Apple and Samsung have been raging a legal war against each other across the globe. While Apple won a $1 billion lawsuit against Samsung in the U.S. earlier this year, the two giants have exchanged blows in Europe as well, but neither side has come out on top yet.
However, a new report claims that Samsung might be facing a serious blow from the European commission that is seeking to impose some huge fines on Samsung for trying to get Apple products banned in Europe.
For the last few decades, developers have always flocked to Microsoft’s operating system while Apple’s Mac OS X has been an afterthought. In the post-PC world though the tables have turned.
Apple’s App Store has the highest quality apps for iPhones and iPads while Microsoft has been struggling to get developers to come over and make apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. In an effort to sway the tide of the battle, Microsoft is now trying to woo popular iOS developers over to Microsoft.
While Apple has managed to keep the App Store free from malware, it seems the Cupertino company has a hard time filtering out scams. Every so often, a shameless developer tries their luck at selling a title that promises to be something it isn’t. The latest claims to be a Halo 4 clone that is “iPhone/iPad exclusive.” They’ve gone through the trouble of writing a lengthy App Store description in an effort to fool you into thinking it’s the real thing. But in reality, it’s just a $4.99 game of chess.
If you pop into your local Microsoft store and ask for a demonstration of Windows 8, there’s a chance the store assistant will disappear and send over an 11-year-old child to help you. That’s what the company is doing in Portugal in an effort to prove its new operating system is so intuitive, even a child can use it. Either that or it’s taking advantage of cheap child labor.
Struggling Kodak has finally agreed to sell its digital imaging patents to Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corporation — two consortiums backed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others — for $525 million. Kodak will receive a portion of the money from 12 intellectual property licensees, with each licensee receiving rights to the patents, while another portion will be paid by Intellectual Ventures, which will then acquire the digital imaging patent portfolio, plus the new and existing licenses.
Android’s market share continues to grow throughout the world, but one country where Google’s platform is having its biggest impact is in China. It’s now the largest single Android market in the world, with one third of all Android devices sold there during 2012. The iPhone, on the other hand, is struggling there.
Following the launch of Windows 8 and the Surface RT, Microsoft’s head of Windows, Steven Sinofsky, abruptly left the company. Some assumed Sinofsky would become the next CEO so it left many to wonder about the fate of Windows 8 and the approach they will take to software in the future.
Julie Larson-Green has been tapped to replace Sinosky and she’s started her reign by talking to the media about what makes Windows 8 special. While many view Windows 8 and the Surface RT as responses to the iPad’s popularity, Larson-Green claims that Microsoft totally didn’t even think about the iPad and iOS when designing Windows 8.
A new report from Reuters takes to the streets (or, malls, rather) of the globe to find out what folks are actually purchasing from retail shops around the world, including Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung retail spaces in cities like Sydney, Seattle, Palo Alto, Shanghai, Bangalore, Singaporte, Paris, London, Mexico City, and Boston. They spoke to store employees and retail shoppers to find out, really, what’s selling and what’s not.
Guess what they found out? While Apple may be the darling of naysayers who like to crow about the stock slippage or the competition from Android and (sometimes) Windows Phones, Reuters found that the people they talked to and the stores they visited were far from anti-Apple, and, in fact, positively glowing about the Cupertino-based tech company’s products.
Glassdoor, a jobs and career community, releases a list of the best places to work for every year. A lot of other websites comprise similar lists, but what makes Glassdoor’s list unique is that it’s based on feedback from anonymous employees who actually work at the companies.
For the last three years Facebook has been in the top three while Apple has appeared in the number spot in the past as well. For 2013 Glassdoor ranked Apple as the 34th best place to work at, while Facebook grabbed the number one spot.
In the battle of the mobile platform wars, Android has been extending its lead over Apple’s iOS platform at a steady rate for over a year. Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt believes that the battle between Android and iOS is similar to Microsoft’s desktop expansion in the 1990s.
Schmidt say down with Bloomberg to talk about the mobile war with Apple and said that with 1.3 million new Android devices being activated per day, he thinks it’s pretty obvious that Android is winning now.
Earlier today, it was revealed that Apple rejected an update to Microsoft’s SkyDrive iOS app in the App Store. The reason was rumored to be because Microsoft didn’t want to share a percentage of subscription revenues from inside the app, and Apple has a blanket policy about all App Store developers sharing a 30% cut.
While the two companies are indeed arguing about Apple’s App Store policies, the issue actually surrounds the upcoming Office for iOS suite that Microsoft plans to launch in early 2013.
The future of Microsoft’s SkyDrive service on iOS looks bleak today as the company appears to have entered into a fight with Apple over its 30% cut of App Store revenues. Microsoft recently gave iOS users the ability to upgrade their SkyDrive subscriptions from their iPhones and iPads, but until the company agrees to give Apple a 30% cut of the in-app purchases, it won’t get any future updates approved.
A critical bug fix that prevents the app from crashing has now had to be placed on hold. Should Apple’s rules be a little more flexible in certain cases?
It’s been rumored that Microsoft Office for iPad will be unleashed on the world in early 2013. We haven’t seen any leaked screenshots, nor has Microsoft given an official release date, but it’s bound to come out sooner or later.
The latest signs that Office for iPad is coming soon come from Microsoft’s own support site where references to “Excel for iPad” have been found.
Hackers have long preferred to focus their attacks on Microsoft’s operating systems over the years, but there have been signs that they’re starting to target OS X as well. With the threat of security attacks looming in the background Apple has decided they need to get help from the very hackers that know how to exploit their software.
To help lock down its security issues, Apple has hired the same noted computer security researcher, and former hacker, who helped Microsoft fix Window Vista’s security bugs.
Microsoft’s new tablet, the Surface, is supposed to make the iPad and MacBook Air irrelevant. It’s supposed to be the best of both worlds by being a tablet/laptop hybrid. Reviews of the Surface have been mixed, and initial sales reports are indicating that Surface RT might be in trouble, because no one is buying it.
According to new research by the Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton, Microsoft is likely to sell fewer than 1 million Surface RT units in the December quarter. To put that number in perspective, Apple sold 300,000 original iPad units on its first day of availability.
Apple’s iPads, including the new iPad mini, have become the most successful tablets every built. Almost three years after Steve Jobs introduced the original iPad, the device continues to be the king of slates, with more than half of the tablet market share. That hasn’t changed much in 2012, but Android tablets have slowly been eating away at its market share, and it may not be long before they dominate.
When you combine all the titles in Apple’s App Store with those in Google Play, you have a catalog of more than 1.4 million apps from hundreds of thousands of developers. But incredibly, more than 50% of the revenue made by these stores in the United States goes to just 25 app developers.
One thing that nobody sees to have noticed with yesterday’s iOS iWork update is that Pages now tracks changes. And not just changes from other Pages documents, either – it’ll import and export tracked changes from Microsoft Word documents.
This could be huge. Or maybe it just won’t work at all.
When most people think of Apple they think of hardware. Apple’s got the iPhone, iPad, and iMac — and they also make their own software to power those devices — but one of Apple’s secret weapons is its gigantic media division.
iTunes was just updated last week, and you already know that it sells everything from books, Apps, newspapers, music, TV shows, movies and more. But did you know that iTunes would be one of the largest and most profitable media companies in the world if Apple decided to set up iTunes as a separate company?
Samsung has once again taken the top spot for mobile market share in the United States after attracting more than a quarter of mobile subscribers. The Korean company claimed 26.3% of the market as of October 2012, but rival Apple is quickly catching up. The iPhone maker saw the highest level of growth among cellphone manufacturers, and managed to overtake LG to take second place.
Microsoft Surface is supposed to be Remond’s answer to the iPad. It’s beautiful and has a cool keyboard. But the reviews for the Surface RT were pretty underwhelming. We played with it too and though it was cool, but definitely no iPad killer.
The common consensus in the tech world is that we’ll have to wait till Microsoft releases the Surface Pro with full Windows 8 before making a judgement on Microsoft’s dreams of squashing the iPad. Well, things aren’t looking too promising because Microsoft just announced that the Surface Pro will be available in January 2013 except it’s going to be expensive, like holy-crap-I-just-blew-$900 expensive.
Apple launched the fourth-generation iPad back in October, introducing a new A6X processor, a FaceTime HD camera, and its new Lightning connector. But despite those improvements, it appears the device isn’t selling as well as its predecessors. The reason? Another tablet is “cannibalizing” its sales.
But that tablet isn’t from Microsoft, or Google, or Amazon — or any other manufacturer for that matter. That tablet is the iPad mini.
Skype has issued an update to its iOS app that introduces support for Microsoft accounts, and a number of new features. Users can now login to the app using their Messenger, Hotmail, and Outlook.com credentials and then merge their accounts. And if you’ve got an iOS device with a Retina display, you can enjoy animated emoticons. Finally!
When you just look at the money Apple made in 2012 it’s pretty incredible. But when you provide some context to those earnings and put Apple’s profits next to the competition’s profits, Apple’s performance is absolutely mindboggling.
From October 2011 to September 2012 Apple made more money than Microsoft, Ebay, Google, Yahoo! Facebook and Amazon combined. In that same period, Dell, Asus, Intel, Acer, IBM, Lenovo, and HP (basically the entire PC industry) only made $19.3 billion in profit, which is less than half of Apple’s profit.
Source: Statista
Apple TV is just a hobby, but it’s still a pretty great product that beats most of the other low-cost entertainment service set-top boxes on the market. It turns out that Microsoft may want in on the action and is building there own Apple TV type of device to compete with Apple.
Sources at Microsoft have confirmed to The Verge that the Redmond company has plans to introduce a low-cost alternative to its Xbox console that will compete more directly with the Apple TV.