News tagged ‘UK’

Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi in the U.K., made a comment in the presence of the Queen at an interfaith reception last week about Apple and its product, noting that the company produces an “egocentric society” and that “i” in Apple's popular naming scheme is a clear indicator of such totally selfish society. He even compared the iPad with Moses' stone tablets that bore the Ten Commandments.

“The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad one and iPad two, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTune, i, i, i," he said. “When you’re an individualist, egocentric culture and you only care about 'i’, you don’t do terribly well.”

The rabbi claimed that such egocentric society makes people unhappy. Sacks called on the devout to observe the traditional Jewish day of rest, the Shabbat, and to thank God for everything they have not to be trapped by material culture.

Nevertheless, the Queen Elizabeth II is said to be a "big fan" of Apple's products and reportedly owns two iPods and she even knighted Jobs in 2009.

The first smartphone with Ice Cream Sandwich, Galaxy Nexus, was released in the UK this week (launch in U.S. coming soon) and website AnandTech has benchmarked the new Galaxy Nexus vs. iPhone 4S.

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Research firm Gartner recently released its estimates of PC sales in Western Europe for the third quarter of 2011. Despite the overall decline of 11.4% for the market, Apple’s sales in Western Europe were up 19.6% year-over-year. In mobile PC market Apple showed the most significant performance of 28%, comparing to the last year performance.

Gartner especially paid attention to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, noting that in the UK Apple became one of five top vendors. Apple’s sales here increased up to 21.8% year-over-year. So now the company takes the fourth place in the United Kingdom with 7.8% of the market. Apple’s rival Samsung goes slightly behind with 7.3% of the market, despite the fact that Samsung’s growth there was 39%.

As for the U.S. PC market, Apple took 12.9% for the third quarter, demonstration significant increase in sales both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.

Apple always cares about its image. Such control spreads even on social networks, especially Facebook. Of course, Apple has its own Facebook pages and Twitter channels to share news, product updates, support documents, etc. But the company seems to control pages of its employees in social networks : Tweet/post/blog negatively about Apple and you’ll get fired.

One of Apple’s employees in the UK left negative comments about Apple on Facebook. He claimed that the post were not public. But he was fired for “gross misconduct”. Apple does warn potential employees in advance to refrain from commenting on the brand. It seems that commentary on Apple products, or critical remarks about the brand are indeed strictly prohibited, because such action could be damaging for Apple’s image and commercial reputation.

Rumors have it that there are Apple TVs that can run Hulu Plus app inside Apple. The app is full-featured and can be rolled out to Apple TV users. Actually, the app has been completed at least month ago, but there are some political issues standing in the way of launching Hulu Plus for Apple TV. Apple appears to have some consideration that the Hulu Plus could decrease iTunes TV sales.

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Since the iPhone 4S launch, some users have complained about battery life issues. Apple actually reduced the battery life in a standby mode from 300 hours on previous iPhone model to 200 hours on the iPhone 4S, but battery life in active mode was considered to be the same or even better.

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Today senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing in Apple Philip Schiller said that iPhone 4S sales topped 4 million units during opening weekend surpassing the 1.7 million units sold during last year’s debut weekend. Also he said:

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Today Apple has begun selling its new iPhone 4S in seven countries: US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan and Australia. The device is available in two colors (black, white) and three storage sizes (16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB).  As usual, lines have begun forming near Apple Stores worldwide and Apple Store employees were pulling overnight shifts to put up new displays and promo materials for the iPhone 4S launch.

The Japanese launch was hampered by registration slowdowns from Softbank, according to the Wall Street Journal:

The launch of the iPhone 4S in Japan was interrupted when Softbank – the main service provider for Apple products in the country—suffered a server glitch that temporarily suspended sales nationwide. A company spokesman said the servers were unable to process registration information.

Apple has already received more than one million pre-orders for the iPhone 4S. Analysts are predicting that weekend sales will exceed the iPhone 4 which were sold 1.7 million units its opening weekend. Estimates range from 2 million to 4 million.

Yesterday during the expected media event Apple announced the new iPhone 4S, an upgrade to the existing iPhone 4 with improved A5 processor, new 8 MP camera with better optics, faster download speed on 3G, Bluetooth 4.0, and more. Media members who attended Apple's iPhone 4S event had the opportunity to spend some time with the new hardware following the presentation, and immediately started posting their first impressions about the iPhone 4S.

Engadget highlights the improved internal specifications of the new iPhone 4S, noting that it is faster than the previous model, with faster navigating between pages and opening the camera application. Engadget was also able to test the new voice assistant, Siri:

The most impressive part was the demo of Siri, the new assistant that lets you do just about anything you can do on your phone — but with your voice. We tried to psych it out with a bunch of random requests... Siri never faltered, never missed a beat… There’s nothing better to say than that. We even sent ourselves a few text messages, which Siri transcribed to a T. Of course, the lady on the other end still sounds eerily robotic, but we’re hoping for smoother responses from the alien within in a future update.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop covers the differences in antenna design:

The current model has three bands — one on each side on the bottom, and one on the top. The iPhone 4S has four bands — two on the top and two on the bottom. The bands are where Apple houses the antennas for the device. The Wi-Fi, wireless and Bluetooth technologies use these areas. It’s not clear at this point if Apple moved any antennas or what they added the extra band.

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Here's a nice quick hands-on video of new iPhone 4S from BBC.

Tim Cook just announced much anticipated iPhone 4S. On the outside the iPhone 4S looks exactly like its predecessor iPhone 4, but on the inside it's "all new." Apple has put inside a dual-core A5 CPU, a new dual-core GPU that boosts graphics performance by up to 7x. The display is the same 3.5-inch Retina with VGA front camera.

The back camera got much better. It features 8MP sensor, backside illuminated CMOS sensor for better low-light performance, 5-element lens with a hybrid IR filter and apertures down to f/2.4. The 4S can record 1080p video and has a new image signal processor for image stabilization and facial recognition. The camera is also quite a bit faster than many other smartphone shooters. It needs just 1.1 seconds before being ready to take the first shot and only half a second between successive images.

The antennas on the sides have been rebuilt and iOS will intelligently switch between two different sets on the fly to avoid dropping calls no matter how you hold it. Those antennas are connected to a dual-mode GSM and CDMA radio that will let Apple's handset roam the globe while enjoying either 14.4Mbps HSPA+ or EV-DO Rev. A.

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According to Reuters, the $12 billion deal between Brazil and Foxconn to produce Apple’s iPad in a new Brazil-based Foxconn factory is now in doubt. It seems that negotiations between Brazilian government and the iPad-manufacturer have temporarily stalled. The main reasons are high taxes and lack of skilled workers that meet Faxconn expectations.

"We’re dealing with a lot of issues, like the (Taiwanese) trying to figure out how to do business in Brazil … and Brazil figuring out how to produce these complicated products,” a second government official told Reuters. Maybe we will end up starting with something smaller.

Start of production was already put off twice. We see that it still unclear whether the company will manufacture any Apple tablets in this country. As far as we know, Foxconn would like to build a new industrial complex with its own energy system, roads and infrastructure outside Sao Paolo. But the situation is complicated by the fact that the Brazilian government is now engaged in building more profitable $1 trillion projects related to the World Cup and the Summer Olympics the country will host in 2014 and 2016. The other problem includes lack of companies to partner with Foxconn in order to share costs in Brazil.

It’s a requirement to have Brazilian partners, (but) in the technology area the partners we have do not have the financial muscle for investments near that value.

According to a survey, conducted by a mobile advertising company InMobi, 41 percent of US customers is going to purchase the next-generation iPhone. 50 percent of them will do it within the first six months after public launch. This time Sprint customers will also have access to the new iPhone, so Apple seems to open new market for its smartphone, taking in account that Sprit has 52 million customers.

If consumers put their money where their mouths are, these numbers could go a long way to bumping up Apple’s overall market share in the UK and the U.S.. According to figures from Kantar Worldpanel, in Q2 Apple had an 18.3 percent share of the UK smartphone market; another research group, comScore, puts it around 20 percent. If people follow through with their purchasing intent, InMobi says this share would go up to 40 percent. In the U.S., the market share would grow to 41 percent.

Nevertheless, despite the InMobi’ estimates, Apple could release slightly revised version of the iPhone 4 – co-called iPhone 4S, reducing number of customers who will purchase such device.

This week Apple continues to carry out its plan for opening over 30 new stores by the end of September. Tomorrow Apple will open a new Stratford City store (image above) in Westfield Stratford City mall located in the northeastern part of London. The unusual mid-week opening coincides with the opening of the shopping center itself, the facility covering nearly 2 million square foot, which will be the largest urban mall in Europe and will be one of the key components in hosting next year’s London Summer Olympics.

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