Posts Tagged “apple”
Mar
11
2010
 
Jesus Phone to exhibit holy gift of bilocationPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Jobsian prophets predict multitasking for iPhone 4.0Apple will add multitasking to the Jesus Phone this summer with the release of the divine handset’s version 4.0 software update, according to a report citing anonymous people who have accurately predicted Jobsian behavior in the past .…
Offloading malware protection to the cloud Read Full Story…
The first rule of iPhone Club is…In the 1999 movie Fight Club, Brad Pitt famously tells a huddle of pugilistic aspirants: “The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.”…
The power of collaboration within unified communications Read Full Story…
Samsung’s iPhone pitch comes to lifeSamsung has been showing its first Bada phone, able to download applications from Samsung’s version of iTunes and nowhere else. But will Bada really challenge Apple and the iPhone?…
The power of collaboration within unified communications Read Full Story…
• Despite the squillions of iPhone apps out there, Apple has worked very hard to keep details of its contract with developers under wraps. No longer: the Electronic Frontier Foundation used Nasa’s iPhone app as an avenue to file a Freedom of Information request to get a public copy of the contract (PDF). And the organisation isn’t happy with what it sees: including a ban on public statements, certain reverse-engeineering restrictions and Apple’s lack of liability in case of something going wrong. • Google is testing a TV search service, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. It suggests that there’s a pilot scheme for an embedded set-top search service linked to a US satellite TV provider – not the first time that Google has shown television ambitions (here are two examples in the UK). But still worth watching. • Also in Google, meanwhile, ZDNet brings news of this Goldman Sachs note reducing expectations of sales of the Nexus One – drastically. It now thinks the company will sell 1m handsets in 2010, down from a previous estimation of 3.5m. Why? “Possibly due to limited marketing and customer service challenges” – or, in other words, the decision to sell it online-only. You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, @gdngames or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.
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Mar
09
2010
Steve Jobs says ‘No’ to iPhone-to-iPad tetherPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
(One) word from the mountaintopSteve Jobs has spoken: Apple’s “magical and revolutionary” iPad will not allow iPhone-to-iPad 3G tethering.…
Offloading malware protection to the cloud Read Full Story…
The Apple iPad will go on sale in the UK at the end of next month, just a few weeks after its US launch on April 3 Read Full Story…
Mar
05
2010
US judge puts freeze on Apple-Nokia patent kerfufflePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Let the feds sort itA US federal judge has sent Apple and Nokia lawyers to their respective corners until the feds get their chance to sort through the competing patent infringement claims.…
What is your recession sales strategy? Read Full Story…
Mar
05
2010
Apple iPad to go on sale on 3 April in US and ‘late April’ in UKPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Apple yet to provide details on UK or international release dates, selling prices or associated mobile network companies Apple’s touchscreen iPad tablet computer will go on sale on 3 April in the US, but no specific date – beyond “late April” – has been given for its release in the UK and other international locations. The company declined to set either the selling price for its models abroad, or to name any of the mobile network companies that will be providing connectivity for the more expensive iPad systems, which have 3G data sims built in. US customers will be able to pre-order the iPad, which Steve Jobs described as a “magical and revolutionary product”, from Friday 12 March, either online or in Apple’s retail stores. The devices come in two basic forms – with Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, and with both Wi-Fi and 3G mobile connectivity. However, only the Wi-Fi versions will go on sale on 3 April; Apple said only that the 3G versions will be on sale in “late April”. All the versions of the iPad will go on sale in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland at the same time. The iPad has excited huge interest because it expands the interface of the iPhone, Apple’s hugely successful mobile phone, into a usable “slate” computer with a 9-inch screen. A number of content publishers have thought that it could be a completely new medium for sales of various products – including electronic versions of books, magazines, newspapers, music and films – that they will be able to charge for by selling them through Apple’s iTunes store, which has been a source of revenue for music, film, TV, audiobook and notably “app” creators. In the US, the basic iPad model with Wi-Fi and 16 gigabytes of storage will cost $499. Apple says that it “lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more”. The device is 0.5 inches thick and weighs 1.5 pounds – “thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook” and Apple says it can run for up to 10 hours on a single battery charge. (Tests on other products suggest the figure may typically be only half that.) In the past few weeks there had been mounting speculation that there were production problems at Apple’s factories in China. Apple had no comment on that, but the staged release to the international market compared to the US – which makes half of Apple’s sales – suggests it is husbanding its resources. The announcement notably does not offer any pricing for the UK, nor any details about which mobile carriers Apple might sign up with. O2, Orange and Vodafone already offer its iPhone, but none of them are mentioned in Apple’s announcement. Nor is pricing – which could be key to how well it sells. Since the announcement of the iPad in January, the pound has slipped against the dollar in international exchange markets, which has led to speculation that Apple is waiting until the last minute to announce the price in order to minimise any losses on exchange-rate volatility. Macworld magazine, which calculated in February that the low-end iPad selling for $499 in the US might have a starting price of £388 in the UK, recalculated on Friday that the downturn in sterling would now mean a minimum starting price of £400.
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Mar
05
2010
Picking facts from speculation on iPad launch prices and datesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Why the collapse in online advertising might be leading you to read pretty much anything about Apple’s new gizmo Hey, have you heard? Apple’s iPad is having production problems! And it’s not having production problems! Also, it’s going to cost £389! Or possibly less, or more. And in the UK the 3G version is going to be exclusively on Vodafone. As well as being on Orange and O2. Also, it’s going to be released in the UK two weeks after the US, where it’s being released on March 26, or actually 29th, except it’s being released at the same time. And it’s going to cost.. OK, enough breathless murmery. Let’s clear the air. There is an astonishing amount of speculation going on about Apple’s iPad. Very little of it seems well-founded – or even grounded in logic. The facts about the iPad: Apple hasn’t given a precise launch date; “60 days” was the best Steve Jobs had on 27 January. It’s not given one for the UK either. It hasn’t said how much the various models will cost in the UK. It hasn’t said whether the 3G mobile-connected models will be available in the UK (though it’s expected) and it hasn’t said which network(s) it will be going with. Which is about par for the course for some Apple products. And of course is enough for ever so many “news” stories. Let’s start with some of the things where people are prepared to put their names to the claims. The Register reports that Vijay Rakesh, an analyst at ThinkEquity analyst, told investors in an advisory note on Thursday that checks with manufacturers suggested “some minor delays” in ramping up production for the tablet. They can only make 200,000 to 250,000 iPads per month at present; production may not hit 800,000 to 1m units per month until at least April. “We believe this is just a minor hiccup in a longer-term entirely new revenue stream and product road map for [Apple],” Rakesh wrote. Earlier this week another US analyst, Peter Misek at Canaccord claimed that “unspecified production problems” will hold initial availability to about 300,000 units – and said Apple may keep the iPad to the US only or delay the launch into April. This was then contradicted by DigiTimes – usually the fount of unspecified vague insights into the Taiwanese and Chinese computer manufacturing insights which turn out to be bang on 50% of the time, and completely off the other 50% – which was told by Foxconn Electronics that everything’s on schedule and that it should be able to ship between 600,000 and 700,000 iPads this month. Apple said.. nothing. Conclusion: they all could be right. The iPad was announced in January, and if Foxconn has been making 200,000 for a couple of months, it’s got a nice stockpile sitting waiting for a container ship. Meanwhile Foxconn could be ramping up production towards that 800K figure. So we conclude: forecasts of a US-only launch unlikely to come true. And “delays into April”? Remember that at the launch (scroll to 7.22pm) Steve Jobs announced that they Wi-Fi only models would go on sale in 60 days, the 3G models in 90 days because they “require approval from carriers”. 90 days from the iPad launch takes you… into April. OK. Assume that it is going to launch in the UK at about the same time as in the US. Two questions: how much will it cost? And which networks will the 3G version be available on? The cost question is interesting. Apple has told us it won’t announce the UK price until it launches at the “end of March”. We’ve done our own calculation (helped by Macworld) which gives us a starting price guess of £424 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only (Macworld suggests £388), ranging up to £705 for the Wi-Fi/3G 64GB model (Macworld: £693). And which operators? No clues. Obviously, we speak to our contacts there; but so far they’ve had little to offer. So what then are we to make of the sudden flurry of emails recently from really small sites (and I do mean really small) which claim to know the launch date and/or chosen carrier? Here’s an example I received recently: “We just got word on Vodafone being the official launch partner of the iPad in the UK, direct from Vodafone. Details in the below blog post. This is from the same guy who provided details that O2 would be the Palm Pre’s UK carrier well before announcement.” And a link to the site. But we’re not going to link it here. I’ll explain why in a moment. Then there was the email from another site which said it had the price for the low-end iPad: “We are pretty confident regarding the pricing, the tip came from a source who works closely with Apple UK, obviously we can’t say much more about this. “We are 99% sure that the base model will be £389, regarding the other prices of the 32GB and 64GB models, our source said that these are likely to be the prices, although he did mention that the prices on the last two aren’t set in stone as yet.” (I should point out that the other site didn’t approach me; I contacted it to ask how sure they were of their sources.) Hmm, so have we missed a trick? Are we getting blown out of the water by dedicated bloggers running niche sites who have contacts in just the right places? Perhaps. But consider another possibility. I spoke to someone who has very good contacts in the mobile phone industry. The reply: “My source at Voda says nothing signed yet but is checking, also it’s kinda weird but [the person quoted in the Vodafone story] left a year ago.” So why the certainty in that story? My contact noted: “There are going to be more and more stories like this as the collapse in online advertising has pushed sites into e-commerce and they need the links from [the Guardian] to push them up the [search] rankings. There are quite a few mobile phone so-called bloggers already in the UK who are actually little more than affiliate channels for the mobile phone operators. That’s often how they get their stories. Watch the links when you click through, it’s often quite instructive. There is, for instance, a very well respected UK mobile phone blogger who gets a lot of very good Orange scoops. Of course he does, my mates at Orange point out, the other half of his business is a retailer for Orange so he finds out about new phones at the same time as the rest of the channel. Is that journalism? Who knows these days.” We conclude: the maths suggests that the iPad will very likely come in around the £389-£399 mark (we like the Macworld number better than ours, which by being above £400 isn’t a marketing-friendly price sticker). Networks? Whichever ones can handle the micro-sims that the iPad uses. Given that Apple is still with only one network in the US, but in the UK has signed up three (O2, Orange and Vodafone; Tesco is a virtual MNO), it’s hard to know whether it will try to be a kingmaker again or prefer to spread the love like butter among them all. Rationally, being on all three (while making them think it’s exclusive until it’s announced) would be better for sales – people could just add an iPad plan to their existing contracts. OK? We hope that puts your minds at rest about prices and operators. As for launch dates… well, Apple traditionally goes with Tuesdays or Fridays. Strictly, 60 days from the iPad announcement puts you on Sunday 28 March, so take your pick: Monday 29th, or Friday 26th? Or might it get pushed further along? As for the 3G version, if there’s a 90-day delay, then you’re not going to see it until April 27 (on the 90-days-from-iPad-ground-zero principle). So even that US analyst could be right. And remind us what you’d be buying an iPad for? We’re interested to hear.
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Mar
04
2010
Brits blame Apple, Nokia, RIM et al for smartphone woesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Yet most problems appear network relatedSmartphone owners are a vocal lot, willing to vent spleen to all and sundry when their handsets don’t work as well as they expect them to.…
What is your recession sales strategy? Read Full Story…
Mar
03
2010
Most smartphone users are disappointed, claims FanfarePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
People are buying increasing numbers of smartphones, but are they living up to the media hype? Fanfare thinks not…. Smartphone sales are growing fast, but “57% of smartphone users are disappointed with handset and application performance,” claims a report from Fanfare (PDF: registration required). However, the results reflect a very small sample: “155 members of the public” and “the survey was conducted online and filled in anonymously,” so don’t bet your lunch on its applicability to the Great British Public. Most of the issues appear to be internet related, with streaming media, web browsers and social networking applications causing the most problems. And then there’s the part that could be important to Fanfare, which offers automated testing services:
Dissatisfied smartphone users typically tell their friends and family (57%) and social networking sites (58%), which could have a negative effect on sales. Indeed, it makes social networks much more of an influence on purchasing than “traditional media” (by 64% to 40%). Fanfare marketing man David Gehringer says: “The Apple App Store and Android Market have served up billions of app downloads, giving smartphone owners the ability to use their phones in new and exciting ways. But now that the novelty is wearing off, users want their applications to be more reliable.” The report says:
I’d like this to be true, but I can’t really see much evidence. It seems to me there’s a big fashion element to smartphone sales and (based on a much smaller sample than 155) people like being one of the first to own a sexy new gadget. How well they can make it work it is another matter. Nor is this a criticism of media darlings such as Apple’s iPhone, HTC and Google Android phones, various BlackBerry handsets and the odd Palm. All of these seem more reliable and usable than what I remember of the Nokia 7110 or 8110 (The Matrixphone), while disappointed iPhone owners seem to be a very rare breed indeed. So, are you happy with your smartphone, and if not, is the backlash about to start?
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Smartphone maker HTC has denied copying patented features of Apple’s iPhone in its Nexus One – a handset it launched in collaboration with Google. Read Full Story…
Mar
03
2010
Apple sues HTC over multitouch and other patentsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
As Netflix mulls iPhone appApple executives are shopping around the idea of enabling iTunes users to back up movies, music, and television on the company’s servers and to access them from any internet-connected device.…
Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing Read Full Story…
Mar
03
2010
Apple sues HTC over phones with Google softwarePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc sued Taiwan’s HTC Corp, which makes touchscreen smartphones using Google software, accusing it of infringing 20 hardware and software patents related to the iPhone. Read Full Story…
Taiwanese mobile-phone manufacturer backing Google’s Android OS is accused of infringing 20 Apple patents Apple is suing the Taiwanese handset maker HTC, alleging that it has infringed 20 patents relating to “the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware”. Among the patents that Apple alleges have been infringed are a number relating to touchscreen interfaces – for which the iPhone has become the best-known, though it was not the first, mobile device. “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, in a statement. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” It is thought that a key element that triggered the lawsuit is that in February HTC released handsets which use “pinch-to-zoom” functionality resembling that of the iPhone. Apple has filed the suit in the US courts in Delaware, Maryland, but also with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), which has the power to halt imports of products. That would stymie HTC and Google, whose free Android mobile operating system is built into a growing number of HTC phones, and has made significant inroads into the burgeoning smartphone market in recent months. But the move was received with surprise in the technology community. “I don’t fault Apple for acquiring patents. They have to, for defensive purposes, given the current laws,” noted John Siracusa, a journalist at Ars Technica who has followed Apple closely for years. “But using them offensively sucks.” The use of the ITC could be key for Apple. A recent analysis found that where lawsuits are filed both with US district courts and the ITC, plaintiffs succeed in the latter more often than the former, by 58% to 35%. That means Apple is roughly 50% more likely to win the case with the ITC – and so could block HTC imports of newer handsets. HTC indicated that it was completely surprised by the case, and had not even received the formal complaint from Apple when the American company announced it publicly. Apple has submitted more than 700 pages of exhibits relating to its patents to the court in Delaware, Maryland, where it is filing the case. It cites a number of handsets, including the Nexus One handset powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system, and also other handsets which use Microsoft’s Windows Mobile system. HTC has in the past been the largest manufacturer of Windows Mobile handsets – although it has recently shifted its allegiance to Google’s Android, which is free and has captured significant market share since being launched in 2008. Apple has specified 10 patents in the Delaware filing, and a different 10 in the ITC filing. The case is thought to be the first in which Apple has taken the first step in suing a rival mobile phone company. Although it has an ongoing patent dispute with Nokia, the Finnish mobile handset maker, the first move there was by Nokia. Apple has since countersued. The case is ongoing.
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Touchy feely infringement accusationApple has filed a lawsuit against Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, citing 20 patent infringements including UI and hardware as well as architectural design.…
Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work Read Full Story…
It’s not a cure-all – it’s barely even a phoneTwo NHS mobile equipment specialists have said that the short battery life of Apple’s iPhone makes it unsuitable for use in health work…
Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing Read Full Story…
Mini on the iPhone? Still waitingYou still can’t run Opera on the iPhone. But Opera-loving Apple fanbois can take some comfort from the fact that a beta version of the Norwegian browser maker’s latest desktop creation is now available for the Mac.…
Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing Read Full Story… |
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