https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ku0H10_G1X4
One of the curses of being an innovator is every time you innovate, someone comes along and says they had a patent on it first. Apple knows this dilemma well, and the latest patent infringement claim Cupertino has to defend itself against is in China over Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant.
The Chinese Communist Party is continuing to attack Apple in the press, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. After China Central Television (CCT) ran its big hit piece, the government’s newspaper has also decided to throw dirt on Apple now. The first criticisms revolved around Apple’s product warranty practices, while the second volley of propaganda calls out Apple’s lack of interaction with the Chinese media.
As Apple has become more successful over the last few years, Hon Hai Precision Industry’s (Foxconn) financial fortunes have been more tightly bound to Apple’s than ever before.
If things are going well for Foxconn, then Apple’s probably doing pretty well too, so investors were happy to hear that Foxconn just posted its most profitable quarter ever thanks to improved production efficiency of the iPad and iPhone 5.
There are some people in China that will do almost anything to get their hands on a new Apple product. One guy even sold his kidney. But if you don’t want to sell a body part, Chinese students have decided to accept some truly horrific loan terms just to buy an iPhone.
When Apple launched its new Maps app with iOS 6 last September, one of its headline features, Flyover, only supported a handful of big cities. But the Cupertino company has been hard at work in the background to extend its reach, adding support for additional locations all over the world.
In the past few months, Apple has brought Flyover to an additional 16 cities, plus extended its coverage in 14 of the cities already supported.
Apple hasn’t announced the iPhone 5S yet, but Chinese clone specialist GooPhone has already created a cheap knockoff of it. And it has done a pretty incredible job. As you’ll see in the video below, the “i5S” looks identical to the real thing, and you probably wouldn’t even know it was a clone. That is, until you started using it.
Samsung smartphones outsold those from rivals Apple, Nokia, and Lenovo in China throughout 2012, allowing the Korean company to claim the biggest share of the Chinese smartphone market, according to the latest report from Strategy Analytics.
Nokia had claimed the top spot in 2011, but the Finnish firm has struggled to compete with Samsung’s Galaxy devices this time around, and couldn’t even make its way into the top five.
Last year, Apple launched its Labor and Human Rights page to give some transparency to the human rights controversy’s it’s been having with supply chain workers. Along with numerous explanations on what Apple is doing to make sure its supply chain workers are treated fairly, the company releases the percentage of supplier work-hour compliance every month.
For the first time since Apple started tracking its supplier work-hour compliance metric, they just hit 99% compliance in January 2013.
There have been a lot of theories floated for why Foxconn froze new hires earlier this month. Early rumors suggested that iPhone 5 production had slowed, while later reports said that Apple’s new measures to improve working conditions had caused fewer workers than usual to abandon their posts over Chinese New Year.
Now there’s a new theory: Foxconn’s getting out of China, at least in part.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — As I was walking around the show floor at MWC today, I noticed a number of smartphones that looked very familiar — yet they were being paraded by Chinese companies I’d never heard of. I saw what looked like a large iPhone 5, an entire range of Samsung Galaxy devices, and a number of high-end HTC handsets.
Except they weren’t really Apple, Samsung, or HTC devices at all; they were actually cheap clones that were trying their best to look like the real thing. They even had fake accessories that were identical to the originals.
Foxconn has reportedly placed a recruitment freeze across most of its factories in China as the company slows production of the iPhone 5, the Financial Times reports. This is believed to be the first such freeze since 2009, and it’s seen as an emphasis of the “weakening demand” for some Apple products. But does the freeze really have anything to do with Apple’s devices?
Apple could launch its $330 “iPhone mini” as early as this summer to boost the company’s smartphone sales in China, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty. It’s expected the low-cost device could provide Apple with an additional 20% of the smartphone market, adding to the 10% it has already claimed with the iPhone 5. And with smartphone prices now beginning to stabilize in China, now would be an ideal time for such a device.
There’s a belief that Apple makes new engineers work on fake products until they can be trusted. According one of the company’s former employees, Adam Lashinsky, who published the book Inside Apple last January, the Cupertino company hires people into so-called “dummy positions” until it’s confident that they can be a part of upcoming products without leaking information.
But how accurate are those claims? We know Apple takes secrecy very seriously, but would it really waste time and money on giving people fake projects just to ensure they won’t squeal?
Almost certainly not.
Even though we have yet to see some truly credible evidence to support the countless claims that Apple will release a cheaper iPhone sometime in 2013, that’s not stopping another analyst from jumping on the cheap-iPhone train.
Analyst Brian White, at Topeka Capital, released a report this morning claiming that his research supports the claim that Apple will sell a cheaper version of the iPhone in order to attract new growth opportunities in China and elsewhere around the world.
After facing a lot of scrutiny for the past few years over working conditions at factories in China, Apple has made a lot of progress on cleaning up their manufacturing partners’ facilities. Pay has been increased. Forced overtime and child labor aren’t as frequent. And we haven’t heard of any massive brawls in a while.
Following Apple’s lead, HP has decided to get its act together in China as well by reducing the number of underage student laborers at its facilities in China.
According to a source that posted on a Chinese microblogging site, the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 have been spotted at Apple suppliers in China. Both models could release in 2013, said the source, named Old Yao on the site.
The source also notes that the iPhone 5S looks a lot like the iPhone 5, while the five-inch iPhone 6 is even lighter and thinner than that.
It’s good to take all rumors with a big grain of salt or two, of course, but this one is both exciting and plausible, even without any photos.
Source: Sina Tech
There are seventeen rare earth elements in the periodic table: fifteen lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium. About nine of those elements go into every iPhone sold… and if China were suddenly to disappear from a map tomorrow, Apple would lose about 90% of those elements.
Those nine rare-earth elements are used in all sorts of things to make your iPhone, including providing the LCD display, help polish the glass, build the speakers, make the phone circuitry and even allow your iPhone to vibrate on silent mode. But they are also an environmental nightmare to actually claw out of the earth, which is why China — which doesn’t care much about such issues — has a stranglehold on them.
The City of Shanghai has just confirmed via the Municipal Commission of Commerce that Apple will be opening a research and development center this summer.
Apple’s fifth-generation iPad is expected to finally ditch the existing design and adopt a new form factor that’s said to be much like the iPad mini’s, according to a new report that has surfaced today. A physical model of the device indicates it will be significantly smaller in almost every way, with virtually no bezel down the sides of the display.
As for the iPhone 5S, that’s expected to be very similar to the iPhone 5 — as you may have guessed; while Apple’s new low-cost iPhone, which will reportedly launch some time this year, will be built with China Mobile’s 700 million customers in mind.
Apple has just released its annual Supplier Responsibility Report, a document that sheds light on the Cupertino-based tech company’s findings about its suppliers’ business practices in 2012. It takes into account excessive work hours, underage labor, and environmental impacts of the manufacturing process, including things like conflict-free minerals.
In the report, the company notes that it is the first technology company to join the Fair Labor Association (FLA), and had the group audit Apple’s biggest supplier, Foxconn, finding that the Chinese manufacturing company is on track to meet the recommendations of the FLA this year.
Not all in the report is positive, however.
Apple celebrates the Chinese New Year by offering its fans in Asia one-day “Red Friday” deals, similar to the Black Friday sale it holds for customers in the United States. And the Cupertino company has today begun teasing the event via its online store with a big red advert that promises “great gifts for everyone on your list.”
Apple products are expensive, and they’re especially expensive in China, a country where Foxconn workers can’t afford the iPhones they make. To help make its devices more affordable for Chinese customers, Apple has started offering payment plans that range from 6-24 months. The plans are available for purchases between 300 yuan to 30,000 yuan, or about $48 to $4,825.
The 6-12 month installments are offered with 0% interest, while a 2-year payment plan comes with a 8% interest charge. Customers must be using China Merchants Bank to participate.
Verizon Wireless has helped a critical infrastructure company based in the United States catch one of its developers paying Chinese workers to do his job so that he could browse the Internet all day. “Bob” outsourced all of his work to China and paid the workers just a fraction of his six-figure salary so that he could spend his time on sites like Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, and eBay.
Verizon has revealed the fascinating story in a new case study.
Even though Apple’s headquartered in Cupertino, they’ve got operations all across the globe, and we don’t mean just retail stores. There have been rumors that Apple is opening up an R&D center in Israel, but according to a new rumor, that’s not the only place they’re considering.
Tim Cook recently talked to the mayor of Beijing, Wang Ashun, about the possibility of Apple opening an R&D center in Beijing.
Apple just sent out a press release confirming that cellular models of the iPad mini and fourth-gen iPad will officially go on sale in China this Friday, January 15th. During a trip to China last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that WiFi + Cellular models of the company’s newest iPads would arrive this month. The WiFi-only versions went on sale December 7th, a little over a month after U.S. sales began.