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Apple becomes No. 3 PC maker in US
Research group Gartner released preliminary PC shipment results for the fourth quarter of 2011, showing that Apple climbed to third place among U.S. PC vendors as the rest of the top five vendors saw shipments decline year over year. Apple saw 20.7 percent growth of Mac sales in the U.S. market from the year ago quarter, and took the No. 3 spot behind HP and Dell.
However, customers shied away from the world's largest PC maker in the fourth quarter, causing a 26.1 percent decline year over year. Shipments fell from 5.6 million in the last quarter of 2010 to 4.1 million. Dell had a 4.5 percent decline in shipments from 4.2 million in the year ago quarter to 4.0 million in the most recent quarter.
Greg Joswiak and other 250 employees from Apple were noticed at CES
Though Apple doesn’t officially participate at CES, the company continues to keep an eye on new products by its competitors, but is likely also interested in what companies are coming up with in terms of accessories for Apple's own products, and CES is a prime event for announcements for products of all types, including those within the Mac- and iOS-related markets. paidContent has in fact proven Apple's interest in CES when met accidently into iOS device marketing chief Greg Joswiak on the floor at the expo.
While wandering around the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center Tuesday, I bumped into Greg Joswiak, head of iOS product marketing for Apple, just outside of Sony’s booth. Joz, as he’s known within the Apple community, grinned sheepishly upon being recognized by a reporter and stopped to chat for a few minutes.
Kodak lawsuit accuses Apple of violating four patents
On Tuesday Kodak has filed lawsuits against Apple and HTC claiming infringement of patent violations regarding the sharing of digital pictures between various electronic devices. The claim accuses Apple of violating four digital photography patents Kodak said it obtained after "concluding it would be desirable for people to easily share pictures" from digital cameras without having to first upload them to a central PC. Apple and HTC are likely to cooperate with each other over the Kodak suit, although the companies are suing each other.
Essentially, any Apple product with a camera is affected by the proposed suit, but specifically cited examples include the iPad 2, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and the iPod touch (4th generation).It is unclear whether software like Apple's Photo Stream, which allows digital images taken on one iDevice to be pushed to other devices through the company's iCloud, or other third-party apps that allow for image transfer over Bluetooth or WiFi are being targeted in the suit.
Apple confirms purchase of flash memory company Anobit
Apple’s spokesman Steve Dowling confirmed on Tuesday that the company recently purchased Anobit Technologies, an Israel-based flash memory component maker, though it declined to reveal the cost of the deal. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” Steve Dowling added. As far as we remember Apple planned to spend for acquisition of the company as much as $500 million. According to a Hebrew-language newspaper, the deal was finalized in December.
Apple already uses Anobit parts in its iOS devices and the MacBook Air, and the firm's proprietary "Memory Signal Processing" (MSP) technology reportedly attracted the Cupertino, Calif., company's interest. Anobit claims MSP can improve the reliability, performance, efficiency and endurance of flash memory.
Apple's 2012 shareholder meeting set for February 23
Apple Senior Vice President and General Counsel Bruce Sewell has issued a letter on Monday where Apple informs the company's shareholders that its annual shareholder meeting will be held at 10 a.m. Pacific on Feb. 23 and will include four shareholder proposals. Last year's meeting was also held on Feb. 23. Only shareholders of record as of Dec. 27, 2011 will be eligible to attend and vote at the meeting.
The agenda for the annual meeting includes: the election of Apple's board of directors, ratification of Ernst & Young as its independent registered public accounting firm for the year, an advisory vote on executive compensation and consideration of four shareholder proposals.
The first shareholder proposal is the request for a "Conflict of Interest Report" that requires to disclose any investments of board members that would represent a financial conflict of interest, describes the role board members play in the development of the company's policies.
Imagination Technologies Releases Details on Next-Generation GPU for iOS Devices
Apple has been long using graphics processing unit (GPU) manufactured by Imagination Technology in its iOS devices. Currently Apple is utilizing PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU in the A5 system-on-a-chip found in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.
Imagination has now revealed new details on the upcoming Series6 family, touting performance improvements of 20x or more for the G6400 and G6200, the first two members of the family.
Apple is working on Siri Dictation for the iPad, iOS 5.1 beta reveals
9to5Mac has reported a couple of hours ago that has discovered something potentially major: Siri Dictation references inside the iOS 5.1 beta 3 released today. Sonny Dickson (9to5Mac’s tipster) was looking through the iOS 5.1 beta 3 settings application on the iPad and discovered a new section in the keyboard menu called “About Privacy and Dictation.” When he opened it, as shown above, the iPad provides the user with the standard legal literature and feature information for Siri Dictation.
Dictation is not actually functional on the iPad 2 running iOS 5.1 beta 3, so perhaps this will be an iOS 5.1 launch feature for the iPad, or it may be an iPad 3-exclusive feature; a similar process to the iPhone 4S exclusively gaining Siri and Siri Dictation support in iOS 5.0. We’re also hearing this link/document is also appearing on retina iPod touches as well.
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Report of Hands-On with iPad 3 Rear Shell and Other Components
Last week iLounge reported that the next-generation iPad would receive improved cameras and today the site has reported that it has viewed what appear to be at least prototype parts for the device, including the rear shell and front glass bezel. The parts seem to corroborate iLounge's earlier claims of an almost imperceptibly thicker body and an upgraded iPhone-like rear camera.
The new iPad’s body is so slightly thicker than the iPad 2 that the change is unnoticeable on first inspection; a roughly 1mm increase will barely be perceptible to users. We’ve heard that the only accessories that might have issues are cases, and then, only cases that were precisely contoured to fit the iPad 2’s back. On the rear, the camera in the upper left corner has become bigger—noticeably so when placed alongside the iPad 2, but not so huge that anyone would think they were different at a distance. The new camera hole is silver-ringed, and does in fact look the same size as the iPhone 4S’s much-improved rear camera system, minus the LED flash.
OnLive Introduces Streaming Windows 7 Desktop App For iPad
, video game streaming company, has introduced a virtual, streaming Microsoft Windows 7 Desktop app for iPad. The Desktop app, at CES, will finally be available on other platforms including Apple’s Mac. The full-functional versions of Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint will be available to users soon after CloudOn released its Office solution for iPad.
Pegatron reportedly lining up orders for third-gen iPad ahead of March launch
Upstream supply chain sources claim that Apple manufacturer Pegatron is believed to have received a "small volume" of orders for the third-generation iPad, which is rumored to launch in March. DigiTimes reported on Tuesday that this year Pegatron focuses on production of future generations of the iPad while Foxconn focuses on iPhone manufacturing. In that case, the company’s strategy is to decrease risk while improving the quality of its products.
"Pegatron Technology has reportedly already landed a small volume of orders for the upcoming "iPad 3" (generally called by supply chain players)," the report read, adding that Pegatron declined to comment on the rumor.
Pegatron is said to see a "significant increase" in orders when Apple will be ready to launch a so-called "iPad 4" in October with an initial volume of 7-10 million units.
Apple sold 1.2M MacBook Airs over holidays, new models with Ivy Bridge loom
According to DigiTimes sources, Apple sold 1.2 million of its thin-and-light MacBook Air over the holiday buying season. These numbers are 200,000 more than Apple achieved in the September quarter. Thanks to MacBook Air sales, Apple became the only vendor that managed to maintain its total notebook shipments from the third quarter to the fourth of calendar 2011.
DigiTimes also claims that another strong performance for the MacBook Air comes as Apple is expected to refresh the ultraportable notebook line in the coming months with Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge processors. Apple PC competitors are doing their best to replicate MacBook Air success, and going to launch their own notebooks based on the "Ultrabook" specification from Intel. Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba reportedly plan to price comparable models $50 to $100 below Apple's MacBook Air pricing.
54% of future smartphone buyers will choose Apple's iPhone
ChangeWave Research yesterday released the results of its new survey of North American smartphone customers. The survey demonstrates that over a half of those looking to purchase a smartphone over the next 90 days are planning to buy an iPhone 4S. But the 54% share of future buying plans held by Apple as of December was down from 65% in September.
The late December survey looked at smart phone demand trends going forward, and finds Apple iPhone demand remains incredibly strong more than two months after the iPhone 4S release.
Among respondents planning to buy a new smart phone in the next 90 days, better than one-in-two (54%; down 11-pts) say they'll get an iPhone.
Apple has never dominated smart phone planned buying to this extent more than two months after a major new release.
Apple wins $920K tax refund from 1989
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California's Supreme Court has affirmed a $920,000 tax refund for Apple dating back to 1989, but it refused to hear the company's request to lower its tax bill for income earned abroad. The court upheld an appellate ruling earlier this week that returned $231,000 in taxes to Apple, along with $689,000 in interest.
However, it is only a partial win, as the Supreme Court rejected Apple's request to reevaluate tax rates on foreign-earned income. "Apple argued that its foreign dividends from that year should be attributed to income from previous years that had already been taxed," the report read.
Smartphones eat up 5.9 percent of the electronic gadget market
According to market research firm NPD Group, sales of general purpose smartphones are causing the market for standalone gadgets such as cameras, camcorders and GPS devices to shrink, falling 5.9 percent overall during the holiday season in the US.
Sales of camcorders dropped by 43 percent, digital picture frames by 38 percent, GPS navigation devices by 33 percent and both MP3 players and "point and shoot" cameras were down 21 percent, all apparent casualties of the general purpose smartphone. Sales of electronic devices that don't directly overlap in functionality with the smartphone fared better, with PC and TV sales down just 4 percent. Desktop PCs were down 2 percent overall, while notebook sales were down 5 percent.
Survey suggests 50% growth in enterprise spending on Apple products in 2012
Forrester Research issued its Global Tech Market Outlook for 2012 and 2013 on Friday where the research company argued that Apple will “reshape the computing equipment market.” The study cited the adoption of iPad and Macs among professionals as proof that Apple is “dramatically disrupting” the corporate market traditionally dominated by Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, and HP.
Analysts have been predicting that cloud computing — specifically, infrastructure-as a service (IaaS) — will reshape the server and storage market… Actual adoption of IaaS remains limited…The biggest disruptive force in the computer equipment market thus is not IaaS, but Apple. This is a surprise, because Apple has not and does not directly address the corporate market, while turning a wide variety of consumer technology markets upside-down. But its rapid growth in the corporate market has been the big surprise of 2011, and it will be even more of a factor in 2012.
According to the survey, the business sector will buy $10 billion worth of iPads this year, up from $6 billion in 2011. IT departments are also projected to spend $9 billion on Macs in 2012, up from $6 billion in 2011. Mac and iPad spending will rise to $12 billion and $16 billion, respectively in 2013, according to the survey.