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Tag: iphone

  • Can Nokia Rise To Apple's challenge?


    Nokia will see its share of the global smartphone market halved from 40 to 20 per cent by 2013, according to Generator Research.

    And who is going to be gobbling up Nokia’s lost business? Why Apple, of course.

    Generator believes Apple’s embryonic mobile business could knock Nokia from the top spot in the smartphone market and transform the mobile services market in the process.

    It predicts Apple could ship as many as 77 million iPhones in 2013 – while Nokia’s share would sit at just 38.5 million based on the analysts’ calculations.

    But is it likely the Finnish company will allow itself to be toppled so dramatically – even given the iPhone’s phenomenal success and Nokia’s continued under-performance in the US?

    Based on Generator’s analysis, the matter may be out of Nokia’s hands.

    Its report suggests that with cash reserves exceeding USD $25 billion, 33 per cent gross margins and the iPhone just about to enter its fastest-growth phase, Apple is extremely well placed.

    The iPhone-maker has the "resources, competencies and motivation" to invest in the mobile sector just at the time when the economic climate is forcing
    many established players in the mobile industry to cut back on product development.

    Generator adds that the impact on some incumbent players is likely to be substantial – not least Nokia’s.

    Andrew Sheehy, head of research at Generator, said the iPhone and App Store constitute a vertical platform for the delivery of advanced mobile services that will be developed in a similar manner to how Apple developed its digital music platform – including the iPod and the iTunes Music Store.

    "Outsiders are rewriting the mobile industry’s rulebook for how to deliver mobile services and the new rule number one is that you need a fully-integrated service development platform that has a rich API which is open to third party developers on favourable commercial terms," he said.

    "Right now, Apple has the best platform and the best-looking forward roadmap."

    Sheehy adds that Apple will use its financial strength and revenue velocity to try to get one or more design cycles ahead of the competition.

    "By that time the iPhone will include a range of different models, each addressing different market segments and the App Store will have developed to
    the point where third party developers have access to network assets that will allow them to write programs that can send messages and establish voice
    calls between different iPhones," he said.

    Fanciful ruminations or worryingly accurate (if you’re Nokia)? We would like to hear your comments.

  • Apple Signs USD $ 500 Million Deal With LG


    Apple and LG Display have agreed a deal that will see the South Korean electronics manufacturer supply flat panel displays for Macs and handheld products over the next five years.

    In exchange for a guaranteed supply of LCD screens until 2013, Apple will prepay USD $500 million to LG later this month.

    LG, which is the world’s second-largest maker of flat panel displays behind Samsung, presently supplies Apple with 70 per cent of its LCD panels.

    Prices for the parts, which have been falling rapidly during the recent global slowdown, are expected to begin rising again in the near future.

    In 2005, Apple made a similar deal with five memory suppliers which ensured the iPhone maker established a competitive edge in the digital media player and cell phone markets.

    In that agreement Apple prepaid a total of USD $1.25 billion to secure its supply of NAND flash memory.

    This type of strategic deal allows better prices to be obtained for components and can put pressure on competitors’ margins.

  • iTunes To Be DRM-free As Song Pricing Altered


    Apple is to start selling digital songs without copy protection software from iTunes along with over-the-air download songs for the iPhone.

    Announcing the changes at the Macworld Expo trade show in San Francisco, Apple marketing exec Phil Schiller also detailed plans to roll out variable pricing on digital songs at iTunes with songs priced between USD $0.69 cents and $1.29.

    Along with the new price points, all tracks on iTunes will be digital rights management or DRM-free by April.

    DRM has proved a controversial topic with music fans and record labels alike.

    It was designed to prevent fans from illegally sharing digital downloads on file-sharing services.

    But it also prevented many fans from moving their own songs between devices and became increasingly unpopular.

    Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, publicly called on major record labels to drop DRM in February 2007.

    In exchange, labels have been asking that iTunes agree to sell songs at variable prices. Currently, iTunes sells all individual songs at USD $0.99 cents.

    Apple also announced details to allow iPhone 3G and iPod Touch Wifi users to buy songs while on the go, over the air through its popular App Store.

    The changes mean a 30 per cent price rise for tracks from big name artists record labels – which will make more money for the record lables.

    They will also mean consumers will be able to buy older and lesser known artists’ tracks for less.

    The fact that iTunes downloads are in the AAC file format means there will still be restrictions on where they can be played despite being DRM-free.

    In what was a fairly dry keynote, Schiller also announced the new 17" MacBook Pro – priced at USD $2,799 for a glossy screen, 2.66 GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, 320GB 5400 rpm hard drive, glass trackpad and backlit keyboard.

    Expected to be Apple’s last Macworld keynote the company also showed off some software and hardware updates.

    The expected update to the Mac mini never materialised – nor did Jobs, who is treating a "hormonal imbalance".

  • SlingPlayer Coming To The iPhone


    The Macworld trade show in San Francisco is to get a glimpse of SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone.

    SlingPlayer Mobile enables users to watch any program normally viewed on a home TV set on the iPhone using a standard broadband network connection.

    It will also allow iPhone users to control their home digital video recorder (DVR) to watch recorded shows, pause, rewind, and fast forward live TV, or even queue new recordings while away from home.

    Blake Krikorian, co-founder and CEO of Sling Media, said SlingPlayer Mobile was ideally suited for the iPhone’s large touch screen display.

    "I know iPhone users are eagerly anticipating the application’s availability," he said.

    SlingPlayer Mobile will be submitted to Apple for testing and approval in Q1.

    It will be compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch.

    No pricing details have been released as yet.

    Sling Media is also unveiling a prototype of the new SlingPlayer for Mac HD which allows Slingbox PRO-HD users to stream HD content to their Mac desktop or laptop computer.

    The new SlingPlayer for Mac HD is a web-based version of the SlingPlayer software that will be available for free from Sling’s video entertainment web site later in Q1.

    Mac customers will be able to use either Safari or Firefox web browsers to get both HD streaming and Live TV within Sling.com.

  • Keyboard and Touchscreen For Palm's New Handset


    Details are emerging about Palm’s expected launch of its latest smartphone and operating system at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show.

    The new handset is to have a full QWERTY keyboard that will slide down under a portrait-oriented touchscreen.

    This, and the new Nova operating system, are to be launched Thursday, according to CrunchGear.

    Faced with mounting losses and weak smartphone sales, the success of the new phone and Linux-based operating system could very well decide the company’s fate.

    It should be clearer by the end of the week whether Palm’s offerings will enable it to succeed with its plan to position itself somewhere between RIM’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone.

  • Motorola Commits To WinMo And Android


    Motorola is to discontinue making phones for Symbian and will instead concentrate on two new platforms: Windows Mobile and Android.

    Sanjay Jha, CEO of the Mobile Devices group at Motorola, confirmed what had until now been rumors to Michael Oryl of MobileBurn.

    Motorola’s stake in Symbian was in UIQ, a part of the OS being cut following Nokia’s decision to move to an open platform.

    A leading force in the US smartphone market, Motorola has seen it position threatened of late.

    In November, Apple’s iPhone overtook Motorola’s Razr to become the best-selling consumer cellphone in the US in the third quarter of 2008.

    Motorola is now expected to postpone any product launches until the end of 2009 to allow it to prepare its new Android devices.

  • Apple Devices Dominate Mobile Wi-Fi Use


    iPhone owners are the single largest source of mobile WiFi data traffic worldwide, particularly in the US and UK, according to AdMob.

    In the US, the Apple handset represents 50.6 per cent of all requests from handhelds of any kind, followed by the iPod touch, which accounts for 28 per cent of the requests.

    The best non-Apple device, Sony’s PSP, only manages 13.1 per cent of this traffic.

    Even further down the scale come the T-Mobile Dash, G1 and various BlackBerries, which each have less than one per cent of WiFi use.

    UK figures are similarly weighted and give the iPhone the lead at 46.1 per cent, followed by the iPod touch at 21.8 per cent and Nokia’s N95 at 16.7 per cent.

    The Apple device is also more than twice as likely to be used on Wi-Fi than other devices and is used 42 per cent of the time on these hotspots in the US rather than EDGE or 3G compared to no more than 10 to 20 per cent for competitors.

    In the UK, this reaches 56 per cent.

    The phone’s presence helped roughly double the use of mobile WiFi to 8 per cent in both countries between October and November.

    Increasing numbers of smartphone users are taking advantage of WiFi to make voice calls over IP networks.

  • Seadragon App Is Microsoft's First For iPhone


    Microsoft’s Live Labs has released its first application for the iPhone.

    Seadragon Mobile is an experimental image viewer that aims to make high-resolution images easier to handle on a small screen.

    It allows users to view enormous photo collections and high-resolution imagery using the iPhone’s multi-touch intuitive interface.

    The application provides a Deep Zoom feature to enable smooth image browsing of lots of images as well as simple manipulation of massive, gigapixel images.

    Alex Daley, group product manager for Microsoft Live Labs, said the iPhone had been chosen to launch the app because it is the most widely distributed phone with a graphics processing unit.

    "Most phones out today don’t have accelerated graphics in them," he said. "The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do.

    "I couldn’t just pick up a Blackberry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support."

    Microsoft’s goal for Seadragon is nothing if not ambitious – essentially it wants to change the way screens are used, be they wall-sized displays or smartphone screens, so that graphics and photos are smoothly browsed, regardless of the amount of data or the bandwidth of the network.

    Seadragon Mobile is available immediately on the iTunes App Store as a free download.

  • iPhone As A Netbook?


    Predictions about Apple’s intentions for the upcoming Macworld Expo are ripe – with the latest being the launch of a netbook that works like an iPhone.

    Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil believes that as with the iPhone, users will download mobile applications for the netbook from Apple’s App Store.

    According to the analysts, Apple would benefit from allowing such a device access to its App Store, through which Apple reports iPhone users have downloaded more than 300 million apps since its launch in July.

    Gottheil claims Apple will announce its a netbook-like device at next month’s Macworld conference in San Francisco and will launch it in the middle of 2009.

    While Apple as always is giving nothing away, one thing is certain: this Macworld Expo will be Apple’s last appearance at the event.

    The company has announced that chief executive Steve Jobs will not be giving the keynote at the event that is traditionally Apple’s largest of the year.

    Instead, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of product marketing, is to give the keynote on Tuesday January 6, 2009.

    While the move will undoubtedly reignite speculation about Jobs’ health, successor and a myriad of other issues, the only explanation from Apple came in a statement saying: "Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris."

  • Copy And Paste On The iPhone – Finally


    The lack of copy and paste on the iPhone could soon be a thing of the past if a new web service called Pastebud is as good as it appears.

    Although still to be launched Pastebud’s creators have put a demonstration of their service on YouTube showing how iPhone users can copy and paste text from Safari into Mail and between web pages.

    Based on the YouTube demo, it works through bookmarks that allow users to go between Web pages and email.

    Users are then able to highlight text and hit a button to copy, flip to the another page and hit paste.

    As a web-based service users don’t have to download software onto their iPhones – meaning it bypasses Apple’s App Store altogether.

    While Pastebud may be quite limited in copy and paste capabilities, it will definitely be gratefully received by iPhone users.

    Video below: