News tagged ‘Amazon’

Yesterday Reuters reported Apple is ready to launch its long-rumored cloud-based music streaming service. The publication cites three anonymous sources who also have details on how it will work.

"Apple's plans will allow iTunes customers to store their songs on a remote server, and then access them from wherever they have an Internet connection, said two of these people who asked not to be named as the talks are still confidential".

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This week another lawsuit had been filed against Apple. This time H-W Technology LC accused the company of violating its patent No. 7,525,955, entitled "Internet Protocol (IP) Phone with Search and Advertising Capability".

The latter was filed in 2004, and granted in April of 2009 by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The invention describes a handset with the unique ability to "converge voice and data within a single terminal", which would allow users to "receive information and offers from merchants and to complete a transaction with one of said merchants without having to generate a voice call".

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Amazon has announced its own Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player to store and distribute music, video, photo content via the cloud.  These services allow customers to securely store music in the cloud and play it on any Android phone, Android tablet, Mac or PC, wherever they are. Customers can easily upload their music library to Amazon Cloud Drive and can save any new Amazon MP3 purchases directly to their Amazon Cloud Drive for free.

In other words now Amazon is offering the following services to its customers:

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According to Bloomberg, Apple has sued Amazon over the use of the name “App Store”.  Apple, in a complaint filed March 18, accused Amazon.com of trademark infringement and unfair competition and asks for a court order to prevent the company from using the “App Store” name. Amazon is planning to launch its own “Amazon Appstore” for Android devices, a marketplace to distribute and download apps. Apple claims to have contacted Amazon three times demanding that they change their name, but Amazon has yet to provide a "substantive response".

“Amazon has begun improperly using Apple's App Store mark in connection with Amazon's mobile software developer program," Apple said in the complaint. “We’ve asked Amazon not to copy the App Store name because it will confuse and mislead customers.”

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The  Amazon UK website placed several manuals for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 Lion  that will be released late in July. That fact might suggest that the operating system will also launch around that time. It seems that the OS will be released right after WWDC, this year expected to be from July 5 to July 9. The cover of one of the Mac OS X Lion manuals makes reference to the already announced Launchpad and Mission Control features but also references the dock, most of which was demonstrated last year at the Lion announcement. Noteworthy to say that the release date of these guidebooks is a good indication of product launches. For example, Amazon information predicted the release date Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac.

According to The New York Times, Apple has forbidden all developers including Sony to sell content or provide access to purchases outside its iOS App Store.

After that Apple rejected a Sony Reader iPhone application, as it allowed users to buy and read electronic books from the Sony Reader Store. So now all in-app purchases must go through Apple, president of Sony's digital reading division Steve Haber told.

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Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has recently released another report, where he states that the next-gen iPad won't get new resolution this year.

"The most important reason why iPad 2 won’t have retinal display is yield rate of panel making. At this point, making high resolution and bright IPS/FFS panel is not easy and the production volume and cost couldn’t meet Apple’s requirements."

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Several sources claim that the stock for the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros is beginning to run low. Some resellers have suggested that Apple might be planning to update the product line.

The 17″ MacBook Pro generally appears to be in the shortest supply at the moment, with Amazon quoting a shipment window of 1-2 months for the base Core i5 model. For its part, Apple continues to show “within 24-hour” availability of all MacBook Pro models in its online stores, suggesting that the company may be prioritizing remaining stock to serve its customers directly.

The updated MacBook Pros might receive Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, internal Solid State Drives, thinner design and implemented USB 3.0 or Intel’s Light Peak.

This week Amazon has revealed another press-release, where it is said that the company's third-gen Kindle became the best-selling product in the history of the online retailer. To take the top spot it surpassed the book of Joanne Rowling "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".

Though it was said that this holiday the 3G and Wi-Fi Kindle models are the best-selling products, actual sales figures were not unveiled. But it is interesting that Jeff Bezos, who is Amazon Chief Executive, said that people who buy Kindle also have one more tablet.

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Apple may refresh an iWork pretty soon. Some Apple Store Employees report that “there is no iWork on the shelves, no iWork in stock and none on the way”.  A quick check to Amazon shows none in stock there. Family packs are only available. Meanwhile, Apple's online store auto-completes "iWork 11" as a possibility when searching for "iWork". Perhaps, Apple is planning on launching iWork '11 alongside the Mac App Store. Apple promised to launch the Mac App Store on January 6th, 2011.

Yesterday ChangeWave released another study based on a survey of the owners of e-readers. There were 2,800 consumers that had been polled, and 47% of them told they have an Amazon Kindle, which appears to be continually losing its market share to Apple's iPad.

In terms of the market of e-readers iPad now has a 32% share, according to the survey, conducted in November. This is twice as more in comparison to August. For the same period Kindle's share fell down from 62% in August to 47% in November.

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This Tuesday Microsoft released Office 2011 for Mac, which has a bunch of new features and Microsoft Outlook with totally redesigned interface.

General manager of the MS Office for Mac team Eric Wilfrid explained that many Mac users still want to use Microsoft office, though Microsoft and Apple are serious competitors in this field.

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Here's the Apple CEO in his own words talking during Apple Q4 Earnings Call:

Hi, everybody. As most of you know, I don’t usually participate in Apple earnings calls, since you’re all in such capable hands with Peter and Tim. But I just couldn’t help dropping by for our first 20-billion-dollar quarter. I’d like to chat about a few things, and then stay for the rest of the Q&A, if that’s all right.

First, let me discuss iPhone. We sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter, which represents a 91 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter, and was well ahead of IDC’s latest published estimate of 64 percent growth for the global smartphone market in the September quarter. And it handily beats RIM’s 12.1 million BlackBerrys sold, in their most recent quarter ending in August.

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Yesterday Taiwanese news resource DigiTimes reported that TPK Touch Solutions and Wintek, which are Apple's partners that make touch panels for the iPad, will experience revenue growth in the last quarter of year 2010, which is evidentially caused by the strong demand for the tablet device. Nevertheless, some other company’s partners like J Touch and Young Fast Optoelectronics are expecting traditional decline in the end-of-year season.

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