New data from market research firm Counterpoint shows iPhone sales are down 20% YoY based upon November 2018 numbers versus 2017. Further, the firm shows that last November, the $999+ iPhone X was the best selling phone in November, while this year it is the iPhone XR, which starts at $749.
New data from Thinknum shows how hiring for Amazon’s Alexa platform is currently outpacing Apple’s attempts to grow the Siri team, at a rate of nearly 5:1. As of writing, there were about 750 job openings mentioning “Alexa” from Amazon, with just under 170 from Apple with specific mention of “Siri“.
New data from Best Buy via Thinknum shows that iPad Pro sales remain consistently strong despite widespread media coverage of the alleged bending issues ailing the tablet.
Though the data doesn’t conclusively paint the entire picture of how well iPad Pro has faired in the sales department, it does indicate that niche bending coverage hasn’t critically affected the general consensus of the device — at least not so far.
Last year GigSky announced that it would offer iPad cellular data plans in around 90 countries by leveraging Apple’s new carrier-agnostic Apple SIM now included in the device. Today the company is expanding availability of those plans to 140+ countries, giving more iPad users the ability to purchase data plans through GigSky without going through a local carrier.
T-Mobile is adding more services to its Binge On and Music Freedom features, which allow its customers to stream video and audio content from certain apps without eating into their wireless plan’s data allowance.
“It’s a fact … Un-carrier Data is different than Carrier Data. It’s better! Nobody does data like T-Mobile!” said Legere. “Un-carrier Data is not only faster, it lasts a lot longer than the other guys… As of today, you stream unlimited music and video from over 100 providers – without ever touching your Un-carrier Data or worrying about overages—and you can stash what you don’t use for later. Try that with Carrier Data. It’s gone in a flash, and you’re getting hit with penalties—or they repossess it after a month or two. Ridiculous!”
Among the 16 total new services being added today, users can now stream audio data-free from Amazon Music, Chilltrax, ESPN Radio, OHIO.FM, PreDanz and Uforia.
And for video, services officially added to the list today include Dailymotion, EPIX, OVGuide, OWNZONES, Viki, YipTV, 120 Sports, Nickelodeon, Spike, and TV Land.
T-Mobile shared some stats about the Binge On and Music Freedom initiatives noting that users have streamed approximately 90 billion songs without using data since launch (around 210 million songs a day). It also pointed out that its users “are watching 2x more from free streaming sites on plans with limited data and have streamed over 190 million hours of video for free.”
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The addition of the new services today brings up the number of audio and video services supported by Binge On and Music Freedom to 100 total. You can view a full list of supported services on T-Mobile’s website.
Apple has started collecting some of the research data that users submit through apps using the company’s ResearchKit platform for the first time.
The iPhone SE may be Apple’s most muted iPhone launch in recent memory due to the fact that it’s not considered a flagship model for the company, but new data shows the 4-inch iPhone is attracting a large number of users in two of Apple’s most promising emerging markets: China and India.
iPhone SE might be helping Apple attract more new users from Android compared to previous recent iPhone launches, according to the latest data on sales of the new device from Slice Intelligence. Specifically, Slice points to the higher number of SE buyers coming from Android compared to the iPhone 6S:
With Apple making very clear how strongly it feels about the privacy of customer data through the FBI case, it’s no surprise that the issue is a hot-button within the company. A Reuters piece shows just how serious Apple is when it comes to guarding personal data.
Any collection of Apple customer data requires sign-off from a committee of three “privacy czars” and a top executive, according to four former employees who worked on a variety of products that went through privacy vetting […] The trio of experts […] are both admired and feared.
One former employee said that debates over whether or not customer data can be used to improve a service usually take at least a month to settle, and some privacy issues are debated for more than a year before a final decision is reached. Key privacy issues are escalated all the way to Tim Cook.
It was a refusal to compromise on privacy that killed one of Apple’s products, says the piece, while others needed to be substantially reworked to achieve privacy sign-off …
Who will buy the iPhone SE? Data shows that over 35% of iPhone users are still using a 4-inch device…
IDC is out today with its latest data on the wearable market — both smartwatches and more basic activity trackers— and within we get a look at Apple Watch sales for the fourth quarter of 2015.
Bloomberg reports this evening that Apple is getting an extension on its Tuesday deadline to make a decision and respond to the court order asking them to aid the government in retrieving data off of an iPhone 5c used by one of the gunmen involved in the fatal San Bernardino shootings last December. Apple now has until February 26th to respond to the request in court.
Apple just released its Q1 2016 earnings, reporting “record” results of $75.9 billion in revenue and $18.4 billion in profit. In addition to its normal data, however, Apple has shared a new figure relating to the number of active devices it has in the wild. Apple says that it now has an active installed base of 1 billion devices, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. Apple says it gathered this data by tracking the devices that have been engaged with its services within the last 90 days.
The carrier wars in the US are heating up as we head further into the winter, and that’s generally good news for consumers. Verizon is currently adding 2GB of data for new and current subscribers that upgrade to certain plans over the next few weeks. T-Mobile is targeting switchers by offering AT&T subscribers that jump carriers the chance to buy the 128GB iPhone 6s at the price of the 16GB model and save as much as $125 on financed accessories including Beats headphones and the Apple Watch. Read on for details…
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Code analytics platform SourceDNA has found hundreds of apps on the App Store that used private APIs to collect private user data, like email addresses and device identifiers, slipping under Apple’s radar in the approval process. The code got into these apps through the inclusion of a mischievous third-party advertising SDK, which secretly stored this data and sent it off to its own servers.
Apple has now verified the SourceDNA report and is removing all of the apps that included the advertising SDK from the store, as using private API calls is a breach of App Review Guidelines. Apple has also patched its approval processes to prevent any more apps that use this technique to make it onto the App Store.
Update: T-Mobile has reached out and clarified that the breach affects current and former customers who went through a credit check. Anyone who did not go through a credit check is unaffected.
T-Mobile has confirmed this evening that as many as 15 million of its customers have been affected by a data breach. As the company is quick to point out, however, the breach did not occur on its servers, but rather its credit partner’s, Experian.
Foursquare is tapping into its data of foot traffic for the first time to predict Apple’s iPhone sales as the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus launch this weekend. The company notes that it has “the world’s largest database of information on the foot traffic of people around the globe,” courtesy of its app users that use the app to check-in at locations they visit.
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Today T-Mobile announced that its Simple Global Uncarrier move is expanding to cover 20 more countries. That means you can now take your T-Mobile iPhone abroad to anywhere in South America and Europe as well as many other destinations, and not pay any extra for data or texting while you’re there.
AT&T today has revealed a slight change to how it is handling throttling users grandfathered into unlimited data plans. Up until today, AT&T has throttled unlimited data users when they hit 5GB of usage and are in a congested area. As a reader has pointed out to us this evening, however, the carrier has updated its website with a new policy for throttling those on an unlimited data plans…
With iOS 9, Apple revealed that its Maps service would begin to support transit directions. The service supports buses, trains, subways, and ferries and will be available in 10 cities at launch later this year. One big question, however, centered around where Apple was obtaining its transit data from. Now, Apple has updated its Apple Maps Acknowledgements webpage with a breakdown of where transit data from each city is coming (via Apple Maps Marketing).
The webpage reveals that Apple’s transit data from twenty different sources, with each source providing data for a single city in most cases. For instance, three different sources are contributing transit data for Berlin and three other sources are contributing to San Francisco transit data. Some sources include Flixbus, Metrolinx, and MiWay. The full list of sources can be seen on the Acknowledgements webpage here.
Apple’s Maps webpage also now lists that both Positron Technologies and DAC Group are supplying business listings to Apple Maps. Previously, the data was being supplied only by Yext, so with the addition of two new sources, there should now be both more information and more businesses listed in Apple Maps.
When Apple Maps transit launches later this year, the feature will be supported in Baltimore, Berlin, Chicago, London, Mexico City, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington DC, with expansion occurring as time progresses.
National carriers across the US have been adding features that make it easier to use their service in Mexico and Canada as a growing trend, and today AT&T has announced enhancements to its pre-paid GoPhone plans to include 4GB of high speed data use in Canada and Mexico as well as the United States. The new AT&T GoPhone feature goes into effect on August 21st and is supported on the carrier’s $60 pre-paid plan without making any changes.
In addition to 4GB of 4G LTE data for use across North America where available, the GoPhone plans include unlimited talk and text in the US, Canada, and Mexico as well. AT&T’s $60 GoPhone plan is reduced to $55/month for customers using the carrier’s Auto Refill automatic payment feature.
For post-paid subscribers, AT&T supports international calling and texting to Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands on its 15GB and 20GB Mobile Share Value plans that it simplified over the weekend. More similarly, T-Mobile enhanced its own plans last month to support 4G LTE data use in addition to text and calls in Canada and Mexico without international roaming fees.
Starting tomorrow, AT&T will be revamping its Mobile Share Value plans by adjusting data tiers and plan prices for new and current subscribers. At the low end, AT&T is consolidating a few data tiers into just two options with different price points. Meanwhile, AT&T’s double digit data tiers are also being reduced, and some subscribers can potentially end up with more data at no extra cost per month or get a better rate on even higher data tiers.
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Apple has quietly added a new data restore feature to iCloud.com, enabling users to rollback accidentally deleted documents, calendar changes and contacts. The new ‘Restore Files’, ‘Restore Contacts’ and ‘Restore Calendars’ features are hidden in iCloud.com Advanced Settings pane.
Seemingly unrelated to iCloud backup, Apple shows snapshots of your recently deleted documents and lets you put them back onto iCloud Drive. This means there is now a way to recover accidentally deleted iCloud documents for the first time, because there is no equivalent to the Trash folder in iCloud.
Similarly, Contacts restoration shows timestamped snapshots of your iCloud contacts database. Restoring to an earlier version reverts all changes made since the backup date. Unlike with files, you cannot individually restore single contacts. The same is true for Calendars.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has today published its rankings of technology companies regarding how they handle user data. Apple this year has received praise from the EFF for how transparent it is when it comes to handling requests form government agencies and standing up for user rights and privacy.
