With a new story concerning the extraordinary lengths the U.S. Government is seemingly taking to spy on its citizens’ digital lives hitting the news every day now, President Obama met Apple CEO Tim Cook and a number of other tech executives to discuss government surveillance.
Despite the cornucopia of different smartphones available to consumers, the battle for global smartphone domination comes down to just two companies: Samsung and Apple.
Samsung posted record results in Q2 and even though a new iPhone hasn’t been announced, Apple still managed to beat Wall Street’s iPhone sales estimates last quarter, leaving Nokia, HTC, LG, and all the other major OEMs with nothing but table scraps to feast on.
Source: Benedict Evans
Via: BGR
With competition around the iPhone at an all-time high, Apple could use a huge boost in sales numbers, so Tim Cook made another visit to Beijing this week to recruit the world’s biggest mobile carrier, China Mobile, to bring the iPhone to its network.
China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua was on hand Tuesday to meet with Cook, and according to the Chinese firm, the two discussed ‘matters of cooperation’ between the two companies, which means they were probably talking about how much money they’d both make if China Mobile sold the iPhone 5C.
This week on the ‘ol CultCast: why Google’s new Chromecast is great for us Apple fans; the 5S might be the biggest S-upgrade ever; Apple’s earnings make a low-cost iPhone look likely; how to best connect your iDevice to your car stereo; the Dev Center gets hacked; and then, Tim Cook sings Barbie Girl!
Have a few laughs and get caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.
Thanks to Bitcasa for sponsoring this episode. Show notes up next.
Apple has acquired Locationary, a small Canadian startup that crowdsources location data, according to a report from AllThingsD. Apple has refused to comment on its plans for the company, but the acquisition will undoubtedly help improve Apple’s widely criticized Maps service.
Apple’s CEO wants to sell more iPhones, but only in his stores. The iPhone is Apple’s cash cow with its high profit margins, and it creates a “halo effect” that causes customers to buy other Apple products.
Less than 20% of iPhones are currently sold in Apple Stores, and Cook won’t stand for it. Despite the fact that 80% of customers buy their iPhones elsewhere, 50% bring them into the Apple Store to get serviced. If Cook wants the sales/repairs ratio to improve, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
Tim Cook and co. have claimed that the Apple TV is just a hobby device, but that hasn’t stopped it from dominating the TV streaming box industry.
A new report from Frost & Sullivan claims that Apple TV now accounts for 56% of the worldwide IP streaming devices market and its nearest competitor, Roku, isn’t even close.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is on the list of guests expected to attend the annual Sun Valley conference in Idaho this week.
The conference is held by New York-based investment bank Allen & Co., and hosts over 300 industry leaders participate in panels on politics, business, tech and more over a four day period. It’s basically a place for some of the most powerful business people in the U.S. to figure out how to become more powerful as they hangout and try to strike up business deals.
Apple is close to securing a deal that will bring Time Warner Cable subscribers access to their cable television service through the Apple TV, according to sources with knowledge of the company’s plans, who have been speaking to Bloomberg.
The two companies are expected to announce the deal “within a few months.”
According to its investor’s page, Apple, Inc. will conference call with investors on July 23, 2013, discussing its financial performance for the fiscal third quarter of 2013, which ended June 30.
The call will be live streamed on Apple’s web page for anyone to listen in, and should cover revenue and sales figures. We can expect to hear from Tim Cook, CEO, and probably Peter Oppenheimer, CFO of Apple, both explaining the current performance as well as making some sort of financial forecast for the coming quarter, Q4 2013.
Apple has been under heavy scrutiny the past few months for its tax practices and off-shore cash pile, but the criticism that Apple isn’t paying enough taxes isn’t likely to stop thanks to a new report that claims Apple paid zero corporate tax in the United Kingdom last year.
According to a report from the Financial Times, Apple was able to avoid paying corporate taxes in the UK last year by using tax deductions from share awards to employees that basically offset the amount of taxes Apple owed through September 2012, all of which is completely legal.
AAPL shares have dropped below $400 in early morning trading on Monday. The DOW and NASDAQ both opened to big losses as they dropped 220 points and 53 points.
The share price drop may also be due in part to a report this morning that Apple has significantly reduced iPhone orders for the remainder of 2013. AAPL shares dropped below $400 in April for the first time in over 16 months.
Top Apple executives get really good stock compensation as an incentive to stay with the company. In the past, stock awards have typically been granted by Apple’s board on a restricted basis, meaning that a certain number of shares is set aside to be given years down the road. The obvious incentive is that the executive does well and helps Apple succeed so that the stock is cashed in for more than when it was granted.
Tim Cook was awarded 1,000,000 restricted shares in Apple when he became CEO, but the shares weren’t tied to Apple’s overall health as a company. He would get them all over time as long as he stayed at Apple—whether the stock value bottomed out or rose exponentially.
A recent update to Cook’s stock compensation—at what appears to be his own request—changes the terms to focus on Apple’s actual performance. If Apple doesn’t perform well under Cook’s tenure, millions of his own dollars are on the line. His stock is currently worth around $413 million.
If you haven’t already watched Apple’s WWDC keynote, it’s probably because you just haven’t found the time. At just under two hours long, it’s not something you can just slip into your day. But you can now watch it at your leisure on any of your electronics devices because Apple just uploaded the entire thing to YouTube.
Jony Ive didn’t even make an appearance at the WWDC keynote last week, but that didn’t stop his name from spreading all over Twitter and Facebook, thanks to his influence on iOS 7’s new parallax UI.
A report from the people at ViralHeat shows that Jony Ive had the most social media mentions of anyone at Apple, including CEO Tim Cook. Sir Jony Ive had 28,377 mentions across Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, while Tim cook was mentioned 20,919 times.
Not only did Jony get more attention on social media, the comments about him trended more positively than those about Cook (72% positive for Ive, 64% positive for Cook)
Here are the full social media stats about WWDC:
Last week, a story about the NSA’s top-secret PRISM program broke. According to leaked documents, PRISM is a program in which the NSA is directly able to survey all data stored on the servers of pretty much every tech company under the sun, including Apple.
Apple has firmly denied even hearing about PRISM, but intriguingly, they might be required by law to do so.
Either way, it was only a matter of time when the first class-action lawsuit suing Apple for its participation in PRISM hit the courts.
Steve Jobs used to take care of Apple’s biggest product unveilings prior to his passing in 2011, and since then, they’ve been shared around among the top company executives. Scott Forstall handled everything iOS, but his departure from Cupertino last year left the door open for someone else.
At WWDC on Monday, Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, took to the stage to present iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and he’s now being hailed the perfect frontman for Apple, with developers, fans, and even investors impressed by his pitch.
Don’t have enough time to sit at your computer and watch all two hours of the WWDC keynote? Well you can take it with you on your iPhone or iPad now.
The WWDC 2013 keynote was just made available in iTunes. You can download the video straight to your device as a podcast, but with a run-time of 1 hour and 58minutes, the file is pretty big, so make sure you’re on a Wifi connection. Here’s the download link.
Source: iTunes
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Apple has been holding developer conferences for almost a quarter century, so it’s not surprising that the AltWWDC Keynote breakfast is less like Ugly Betty’s anti-prom and more like a midnight run of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Apple has really started to rally around its identity as an American company. During Tim Cook’s recent appearance in Washington he repeatedly stressed the point that Apple is proud to be an American company. Phil Schiller also made sure to note that the new Mac Pro is designed and assembled in America.
At the end of WWDC Apple revealed a new ad, ‘Designed by Apple in California’ which talks about the passion Apple puts into its products. Cook said the ad will start appearing on TV later today.
“If you do the math, iOS is the world’s most popular operating system, and number 2 is an Android operating system that was released back in 2010,” says Tim Cook.
Tim Cook just did something odd: he allowed another company to take the stage right off the bat to explain cool things people can do with iOS devices, artificial intelligence and robotics.
Boris Sofman, founder of ANKI, showed off ANKI Drive, remote control cars that connect to your iPhone via Bluetooth 4.0 and can drive themselves around a course while automatically detecting the other drivers, motions of the track, etc.
Kind of like Google’s self-driving cars, but for children. The reaction from the audience wasn’t that great, and the demo sort of failed, but you can see the possibility: iOS devices acting as the brains for real life robots.
It’s a small, fun demo, but it’s more about the possibilities here. Everything you love about video games imbued in real objects, or artificial intelligences being powered by iPhones.
Today Tim Cook gave an Apple State of the Union update at WWDC 2013. He kicked off with Apple Retail, highlighting the recent opening of Apple’s new store in Berlin. “It’s a fantastic store in a great location,” he said. “Only Apple could do this.”
Cook went on to talk about Apple’s success on the digital storefront: the App Store and iTunes.
Here are some big numbers that were mentioned:
It’s not a big deal, but in a human touch, Tim Cook just acknowledged the difficulties Apple had accomodating all the developers who wanted to go to WWDC 2013 this year.
“We apologize for not being able to have more developers here,” Tim Cook said. “This is the largest venue we can hold WWDC in.”
This is a nice nod to the controversy that erupted after Apple’s WWDC 2013 tickets sold out after just two minutes this year. Of course, the biggest issue isn’t just capacity: Apple’s ticketing system fell over in demand this year. But it’s still nice to hear Tim Cook acknowledge the difficulty so many developers have had getting to WWDC.
Let’s hope they manage better next year. In the meantime, Apple is posting all of its conferences online.
To rousing applause, Tim Cook has just taken the stage at the 2013 Worldwide Developer’s Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Today, Tim Cook is expected to unveil Apple’s new streaming music service, iRadio, along with iOS 7 and OS X 10.9. In addition, we’re expecting new MacBooks, a radically redesigned iOS experience courtesy of Jony Ive, and possibly new Mac Pros.
This year, Apple kicked off the WWDC keynote with something different: a video presentation expressing Apple’s design ethos. It was very pretty, and forecasts some radical changes to iOS and OS X 10.9.
We can’t see what’s coming next. But first, the obligatory numbers.
