What does Nokia’s decision to junk Symbian for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 mean for Apple? The view on Wall Street is that the Cupertino, Calif. iPhone maker will stay strong – and its strength only increase the longer the Finnish cell phone maker waits to release handsets.
“The more time it takes for [Nokia] to launch their product, the tougher it will be for them to compete against iOS and Android-based devices,” ISI analyst Abey Lamba remarked Friday. Lamba expects Apple “will remain the leader.”
Apple is among only two notebook makers in early 2011 experiencing strong demand, with the Cupertino, Calif. firm doubling orders for some “hot-selling” MacBooks, according to a Friday report. The news follows indications the Apple notebook was “flying off the shelves” during the holiday buying period.
HP was the only PC notebook brand seeing first-quarter demand amid a flaw discovered in an Intel chipset which depressed production levels. HP could ship 10 million notebooks during this year’s first quarter – down from 11.13 million units shipped last quarter. The chipmaker says its Sandy Bridge chips won’t return to full production until April. (MacBooks should see an update of the Intel chips in June, other reports indicate.)
With these words, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop declared his intentions for the future as part of his company’s strategic partnership with Microsoft. Both companies are trailing in Apple’s wake and urgently need to catch up.
The first part of Elop and Steve Ballmer’s open letter is somewhat dull, but the final paragraphs contain the real meat.
“Today, the battle is moving from one of mobile devices to one of mobile ecosystems,” they declare. “Ecosystems thrive when they reach scale, when they are fueled by energy and innovation and when they provide benefits and value to each person or company who participates. This is what we are creating; this is our vision; this is the work we are driving from this day forward.”
And then this declaration of war: “There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them.”
I, for one, welcome our new Nokisoft overlords; and I’ll happily raise a glass to disruption. Let’s see what actual shipping products they come up with, shall we?
Griffin Technology has announced the release of their Survivor iPhone 4 case which is made for warriors of all types. Even if pink is their favorite color. Personally I’ll stick to black and that’s the color of the case I’d probably buy if given the chance.
The Survivor case retails for $49.99 and it is one of the most heavy-duty iPhone cases I’ve seen similar to the Ballistic HC I reviewed previously, but it is also the first I’ve seen that is compatible with the Verizon version of the iPhone 4.
Carling's rescued iPad. He joked that he might test it for fingerprints.
Former England Rugby captain Will Carling left his iPad on a train (doh!) but recovered it using the Find My iPhone App.
When Carling logged on to his laptop at home, he thought some good samaritan had turned in the device to the station’s lost and found, since the location dot was beeping nearby. He drove back to the area only to find the GPS chip led him to an apartment building.
“There was no answer, so I wrote 18 notes and put them through the doors,” he said. “Part of me thought, what if they take it the wrong way? But I just thought, to hell with it, I want my iPad back.”
As Apple’s stock takes a pounding on rumors that Steve Jobs is in hospital, the Wall Street Journal says he’s up and about and still on the job.
According to the Journal, Jobs is still on the job, taking meetings about the IPad 2 and iPhone 5:
The 55-year-old Mr. Jobs, whose ailment hasn’t been disclosed, has been taking business meetings at home and on the phone, these people said.
He also has been seen on Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., campus and in public in Palo Alto, Calif., with a company executive, said people familiar with the matter.
There’s the possibility that the WSJ story is a plant from Apple’s PR department to counter the Wall St. rumors. Apple’s stock started plunging at around 3PM EST: the Journal’s story, which is based on unnamed sources, appeared about three hours later, at 6PM. The timing may also be a coincidence, of course.
We like the sound of this one: Apple is rumored to be working on a smaller, cheaper iPhone — the iPhone nano. Best of all, the $200 iPhone will be contract free and may be dual-mode.
According to Bloomberg, the new handset will be about one-third smaller and be based on older, cheaper components to keep the price down. Apple already has a prototype (more likely, prototypes) and plans to introduce the new iPhone mid year.
The new iPhone may also be dual-mode. Bloomberg says Apple is also working on a dual-mode GSM and CDMA handset that would work on almost all networks — this may or may not the iPhone 5, and may or may not be in the new, smaller iPhone. Would make sense if it was though.
The cheaper handset is to counter the relentless march of Android phones, which are beating iPhone market share (but not iOS market share).
Bloomberg has great sources and has a good track record with Apple rumors. If true, it’s huge. It would upend carrier subsidies and the whole wireless business, givung control back to consumers and device makers.
As we noted in our prediction piece, Apple is currently competing only at the high-end, and has nothing to counter Android at entry-level prices. We predicted Apple will introduce a cheaper iPhone this year to widen the “price umbrella.” We called the cheaper iPhone, the “iPhone play.”
Of course, the iPhone nano rumors are as old as the hills.
The iPad is taking off faster than anything Apple has shipped before, including the iPod and iPhone, both a pair of monster hits.
Look at this amazing chart from Mary Meeker, a former Wall St. analyst who is now with the VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. It shows the initial shipments of the iPad compared to the iPhone and iPod.
When the iPod was introduced in 2001, Apple shipped 236,000 units in the first three quarters. In 2007, the iPhone shipped 3.7 million units in its first three quarters. But the iPad blows both away: 14.8 million units shipped.
Steve Jobs has said the iPad was like “catching a tiger by the tail.” No kidding.
And here’s how the iTunes App Store is selling vastly more apps than it sold music or movies:
Although pointedly explaining that he has no direct knowledge of such a move, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has just posted a fascinating piece speculating that 2011 might not just see the release of the iPad 2, but the iPad 3 as well.
As Verizon begins the first day of iPhone sales to the general public, a noted Apple analyst is projecting the carrier could sell more than 1 million handsets in the first three days, including 250,000 pre-orders from Verizon subscribers. The addition of Verizon to existing iPhone sales from AT&T “marks an important battle in the war for smartphone market share,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors Thursday.
Noting the Verizon iPhone sold out twice during the pre-order period, the demand outstrips both Apple’s and the carrier’s expectation, Munster writes.
If you lose your iPhone, you’ve got a lot more to worry about than just having to buy a new phone or restore your contacts. German experts have just demonstrated that bypassing the security passcodes and gaining access to the iOS keychain on any iPhone is just a matter of six minutes.
They’ve already got Nintendo running scared when it comes to the handheld gaming market, and now some new code in the latest iOS 4.3 Beta 3 firmware indicates that Apple may be planning on doing the same thing to Microsoft and Sony through the $99 AppleTV already in millions of users’ living rooms.
The latest beta of iOS 4.3 indicates that the current generation AppleTV may soon support online gaming, with several references to “ATVGames” and “ATVThunder” pointing towards a gaming controller, Game Center support, online multiplayer and even an AppleTV App Store.
The wistful tone and open-ended time frame of Steve Jobs’ email announcing another medical leave of absence from Apple has led many to fear the worst when it comes to the charismatic CEO’s health, but a new report suggests that Jobs’ health might actually be better than expected.
In fact, not only is Jobs still making appearances at Apple’s Cupertino campus, but he seemed upbeat, described as wearing a big smile and with a spring in his step.
Can a former Apple executive help HP’s sputtering webOS gain some respect? That may be the goal of HP’s hiring of Richard Kerris, who headed Apple’s global developer relations. The news followed a Wednesday announcement that HP is “embarking on a new era of webOS” with plans to bring Palm’s webOS (now a HP unit) to Windows PCs. In an ironic twist, the message came from HP senior vice president Jon Rubinstein, also a former Apple executive.
Kerris, who reportedly spent 2001 to 2007 at Apple managing special projects and served as the company’s senior director of worldwide devloper relations will become HP’s VP of Worldwide Developer Relations. The hiring was reportedly announced during a gathering of developers following Rubinstein’s statement.
If you’re the kind of person who believes that “luxury Range Rover” should be an oxymoron, you’re probably not going to like the latest vehicle unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show.
Among the luxe touches that come standard with the Range Rover Autobiography Ultimate Edition are two iPads for the rear passenger seats.
This clearly isn’t designed for toting around the kiddies, what with the “superyacht-inspired teak loadspace floor,” “semi-aniline leather seating” and a rear console which features a machined aluminium laptop table and drinks chiller.
All of these tony touches, however, “suggest its suitability as a chauffeur vehicle.” Which is always good to know.
Range Rover did not yet release the sticker price for the model, which comes with a choice of LR-TDV8 or LR-V8 Supercharged engines.
Readability is an excellent bit of Javascript that strips online content down to its barest and most readable elements, and was borrowed wholesale last year by Apple for the new Safari Reader option in Safari 5.
Late last month, it became even more excellent by relaunching itself as a reading platform in its own right. Launching aside a native iOS app powered by Marco Arment’s excellent Instapaper, Readability is now more than a snip of Javascript code but instead a monthly subscription service that pays 70% of its collected fees directly to the writers and publishers being read.
We reached out to Arc90’s Richard Ziade for a quick chat about what Readability’s new change in scope would mean not just for existing users, but for publishers of web content looking to get paid.
Snow and ice take a heavy toll on roads every year, and this winter has been brutal here in New England. Large potholes have already appeared all over the Boston area, with roads still clogged with snow. Fortunately some high-tech wizards here in my hometown are working on a solution. The Boston Globe reports on an effort to help solve this problem using iPhones and other mobile devices:
A new app, called Street Bump, would automatically report potholes to the city by sensing when a car has hit a bump. The app, in development, would be sensitive enough to identify cracks and divots, alerting the city to pavement problems before they become car-crunching craters.
Police are hoping shoppers will help identify a pair of women who snatched an iPad from a cart in a parking lot, put it in their car for safekeeping and returned to the store.
The scene of the crime was a Walmart parking lot in Blythewood, North Carolina. The victim was unloading her purchases into her car, with the iPad perched in the front basket, at 8:30 pm. She turned around and the magical device had disappeared.
Police believe a pair of women snagged it, put it in their own car, then went into the store. Video surveillance shows two heavy-set women dressed in black who don’t look to be in any hurry walking through the entrance with a cart.
It’s another instance that shows how the lightweight and portability of the iPad can sometimes work against owners who want to hold on to them. And a good reminder to install the Find My iPhone app.
The keyboard you see here is something called an Alphasmart Dana – a somewhat niche tech product, but one much loved by a small band of users (myself included). Some professional writers love it for its weeks-long battery life, instant-on, auto-save, and durable shell.
From the bowels of the web where outtakes are never forgotten, a short video surfaced today showing a 23 year-old Steve Jobs making possibly his first appearance on TV. Far from the stage persona we know today, this candid clip shows a young Jobs wrestling with his earpiece, becoming visibly amazed that he could be seen across the country in realtime, and suffering from nausea due to nervousness!
Embarrassing, but in a charming way. Like those old home movies of you as a kid!
Rounding out a triumvirate of new webOS devices, HP just took the wraps off of the third-generation Pre, or Pre3, their new flagship webOS smartphone. Unfortunately, while the HP Veer was a cute pebble of a phone filling a unique niche, and the HP TouchPad is an able iPad competitor that might even hold its own against the iPad 2, the Pre3 just seems generic.
Forget the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab. At their webOS event today, HP just unveiled the HP TouchPad, and judging by first initial blush, it might be the first tablet that can really challenge the iPad in its own game.
Boasting a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a 9.7-inch 2024 x 768 display (just like the iPad), the HP TouchPad comes with either 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage, as well as Flash Player 10.1 support and the newest iteration of HP’s webOS operating system.
Thanks to a front-facing camera, the TouchPad supports FaceTime-style video calling, and to improve sound quality, HP has carried their Beats Audio technology over from their line of notebooks to the TouchPad. And because of the new functionality found in webOS 3.0 as well as HP’s revised Touchstone technology, the TouchPad has its own versions of AirPrint and AirPlay. Like with the Veer and Pre 3, this TouchStone technology will allow you to share information between webOS devices by tapping them together, as well as allow you to charge your TouchPad wirelessly.
To be honest, this looks like a heck of a response to the iPad, and maybe the first tablet that tries to compete with Apple on its own terms. The only problem is that when it’s released this summer for an unreleased price, the TouchPad won’t be taking on the iPad… it’ll be taking on the iPad 2. That puts HP at a huge disadvantage, because not only will the iPad 2 obviate most of the TouchPad’s strengths (video chat and a dual-core processor, most of all) but will also give users access to a much more robust app ecosystem than that afforded by webOS.
When HP purchased Palm last year, it made no secret of the fact that it was doing so to get a hold of Palm’s webOS operating system in order to better compete with Apple in the tablet and smartphone space.
Now, at an official event today, HP is starting to finally reveal what they’ve accomplished with webOS in the last year. First up? The HP Veer, a tiny pebble of a phone meant to bridge the gap between feature phones and smartphones.
