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iPhone (iOS) Location Tracking ...
by Doug Hamilton 02 May '11

02 May '11

iPhone (iOS) Location Tracking You may have recently read articles about Apple tracking you via your iPhone, this is patently false. Some researchers discovered on their iPhones, a file containing GPS locations of where an iPhone they had been; or so they had thought. The locations were of the cellular towers and WiFi hotspot in their vicinity and not the phone tracking them personally. All cellular phones cache these files to improve network performance. What is of a minor concern is that this file wasn't encrypted. This issue will be resolved in a soon to be related iOS update. Here is a link to Apple's Press Release. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27location_qa.html Regards ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, ASP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 (Ph.) 204-474-7556 (Fax) http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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INTEREST: AssociatedPress: Apple juggernaut sends ripples through tech world
by billing 30 Apr '11

30 Apr '11

...from: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_APPLES_RIPPLES?SITE=CARIE&TEM… Apr 29, 3:55 PM EDT Apple juggernaut sends ripples through tech world By PETER SVENSSON AP Technology Writer AP Photo/Kin Cheung NEW YORK (AP) -- Consumer technology companies reporting financial results this week are looking like rowboats bobbing in the wake of Apple Inc.'s supertanker. Close to oblivion in 1997, Apple is now the world's second-most valuable company, after Exxon Mobil Corp. On April 20, it reported net income of $5.99 billion for the January-to-March period, nearly double that of a year ago. It shipped a record 18.65 million iPhones during the quarter. Its iPad tablet computers are so popular, the company couldn't make enough. Apple's ascendancy has produced many losers and a few winners, as underscored over the past two weeks: - Microsoft Corp.: loser. Apple dethroned Microsoft as the world's most valuable technology company a year ago. In its mid-fall report, it surpassed Microsoft in quarterly revenue. In the January-March period this year, it surpassed Microsoft in net income, too. On Thursday, Microsoft reported that revenue from the Windows operating system declined for the second straight quarter because people are buying fewer Windows computers. Some prospective buyers are going to Macs instead - Apple reported that it sold 28 percent more units. Others are going to iPads. Goldman Sachs now believes that more than 30 percent of iPads sold may be replacing PC sales. In the 90s, the trend was the opposite, as Windows PCs were crowding out Macs. - Nokia Corp.: loser. Nokia said this week that it will slash 7,000 jobs through layoffs and outsourcing. It still sells more phones than anyone else, but it's losing share to Apple, especially when it comes to smartphones. Research firm Strategy Analytics also said revenue from Apple's iPhone sales surpassed that of Nokia's phones in the January-to-March period, as iPhones are much more expensive than the average Nokia phone. That makes Apple the world's largest phone maker by revenue. To better compete with the iPhone, Nokia is ditching its old Symbian software and adopting Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. But the transition will take time; the first Windows-powered Nokia phones aren't expected until late 2011 or early 2012. - Research In Motion Ltd.: loser. The maker of the BlackBerry is in a predicament that's similar to Nokia's. RIM warned Thursday that net income, revenue and unit sales for the quarter ending in May will come in below its previous forecast. The company's high-end phones are looking old compared with the iPhone and ones running Google Inc.'s Android software. They aren't selling as well as the company expected. RIM promised investors that new phones with revamped software will bring sales roaring back in the latter half of the year, but investors are skeptical, sending RIM's stock down Friday. - HTC Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.: winners, indirectly. Although all three companies compete with Apple's iPhone, they are doing well. Unlike Nokia and RIM, the three are betting on Google's Android system, which comes the closest to mimicking the look, feel and functions of the iPhone. Motorola Mobility is a shadow of the old Motorola, once the world's second-largest maker of phones. But its focus on Android-powered smartphones is showing signs of success. It reported on Thursday a near-doubling of smartphone sales in the first quarter. HTC of Taiwan has been making smartphones for a decade, and sales are really taking off with the help of Android. On Friday, it reported selling 9.7 million in the first quarter. For South Korea's Samsung, smartphone sales were a bright spot in the first quarter as overall phone sales declined and other electronics were weak. The company is embroiled in patent litigation with Apple. - Verizon Wireless: winner. The No. 1 U.S. cellphone carrier posted a jump in new contract-signing customers - the more profitable kind - after it introduced its version of the iPhone on Feb. 10, which ended AT&T Inc.'s exclusive grip on the device in the U.S. (Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. of New York and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain.) - AT&T and Sprint Nextel Corp: mixed. Verizon's new subscribers came at the expense of AT&T and Sprint Nextel Corp. But neither carrier saw signs of current customers moving to Verizon for the sake of the iPhone. Rather, it seems customers weighing between carriers were more likely to go to Verizon because of the iPhone. AT&T appeared to be splitting new iPhone customers evenly with Verizon Wireless. Sprint lost lucrative contract customers in the quarter, but continued its long turnaround by signing up a record number of people on cheaper, contract-free plans.

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INTEREST: Apple outlook: iPad2, iPhone, Android, Steve, Japan
by billing 27 Apr '11

27 Apr '11

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/159366/2011/04/tim_cook_apple_android_japan… Tim Cook speaks! Apple's COO on Android, Japan, iPad 2 by Macworld Staff, Macworld.com Apr 20, 2011 6:20 pm [Editors’ note: When Apple releases its quarterly earnings report, it holds a conference-call with financial analysts. Some of the more interesting tidbits about how Apple views the world take place in this call, when Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook answers analyst questions. Here’s an edited transcript of what Cook said on Wednesday’s call.] Apple COO Tim Cook at the Verizon iPhone 4 launch. iPad 2 Demand on iPad 2 has been staggering. We’re still amazed that we are still heavily backlogged, not only at the end of the quarter but also up to date. However, I can tell you that I’m extremely pleased with the progress of the manufacturing ramp and we were so confident that we rolled out 25 additional countries at the end of last month, and we are shipping to an additional 13 countries next week, and we’re planning to add even more countries through the quarter. So I’m very confident that we can produce a very large number of iPads for the quarter. Whether that will be enough to meet demand, I don’t know. Demand has been staggering and I’m not going to predict when supply and demand will come into balance. I can only be confident on supply side. By the end of the quarter, we were in supply/demand balance [for the iPhone] in almost all of our major markets. And I would say, as of today, we’re in supply/demand balance [for the iPhone] virtually everywhere. The Mac is in supply/demand balance, and the iPod is in supply/demand balance, and the iPad has the mother of all backlogs that we’re working very, very hard to get out to customers as quickly as we can. Product transitions are never simple, and as you can probably appreciate, we are in a position that we have to call them for many, many weeks in advance, in terms of how many of the current product we want to produce and the dates at which we will announce the new product. We drew the channel down on the original iPad by 570,000 units during the quarter, and we added at the end of the quarter 170,000 of the new iPad 2s, although most of that was in transit at the end of the quarter. And so the net reduction was 400,000 and so our sell through was above five million for the quarter. And again, this has to be planned quite a ways in the future. Just to remind you, we sent out an invitation to the [iPad 2 launch] event toward the end of February, we had the event in early March, we placed the unit on sale in the United States on March 11, and our quarter ended about 2 weeks thereafter. So, there was some expectation of a new product, and we would have obviously factored that into our thinking about the product transition, as we planned the number of the original unit to build. So I think the key point here is that I’m extremely pleased with the progress we’ve been making on the manufacturing ramp. We have gotten off to a materially better start and produced a lot more units than we did on the original ramp of the first iPad, and we’re so confident with our ability to supply that we’ve already put on 25 additional countries at the end of March, and we’ll be placing on 13 more next week, and we’ll do even more as we step through the quarter. [Can you compare iPad 1 sales to iPad 2 sales?] We purposely aren’t giving that because we don’t want to help out any of our competition. But I would tell you, I wish we could have produced a lot more iPad 2s, because there were certainly a lot of people waiting for them. [What about offering an iPad subsidized by a wireless carrier?] The iPad today is subsidized in a few markets. It’s subsidized in Korea if people sign a 24-month contract, it’s subsidized in Japan with a 24-month contract, and a couple of European countries. But the vast majority of people that are using the iPad on 3G are doing so on a pay-as-you-go plan, a no-commitment plan. And so yes, carriers can do that, but I think many customers prefer the pay-as-you-go plan. [What about the iPad in education?] K-12 is sort of even more conservative than enterprise on adopting new technology. And last quarter, we were about a 1:1 ratio of iPads to Macs, which is, I think, amazing given the short life of the iPad. And really demonstrates what kind of opportunity there probably is there. iPhone In terms of iPhone, we did actually very well everywhere. I’d call out two places where it was just off the charts. The U.S. grew 155 percent year over year. Obviously adding Verizon and beginning to offer iPhone to their enormous customer base was key in that. However, as you heard from AT&T’s announcement this morning, AT&T did extremely well during the quarter. So the U.S. as a geography grew at 155 percent, and that’s about three times IDC’s forecast of growth for the smartphone market, which was about 48 percent. Also, we continued to be on a tear in China. Greater China saw iPhone sales being up over three times. Almost 250 percent. This catapulted revenue for first fiscal half in Greater China to just under $5 billion, which is up almost four times year over year. So we’re extremely happy with how we’re doing in China. [What about launching a 4G/LTE iPhone?] I was asked this question, or a similar question, when we launched the iPhone with Verizon. What I said then, and I still see it as being the case today, and I think you can see this in the products that have been shipped, is that the first generation of LTE chipsets force a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make. And so we are extremely happy with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. Hitting 18.6 million units was something much larger than we thought we could do this quarter, and we’re happy to have gotten it out to three more large carriers. [Can you talk about future CDMA carrier partners outside the U.S.?] On the carrier side, I don’t want to get into specifics about CDMA (or GSM for that matter). But we are constantly looking at where we should bring on incremental partners. As we said earlier, we brought on three large ones this quarter, with Verizon, STT and Saudi Telecom. That’s on top of the ones that we brought on in December, where we added O2 and Vodafone in Germany. And so we are constantly looking and adding where it makes sense, and you can keep confidence that we’ll continue to do that. [What about moving the iPhone into the prepaid market?] Our focus has very much been on China. We wanted to understand that market and understand the levers there. iPhone sales were up over three times during the quarter, and in the first half we did just slightly under $5 billion in greater China in revenue, which is about 10 percent of Apple, to put it in perspective. And it wasn’t but a couple years ago that that number would have been less than two. And so it’s a sea change. That’s certainly not what I would call a classic postpaid market by any means of imagination. And so we have some ideas about other countries as well. I’m not in a position that I want to share those today. We purposefully put the bulk of our emphasis from an emerging markets point of view, in China, to really learn, and then we’re going to take that learning to other markets. Considerably more [than half of China is pre-paid wireless]… I think the first digit would start with a 9. Mac growth The growth on the Mac has been enormous in Asia. The last quarter we were up 76 percent in Asia Pacific, this is many multiples of the growth that region is seeing for the market. I believe the IDC forecast is around six percent. And so we’re seeing enormous growth in the Mac there. Japan also did quite well on the Mac for the quarter and the U.S. had a surprisingly strong quarter for the Mac, Americas is up 25 percent, the U.S. was up just slightly higher than that. Our market share is obviously less outside the U.S. in most places than it is in the U.S., and so I think it speaks very, very well for the opportunity that the Mac has. We’ve now hit 20 quarters in a row where we’ve outgrown the PC market, and the momentum is still there. We seem to be the only guys that are really focused on building innovative products in that space. There are several of the international countries that are extremely portable-focused, and you can see that we had enormous growth in our portables for the quarter. However, part of that is that we had a launch of the new MacBook Pro line. But honestly I see popularity in both the iMac and the portable [form] factor and believe there is a great future for both. [The iPad] clearly seems to be creating a halo effect for the Mac. And I think that’s one reason we see the growth that we are seeing on the Mac. You know, it’s amazing when you see the 28 percent year over year versus the worldwide market in PCs contracting by 3 points. It’s an astonishing delta. Android vs. iOS I just saw yesterday… the ComScore data released yesterday reported that the iOS platform outreaches Android by 59 percent in the U.S. And so this is an enormous percentage. On a worldwide basis, we just did 18.6 million iPhones, which is up 113 percent, which is materially faster than the market rate of growth. And we launched the iPad 2 and sold every one of ‘em that we could make. As we said before, we’re gaining traction in enterprise on both iPhone and iPad with astonishing 88 percent and 75 percent respectively of the Fortune 500 companies deploying or testing these. We’ve got the largest App Store with over 350,000 apps for iPhone and 65,000 iPad-specific apps on iOS. Versus what appears to be fewer than a hundred on Android. And so we feel very, very good about where we are and we feel great about our future product plan. We’ve also paid over $2 billion to developers and we’ve had well over 10 billion applications downloaded. And so our business proposition is very, very strong. And as we’ve said before, we continue to believe—and even more and more every day—that iPhone’s integrated approach is materially better than Android’s fragmented approach, where you have multiple OSes on multiple devices with different screen resolutions and multiple app stores with different rules, payment methods, and update strategies. I think the user appreciates that Apple can take full responsibility for their experience, whereas the fragmented approach turns the customer into a systems integrator, and few customers that I know want to be a systems integrator. Steve Jobs He is still on medical leave, but we do see him on a regular basis. And as we previously said, he continues to be involved in major strategic decisions. I know he wants to be back full-time as soon as he can. Samsung We are Samsung’s largest customer. And Samsung is a very valued component supplier to us, and I expect that strong relationship will continue. Separately from this, we felt the mobile communication division of Samsung had crossed the line, and after trying for some time to work the issue, we decided we needed to rely on the courts. On Japan and Apple's supply chain Let me sort of step back and talk about Japan in general. First of all, this is an incredible tragedy and our hearts go out to everyone involved. Apple as a company has a very long history and has many strong ties to people in Japan, and we’re very, very saddened by the situation, and we’ve undertaken various actions to assist in the relief effort. The economic impact that we’ll address today pales in comparison to the human impact. Regarding our business in Japan, we had some revenue impact in Q2, but it was not material to Apple’s consolidated results. We believe revenues will be approximately $200 million less in Q3, and this has been factored into the guidance [we] provided you earlier. Regarding our global supply chain, as a result of outstanding teamwork and unprecedented resilience of our partners, we did not have any supply or cost impact in our fiscal Q2 as a result as the tragedy, and we currently do not anticipate any material supply or cost impact in our fiscal Q3. To provide a bit more color on this, we source literally hundreds of items from Japan, and they range from components such as LCDs, optical drives, NAND flash and DRAM to base materials such as resins, coatings, and foils that are part of the production process that are several layers back in the supply chain. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami and the associated nuclear crisis caused disruption for many of these suppliers. And many unaffected suppliers have been impacted by power interruptions. But since the disaster, Apple employees have literally been working around the clock with our supply partners in Japan and have been able to implement a number of contingency plans. Our preference from the beginning of this tragedy has been to remain with our long-term partners in Japan, and I have to say, they have displayed an incredible resilience that I’ve personally never seen before in the aftermath of this disaster. So while we do not currently anticipate any material impact to our component supply or cost in our fiscal Q3, we do need to caution everyone that the situation remains unpredictable, given recent aftershocks, the uncertainty about the nuclear plant, and potential power interruptions. Further, there are some supply risks that are beyond the current quarter, and although we know of no issue today that we view as unsolvable, the situation is still uncertain and there’s obviously no guarantee. For this reason it’s difficult to predict whether the issues created by the tragedy would impact revenues beyond Q3. However, I’ll be happy to address Q4 on our next call in July. As of today we currently do not anticipate any material supply (or cost impact as far as that goes) in our fiscal Q3. That’s the quarter that we’re in now, that ends in June. Beyond June, there are risks, but there’s no issue that we’re aware of today that we view as unsolveable. However, new things could happen. I’m sure you’ve been paying attention to the news: there’s aftershocks, there’s still uncertainty about the nuclear plant, there’s power interruptions. If that stays at the level that it is today, I’m not as worried. I would worry if something happened and took a turn for the worst, and obviously I can’t predict that and certainly hope that it does not occur.

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INTEREST: AT&T: smartphone data facing huge growth
by billing 22 Apr '11

22 Apr '11

...from: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/04/22/atandt-filing-shows-that-smartphone-data-is-… AT&T filing shows that smartphone data is facing huge growth by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Apr 22nd 2011 at 6:00PM AT&T has submitted a document to the FCC in the process of trying to get that T-Mobile mergerapproved, and it reveals that AT&T was overwhelmed by the amount of smartphone data traffic it had to push through with the arrival of the iPhone. 2010 saw an 8000% jump in data rates over 2007, according to the document, which adds that "a smartphone generates 24 times the mobile data traffic of a conventional wireless phone, and the explosively popular iPad and similar tablet devices can generate traffic comparable to or even greater than a smartphone." The total apparently went up to 10 petabytes of data per month in 2010. Because of all that data, AT&T is trying to suggest that it "faces network capacity constraints more severe than those of any other wireless provider." And while AT&T says that connecting with T-Mobile will help both companies be better able to handle their data issues, things aren't going to get easier. The company expects to deliver the same amount of data it served in 2010 in just the first five weeks of 2015. Lest the FCC start feeling bad for AT&T and its predicament, don't forget that by connecting with Apple for the iPhone in the first place, AT&T gladly took the bullet for all of that data. But yes, AT&T and other data providers have quite a goal in front of them, considering how fast consumer data consumption is growing thanks to Apple's devices.

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INTEREST: iPhone: IDC prognosis through 2015
by billing 19 Apr '11

19 Apr '11

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/158892/2011/03/windowsphone_iphone.html#lsr… IDC (www.idc.com): Windows Phone to surpass iPhone by 2015 Posted on Mar 29, 2011 10:35 am by Matt Hamblen, Computerworld Editor’s Note: This story is excerpted from Computerworld. For more Mac coverage, visitComputerworld’s Macintosh Knowledge Center. IDC made a bold prediction Tuesday, forecasting that Windows Phone will surge ahead to become the No. 2 smartphone operating system by 2015 behind Android in the top spot. That forecast would push Apple’s iPhone to third position, followed by BlackBerry in fourth in 2015, the market research firm said. Windows Phone will grow, IDC said, because of the alliance forged between the world’s largest mobile phone maker, Nokia, and software powerhouse Microsoft. “The new alliance brings together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and Windows Phone’s differentiated platform,” said Ramon Llamas, an IDC analyst. Many analyst firms, including IDC and Gartner, had predicted last year that Windows Phone without Nokia would only reach 5 to 10 percent market share in coming years. IDC expects the first devices from the new Nokia/Microsoft alliance to launch in 2012. “By 2015, IDC expects Windows Phone to be the number 2 operating system worldwide behind Android,” Llamas said in a statement. In 2011, IDC expects Android to secure the top spot for all 12 months of the year, after pushing into top territory late in 2010. Android will secure nearly 40 percent of the smartphone operating system market in 2011, IDC predicted, and then move to 45 percent in 2015. Symbian, Nokia’s current OS, will retreat to second place with nearly 21 percent in 2011, to zero by 2015, since Symbian phones will no longer be produced sometime after 2012. Apple’s iOS will be in third position globally for all of 2011, with nearly 15.7 percent of the market, falling to 15.3 percent of the market in 2015. Apple will still sell 19 percent more smartphones each year, however, as the smartphone market expands. BlackBerry, the smartphone from Research in Motion, will be in fourth position for all of 2011 with 14.9 percent share of the market, dropping to 13.7 percent share in 2015. BlackBerry will still grow by 17 percent each year. Windows Phone 7 and WindowsMobile, the older Microsoft OS, will take 5.5 percent of the market in 2011, but Windows Phone will surge to nearly 21 percent in 2015, an annual growth rate of 67 percent, IDC said. Overall, smartphones won’t grow quite as fast in 2011 as in 2010, IDC noted. Growth in smartphones globally will be 49.2 percent, IDC said. Vendors will ship more than 450 million smartphones in 2011, compared with 303.4 million shipped in 2010, IDC added. Part of the reason for the fast growth in 2010 was that buyers held off mobile phone purchases during the 2009 economic downturn, said Kevin Restivo, also an IDC analyst. “The expected market growth for 2011, while still notable, will taper off somewhat from what we saw in 2010,” Restivo added.

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INTEREST: iPad: Gartner prognosis through 2015
by billing 18 Apr '11

18 Apr '11

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/159154/2011/04/tablet_forecast.html#lsrc.mo… Gartner: Apple will dominate tablet market through 2015 Posted on Apr 11, 2011 2:20 pm by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Editor’s Note: This story is excerpted from Computerworld. For more Mac coverage, visitComputerworld’s Macintosh Knowledge Center. Apple’s iOS will dominate the tablet market through the middle of the decade, Gartner analysts said Monday. But as already is the case in the smartphone market, Apple will face its most heated competition from Google’s Android. iOS will retain a market majority through 2014, then slip under the 50 percent bar the following year, said Gartner analysts Carolina Milanesi and Roberta Cozza, who cited Apple’s reinvention of the tablet as key to the company’s success. In 2011, Gartner is forecasting iPad sales of 48 million, compared to 13.9 million tablets running Google’s Android, giving Apple’s iOS a 68.7 percent share of the tablet market. In 2012, however, Apple’s share will slip to 63.5 percent—even though it will sell over 68 million iPads—as sales of Android-based tablets surge to 26 million to account for nearly a quarter of all devices. By 2014, Apple’s share will have dropped to 51.8 percent on sales of 115 million tablets, while Android sales will have climbed to 76 million, representing 34.2 percent of the market. According to Gartner’s forecast, iOS will fall under the 50 percent mark for the first time in early 2015, even as it sells a record 138 million iPads throughout that year. Apple’s dominance would have been threatened even earlier but for Google’s decision to not open Android 3.0—dubbed “Honeycomb”—to third parties, as it has with earlier versions of the operating system. Google’s change was a reaction to criticism over the Android smartphone market’s fragmentation—and that the tablet market would suffer from the same—said Gartner’s analysts. But the move will probably mean that prices won’t drop as fast as they otherwise would—tablet makers won’t be able to decide what’s in and what’s not in their implementations of Honeycomb—and that Android may find a ceiling on market share. “The new licensing model Google has introduced with Honeycomb enables Google to drive more control, allowing only optimal tablet implementations that don’t compromise quality of experience,” said Gartner’s Cozza in a statement. “This might mean that prices will drop at a slower pace than what we have seen in the smartphone market.” Gartner’s take on rivals to iOS and Android was bleak: By 2015, RIM’s QNX—the operating system destined for the not-yet-released PlayBook—will have just 10 percent of the tablet market, while others, like Hewlett Packard’s WebOS and Nokia’s MeeGo, will still be in the single digits. Even as its market share slips, Apple’s iOS and iPad will remain the benchmarks to beat, said the Gartner analysts. “Many [tablet vendors] are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritizing hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience,” said Milanesi. “Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realize that, the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple.” Apple’s iOS will dominate the tablet market through 2015 even as rivals catch up.

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INTEREST: iPad: Gartner prognosis through 2015
by billing 18 Apr '11

18 Apr '11

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/159154/gartner_apple_will_dominate_tablet_m… Gartner: Apple will dominate tablet market through 2015 Posted on Apr 11, 2011 2:20 pm by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Editor’s Note: This story is excerpted from Computerworld. For more Mac coverage, visitComputerworld’s Macintosh Knowledge Center. Apple’s iOS will dominate the tablet market through the middle of the decade, Gartner analysts said Monday. But as already is the case in the smartphone market, Apple will face its most heated competition from Google’s Android. iOS will retain a market majority through 2014, then slip under the 50 percent bar the following year, said Gartner analysts Carolina Milanesi and Roberta Cozza, who cited Apple’s reinvention of the tablet as key to the company’s success. In 2011, Gartner is forecasting iPad sales of 48 million, compared to 13.9 million tablets running Google’s Android, giving Apple’s iOS a 68.7 percent share of the tablet market. In 2012, however, Apple’s share will slip to 63.5 percent—even though it will sell over 68 million iPads—as sales of Android-based tablets surge to 26 million to account for nearly a quarter of all devices. By 2014, Apple’s share will have dropped to 51.8 percent on sales of 115 million tablets, while Android sales will have climbed to 76 million, representing 34.2 percent of the market. According to Gartner’s forecast, iOS will fall under the 50 percent mark for the first time in early 2015, even as it sells a record 138 million iPads throughout that year. Apple’s dominance would have been threatened even earlier but for Google’s decision to not open Android 3.0—dubbed “Honeycomb”—to third parties, as it has with earlier versions of the operating system. Google’s change was a reaction to criticism over the Android smartphone market’s fragmentation—and that the tablet market would suffer from the same—said Gartner’s analysts. But the move will probably mean that prices won’t drop as fast as they otherwise would—tablet makers won’t be able to decide what’s in and what’s not in their implementations of Honeycomb—and that Android may find a ceiling on market share. “The new licensing model Google has introduced with Honeycomb enables Google to drive more control, allowing only optimal tablet implementations that don’t compromise quality of experience,” said Gartner’s Cozza in a statement. “This might mean that prices will drop at a slower pace than what we have seen in the smartphone market.” Gartner’s take on rivals to iOS and Android was bleak: By 2015, RIM’s QNX—the operating system destined for the not-yet-released PlayBook—will have just 10 percent of the tablet market, while others, like Hewlett Packard’s WebOS and Nokia’s MeeGo, will still be in the single digits. Even as its market share slips, Apple’s iOS and iPad will remain the benchmarks to beat, said the Gartner analysts. “Many [tablet vendors] are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritizing hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience,” said Milanesi. “Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realize that, the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple.” Apple’s iOS will dominate the tablet market through 2015 even as rivals catch up.

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INTEREST: Cisco Systems: disappointing results lead to exiting parts of consumer businesses
by billing 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

...from: http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/Cisco-Systems-exiting-parts-capress-375506… Cisco Systems exiting parts of consumer businesses, plans to stop making Flip camcorders Email Print Topics:Earnings FILE - In this Nov. 4, 2009 file photo, a Cisco Systems' Flip Video camera is displayed at Best Buy in Mountain View, Calif. Cisco Systems Inc. is exiting parts of its consumer businesses, with plans to shut its Flip video camera business Tuesday, April 12, 2011.(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) Peter Svensson, The Associated Press, On Tuesday April 12, 2011, 12:19 pm By Peter Svensson, The Associated Press NEW YORK, N.Y. - Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest maker of computer networking gear, on Tuesday said it is killing its Flip Video camcorder business as part of a reversal of years of efforts at diversifying into consumer products. The about-face comes after several quarters of disappointing results and challenges in its core businesses. Analysts say the company has been trying to do too many different things. A week ago, CEO John Chambers acknowledged the criticism, sending employees a memo vowing to take "bold steps" to narrow the company's focus. The San Jose, California, company said Tuesday that it expects its consumer business shakeup will result in the loss of 550 jobs, or less than 1 per cent of its work force of about 73,000. It also expects to take restructuring charges of no more than $300 million spread out over the current quarter, which ends April 25, and the following one. Cisco bought Pure Digital Technologies Inc., the maker of the Flip Video camcorder, for $590 million in 2009, just two years after the San Francisco-based company made its first camera. The Flip Video quickly became a top seller because it was easy to use. A signature feature, since copied by many other manufacturers, was a USB connector that flipped out of the case, letting the user connect the camera directly to a computer. The camera even contained video-editing software that fired up on the computer. Last year, the Flip Video was still the top-selling video camera in the U.S., with 26 per cent of the market, according to IDC analyst Chris Chute. But that only amounted to 2.5 million units sold. Dedicated video cameras are small potatoes compared to digital still cameras and smart phones, both of which now shoot video. That could be the reason Cisco appears to see no point in selling the business — the announcement Tuesday said Flip will be closed down. It will continue to support the sharing of Flip videos online. A Cisco spokesman did not respond to a question about why the unit would be shut down. Top competitors in the pocket camcorder field, which could benefit from Flip Video's demise, are Eastman Kodak Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. The company said it will realign its remaining consumer business to support four of its five key priorities — routers and switches; corporate communications and collaboration equipment; data-centre products and video. That means it's retrenching on another consumer video business — home videoconferencing. In November, Cisco started selling the umi, a $599 box that turns a high-definition TV into a big videophone. But signs soon emerged that the umi wasn't doing well. It cut the price of the unit in March, along with the monthly service fee, which went from $24.95 per month to $99 per year. On Tuesday, Cisco said it will fold umi into its corporate videoconferencing business and stop selling the box through retailers. Instead, it will sell it through corporate channels and Internet service providers. Cisco's Home Networking business, which makes Wi-Fi routers and has the 2003 acquisition of Linksys at its core, will be "refocused for greater profitability," but Cisco will keep selling the routers in stores. Cisco shares fell 6 cents to $17.41 in midday trading. The shares are close to their 52-week low of $16.97, hit a month ago. Analyst Simon Leopold at Morgan Keegan said the pullback on the consumer side is a good thing for investors, but not enough to set off a stock rally. Consumer products have been a drag on Cisco's results because they carry profit margins that are far lower than the big-ticket capital equipment the company sells to corporations and governments, Leopold said. But the drag has been minor, because consumer products are still only a small part of Cisco's overall business. More importantly, Leopold said, investors have been selling Cisco stock because it's been losing market share in corporate products. He believes the selling is overdone because the losses are mainly in fringe products rather than bread-and-butter routers and switches.

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INTEREST: Google, Nortel, and Patent Protection
by billing 04 Apr '11

04 Apr '11

...from: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/patents-and-innovation.html Patents and innovation 4/04/2011 07:45:00 AM The tech world has recently seen an explosion in patent litigation, often involving low-quality software patents, which threatens to stifle innovation. Some of these lawsuits have been filed by people or companies that have never actually created anything; others are motivated by a desire to block competing products or profit from the success of a rival’s new technology. The patent system should reward those who create the most useful innovations for society, not those who stake bogus claims or file dubious lawsuits. It's for these reasons that Google has long argued in favor of real patent reform, which we believe will benefit users and the U.S. economy as a whole. But as things stand today, one of a company’s best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services. Google is a relatively young company, and although we have a growing number of patents, many of our competitors have larger portfolios given their longer histories. So after a lot of thought, we’ve decided to bid for Nortel’s patent portfolio in the company’s bankruptcy auction. Today, Nortel selected our bid as the “stalking-horse bid," which is the starting point against which others will bid prior to the auction. If successful, we hope this portfolio will not only create a disincentive for others to sue Google, but also help us, our partners and the open source community—which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome—continue to innovate. In the absence of meaningful reform, we believe it's the best long-term solution for Google, our users and our partners. Posted by Kent Walker, Senior Vice President & General Counsel

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INTEREST: SoftBank of Japan to provide connections....
by billing 30 Mar '11

30 Mar '11

...from: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/30/softbank-to-offer-free-phones-to-earthqu… Softbank to offer free phones to earthquake orphans, free replacement for lost iPhones By Richard Lai posted Mar 30th 2011 at 9:14AM Following the catastrophic earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, surviving victims from the affected region are going to face a tough time over the coming months, if not years. Many of those who are more fortunate have been actively contributing in one way or another, regardless of distance, to help put Japan on its road to recovery. Back in the country, one such generous person is non other than Softbankfounder and CEO Masayoshi Son, who's recently visited Tamura, one of the cities most affected by theFukushima nuclear disaster. During that trip, Son announced that Softbank will cover a year's worth of living costs (commute and food) and provide job positions for the 1,200 people to be relocated to Takeo in Saga, the prefecture where Son originated. Additionally, Son is using Softbank's "Let's Do It" campaign site -- a tracker for his "Let's Do It" tasks posted on Twitter, each accompanied by a completion status indicator -- to crowdsource requests for supporting earthquake victims. So far, these requests are mainly about ways to increase efficiency for donation efforts (like publishing a live list of item shortages for each shelter, and setting up new mobile networks at the shelters), but there were two that caught our attention. Last week, one of Son's followers suggested that Softbank should provide orphaned children free phone credit for a limited time, so that they could contact their friends and other family members. Son then retweeted this idea and announced that all earthquake orphans will receive free phones, along with call costs waived until they reach the age of 18. Another gadget-related initiative came in earlier today with Son promising free replacement for all lost or damaged iPhones due to the earthquake, with details to follow later. Obviously, anyone providing aid to Japan in any way, shape, or form deserves just as much credit, but Softbank's extra mileage and cunning use of social networking is certainly praiseworthy in its own right. Here's hoping that Son's actions will inspire others for even greater causes.

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