Playboy for the iPad will be launching in March and will be feature both the old issues and new issues of the magazine. It will also be uncensored! The only question: is this an iPad-optimized site? Or an app? If it’s an app: is Apple loosening their tough restrictions? (via TechTrackr)
Apple 2.0 has published its quarterly poll of analyst expectations for Apple’s Q1 FY2011 results, the collection includes both amateur and employed financial analyst predictions. Apple 2.0 will publish the score card later in the quarterly amateurs versus pros tournament.
Meanwhile, Apple stock fell slightly on the US pre-market this morning, though Frankfurt is seeing some recovery as investors adjust holdings in wake of news of Jobs’ medical leave. In related news, Apple filed its Sec 8K forms disclosing the latter information over night, though this offers no fresh insights into the condition of the CEO.
Apple remains on course for a slew of new product introductions this year, and as investors slowly regain confidence in the firm (stock is rising on the Frankfurt exchange at this time), new iPhone contract manufacturer, Pegatron, has raised its order book to cater for an anticipated 12-15 million CDMA iPhones this year.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple shares wobble as US futures market impacted by Steve Jobs’ ‘medical leave’ disclosure and request for privacy. Apple users wish company co-founder well, shareholders prepare to discuss Apple’s succession plans and analysts will be asking questions of the company during tomorrow’s financial call.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced a new period of medical leave from Apple. Reaction to his news has already begun, with Apple shares traded on the Frankfurt exchange falling by 7.5 percent by 14:38 GMT. US futures also seem destined for a hit, with 0.3 percent falling off of the S&P 500 and 0.9 percent down on the Nasdaq.
Meanwhile speculation as to Apple’s succession plans is inevitably set to increase, particularly in light of a board recommendation shareholders reject a plan to formalise such preparations that is being advanced at the AAPL AGM in February.
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News is breaking this hour that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been forced to take another round of medical leave from the firm he co-founded.
Apple has published the following note from Jobs, in which he expresses his utmost confidence in COO, Tim Cook, and asks for “respect” for the privacy of himself and his family.
“Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees:
Team,
At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.
I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.
I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.
Steve”
Update: The New York Times says:
Mr. Jobs suffers from immune system issues common with people who have received liver transplants and, as a result, his health suffers from frequent “ups and downs,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it.
In recent weeks, Mr. Jobs began a down cycle and slowed his activities at Apple, the person said. Mr. Jobs has been coming to the office about two days a week, and appeared increasingly emaciated, the person said. He frequently lunched in his office, rather than in the company cafeteria, the person said.
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With all that new graphics power tucked-away inside the next-generation iOS devices, here’s a huge dose of speculation to brighten up your day — that Apple’s next iPod touch will be boast a glasses-free 3D screen. And that’s got to be something to worry Nintendo, who will introduce its Nintendo 3DS this week.
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I’ve been wondering what you’d find out if you took the number of iOS devices sold and then divided the number of App sales so far by that figure — and guess what — the answer’s sixty.
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Time to declare this weekend for the biggest batch of iPad 2.0 rumors yet, with news on the processor, much-improved graphics and a much better display hitting the wires, this morning we have the latest images of claimed components for Apple’s soon-to-be-updated industry-defining tablet device.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Blink and you may have missed it (only joking, the yards of coverage gave it away) but Apple has begun beta-testing a feature-packed iPhone/iPad software update, iOS 4.3. With iOS features set to prowl over to Mac OS X Lion, what do these new mobile features suggest may be coming to the Mac?
A big day for Mac users in Germany — we now know where the next Apple retail store is going to land in Berlin. Citing reliable sources we learn the huge store will open on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBvfa4JX3Tw&w=670&h=401]
Introducing HackCenter. Available soon on the Cydia store. This hack allows you to send any score that you want to Game Center, and it works with every game. In this example, the developer shows how you can use HackCenter to submit a fake score for Fruit Ninja.
We’re approaching ten billion App Store downloads and this is remarkable. The App Store only opened for business on July 10, 2008. And it was only on October 20, 2010, that Apple confirmed over 7 billion downloads via the store during its OS X Lion special event.
This means that in approximately three months Apple has seen near three billion Apps downloaded from the store. Apple confirmed 6.5 billion App Store downloads in September, and 3 billion such downloads were achieved in January.
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Apple has confirmed it will hold its FY 11 Q1 financial results conference on January 18, making the session available for playback online in QuickTime format. The event takes place Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 2:00 p.m. PST/5:00 p.m. EST/10:00 p.m. GMT. Apple’s live audio streaming of the event will be available for replay here for approximately two weeks.
Even as it prerpares for an imminent introduction of the iPad 2.0, Apple has begun sourcing components for iPhone 5, choosing Qualcomm for the baseband chip and a faster ARM chip for the processor.
Kinsus Interconnect Technology seems set to enter Apple’s supply chain for iPhone 5, as the new smartphone will adopt Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets, which use Kinsus IC substrates, according to a Chinese language Apple Daily report.
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The rush to build tablet devices to compete with Apple’s iPad is posing unexpected strain on component suppliers, a report explains, challenging those in the value chain to focus production away from existing products to meet expectations of non-iPad tablet sales which insider sources report may turn out to be “unrealistic”.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Rupert Murdoch’s iPad newspaper The Daily launches next week while some claim iPad publishing isn’t the gold rush they’d expected – some big name titles are failing to achieve numbers much beyond newstand sales! How refreshing then to look at this iPad publishing success story: an independently-produced title, called TRVL.
Sure but it is only a question of time. Preliminary PC numbers in the U.S. showed Apple (AAPL) jumped from 7.4% of total shipments a year earlier to 9.7% in Q4, a 24% rise, the largest unit shipment increase of any vendor. HP lost 6%, Dell lost 6.1%, Acer lost 30% in the U.S. market, and Toshiba gained 14.4%. At 10.3%, Toshiba is just slightly ahead of Apple in fourth place. (Barron’s and Gartner). There’s a poll after the break:
It is the iPad who dunnit. “Overall, holiday PC sales were weak in many key regions due to the intensifying competition in consumer spending. Media tablets, such as the iPad, as well as other consumer electronic (CE) devices, such as game consoles, all competed against PCs,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
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As expected, Apple intends making a version of its CDMA iPhone available for sale in Japan, South Korea, China, India and other countries, leaks from within its supply chain have confirmed. Apple also expects to sell several million of these new devices in the first quarter 2011.
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Yet another feature hidden within iOS 4.3 seemingly hidden within the plethora of reports on the future update yesterday comes the ‘Find My Friends’ tag, a new facility which suggests the ability to find iOS-using friends kept within your MobileMe address book.
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Spotify and Shazam have teamed-up to offer a combined service for the iPhone and other mobile devices, with new apps which allow Shazam users to access Spotify directly using a new ‘Play in Spotify’ feature.
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November saw Apple and Oracle confirm the loss of built-in Java in future Macs in favor of a jointly developed open source Java implementation, to be maintained by the OpenJDK project. Now the first code under the deal has landed.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Google and Apple continue their war, with the search giant overnight announcing plans to drop support for H.264 from Chrome, even while it continues to develop its very own tablet software to compete with the iPad. Does its code-name — ‘Honeycomb’ — suggest Google plans to turn to distributed computing in an attempt to unseat Apple’s iTunes empire? And how can Apple fight back?
Have no doubt, for any supplier lucky enough to achieve it, landing a component supply order within the Apple product value chain is big, big business — now Apple’s iPad and iPhone screen supplier, Wintek, is making a $13 million investment in new land to build new touch panel production facilities.
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