News tagged ‘iCan’

DigiTimes reports that Apple is planning to increase significantly the iPad 2 shipments for the third quarter of this year. The company is going to ship about 12-14 million devices over that period. These numbers are obviously larger than the 7-9 million units reportedly shipped during the previous quarter.

In order to significantly increase its shipments in the third quarter, Apple has been piling up its inventory of iPad 2 components such as panels in the second quarter to minimize the risk of facing component shortages.

Now it is quite difficult to forecast the iPad’s shipments due to production constraints and the transition from the original iPad to the iPad 2. Moreover, Apple didn’t come up with forecasts of some analysts suggesting that Apple's total 2011 iPad could reach 40 million units and sold in the first quarter only 4.69 million units, though, these numbers include a few initial weeks of official iPad 2 sales.

Arstechnica and iFixIt claim that Apple’s new Tunderbolt cable is actually a "smart" cable that contains circuitry and firmware. iFixIt have already torn down the cable, having found inside two Gennum GN2033 chips in the connector that works as a transceiver to enable “reliable data transfer at cutting-edge speeds over low cost, thin-gauge copper cables.” There were also found additional support chips and resistors, so the total number of chips inside the Thunderbolt connector is 12, of course not including multiply smaller electronic components.

Quite interesting that the current Thunderbolt ports found in iMac and MacBook Pro are planned to be compatible with future Thunderbolt cables, bringing a significant speed improvement. But the current generation of such ports works on the traditional wiring.

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According to Business Insider analyst Chris Whitmore reports that Apple plans to release not only the iPhone 5 this fall, but they will also release a cheaper version of the iPhone, the iPhone 4S.

This means that Apple will release a minor update to the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S, as well as a major update called the iPhone 5.

"With Nokia and RIMM struggling," he writes, "the time is right for Apple to aggressively penetrate the mid range smart-phone market (i.e. $300-500 category) to dramatically expand its [total addressable market] and market share."

As Whitmore sees it, an iPhone 4S that is unlocked, priced around $349, and comes with a pre-paid voice plan would "drive significantly greater penetration" into an addressable market that has grown to include 1.5 billion potential customers in 98 countries, two thirds of whom prefer pre-paid plans.

The rumors about cheaper iPhone have been reports floating around for a long time. It's a pity that Whitmore only offers us his prediction without any evidence or inside knowledge.

Here is a summary of what we have in mind right now:

iPhone 5:

• 4" screen
• new design
• dual core
• 8MP camera
• possible dual LED and/or dual camera
• 64GB
• 1080p video

iPhone 4S:

• 3.5"
• old design
• single core
• 5MP camera
• 4GB Storage
• 720p video

Imagination Technologies, the contract manufacturer of graphic processor units (GPU) for the next-generation iPhone and iPad, has announced that its key partners have started licensing process of the company’s next-generation GPU with codename Rogue. It’s likely that one of such key partners is Apple, because the company uses Imagination Technologies' GPUs in many its mobile devices. Moreover, Apple not only a major client, it also owns 9,5% of the company’s shares. The current-generation iPad uses Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. And Apple claims that the new iPad with the new GPU will bring significant performance boost for mobile graphics.

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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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New report by MacOtakara claims that Apple may release the "iPhone 4S" that will sport hybrid GSM-CDMA functionality and a special SIM card slot for countries other than United States.

Besides that, the new smartphone will supposedly have a smaller hole for FaceTime camera and a "more narrow front receiver slit". It will also get a 5 GHz antenna for 802.11n wireless networking support.

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DigiTimes sources revealed this week that HTC may challenge Apple's position of the top U.S. smartphone maker.

Here's the deal: HTC has smartphones available on all four U.S. carriers, while Apple partners only with AT&T and Verizon. The HTC Thunderbolt is reported as the second most popular smartphone on Verizon's network, while Apple's iPhone is the first one. The best-selling Android smartphone on AT&T is also of HTC (The Inspire 4G).

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A new report issued by Research2Guidance shows that Apple dominates among other mobile application stores in terms of application downloads. In first quarter of 2011 59% of all applications were downloaded from the Apple’s App Store. Though the numbers are quiet large, they demonstrate a fall in 22% comparing with 81% then the App Store first opened. During the report 58 application stores were surveyed. Noteworthy, there were only 18 application stores when the iPhone App Store launched in July of 2008. The Android Market is the strongest competitor to the App Store that led to 24% fall of the App Store’s share of application downloads.  Though, resent numbers show 2% increase of App Store’s share. Moreover, users, who already spent significant amounts of money on apps, unlikely want to switch to other mobile platform.

Japanese blog Macotakara  in its latest story claims that an A5-powered MacBook Air with Thunderbolt I/O is being tested in Apple’s labs. The machine could be manufactured by Quanta Computer, the story has it. The article quotes a source who allegedly saw an early prototype:

According to this source who saw live A5 MacBook Air actually, this test machine performed better than expected. Though it’s not clear which Mac OS X or iOS is pre-installed on this A5 MacBook Air, iOS seems to have difficulty to use features of Thunderbolt without Finder. And even if Mac OS X is installed, developer should spend time to support A5 on Universal Binary Applications. As considering these situation, this A5 MacBook Air seems to be made just for experiment.

This news comes weeks after another rumor claiming that Apple is planning on transitioning from Intel to ARM-based processors on their laptops in the not too distant future. Another major issue is that while ARM processors are more power efficient, they presently offer significantly lower performance than their Intel counterparts.

ifoAppleStore is today reporting on two new Apple stores in Spain and Italy that are currently undergoing construction. The new Italy store is expected to be opened in Florence. Based on documents, the stores construction will be completed in August, suggesting an early September opening. The second Apple store is  in Spain, set to be a spectacle, occupying all seven levels of the historic building in Madrid, overlooking the large city plaza (pictured above). The historic 1863 building is currently being restored and renovated. The retail store is then expected to operate on at least two levels and the basement. As for the other levels, ifoAppleStore speculates that they may be used as administrative offices for Apple, meeting rooms or training space. Madrid’s mayor revealed the plans last week when he confirmed to reporters that Apple was leasing the entire building. The store will most likely open early next year, with significant construction work still to be completed.

Pharmaceutical sales reps are trying to find better ways to engage and sale their products during all their sales calls. Doctors and physicians typically only give these sales reps 30 seconds of their time as well. That’s not very much time so every second is important, and so is presentation.

Eric Newmark, an analyst at IDC Health Insights, says that sales reps “still struggle with their ability to differentiate themselves through clear, concise, and interactive messaging.” So the pharmaceutical industry may have a solution to the problem: Purchase many Apple iPads to give the sale reps “a quicker, lighter and more attractive way of displaying drug-related information,” Newmark wrote.

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Last week we reported that Apple is in talks with voice recognition firm Nuance Communications. The scope of the deal is some sort partnership linked to rumors that Apple is integrating significant voice capabilities into iOS 5. As was reported previously, Nuance is a leader in voice recognition technology and holds a number of key patents in the field. TechCrunch now reports that the deal relates to utilizing Nuance's technology in Apple’s new North Carolina data center to drive centrally-hosted voice services. The partnership is said to likely be introduced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) early next month.

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Yesterday Fortune released its annual rating of 500 American’s largest companies by revenue. This time Apple landed at 35th place with over $65 billion in revenue.

Apple climbed 21 slots into the top 50 of the Fortune 500 this year. How'd it get there? The company not only continues to expand its reach in existing markets, it also keeps creating new ones. Take the iPad, which showed the world the power of tablet computing when it was introduced last year. iPad 2 followed, and was one of the most highly anticipated electronic products this year.

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Yesterday, on May 3 Needham & Co analyst Charlie Wolf sent a note to his clients, where he reveals that Apple retail stores made only 12.9% of worldwide revenues for the company in March. Due to the increased number of distribution points, such as big-box retailers and international carrier stores the revenue has declined since the second quarter of 2008, when the revenue share from retail stores was 21.6%.

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Recently Apple has made changes to its app policy and focused on making the iOS App Store the most attractive rather than simply the biggest.

Lately the company has banned the idea of "incentivized app installs", which was used by certain game developers to prompt players to install other apps if they want to continue playing. Because of the incentives some apps become artificially popular and don’t reflect the actual situation in top games chart, for instance.

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