment terminal letting you accept credit cards for a 2.75 percent commission on each swipe. By jumping into the game early, Square could profit big from booming mobile payments, especially with Google muscling its way into the market with Wallet. Check out a video tour embedded below and go past the fold for more pretty screenies. Note that Square, the company, is also the new home of the man that designed your Apple icons.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRi_KXAqn2U]

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Remember the iHub, a four-port USB port that set itself apart with the cool-looking, glowing Apple logo – until Cupertino outlawed them? Apparently someone in China was inspired enough with the iHub and walked away concluding this must be the way to roll with everything. Check out a Chinese SD card reader in the below clip. We actually love its miniaturized all-white design with round corners and the advert certainly looks business, if we disregard the too obvious focus on the many close-ups of the glowing Apple logo. The iSD Card Reader is interesting because it lets the 11-inch MacBook Air owners accept SD and SDHC memory cards via USB as the notebook lacks an SD card slot. It can be yours for $9.90 over at the K.O. Gadget store. And while you’re there, make sure to check out their obnoxious white iPhone 4 air cooler. And what’s with the “Apple and 7 Pioneers” article (mark 00:13)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df8VCRrPuGU]

another video below

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In the battle for mobile supremacy, Apple and Google are winning as competitors continue to lose ground, finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the strong iOS and Android ecosystems (can you say ‘duopoly’?), per latest survey from the NPD Group. The results came by tracking U.S. consumers aged 18+ who reported purchasing a mobile phone and exclude corporate purchases. In the June quarter, iOS grabbed 29 percent of the U.S. smartphone share versus Google’s 52 percent share. Both tech behemoths have grown their platform share at the expense of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.

RIM’s been on a serious decline amid poor sales and delays related to their QNX-based superphones. Their BlackBerry OS software share fell to just eleven percent in the U.S. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard’s webOS is in a state of limbo as the world’s leading computer maker announced intentions to exit the hardware business. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile grabbed five percent of the market each.

The emerging prepaid market is the next battelground for iOS and Android. Google, however, has the first mover advantage here…

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A report from July by notoriously unreliable Smarthouse that Apple may be partnering with LG on a rumored 55-inch Apple television has been debunked by LG Display CEO Kwon Young-Soo. The exeuctive denied the alleged partnership as “Apple is still pessimistic about using OLED displays”, per an OLED-Display.net story.

Likewise, a Korea Times article from this morning cited market sources underscoring “currently very low” chances of Apple tapping OLED displays over cost concerns. The source argues:

It’s true that Apple has keen interest in TV, allowing users to stream music, videos and TV shows via iTunes, though that needs some iPhone and iPad integration, however, Apple is still pessimistic about using OLED displays. Because Apple is worried over higher costs and technology-related issues linking to large-sized OLED displays, it is groundless that Apple has asked LG Display to supply its OLED screens for its upcoming televisions.

Instead,  the California-based gadget maker is understood to keep favoring the evolved LCD displays as big screen OLEDs suffer from screen burn-ins, limited life span, color balance woes and issues related to an efficiency of blue OLED. Plus, this reasoning from “a high-ranked industry executive”:

Apple has a track record of sticking to proven technology in its products and it’s unlikely that Apple will change the years-long stance for televisions.

So when will Apple devices finally get OLED screens?

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Multiple leaks of various parts purported to belong to a fifth-generation iPhone, which we’ve been hearing is up for launch October 7, are a norm that late in the game. Today, MacRumors points (here and here) to several components allegedly sourced from suppliers. These parts might have been used in the design of iPhone 5. The back camera module, picture above next to its iPhone 4 counterpart, reveals the familiar compact design calling for the LED flash embedded closely to the CMOS sensor.

Surprisingly, the iPhone 5’s back camera appears to lack dual LED flash. Of course, you never know with those leaks. For all we know, this part could just as easily have been used in one of early iPhone 5 design prototypes. It could also be the case of a repair shop looking for some free coverage. As 9to5mac reported back in April, Apple is likely to keep iPhone 5 ahead of other smartphones in the camera department by using Sony’s eight-megapixel camera.

The company also might keep its current supplier, OmniVision. That company unveiled in May a 1080p camera sensor that could lend itself well to a thinner designs, said to be one of the iPhone 5’s treats. Asian trade publication DigiTimes followed-up with a report that both Sony and OmniVision cut a deal to supply Apple with eight-megapixel cameras for iPhone 5s. The other leaked parts reveal little new information, but are nevertheless interesting…

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Sudden drops? The Kraken II rugged case comes to the rescue.

Trident Case recently sent along their Kraken II case for review and I’ve been carrying my iPhone 4 in it for several weeks – and not just around office, mind you. I took it for a spin through a variety of environments, from public transport in an ugly, big city to cafes and restaurants, some countryside and finally to the beaches of Rovinj, a city on the North Adriatic sea where I’ve been blogging and soaking up sun rays since June.

The case did a good job protecting my iPhone 4 from several accidental drops at the gym, my home office and during mountain biking. My device also survived a really ugly drop onto a marble staircase from about two meters. I’m pretty convinced that accident would have been fatal (can you say Glassgate?) had it not been for the Kraken II’s silicone insulation and its rugged design calling for reinforced edges. But on the flipside, it does need some additional tweaking and more attention to detail, but more on that later.

An unexpected treat: A kickstand totally lends itself to media viewing in landscape and alarm clock/weather apps. Wish iOS 5 supported landscape lock screen.

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Assuming Android goes proprietary to Motorola, it falls behind Apple in market share by 2012 and Windows Phone (the Other category) gulps up nearly half the mobile phone market.

There’s a good reason why Apple’s products “just work”. But it’s been a bumpy road for the Cupertino, California company because right from the onset competitors were ridiculing its vertically integrated approach to business. Apple’s supposedly ‘closed’ ecosystem is a major weakness, critics cry. The past decade, however, saw the marketplace validate the strategy through booming sales of Apple gear. But what if GOOG actually tried the AAPL model with Motorola, which today makes about one in ten Android smartphones?

That’s the dilemma Piper Jaffray resident Apple analyst Gene Munster set out to explore in his Friday note to clients. In short, making Android proprietary and exclusive to Motorola would add about 35 percent to operating income for Google, the accidental hardware company. By 2015, the phone biz would add $10.5 billion in operating profit and $56 billion in revenue, resulting in a per-share earnings of $25.16 by 2015. There’s just one problem with this hypothetical strategy:
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Relaying information provided by “high-level sources” from American carrier AT&T, BGR is getting on the early October  iPhone 5 launch bandwagon. They’ve heard that AT&T higher-ups told their managers to prepare employees for a “really, really busy” iPhone 5 launch. The internal communication allegedly includes the specific mention of an early October release:

One of our high-level AT&T sources just informed us that an AT&T Vice President has confirmed to several employees that the iPhone 5 is slated to launch in early October. Additionally, the VP communicated the following to a group of managers: ‘Expect things to get really, really busy in the next 35-50 days, so prepare your teams accordingly’.

Per information 9to5Mac obtained from trusted sources, corroborating the dates TiPb heard as well, Apple is aiming to launch the fifth-generation iPhone on October 7 and planning on starting pre-orders September 30. Additionally, the first week of October date for the new iPhone’s availability, fits nicely with our report about AT&T’s major early October changes: data throttling and a new insurance plan for $199 devices.

Several leaks do, however, point to a thinner, sleaker form factor that represents a distinctive departure from iPhone 4’s glass design (although some obviously disagree).

BGR previously reported that AT&T had blocked out September for the iPhone 5 launch and that a radically new iPhone 5 was expected in August. They also forecasted a $350 iPhone was due by “end of summer”.

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Hewlett-Packard engineers did dare pull unthinkable: They hacked iPad to install webOS only to find out Apple’s hardware runs their mobile operating system more than twice as fast compared to their own TouchPad hardware, a source “close to the subject” told The Next Web. The finding had devastating effects on the team’s morale:

The hardware reportedly stopped the team from innovating beyond certain points because it was slow and imposed constraints, which was highlighted when webOS was loaded on to Apple’s iPad device and found to run the platform significantly faster than the device for which it was originally developed.

It should be pointed out that webOS  runs on Qualcomm ARM chips while iPad 2 runs on Samsung silicon. This little nugget is even more revealing:

With a focus on web technologies, webOS could be deployed in the iPad’s Mobile Safari browser as a web-app; this produced similar results, with it running many times faster in the browser than it did on the TouchPad.

In fact, the webOS team wanted HP’s TouchPad and Pre hardware “gone” even before the products hit the marketplace according to TNW.  With a hardware refresh a year off and similar issues with the Pre phones, this could have contributed to the decision to shutter the webOS and perhaps license it out to other companies (with better hardware).

In a separate report, TNW details how the news was broken to the webOS group within HP.

Almost everyone at HP found out about the death of the TouchPad and Pre hardware as the public did, in the press release. Only the top executives knew anything about this decision and even senior staff as high as Ari Jaaksi, the Vice President of webOS software, didn’t know about the shuttering of hardware before it happened.

After the press release came out, there was a company wide meeting filled with a bunch of ‘corporate speak’, in which staff were told that they were going to be in limbo for 3-4 weeks.

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Adding their bit to the overall confusion related to an upcoming iPad refresh, the Wall Street Journal this morning runs a story asserting that the device is coming out early 2012 rather than this year. Contrary to late reports, “people familiar with the situation” have informed the paper that iPad 3 will in fact rock an ultra-high-resolution display with a 2048-by-1536 pixel resolution, four times the number of pixels on the original iPad’s 1024-by-768 pixel display:

Apple Inc. is working with component suppliers and its assembler in Asia for the trial production of its next generation iPad from October, people familiar with the situation say, as it looks to stay ahead of the competition in the fast-growing tablet computer market. The next generation iPad is expected to feature a high resolution display – 2048 by 1536 compared with 1024 by 768 in the iPad 2 – and Apple’s suppliers have already shipped small quantities of components for the sampling of the iPad 3. Suppliers said Apple has placed orders for a 9.7-inch screen device.

The report does confirm an earlier story telling us Apple scrapped plans for Retina Display iPad 3 this year due to issues associated with volume production of such a high density screen. The company has been reportedly quality-testing 2048-by-1536 displays for iPad 3 from LG and Samsung.

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Apple is in the process of leasing a 40,000-square-foot office space in the Kaufman building in New York City, located at 100-104 Fifth Avenue, reports New York Post. It will be the company’s first-ever executive office in the city, another indication of Apple’s growing influence in the world and booming business. Business Insider notes that the gadget king already leased a 10,000 square-foot space of the Kaufman building in January of 2011 for its ailingmobile advertising group. The place will be pure Apple, the publication explains:

Apple will use the space to launch new business projects.  The office will look and feel like the retail stores with an all-white lobby, sleek elevators and LED lights. The terms of the lease are undisclosed, but the asking price was $55 per square foot.

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Prescient image courtesy of Gizmodo

The Wall Street Journal reports that Hewlett-Packard, the leading computer maker in the world, is about to announce that it will be spinning off its personal computer business, excluding printers, storage or networking. In a just released statement via BusinessWire, the computer maker offically confirmed its board of directors has authorized “the exploration of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG), which may include “a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction.

Quoting the obligatory “people familiar with the matter”, the paper further writes that HP “is close to a $10 billion deal to acquire U.K. software firm Autonomy Corp.” The spin off announcement is expected later today as the computer maker reports quarterly earnings. Shockingly, HP is abandoning its webOS devices, from their release:

In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

And here’s the most interesting bit from the Journal’s story:

As part of Hewlett-Packard’s planned spin off of its personal computer business, it will keep the webOS software business but let go of the hardware, meaning HP is shutting down its tablets business, people familiar with the matter said. H-P’s tablet is the TouchPad, an iPad rival that went on sale in July starting at $499. Earlier this month, HP cut its price 20 percent.  HP got webOS when it acquired Palm Inc. in April 2010 for $1.2 billion. H-P may license the webOS software to others, the people added.

Mind you, not that HP pulling Kin matters in the greater scheme of things because the TouchPad didn’t even blip on Apple’s radar, but separating the personal computer business from their enterprise group could present Apple with an ample opportunity to grow Mac sales. Earlier today, a DisplaySearch survey revealed that – if you count tablets as PCs – Apple has now officially become the world’s leading PC manufacturer with a 21.4 percent share, passing HP in sales by four million units.

As our Seth Weintraub puts it, “the leading PC hardware company just exited all hardware”. And here’s your food for thought if you’re still tripping on this: Perhaps HP will be selling their intellectual property to Google, Apple or Microsoft, giving a potential suitor plenty of ammo for patent battles. Dang, talk about slow news day!
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I was really excited finding out that Skitch went free on the Mac App Store as Evernote earlier this morning at a conference in San Francisco announced intentions to acquire the company. Both programs are actually high-quality pieces of software, each in its own right. I’ve been an avid Skitch user since its early (and free) beta days.

This über-cool screenshot taking, editing and sharing app later went down the paid route and as much as I’d grown dependent on its elegant labeling capabilities that capture attention (useful for blogging), I never did wrap my head around actually purchasing the software. Starting today, you can download Skitch for Mac free, a considerable saving over the previous $20 price tag.

In addition, our Android frenemies can download Skitch onto their mobile phones and Tech Crunch confirms an iOS app is in the works as Evernote remains devoted to bringing “Skitch to every desktop and mobile platform under the sun”. They will keep it as a separate app while integrating its features into Evernote over time. The full list of features, a couple of screenies and a promo clip right after the break.

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Apple, Microsoft and Intel are locked in a bid for a contract to supply Turkish schools with up to fifteen million iPads. The government-funded project is nick-named “Fatih”, a Turkish word for “conqueror”. The government will require the winner to build the tablets and/or peripherals in the country, however. This little nugget has been officially confirmed to Anatolia news agency by the country’s trade minister Zafer Caglayan. Bloomberg has the story:

Apple officials told Caglayan during his visit to the U.S. that the Cupertino, California-based maker of smart devices may also decide to use some Turkish manufacturers to make some peripheral equipment such as covers, earphones for its iPad and iPhone models, Caglayan said at a news conference with Turkish reporters in Seattle, according to the Ankara-based agency.

Frankly, we somehow don’t see Apple building fifteen million iPads in Turkey as the country may lack the manufacturing capacities necessary to produce such a precisely engineered gadget that is the iPad. As for Microsoft and Intel, the Windows maker “may inquire about the project” and Intel could be interested in opening a research and development center in Turkey.

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A Tuesday report by Reuters sourced from a note by MF Global FXA Securities asserted a billion dollar Apple investment in Sharp, allegedly to secure steady supply of displays for iOS devices. However, Asian supply chain is questioning the story, asserting instead that Apple is “working out a deal with Sharp” involving  a pre-payment to secure display supply for the iPad tablet. If true, Chimei Innolux, a Foxconn subsidiary, will see difficulties becoming a regular LCD panel supplier for iPad. Chimei was shooting for a million 9.7-inch iPad panels a month. Potentially the biggest loser? Samsung, .

Tighter collaboration between Apple and Sharp means that the US vendor might rely less on Samsung, as well as CMI, which has just begun supplying IPS panels for the iPad 2, the observers said.

Granted, Samsung is *not* the prime supplier of iPad displays (LG Displays is), but Apple potentially reducing its reliance on a frenemy – if anything – is a telling sign. On the other hand, it could also be business as usual as Apple normally does not put all eggs in one basket, especially amid the alleged quality issues with LG Display’s panels. Let’s not forget that Apple last month swapped LG for Samsung display drivers in iPad 2s.

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