Archive for February 2nd, 2012

Last week we reported that Foxconn was gearing up for production of the rumoured iPhone 5 with the likely launch set for summer. Today, the Commercial Times citing the report from Daiwa Securities analysts has reported that the iPhone 5 is expected to launch at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) to be held in June 2012. The official dates for the 2012 conference have not yet been announced, but a previously leaked guide suggested June 10th-15th as the likely dates. Now they are blocked off for a "Corporate Meeting" which typically acts as a placeholder for WWDC.

Daiwa Securities also claims that the next-generation smartphone will continue utilizing "glass to glass" touch panel technology.

The iPhone 5 will continue to utilize glass to glass (G/G) touch panel technology, which will benefit current touch panel suppliers TPK Holding and Wintek, the paper quoted the securities house as saying.

The summer launch claim is not new and has been echoed in previous reports. So this may be just another one rumor. Apple broke from tradition with the iPhone 4S by launching it in October of 2011. A significant change from the previous four generations of iPhone, which were released at or around WWDC in June.

The Chronic Dev-Team has released an update to its Absinthe jailbreak utility that brings support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Intel + PPC) and fixes several bugs.

@pimskeks announced the update:

#Absinthe 0.4 released greenpois0n.com/?p=173 - OSX 10.5 support (PPC+Intel). Re-jailbreaking not required. Changelog: pastebin.com/DdwGKstR

What's New in Absinthe v0.4:

• Mac: added support for OSX 10.5, PPC and Intel CPU
• added consistency check on startup to make sure required files are in place
• Windows: fixed bug in payload generator that might cause a crash

You can download Absinthe for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from here.

Here are our step-by-step tutorials:

• HowTo untether jailbreak iPad 2 with iOS 5.0.1 (Mac OS X)
• HowTo untether jailbreak iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0/5.0.1 (Mac OS X)
  

• HowTo untether jailbreak iPad 2 with iOS 5.0.1 (Windows)
• HowTo untether jailbreak iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0/5.0.1 (Windows)

Japanese site Macotakara has issued a new report where it clarified earlier claims of an Apple event in February with the cryptic details that Apple will hold a "Strange" event in February to unveil the so-called "iPad 3" and iOS 5.1 with deeper Facebook integration and a Special Event to launch the third-generation iPad in early March.

Citing both an Asian supplier and a source in the U.S., blogger Danbo has now corrected the original claim telling that Apple will indeed hold an event in February, but it will be a "Strange" event rather than a full product launch.

One possibility is that the rumored February event could contain industry-related announcements similar to how last month's education event in New York City to mark the release of iBooks 2 and iBooks Author without showing off new hardware. "Special Event for new products will be hold in early March and will release products during March as usual," Danbo continued.

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Samsung's modified Galaxy Tab 10.1N seen on the left compared to the original model

A German Munich Regional Court judge has recently made a decision against granting Apple injunctions on two Samsung products. The judge also noted that at least one of the patent mentioned in the action was likely to be revoked at trial.

The two products, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone and its revised "10.1N" version of the Galaxy Tab (redesigned by Samsung to escape the original injunction on sales Apple won last September) will be available for sale in Germany while the case against them continues.

As for the Galaxy Nexus, Apple argued for an injunction on sales based on a "patent granted last year protecting some technology related to touch screens."

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Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales in 2011 in Millions of Units

Research firm IDC has recently released its estimates of global mobile phone sales for the fourth quarter of and full-year 2011. The results show that Apple passed LG and became the third world largest mobile phone vendor for the first time. Apple was closing to LG by the middle of 2010, but during the third quarter ZTE pushed the company back on the fifth place. However, thanks to the iPhone 4S launch, Apple moved up in the year’s final quarter and passed LG in full-year numbers as well.

According to the estimates, Apple was neck-and-neck with Samsung for the crown of top smartphone manufacturer, Nokia and Samsung firmly hold down the top two spots in the overall mobile phone rankings on the volume of their lower-end feature phones.

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Research firm Canalys predicted last year that Apple might become the world's largest PC manufacturer during the fourth quarter of 2011, but with one exception, if tablets were counted alongside more traditional computers. Now Canalys may confirm its suggestions that Apple has indeed taken the lead on the strength of the iPad.

Canalys today announced that Apple, after reporting stellar results, became the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4 2011. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally in Q4. Overall, the total client PC market, including desktops, netbooks, notebooks, and pads grew 16% year-on-year. Excluding pads, the client PC market declined 0.4%. The report notes that tablets such as the iPad accounted for 22% of PC sales during the quarter, with the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook also contributing to the strong tablet performance.

Canalys predicts that the iPad would have been able to top the list even without the help of the Mac. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, while the non-tablet market leader HP's shipments were between 14.7 and 15.3 million units.