Ed Sutherland - page 9

It’s never a good sign when you have to give your tablets away in order to compete with Apple’s iPad. A month after cutting consumer prices on its PlayBook, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is telling businesses they’ll throw in a free tablet if they buy two of the devices. The only thing missing from this desperate plea for sales is the word “please.”

Nokia may finally have found its answer to the iPhone, a pair of new Lumia Windows phones that one analyst tells investors is ‘competitive’ with the Apple smartphone.

If Apple was hoping to unveil its iPhone for customers of China’s third-largest mobile carrier in the world’s largest cell phone market, it may have to wait. China Telecom may have to delay introducing the handset until mid-2012, according to a Friday report citing supplier checks.

Don’t underestimate the power of China when it comes to the cellphone market. ZTE, based in the populous Asian nation, became the world’s No. 4 maker of mobile phones, overtaking Apple, which held the spot in the previous three-month period.

It’s not quite Game Over for Nintendo, but Angry Birds and other iPhone games cost the company nearly $1 billion for the first half of 2011. What’s more, an aging Wii is being overshadowed as more and more gamers turn to smartphones. It’s enough to give Donkey Kong indigestion.

The BlackBerry is popular again. Ha ha ha. Sorry, just kidding. That popularity extends only to owners rushing to trade them in after a recent nationwide service outage.

Indeed, one firm specializing in buying your unwanted phones says BlackBerry trade-ins are up 80 percent this week — and it can be entirely attributed to long beleaguered Blackberry owners trading in their devices for the iPhone 4S.

If Apple needed another argument in favor of the iPhone, Sprint’s CEO Wednesday offered up a whopper: iOS devices are 50 percent more efficient than Android handsets when it comes to slurping up 3G data. The comment seems to confirm previous reports that devices running Google’s mobile operating system are the data hogs, not iPhones.

In a classic example of the ‘tipping point’, a research firm which once advised enterprises they need only support Windows, now urges companies embrace Macs. “Stand in the way of Apple users,” the firm says, “and you will eventually get run over.”

The iPod is essentially Apple’s typewriter: a piece of technology that reshaped society completely, then was made redundant by its descendants. However, the iPod’s birth a decade ago launched a legacy that can’t be ignored, no matter how hard you try.

It appears the wave of early disappointment in the iPhone 4S that washed over U.S. consumers has now made it to the United Kingdom. A third of UK consumers were “disappointed” Apple’s new handset didn’t offer more features, according to an Internet survey.

Yet another publisher is singing the praises of Apple’s Newsstand appfor the iPad. Magazine publisher Condé Nast announced Tuesday a 268 percent hike in subscriptions after the tech giant released Newsstand as part of iOS5 unveiled in early October.

Forty percent of Blackberry owners say they want to switch to another smartphone. Following a service outage and an upcoming move to a new operating system, business professionals surveyed in the U.K. see Apple as the preferred alternative to trouble-plagued Research in Motion.

Add free hotel Wi-Fi to the list of services Apple’s iPad is making a thing of the past. The bad thing about the iPad being the best-selling gadget on the planet is, paradoxically, that the iPad is the best selling gadget on the planet. Turns out, the iPad sucks up quadruple the amount of wireless bandwidth as a smartphone — and hotels want to start metering your usage.

First a China supplier of MacBook unibody cases was forced to spend millions on pollution cleanup, now an iPhone plant is under scrutiny for noise and gas pollution. Pegatron, just days from an investor conference, announced plans to update equipment and work closely with local residents.

A first-ever drop in smartphone sales could be good news for Apple but portend ‘ominous signs’ for the many companies tied to the Android mobile operating system. Despite launching several Android-based phones, carriers AT&T and Verizon both reported a drop-off in smartphone sales during the September quarter, one analyst noted Monday.

The growing importance of international iPhone sales, along with demand for Apple’s latest smartphone, should remove any Wall Street doubt that the fourth quarter was only a fluke. One analyst Monday announced bullish expectations for the first quarter of 2012, forecasting 42 million iPhones will have sold in December – more than double that of last quarter.

The belief that Apple will enter the TV set market appears too good to let drop. One high-profile Apple analyst tells investors Monday the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant already has prototypes of a device worth $2.5 billion next year.

Imagine someone wanting to work for Apple, but saying “they’d have to pay me $1 million a week.” Sounds absurd, right? But T-Mobile is taking a similar tack in its attempt to sell iPhones. The carrier insists the tech giant support a little-known 4G spectrum, AWS.

Want another example of how Apple’s masterful use of design fuels sales? Like the empty iPod that just screams out for you to buy music, the empty shelves of recently-unveiled iOS 5 Newstand begs to be filled with magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

Questions asking whether Tim Cook could mimic the late CEO Steve Jobs was exactly what the Apple co-founder wanted to avoid, former vice President Al Gore now says. Gore, an Apple board member, said Jobs urged executives: “Don’t ask what Steve would have done.” Instead, the iconic Apple leader said: “Follow your own voice,” Gore recalls.

A Chinese plant temporarily closed because of noxious odors wafting into nearby communities is spending millions to reopen. The Catcher Technology site, which produces 60 percent of unibody cases for Apple’s top-selling MacBook and iMac, hopes to reopen by November.

How well are U.S. carriers selling the iPhone? Verizon Wireless, the second domestic carrier to get the Apple handset, announced it sold 2 million of the smartphones during the third quarter. The company did not reveal how many of the latest iPhone 4S units it sold, however.

The real estate chain Coldwell Banker, the iPad is the perfect tool. Soon after the first iPad was unveiled, the company ordered the tablet for both its company and the many field personnel selling home across the country. Today, there are about 50-75 iPads in use internally with every field office using the iPad, along with a customize app displaying videos of available homes.

Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice president of mobile, doesn’t particularly care for Siri and the idea that the iPhone 4S could be your personal assistant. Rubin says it’s just a little weird for people to be talking to their phone. Those words he’s going to eat.

Apple once more outsold Nokia as the one-time cell phone giant bleeds more red ink. The Finnish cell phone maker is hoping the launch of its first smartphone based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone software will save it from further financial drubbing.