News tagged ‘Lion’

The well-known market research firm comScore today released data on U.S. sales for Black Friday. The report shows that customers spent $816 million, up 26% over last year's numbers. Apple’s online store became the fifth most-visited online retailer in the country on Black Friday behind Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target.

Fifty million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, representing an increase of 35 percent versus year ago. Each of the top five retail sites achieved double-digit gains in visitors vs. last year, led by Amazon. Walmart ranked second, followed by Best Buy, Target and Apple.

“Each of the top online retailers generated significantly greater Black Friday activity compared to last year,” added [comScore chairman Gian] Fulgoni. “Amazon.com once again led the pack, with 50 percent more visitors than any other retailer, while also showing the highest growth rate versus last year. However, it is telling that the top multi-channel retailers also showed strong growth in visitors, demonstrating the importance of the online channel to the retail industry as a whole.”

Regional Express (REX), Australian largest independent regional airline, had to extinguish a glowing iPhone 4, emitting “dense smoke” while a flight from Lismore to Sydney. A flight attendant extinguished the smoking smartphone and no one was injured during the incident. The situation, obviously, has sparked concerns over the handset's battery. The defected device was the GSM version of the iPhone 4, according to the model number of the device.

This issue, probably, caused by battery overheating wasn’t a unique one for Apple's devices. As far as we know, the company recently initiated a replacement program for the first-generation iPod nano due to potential battery overheating issues earlier this month, although Apple notes that the problem is very rare, but the likelihood of overheating does increase over time.

One of the biggest consumer electronic battery scares in recent years occurred in 2006. Microscopic metal particles were found in 9.6 million lithium-ion Sony batteries that the company had to recall. Such batteries were also used in Apple’s iBook and PowerBook G4 and Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries.

Local residents view Apple's massive data center in Maiden, N.C. as “disappointing development” because it seems not to answer their expectations, bringing just 50 full-time jobs to the area with double-digit unemployment rates. Residents are rather skeptical about Apple’s positive influence on the city, and thinking that the company has done nothing to improve the situation.

But, at the least, two residents, Donnie and Kathy Fulbrigh, have benefitted significantly from Apple's venture. Apple paid $1.7 million for their one-acre property. At first they didn’t want to sell their property, but Apple offered them to set their own price, and they finally gave up. As for others, the situation hasn’t changed for them. It still very hard to run a business here.

The North Carolina legislature amended its corporate income tax law in order to offer Apple tax breaks of up to $46 million over the next 10 years to build its data center in the state. According to the report, local authorities have discounted property taxes by 50 percent and personal taxes by 85 percent. In exchange, Apple has created 50 full-time jobs and is also expected to create 250 "indirect contracting jobs."

MacMagazine.br has received leaked photos that depicts an 8GB iPhone 4 produced by Foxconn in Brazil. But the 8GB iPhone 4 is not expected to go on sale in Brazil.

The back cover of the device contains the words "Brazilian Industry" in Portuguese, the stamp of approval from ANATEL, the country's telecommunications agency. The Brazilian iPhone 4 has reportedly iOS 5.0 and a model number that ends with "BR," indicating that the device was manufactured in Brazil.

Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn is said to be considering an investment as large as $12 billion on production facilities in Brazil. But, according a report from September, negotiations between the company and the government have stalled because of disagreements over tax rates, unprepared infrastructure and the lack of qualified workers.

Read the rest of this entry »

After Steve Jobs’ death, speculations arose on what would be done with his huge estate, estimated in $7 billion. The majority of his wealth is represented by the 138 million shares of the Walt Disney Co. that were placed in trust. Jobs acquired shares in 2006 having sold Pixar to the company for $7.4 billion. Tax experts suggest that Job’s family should sell all Apple and Disney share to avoid higher taxes. According to Bloomberg, the family could save $867 million in capital gains taxes.

Noteworthy, placing shares in a trust is also a method to avoid higher taxed, though it’s not clear what type of trust was set up in this case. According to Bloomberg, Jobs moved his assets into trusts toward the end of his life.

Now the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell, will manage a $4.6 billion trust. Some experts expect her to use a portion of the trust for charity and philanthropic work, as she is an active participant in the non-profit sector.

Last week Gartner reported that Android doubled its market share year-over-year, while Apple experienced a decline at 15%, compared to the previous quarter. Despite that fact, a report from research company GfK (via Reuters) states that iPhone users are more likely to show loyalty to iOS by buying another iPhone when upgrading their smartphone.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to FOSS Patent’s report, a pending legal case in Germany could have a profound effect on Apple with a possible injunction barring the iCloud service in this country over violation of Motorola Mobility patent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popular Science Magazine has once again declared its 2011 Best of What’s New Awards , and it is not so surprisingly that this year’s top three places in the category “Computing” are all technologies found in the latest lineup of Macs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Digitimes reports that Apple has reduced its fourth-quarter orders for iPad 2 display panels. That might mean that Apple has already started preparing for the launch of the iPad 3 early next year. The second reason might be the reduction of customers’ interest in the device.  Moreover, Apple stockpiled components for an extra 4-5 million iPad 2 units, so that allows it to reduce its orders for the fourth quarter.

Sales of iPads at the end market totaled 11.12 million units in the third quarter of 2011, according to data released by Apple. However, inventories of parts and components prepared by the makers in the supply chain for the production of iPad 2 in the quarter are sufficient for the production of 15-16 million iPads, leaving a stockpile of 4-5 million units of iPad 2 in the supply chain, the sources noted.

Digitimes also notes that the reason for stockpiling of iPad 2 components may be preparation for the iPad 3 launch set for the beginning of 2012, suggesting that  suppliers of both display and touch panels for the iPad 3 have either already begun or will soon begin shipments to Apple.

While Apple is adjusting panel inventory for iPad 2, Samsung and Sharp already began shipping panels for the next-generation iPads to Apple in October, and Taiwan-based touch panel makers TPK Holding and Wintek will begin to ship touch panels for the new iPads to the supply chain in November-December, the sources noted.

According to a new analysis, first time for 15 years Apple’s worldwide share of PC market passed 5 percent up from 4.7 percent in June and 4.4 percent a year ago. Analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co. reported that in the third calendar quarter of 2011 Mac shipments outpaced the PC market for the 22nd straight quarter. Apple’s growth was 24.6 percent, while growth in total PC shipments was 5.3 percent. During this quarter Apple sold 4.89 million Macs, there are the record numbers of Mac sales.

"More impressively, the growth in Mac shipments in the past year represented 20% of the growth in worldwide PC shipments," he said. To further put things into perspective, Wolf noted that Apple's September quarter Mac shipments exceeded annual Mac shipments for all years prior to 2006.

Mac shipments significantly increased in both the home and business markets. In home market Mac shipments showed 25.6 percent growth, while the overall increase was only 4 percent. Shipments to the business market were an impressive nine times the market pace: 43.8 percent versus 4.8 percent. Wolf suggested that Mac success could be attributed to halo effect from the iPad and iPhone.

However, Apple didn’t show great performance in the education and government markets. In the third calendar quarter of 2011 Mac shipments to education customers for the quarter grew on 2.9 percent, compared to 16.9 percent for the PC market. Such situation might be caused by the iPad cannibalization of the education market.

Last week it was reported that Sony was actively working on changing the way users view and interact with content on its TV sets, with company’s CEO Howard Stringer acknowledging that they was seeking the way to compete with Apple’s ecosystem that is planned to include TV sets in the near future.

Read the rest of this entry »

Analyst Brian Marshall with International Strategy & Investment Group claims that apple may finally pay its shareholders dividends, despite the company’s long resistance. Most investors do not believe Apple will initiate a dividend policy in 2012, but if the company will, it may gain an additional $4 billion in investments.

At the moment the current Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is reorganizing the company, so he may probably make an effort to optimize capital structure and start paying dividends Apple’s shareholders. Brian Marshall believes that Apple could "easily" implement a dividend yield of 250 base points, amounting to about $2.40 per quarter.

Apple’s previous CEO, Steve Jobs, didn’t support the idea of dividend distribution and preferred to invest in strategic opportunities such as last year purchase of Siri (Apple paid about $200 million).

"We strongly believe one or more strategic opportunities will come along we're in a unique position to take advantage of," the late Apple CEO said in 2010. "We don't let the cash burn a hole in the pocket or make stupid acquisitions. We'd like to continue to keep our powder dry because we think there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future."

According to the results of worldwide mobile phone sales for the third quarter of 2011, released yesterday by the research firm Gartner, Apple's share of the total mobile phone market came in at 3.9% for the quarter, down from 4.6% in the previous quarter. However, Apple still takes fourth place behind Nokia, Samsung, and LG.

Apple shipped 17 million iPhones, an annual increase of 21 percent, but down nearly 3 million units from the second quarter of 2011 because of Apple's new device announcement in October. Gartner believes Apple will bounce back in the fourth quarter because of its strongest ever preorders for the iPhone 4S in the first weekend after its announcement. Markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Russia and China are becoming more important to Apple, representing 16 percent of overall sales and showing that the iPhone has a place in emerging markets, especially now that the 3GS and 4 have received price cuts.

iOS share slipped from an 18.2% in the second quarter to 15.0% in the third quarter. Android and Nokia with its soon-to-be-defunct Symbian platform are now leaders of the market. During the quarter, Android’s share increased by 52.5%, more than doubling year-over-year.

But Android dominates the worldwide smartphone market by units while Apple by profit. Some researches show that Apple now takes more than a half of the industry's profits.

According to rumors from Apple’s back office, the company is developing a larger iPhone display and a smaller display for iPad. An insider said to The Korea Times that Apple is engineering a shrunken version of the 9.7-inch iPad. According to the IDG, which translated the publication from Korean, a new iPad called iPad mini will feature a 7.35-inch display.

Read the rest of this entry »