Well, the shortage finally appears to be over: a quick check of Apple’s online iPhone 4S order page shows that all models of iPhone 4S are “in stock” and available for immediate dispatch for the first time since the device’s debut in October.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — Rain Design’s new one-piece MacBook stand is made in the same factory that makes Apple’s unibody Macs, says the company.
Although Apple sells millions of iPhones, 500,000 of the smartphones spell the difference between being No. 1 and runner-up in the race against South Korean rival Samsung. New numbers reveal the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant retook by a nose the crown of top smartphone maker in the world.
Zynga Games is a company that has made most of its many millions on games “inspired” by other titles. And by “inspired,” we mean “shamelessly ripped-off.” Mafia Wars was a rip-off of Mob Wars. Words With Friends is a rip-off of Scrabble. Cafe World is a rip-off of Restaurant City. And so on.
So when Zynga came knocking and wanted to buy up NimbleBits, developers of Tiny Tower (which Apple recently named one of their games of the year), it didn’t take a genius to figure out that if the deal didn’t go through, Zynga would rip-off NimbleBit’s games anyway. And — shocker — it turns out that’s just what happened.
Some of Apple’s stock iPhone apps would work wonderfully on the iPad, such as Clock, Stocks, Weather, and Calculator. But the Cupertino company seems to have no plans to port these apps over to the larger device. After all, I’m sure if it did we’d already have them by now.
But thanks to a new utility for jailbroken iPads called Belfry, you can port them over yourself.
A tiny note from today’s Apple earnings: 37 million iPhones were sold in Q1 of 2012, meaning that Apple is the top smartphone manufacturer in the world. The number one spot has previously been held by Samsung. There seemed to be no way that Apple could take the crown so soon.
Samsung said that it shipped (not sold) 35 million smartphones in the last quarter (analyst estimates were a more conservative 32 million), and Apple just sold 37 million iPhones. Way to go, Apple.
Apple has announced its earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2012. The Cupertino company is pleased to report record-breaking earnings this time around, with $46.33 billion in revenue and a net profit of $13.06 billion. Last quarter Apple reported $28.27 billion in revenue and a net profit of $6.62 billion.
37 million iPhones and 15 million iPads were sold in the first fiscal quarter of 2012, making this quarter Apple’s most successful one ever. Apple also saw Mac sales climb to 5.2 million. The only decline in sales was the iPod, which declined 21% year-over-year to 15.4 million units sold.
A German court Friday threw out Samsung’s patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple. The South Korean smartphone maker had claimed the iPhone maker violated a patent related to 3G wireless communications. Samsung had filed seven patent violation claims against Apple in Germany.
Two of the reasons Apple’s iPhone is yet to adopt LTE connectivity is that existing LTE chips are just too large for the iPhone’s slender form factor, and they eat up so much power your new iPhone 4S wouldn’t even last the six hours that you currently get if it was hooked up to an LTE network.
However, a new Apple patent application reveals that the Cupertino company has already set about revolutionizing its batteries to make them thinner and more efficient — possibly making way for LTE connectivity in the iPhone 5.