Apple

Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q12

Gartner is out with its quarterly report for worldwide mobile device sales by vendor and OS for the third quarter. While reporting an overall 3 percent decline in mobile phone sales, the smartphone category hit 169.2 million units in Q3, a 47 percent increase from the year-ago quarter. While Apple is still third to Samsung and Nokia for total mobile device sales, Samsung and Apple remain the top smartphone vendors collectively, capturing 46.5-percent of the market. Meanwhile, Nokia slipped from No. 3 smartphone vendor in Q2 to No. 7 in Q3. This made room for RIM and HTC behind Apple and Samsung in the third and fourth positions.

With sales of 23.6 million units in the third quarter for Apple (up 36.2-percent year-on-year), Gartner reported Samsung widened its lead on Apple with almost 55 million smartphones in the quarter and strong demand for its Galaxy line. Samsung once again takes the top vendor position for smartphones with 32.5-percent of the market:

Samsung’s mobile phones sales continued to accelerate, totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012 (see Table 1), up 18.6 percent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy smartphones across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the smartphone market, selling 55 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012. It commanded 32.5 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.

As for the race between Android and iOS, Gartner’s numbers show Android increased its marketshare nearly 20 percentage points in the quarter to 72.4-percent of the market, up from just 52.5-percent in the year-ago quarter. In comparison, Apple now accounts for 13.9-percent of the market, down from 15 percent last year, but Gartner expects that to change in Q4 thanks to the continuing iPhone 5 roll out:

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While a native Google Maps iOS app has yet to hit the App Store, Nokia said today it plans to release a new free maps for iOS under the “Here” brand in the coming weeks. “Here” is a cross platform effort for mapping applications that the company described as “the first location cloud to deliver the world’s best maps and location experiences across multiple screens and operating systems.”

San Francisco, California – Today Nokia introduced HERE, the first location cloud to deliver the world’s best maps and location experiences across multiple screens and operating systems. With the new brand, HERE, Nokia aims to inspire a new generation of location services and devices that make the mobile experience more personally significant for people everywhere… To further extend its location services, Nokia is launching a maps application for iOS under the HERE brand. 

The new HTML5-based iOS app, also called “Here”, will arrive in the App Store in the coming weeks and feature “offline capabilities, voice-guided walk navigation, and public transport directions.”
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Skype for iPhone version 4.1.2: The Skype iOS app finally gets official support for the iPhone 5’s taller display this morning:

-Support for iPhone 5 display.
-Bug fixes.

Adobe Photoshop Express version 2.6: A nice update for Adobe’s Photoshop Express iOS app brings new sharing and editing features including the ability to “tap to eliminate red-eye” and and make more precise edits with numerical values:

• Easily tag faces while sharing photos to Facebook.
• Share photos more quickly with updated sharing screens.
• Simply tap to eliminate red-eye.
• Make more precise edits now that adjustment sliders display numerical values.
• View animated Help content to get up and running quickly.
• Use the app on the latest Apple devices thanks to support for iOS6.
• Count on bug fixes, performance boosts, and in-app notifications for greater speed and ease-of-use

Overgram: Creators of the Over iPhone app for adding creative typography to photos and sharing them on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr & Instagram is out today with a free version of the app called Overgram. The free version provides 10 of the 225 fonts found in the paid Over version.

In only a few seconds you can add captions, quotes, jokes, memes, poems or anything else you can think of to a photo… STUNNING FONTS: We ♥ typography! We carefully selected 10 amazing fonts that will make your photos beautiful and engaging.

TiVo version 2.1: Official iPhone 5 support and performance improvements for the TiVo iOS app:
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Apple updated the iPhone 5 section of its online store to show shipping estimates for the handset have improved from “3 -4 weeks” to “2 -3 weeks”. The iPhone 5 has seen shipping delays since it first went on sale in late September due to high demand and problems in production. Today’s improvements follow official word from Foxconn in October that production for the iPhone 5 has improved. Foxconn said the iPhone 5 is “the most difficult device that Foxconn has ever assembled,” and it added production is getting better day-by-day. During Apple’s Q4 earnings call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer said, “We’re working very hard to get more into customer hands as quickly as possible.” CEO Tim Cook added, “The demand for iPhone 5 is extremely robust. We are in a significant state of backlog.”

Thanks, Luis!

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1EtnS98l8q4]

While there are a quite a few USB guitar solutions on the market already, Fender is bringing a USB version of its popular Squire Stratocaster series exclusively to the Apple Store. Priced at $199.95 on Apple’s online store, the guitar features a traditional 1/4-inch output, Type Mini-B USB connector, and two included cables for connecting via USB or directly to iOS devices. Unfortunately, Fender is including a 30-pin cable for iOS devices, so users of newer iOS devices will have to grab a Lightning to 30-pin adapter.

The NEW Squier Strat Guitar with USB & iOS Connectivity gives you a huge range of tones and all the features you expect from Fender—plus the convenience of direct connection to your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

Also included is a 3.5mm headphone jack and “a high-quality headphone amp so that you can monitor the processed guitar signal right from the guitar itself.” It’s clear Fender is aiming this product directly at the GarageBand iOS users, but you’ll have no problem hooking up to your Mac or PC with an included USB cable or using it as a traditional guitar with the 1/4-inch output.

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Last we heard, Apple was being threatened with closure of its Italian operations if it did not make necessary changes to its warranty policies following an investigation by the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato. The authorities had previously fined Apple $1.2 million, claiming the company failed to inform consumers about a two-year warranty mandatory by EU law. Now it appears Apple has officially taken its AppleCare Protection Plan products off the shelves in Italy with only online versions of the product still available to Italian customers.

setteB.IT shared the image above showing what is apparently an email from Apple Distribution International in Ireland to Apple resellers in Italy. Apple informed resellers that it would stop selling all AppleCare Protection Plans in Italian Apple Stores as well as through authorized resellers. From the email, it also appeared Apple will no longer offer AppleCare-related services over the phone in the country.

setteB.IT also noted Apple has updated the terms for AppleCare on its Italian website. Rather than a “1 year warranty”, the website now reads “AppleCare plans benefits are added to the 2 year warranty of the seller, required by Italian regulators to protect the consumers.”

A full translation of the email is below:

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There have been several reports that have noted ex-iOS chief Scott Forstall’s fiery relationship with several Apple executives like Jonathan Ive. Despite this, according to a former Apple senior engineer, Michael Lopp, firing Forstall was a mistake. Lopp posted his thoughts on his blog, and the theme of the post was that Apple will eventually be replaced by another company’s innovations (as most usually are). He wondered if the firing of Forstall is where the downslide will begin.

Lopp said Forstall “was the best approximation of Steve Jobs that Apple had left.” He added that several people chatting in Apple’s Caffe Macs cafeteria viewed Forstall as the only real successor to Jobs. Even though it appeared Forstall did not work well with several of his co-workers, being called an “asshole,” he was successful in what he did. Lopp said this is why he could have been the next Jobs.

With the executive shakeup, Apple said this would lead to more collaboration within the walls of Apple. Lopp said this is not necessarily a good thing:

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In October, Apple stock dropped below 600 for the first time since July. Since then, following a number of new product launches, AAPL has continued to fall and now only sits slightly higher than last week at roughly 550 per share and a market cap of $518 billion. While many have pointed to uncertainty regarding new product launches and executive level changes as the cause of Apple’s falling share price, no one quite has a definitive answer for why AAPL has hit a nearly six-month low. In a report today, titled “A dramatic reading of Apple’s share price”, Asymco analyst Horace Dediu might have the answer.

Dediu studied 13 bear AAPL markets starting with the October 2001 launch of the iPod. As noted in the report, Apple’s stock had just fallen 70 percent year-over-year and continued to drop another 20 percent following the iPod launch. However, since the iPhone launch, Dediu found “every dramatic drop in share price was followed by a surge in earnings growth.” The graph above maps earnings growth following bear Apple markets since the 2007 iPhone introduction.

So, why exactly does this happen? Dediu explained his theory:

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Late last week, Apple started notifying customers that orders of LTE iPad minis would begin shipping within 5 business days. Those same customers were also reporting updated shipping times ranging from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23. As for the new iPad 4 with Retina display, Apple recently updated its website with an estimated shipping time of “7 business days,” but today we get word from several readers that existing orders of the device are set to arrive as early as Nov. 16.

The actual arrival time of the iPad 4 with LTE is a moving target, with earlier reports pointing to next week. However, with the release of the LTE iPad firmware on Apple’s servers on Nov. 8, it is likely that the review units are already in reviewers’ hands. So, a release this week isn’t out of the question.

The Nov. 16 date would line up nicely with Apple’s original promise to ship the LTE models of its new iPads within roughly 2 weeks of the Nov. 2 Wi-Fi-only launches. It looks like Apple might not be able to get out new orders of LTE iPad minis as quickly as the iPad 4, however, as its website currently lists the LTE capable minis as shipping in “2 weeks”.

Other rumors have also pointed to a Nov. 16 launch of in-store sales of the new LTE iPads at AT&T.

We’re sure to hear more. Another image below:

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For a few years now PC manufacturers have been attempting to pack a touchscreen into their all-in-one iMac competitors. It’s a feature Steve Jobs made clear back in 2010 that Apple had spent significant time testing on Macs before determining touch was “ergonomically terrible”  on a vertical display. Steve noted “you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off.”  While that does not mean Apple will never do it (see iPad mini), for now Apple has made its bet on hand gestures staying horizontal on Macs– trackpads in its notebooks, and multi-touch gestures with Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad for desktops.

Third-party touchscreen solutions for Mac do exist: Troll Touch will install a resistive touch panel on your Mac for no less than $800 and up. However, with that price on top of the cost of the iMac itself… for obvious reasons it has not been an extremely popular solution. We’ve been playing with what appears to be the only affordable product on the market bringing touchscreen like gestures to iMac, the $199 Zorro Macsk from Shenzhen based TMDtouch.

Early reviews of the Zorro Macsk should perhaps be updated, as we’ve been playing with the product following an update at the end of October that the company said vastly improved performance and fixed many of the issues reviewers were experiencing. 
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Following the $1 billion verdict in the Samsung vs. Apple case, Samsung has been attempting to get the courts to investigate juror Velvin Hogan. It claimed Hogan “concealed information” about his past history with Seagate, a company Samsung is now a shareholder in. CNET reported Federal District Judge Lucy Koh will consider Samsung’s claims in a hearing set for Dec. 6. At the heart of the allegations is whether Hogan disclosed that his former employee Seagate had previously sued him:

As part of her inquiry, Koh said she will require Apple to disclose what information the company’s lawyers knew about the jury foreman…Samsung argued that jury foreman Velvin Hogan didn’t disclose during jury selection that he had been sued by Seagate, his former employer. Samsung pointed out in court papers that Seagate and Samsung have a “substantial strategic relationship.” The litigation with Seagate led Hogan to file for personal bankruptcy in 1993. Samsung maintains Hogan should have informed the court about the case.

The Register reported today that Apple called Samsung’s argument a “convoluted theory,” adding it was Samsung responsibilities to interview jurors members during jury selection:
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In June, Google decided to update Google Play with a very useful feature for developers: the ability to respond to the user reviews attached to their apps in the store. The feature is an important one, allowing developers to respond to criticisms, provide updates on necessary upcoming fixes, and perhaps most importantly, communicate directly with their users. Google’s decision to introduce the feature made it clear the App Store needs to revamp its customer support—and developers agreed.

Apple has yet to introduce any sort major overhaul to its App Store customer support and rankings. However, Freshdesk, creators of cloud-based help desk software, introduced a product today that provides direct, in-app customer support for iOS developers.

The free “MobiHelp” SDK allows a developer to implement customer support directly within their iOS apps using a single line of code. This will allow developers to not just respond to comments in the store like Google Play, but also communicate directly with their users from within the app. From there, devs can view and respond to feedback inside of FreskDesk HTML5 app on the desktop or mobile:

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