Amazon - page 26

According to Reuters, US authorities have called Apple out for collusion with electronic book publishers, saying that the Cupertino-based company conspired with publishers to raise eBook prices when negotiating iBooks by playing them all against each other and against rival eBook retailer, Amazon.

The US Justice Department accused Apple of price fixing in April 2012 in relation to Apple’s negotiations with five publishers when it was launching the iPad in early 2010. The Justice Department has settled out of court with each of the publishers, which included HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and Pearson’s Penguin Group.

If you’re looking for a new solution to back up your iPhone’s photos to the cloud and access them on other devices, Amazon has a new solution for you. The company just launched it’s new iOS app, Amazon Cloud Drive Photos, that lets you upload your photos to Cloud Drive.

For the last two years there has been a lot of speculation that Amazon is working on its own smartphone to go head-to-head with Apple and Samsung’s offerings.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Amazon Kindle Phone is real, and that it might come with a high-tech glasses-free 3D display.

Foxconn has been forced to make preparations for life after Apple following reduced demand for the iPhone and other iOS devices which has caused the company’s revenue to nosedive, The New York Times reports.

The manufacturer has been doing well off the back of Apple’s hugely successful devices in recent years, which have been contributing at least 40% of its revenue, according to analyst estimates. But after suffering a 19.2% drop in revenue during the first quarter of the year, thanks to declining iPhone and iPad orders, Foxconn is now looking at ways in which it can be less reliant on Apple.

Amazon’s Kindle app for iOS hasn’t always been as accessible as Apple’s own iBooks, but that changed today with a new update that adds VoiceOver support, among other new accessibility features. Kindle will now read aloud over 1.8 million books, allowing those who are visually impaired to kick back and listen to their favorite titles.

The iPad has earned first place in the J.D. Power and Associates customer satisfaction survey for the second year in a row, just a month after Apple’s iPhone secured the award for the ninth time. The popular slate scored 836 out of a possible 1,000 points having been rated on performance, ease of operation, styling and design, features, and cost.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has issued a note to investors in which he says the second-generation iPad mini with Retina display won’t enter mass production until October due to yield issues with the new high-resolution display. If true, the problem could make a fall launch for the device very unlikely.

Amazon is reportedly ready to take on the likes of the Apple TV and Roku with a set-top box of its own, presumably some sort of Kindle Box.

Apple’s iTunes catalogue revolutionized the way people consume media. Why go to BlockBuster to rent a movie when you can download it from iTunes just as quickly? While most of the market has been trying to catch up, Apple’s lead in online video sales has remained dominant in the U.S.

NPD released a new report that highlights Apple’s strength in electronic video sales and rentals. While everyone else is fighting for second place, Apple still commands over 67% of the market.

About a month ago, Amazon bought Goodreads, a popular social network for reviewing and recommending books. The reason was obvious: Goodreads in the Kindle Store. But what a new report shows is that the buyout was also a move to steal Goodreads away from a potential partnership with Apple.

Siri hasn’t quite lived up to the hype that most Apple fans bestowed upon it after it debuted with the iPhone 4S, but it’s still a magical piece of software, and Apple’s competitors want their own version of Siri.

Adding to months of speculation that it’s working on its own smartphone, Amazon just bought a  Siri-like app called Evi, for $26 million. 

Real Racing 3 is set to get its first update since hitting the App Store back in February, and it’s going to be a big one. In addition to adding two new cars, users will see more than 100 new events, a new game mode, and iCloud save syncing. EA has published a teaser trailer ahead of the update’s release, which shows off the new cars.

Remember Amazon AutoRip?

It was a cool service Amazon launched earlier in the year which did something pretty cool: if you bought an AutoRip-compatible CD at any point since 1998, it’ll automatically show up in your Amazon Cloud Player, which can be accessed either online or through the free iTunes app

Pretty neat, and now, AutoRip is even neater: it now works with vinyl records you’ve purchased too. For example, I bought a copy of the excellent album Stranger by Balmorhea on vinyl a couple months ago, and it’s now in my Cloud Player.

This is pretty neat. Vinyl is already one of the more savvy ways to buy music, not just because of the improved sound quality and presentation over digital or CD, but because when you buy a vinyl album, you often get the digital version for free as a download anyway. With AutoRip now working with vinyl, buying a record is an even more compelling way to consume music.

Speck is the Trojan of iPhone cases: you might not want to wear one, but they’re everywhere, and it’s better than going bareback. Speck’s colorful, buttony cases are pretty much ubiquitous, and one of the most easily recognizable iPhone case brands out there.

In fact, Speck is so recognizable that there are aapparently counterfeit Speck cases on the market… and Speck is so honked off about it that they are suing the maker of these fake Speck cases for mllions.

Last year it seemed as though everyone was certain Amazon would follow up the success of the Kindle Fire with an Amazon branded smartphone to take on the iPhone. Instead, Jeff Bezos unleashed the Kindle Fire HD on the world.

The rumor mill is back with more Amazon smartphone rumors, as a new report claims Amazon is getting close to finishing its smartphone that will launch later this year.

Over at Asymco, Horace Dediu has compared Apple’s retail economy versus Amazon, and while the results aren’t anything we haven’t seen before — Amazon has annual revenue about twice the size of Apple’s retail revenue, but makes only 10% of Apple’s same operating income on that revenue — it’s informative to see it laid out so clearly. Check it out.

Source: Asymco

Spotify is already one of the premier sources for streaming a la carte audio on the Internet, but the popular streaming service might have far bolder plans than that, with a new report saying that Spotify intends on going head-to-head with Netflix, HBO, iTunes and Amazon Video by launching a video streaming service. Yowza!

HBO Go is one of the best TV apps for the iPad. You can stream episodes of shows like Girls and Game of Thrones to your iPad whenever you’re craving some drama. The only problem is you have a cable subscription with HBO to access the app.

While HBO isn’t ready to ditch the subscription model altogether just yet, but the company’s CEO indicated this week that they might make the app available to cord cutters that pay for broadband Internet.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets have been some of the best competition to the iPad, mostly because they’re cheap but come with good software. It seems like Amazon would sell the Kindle for as cheap as possible if it meant taking a slice of Apple’s pie.

Earlier this morning, a rumor was floated by TechCrunch that Amazon is making a $99 tablet to compete with the iPad mini. It sounded crazy at the time because the Kindle Fire is already $130 cheaper than the iPad mini. Turns out that the rumor was too good to be true and Amazon’s already shot it down.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has replaced Tim Cook as the highest-rated CEO in tech, according to employee approval ratings on Glassdoor. Cook’s 97% approval rating from 2012 has dropped down to 93%, which takes him from first position all the way down to 18th. Zuckerberg now has an impressive 99% approval rating.

Even though Apple had a head start on tablets with the iPad, the number of Android tablets in use is expected to pass the iPad later this year.

According to a new report from IDC, the iPad’s marketshare will decrease in 2013 from 51%, down to 46%, while Android grows its marketshare to 49%.

Rovio has taken some time away from Angry Birds and Bad Piggies to focus on its next project, the official game for the upcoming DreamWorks movie The Croods. Believe it or not, it’s not a physics-based puzzle game, and Rovio has released the game’s first trailer to prove it.

For the longest time, there were no Lightning docks available for iPhones or iPads, and it looks like Apple will never make one. I have some thoughts on why that might be, but we’ll get to that in a bit. For now, we’re going to take a quick look at the seemingly crappy dock I picked up from Amazon last month. It’s called the “White Wave Lightning Dock Docking Charge Station for Apple iPad Mini/ iPad 4G/ iPhone 5/ iPod Touch 5G/ iPod Nano 7G,” which should give you some idea of the kind of SEO-mad company behind it.

Walter Isaacson, the author of the best-selling biography about Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, will not have to share his notes or testify in an ongoing lawsuit over alleged eBook price fixing between Apple and book publishers.

Lawyers wanted to see Isaacson’s notes from interviews with Jobs in an effort to establish Apple’s agreements with publishers, but Isaacson refused to hand them over, citing a New York law that allows journalists to shield their sources.

Teardown specialists iFixit have published a new tablet repairability guide that quickly tells you how difficult it’s going to be to mend your broken Android, iOS, or Windows 8 slate. The guide features 18 popular tablets, which have been given a repairability score between one and ten. The higher the score, the easier they are to repair.

Unsurprisingly, Apple’s iPads are some of the hardest tablets to fix, second only to the Microsoft Surface Pro — the only tablet with a score of one. Amazon’s Kindle Fire’s, on the other hand, are relatively easy to repair, as are Dell’s devices.