News tagged ‘Calendar’

Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray said in a note to investors on Wednesday that as Apple did not redesigned several major products in 2011, the analyst suggest that significant changes could be made in 2012. Among such changes are said to be redesigned rumored iPhone 5 that is predicted to debut in the middle of 2012, as well as an expansion of the iPad lineup into both lower and higher price points.

The launch of a so-called "iPhone 5" in 2012 would set the stage for outperformance in 2013, in Munster's eyes. He offered two scenarios for Apple's products in 2013. According to the first scenario, Apple will sell 142 million iPhone units, good for an 18 percent increase in revenue. According to the more successful scenario, Apple will sell 162 million iPhone units throughout 2013, amounting to a 35 percent increase in revenue. As for a total revenue growth for Apple in calendar 2013, Munster suggests that the growth will reach 14 percent, but he noted that such estimates are rather conservative. More prospective scenario shows that Apple’s revenue will increase by 28 percent in calendar 2013.

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Analyst Mark Moskowitz with J.P. Morgan expects that MacBook Air sales will reach an average of 1.6 million units per quarter over the next 12 months. In the third quarter of calendar 2011, Apple sold 923,000 units of the MacBook Air, representing 838.6 percent year-over-year growth. Comparing with the previous quarter MacBook Air sales grew by 43.8 percent, outpacing total Mac unit growth of 17.1 percent.

China is now becoming a strong driver for growth of MacBook Air sales. Last quarter, MacBook Air units grew 339 percent year over year in China, versus 76.5 percent for the rest of the Mac lineup. Moreover, notebooks based on Intel's Ultrabook specification are highly unlikely to be a significant threat to the MacBook Air.

"In general, we think that Ultrabooks are highly-discretionary devices, and pricing on competitive offerings must fall below $800 before posing a viable threat to Apple's MacBook Air," he wrote in a note to investors. "In our view, Apple's first mover advantage and optimized feature set and form factor command a higher price that early adopters, productivity users, and Apple enthusiasts are willing to absorb."

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.

In October 2008, long before the iPad made its debut, then Apple CEO Steve Jobs said this:

There are some customers which we chose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve. And there’s a lot of them. We’ve seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody. So I think you can expect us to stick with that winning strategy and continue to try to add more and more value to those products in those customer bases we choose to serve.

But Apple finally launched a $500 computer - the iPad.  The least expensive model costs $499. But the iPad average selling price for the three calendar quarters of 2011 was $628 that is more than the average price of Windows PC. For the same period the iPhone ASP was $653.

These numbers prove that the average selling price for all three Apple’s most profitable categories – the Mac, the iPhone and the iPad – is higher than average selling price of Windows PC that sold at U.S. retail (for the first three quarters of 2011) for $491.

Yesterday Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook reported that iPhone sales fell short of expectations at 17.07 million units in the fourth fiscal quarter. iPhone sales dropped by 2.4 million. Record iPhone sales for the current quarter would come in above the 20.34 million units set in the third fiscal quarter (second calendar quarter) of this year.

Decline in iPhone sales, as Cook noted, caused by various rumors related to the Apple’s smartphone, especially, when Apple missed its usual June introduction of new hardware. Most of the rumors were about a dramatically redesigned "iPhone 5" offering a larger but thinner design than the current iPhone. Such rumors were incorrect and Apple might still be working on the iPhone 5.

Yesterday Apple posted financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011 and the full fiscal year. The company posted record-breaking revenue of $28.27 billion and net quarterly profit of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share. Gross margin was 40.3 percent. Apple now has $81.57 billion in cash and marketable securities.

For the 2011 fiscal year, Apple reported revenue of $108.25 billion and net profit of $25.92 billion, or $27.68 per diluted share. Gross margin for the year was 40.5 percent and Apple's yearly profit and revenue were company records with Apple reporting more than $100 billion in yearly revenue for the first time ever.

Apple shipped 4.89 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, sold 17.07 million iPhone, up 21 percent from the year-ago quarter, and the company also sold 6.62 million iPods during the quarter, representing 27 percent unit decline over the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 11.12 million iPads during the quarter, up 166 percent over the year-ago quarter. Apple also announced over 6 million copies of Lion had been downloaded through the Mac App Store since July 20th (when the operating system went on sale), with Mac users approaching 60 million worldwide.

In the first fiscal quarter of  2012 (the third calendar quarter) Apple expects to gain revenue of $37 billion.

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Apple has reportedly sent out invitations for a media event set for October 4th. As far as we know the event will take place at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. If you look at the invitation posted above, it becomes clear that this media event will obviously focus on the next-generation iPhone - the tagline for the banner is “Let’s talk iPhone”. The invitation also includes four Apple’s applications:  Calendar, Clock, Maps, and Phone. We suggest that all applications may be connected with the new system of voice recognition that Apple is focusing on now – Assistant that is waited to appear on the iPhone 5.

Apple is expected to unveil two iPhone's during this media event. The next iPhone 5 is rumored to feature the company’s A5 processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 8-megapixel camera, iOS 5 with iCloud integration. The iPhone 4S is expected to be a low-price smartphone.

The event will begin October 4th at 10:00 am PT.

9to5Mac reveals features of the "Assistant" voice-powered personal application that will appear on the next-generation iPhone. The site claims that Assistant allows users to handle scheduling, reminder, and messaging tasks by voice. The system will be also capable to ask user questions to clarify what is being said.

The system will actually speak back and forth with the user to gain the most information in order to provide the best results. The user essentially can hold a conversation with their iPhone like it is another human being. For example, if a user is making a meeting with me, they will say “setup meeting with Mark” and the first “bubble” of the conversation thread will say that. After that, the system will speak back: “which e-mail address should Mark be notified at, work or personal?” This question will both be spoken out loud by the iPhone Assistant and shown as a new “bubble” in the conversation thread. The user will then respond with the email address they want to notify me at, and the appointment will be made. The iPhone will even show a quick glance at a calendar view to confirm the appointment. If the Assistant was sending an SMS, as another example, a mini SMS view would appear so the user has a quick glance at the SMS thread.

Assistant will also integrate with WolframAlpha that will help users receive answers to factual, and  "Find My Friends" service and speech-to-text transcription from Nuance. Of course, such power-consuming application will require more powerful hardware, suggesting that Apple will integrate  A5 chip and RAM to 1 GB to support the heavy workload into the new iPhone.

9to5mac recently found new code files, related to the announced iOS5-wide voice-recognition app called Assistant. They allow to suggest that the app will be able to browse a user’s e-mail, address book, phone application, calendars and even to open links. However, this is only a suggestion since the code files may not be related to the final version of Assistant.

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We have already heard many rumors about upgrade of Apple’s smartphone line this fall, as well as information about the release of next-generation tablet. Also rumors about launch of iPod touch with 3G modem have been circulating. But we forgot that upgrade of all iPod line is planned on September.

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Apple is requiring developers to start testing iCloud beta 5 and install Mac OS X 10.7.2 build 11C26 for that purpose, but the company has not provided its developers with any information on test builds of Mac OS X 10.7.1 yet.

"You must install OS X Lion 10.7.2 in order to use iCloud for OS X Lion beta 5," Apple reportedly told developers. "This pre-release version of OS X Lion is being provided solely for testing iCloud."

People familiar with the Apple’s plans believe that Apple will initiate a separate beta test for Mac OS X 10.7.1 in the coming days or weeks. Moreover, developers, who have installed Mac OS X 10.7.2 and iCloud beta 5 note changes in Lion's "Mail, Contacts & Calendars" control panel and iCloud management interface that provides tools for managing storage, backups, and purchasing additional storage and lets users choose which forms of data they'd like synced to the cloud.

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Today we mentioned that Apple may release revamped MacBook Air soon. A Wall Street analyst Chris Whitmore from Deutsche Bank believes the release of new netbooks along with the launch of Lion may boost sales of MacBooks Air to 1.5 million orders per quarter.

In case that will come true he concludes that Apple's thin-and-light notebook may eventually represent nearly 50% of the company's total notebook business.

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9to5mac created an eleven minute walkthrough video of iOS 5 on the iPad. The video covers Messages with the iMessage service, Notification Center, new Music application, updated Safari, tweaked Mail, Twitter integration, updated Calendar, Settings, Reminders, the new keyboard, and more. Take a look:

Yesterday Apple introduced new service called iCloud. US users can try it today using iOS 4.3.3 and iTunes 10.3. To understand what is iCloud, what is it for and how can be used, we recommend to read official Apple text about iCloud.

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