News tagged ‘research’

In October research company Nielsen conducted a new survey among 3,000 U.S. children at the age from 6 to 12 ahead of 2011 holiday season, and found out that the iPad is the most-wanted gift for kids, while the iPod touch ranks second and the iPhone comes in third. 44 percent of kids are interested in getting an iPad, 30 percent want an iPod touch, while 27 percent prefer to get an iPhone.

Apple's popularity among children is likely driven by gaming, as the most popular applications on iOS have consistently been games since the App Store first debuted. The iOS lineup beat out a number of popular gaming machines in the survey, including the Nintendo 3DS, Kinect for Xbox 360, and the Sony PlayStation 3.

The iPad dominates among teenagers: 24 percent of those polled said they are interested in buying an iPad in the next six months. Apple's iPhone is in the seventh place with 15 percent, while iPod touch is in twelfth with 8 percent.

On Tuesday Apple held a meeting with five Chinese environmental protection groups in Beijing. While a three-and-a-half hour meeting Apple and representatives from Chinese companies were discussing domestic supplier pollution and reports, criticizing the company for using loopholes in the system.

The representative of EnviroFriends, Li Li, who took part in the meeting, claimed that the company continues to put the burden of responsibility for pollution on its suppliers. But Apple refuses to reveal its suppliers, thus, the groups decided to carry out their own research to discover suppliers working with Apple. During the meeting Apple admitted that 15 out of the 27 suppliers accused of excessive pollution were suppliers for the company.

"Apple said they had already spoken to 11 supply firms and asked them to reform, and they’re in the process of initiating communications with the other four," Li said.

"Apple is committed to driving the highest standards of social responsibility throughout our supply chain. We require that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made," said spokeswoman Carolyn Wu.

Remind you that this year Greenpeace ranked Apple as the fourth-greenest device maker, up five spots from last year.

After Amazon put its Kindle Fire on sale, one question arose: Which tablet is faster, iPad or Kindle Fire? Wanting to figure it out, iDownloadblog compared the two devices with each other.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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.

According to a new research carried out by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Apple’s October Mac sales in the United States were up 19% year-over-year. That means that the company could reach analysts’ expectations and sell 5.1-5.3 million units for the full quarter.

Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray shared the latest domestic sales data from the NPD Group on Monday, which showed Mac sales up 19 percent year over year in the month of October. As sales continue to pick up leading up to Christmas, he sees Apple selling between 5.1 million and 5.3 million Macs during the December quarter.

Those numbers would represent year over year growth of between 23 percent and 28 percent. Consensus on Wall Street has called for Apple to report sales of about 5.2 million Macs during the quarter.

Last quarter Apple managed to sell 4.89 million Macs. These very numbers spurred analysts to push their Mac estimates to over 5 million.

Unfortunately, the iPod shipments in the United States are continuing to decrease. In October the iPod sales were down about 18% year-over-year. That might be connected with the fact that more and more consumers prefer to use smartphones for portable music needs rather than music players. Nevertheless such decline is smaller when it was expected. Analysts predicted a 20% drop for this quarter. That is why Munster suggests that Apple may sell approximately 16 million music players in for the full quarter.

Patently Apple posted a new Apple’s patent application that describes integration of a speaker into the clip of the iPod nano or iPod shuffle and how a small domed or dimpled cover over the speaker could be designed to produce specific acoustic effects.

In some embodiments, the cavity size may be shaped to create a particular frequency response or to otherwise influence the sound produced by the acoustical element. In some embodiments, the interior surface of the cavity may be modified to increase the size of the cavity, to control the frequency response of the cavity, modify the amount of air displaceable by movement of the diaphragm of the acoustical element, and/or to direct sound waves within the cavity and/or out of the cavity. The shape of the surface may be configured to resonate at a certain desired frequency or frequency range that is desired based on its shape. For example, one or more indentations in the surface may be provided to increase the size of the cavity and/or control the frequency response of the cavity. Generally, the larger the size of the cavity, the lower the frequency that may be resonant within the cavity. In some embodiments, holes may be provided in the surface to adjust the frequency response.

Read the rest of this entry »

Flurry, mobile analytics firm, reports that portable gaming has seen a continuous shift from dedicated gaming devices to smartphones and other multifunctional devices.

Read the rest of this entry »

Video where Miller demonstates this exploit

According to Forbes, security specialist Charlie Miller has found an exploit on iOS devices, which allows developers to put malware apps onto the App Store without detection. These malware apps can be used to steal user’s contacts, photo and other information, play a ringtone, make the device vibrate and more at any time the developer chooses.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today comScore published the results of its latest research of mobile phone usage in the U.S., noting that Apple has surpassed 10% share of mobile phone market in U.S. As before, Apple again outstripped all of the largest phone manufacturers in growth over the third quarter, increasing its share by 1.3% to reach 10.2% of the mobile phone market in U.S.

Read the rest of this entry »

Despite Apple has seen sequential decrease in iPhone sales in the third quarter of 2011 as customers waited for the iPhone 4S launch, the company again raked in more than half of the profits produced by the largest mobile phone manufacturers over the quarter, according to a research report (via Forbes) by analyst T. Michael Walkley.

Read the rest of this entry »

Barclays’ analyst Ben Reitzes just visited with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and CEO Tim Cook in a meeting where they discussed Amazon’s new low priced Kindle Fire tablet running on Android. According to his research note, (via Business Insider), Apple’s executives welcome the launch of the Kindle Fire on the market as it will contribute to further fragmentation of the Android ecosystem. And the more fragmentation of Android ecosystem, the better for Apple, as more customers will turn to stable Apple platform. The Kindle Fire runs on Android and at the same time it has been modified by Amazon to interact with its services and products.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today research company Nielsen published its survey on mobile users for the third quarter, which confirmed that Android and iOS remain two main player on the smartphone market. Android platform increased its share of the US smartphone market by 4%, from 39% to 43%. During the same period iOS remained flat with 28% share.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to a research note released by the investment bank Morgan Stanley on Wednesday, a lower-priced iPhone could generate a nearly three-fold increase in demand for Apple in China. The bank conducted research among Chinese customers who hesitate to but the iPhone. 85 percent of them called price as a key factor that prevents them from buying Apple’s smartphones. The right price point could increase demand for iPhone in three times in China.

The maximum price that Chinese customers are ready to pay is $425. But those who said that they were not going to buy an iPhone could afford to pay $344. Nearly 80% of those who took part in the research marked Apple as the leading brand in China. But in last quarter company's share of mobile phone purchases in the region fell from 12% to 7%.

In the third quarter of 2011, China area became the company's second largest market, behind only the U.S. China is "the fastest growing region by far."  China sales of iPhone were $4.5 billion in the September quarter, 16 percent of Apple’s total revenue, comparing with $3.8 billion Apple earned in the June quarter. Meanwhile, one analyst believes that the mobile market in China poses as much as a $70 billion opportunity for Apple.

According to Forrester research, Mac business users are more productive than their PC counterparts, because MacBook laptops from Apple tend to be more reliable and require less maintenance than PCs. Forrester issued a new report entitled "People are Bringing Macs to Work - It's Time to Repeal Prohibition" in order to encourage companies to support Apple hardware in the workplace.

Although the use of Mac in enterprises is increasing, approximately 41 percent of companies that took part in the research do not officially allow their employees to use Mac. Of course, users find ways how bypass company restrictions and use their Mac at work.

Moreover, Mac sales in the enterprise sector have seen a huge spike in 2011. In May, Apple announced that corporate Mac sales grew by 66 percent. But sales of iOS products are more significant. 93 percent of Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing the iPhone, while 90 percent are doing the same for the iPad.