Cue up the Norma Rae theme music. Apple is about to go up against the unions. Well, not quite. The tech giant is starting mandatory training for retail store managers that includes the “legal do’s and don’t of dealing with unions.” The training comes as Apple marks the 10th anniversary of its retail stores, now numbering 357 worldwide.
Google’s former CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt told U.S. Senators Apple’s voice-recognition system is an “interesting development,” suggesting the iPhone 4S feature posed a “competitive threat” to its search business. Schmidt’s written comments come as a new survey finds Siri drastically reduces the number of Google searches, many times to none.
Despite a preliminary injunction granted Motorola Mobility on Friday, Apple continues to sell products in Germany. The tech giant has a two-week window until it must argue why a court’s default judgement should be reversed, averting the possible stop of retail and online sales in the nation.
If you felt like your Internet connection briefly died early Monday morning, you were not alone. About 9 am Eastern (6 am PT) many cable Internet customers along the East Coast and stretching down to Texas lost online connections. The glitch hit “most of our service areas,” Time Warner Cable told Twitter users.
What happens when heartfelt tributes to the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs get turned into commercial schmaltz? You get an Asian eyeglass distributor using the death of Steve Jobs to promote its products. At a Hong Kong trade show, a distributor announced Jobs left “his overwhelming ideas and his favorite glasses.”
The idea of Apple entering the fractious and shark-infested waters of the television set industry has always made us scratch our heads. We were almost convinced the fever had passed when Steve Jobs biography was released, quoting the Apple co-founder that he’d “finally cracked” the problem of integrating home computers with television. Now comes an analyst suggesting the whole idea is bonkers and why even bother?
Here’s a good riddle: What has just four percent of the market, yet pockets more than half of the profits? The answer is Apple, the tech giant known for squeezing every ounce of profit from its iconic products. According to one analyst, Apple took 4.2 percent of the mobile handset market and transformed it into 52 percent of industry profits. Neat trick, huh?
Amazon reportedly plans to scale down the screen size of its next Kindle Fire tablet, producing an 8.9-inch device, rather than an originally expected 10.1-inch product for 2012. The report could be another indication that suppliers are busy filling orders for Apple’s iPad.
Don’t look for the Occupy movement to picket Apple. The iPhone maker is among just a few tech companies paying their fair share of corporate taxes. According to a report released Thursday, Apple paid a 31 percent tax rate. By comparison, the likes of HP, Yahoo and Amazon.com appeared to have paid less than half the 35 percent corporate rate — or even lower.
Remember HP’s fiasco with the Slate, then the TouchPad? You’d think the company would run from the tablet market like a Silicon Valley investor with his hair on fire — but you’d be wrong.
Remember the old line about the enemy of your enemy is your friend? Well, that could apply to how Apple views the Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon. Originally seen as a rival to the iPad, the $199 7-inch device could actually scramble an already disorganized band of Android-based Apple competitors.
According to a recent survey, if you own a smartphone in the U.S., you’re likely younger than 35 years old. By contrast, if you are older than 45, a basic feature phone is likely your preferred handset. Welcome to the Smartphone Generation Gap.
Apple is supposedly is preparing to overhaul its key product trifecta: the iPhone, the iPad and iMac, as well as the MacBook Air in 2012. The report, based on the tech giant’s “upstream supply chain,” echos existing chatter the company will unveil new versions of its products in the coming year.
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is catnip for Mac lovers, selling 379,000 copies during its first week. Although it doesn’t compare to the 4 million iPhone 4S handsets sold during its first weekend, the book’s sales were enough to leave best-selling fiction author John Grisham in the literary dust.
Telefonica Czech Republic has rejected sales of the iPhone 4S and other versions of Apple’s smartphone due to a dispute over reported business terms. Two other carriers will offer the new handset instead, which has sold at a record pace since a mid-October introduction.
Are you being taunted by the sneering pigs? Does the Bluebird of Happiness never seem to come your way? Then you -like I – are an Angry Bird addict and responsible for the infuriating entertainment becoming the world’s most popular game, topping half a billion downloads.
You want to buy an iPad for Christmas. The problem: scammers know it too and are waiting in prey for you this holiday season. Here are some tips on how to safely shop for tablets online without falling victim to hoax high-tech Santas.
Today Apple announced that it will begin selling the iPhone 4S in 15 more countries starting on November 11th, including Hong Kong and South Korea. The news is part of an aggressive roll-out by the tech giant, which hopes to have the iconic smartphone in 70 countries by the end of December.
Although the gap between Apple and Android appears to be shrinking in terms of overall market share, it’s bigger than ever when it comes to the share of the web. In October, web-connected iOS devices rose to 61.6 percent. By comparison, online Android devices comprise 18.9 percent, a paltry sliver of Google’s overall mobile market share.
A third-party app allowing iOS devices to stream music via Amazon’s Cloud Drive has been yanked from the App Store amid reported legal concerns, and that’s not all: the developer says Apple is delaying approving an update for another music app that streams music from Google’s similar cloud music service.
Apple’s massive new solar farm and their next-gen spaceship campus will boost the tech giant’s 2012 expense to $8 billion — a 73% hike over this year, one analyst told investors Monday.
Up until now, Apple’s Siri voice-recognition system has been shown in a humorous light. However, what if Siri could save your life? People remaking next-generation 911 services see Siri as the voice of emergency victims, not just a locator of the nearest sushi joint.
It may sound like something out of an Isaac Asimov novel or a James Cameron film, but the parent company of iPhone maker Foxconn is working to build an “empire of robots” to replace over a million Chinese workers.
The days of students lugging around massive backpacks loaded with heavy textbooks are numbered. According to a new poll of educational IT directors, signs are strong that within the next five years, all U.S. schools could adopt tablets, many as a replacement for textbooks. The good news for Apple is that in education circles (as with most consumers) the only tablet worth considering is the iPad.
Could one of the executives Steve Jobs handpicked for Apple’s Board of Directors be inept? That’s the question some investors are raising following news that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating board member Andrea Jung’s role as CEO of Avon Products.
