According to Gartner, PC shipments will increase worldwide from 305.8 mln. devices in 2009, to 366.1 mln. units shipped in 2010. The figures comprise not only traditional laptops and PC towers, but tablets and notebooks as well.
The variety of applications force vendors to provide users with something else rather than conventional general-purpose-PC-with-fast CPU approach. The new Apple's iPad belongs to the devices that will not only change PC ecosystem, but also overlap it with mobile phone industry. According to Gartner estimates, up to 10.5 mln. tablets (including new-generation devices) will be shipped in 2010. Analysts from Wall Street predict that iPad shipments will equal 5 mln. in 2010.
(different search engine strings on SDK on the left, Firefox 3.6 for Mac on the right)
Here's some more interesting information from the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK. Users will be able to set search to something besides Google in the search bar of the iPad's Safari in upcoming iPhoneOS releases.
Right now, the two options besides the current default Google are Wikipedia and Yahoo, but plugins could be developed to do things like Amazon and Bing searches directly from the search bar in the Safari browser.
There is even a suggestion manager for both Google and Yahoo depending on which search engine you choose. Unfortunately, no Bing… yet.
Apple announced today the date when iPad will go on sale in the USA - it is April 3rd. Models with 3G-module will be available in late April. Preorders for all iPad models will start on March 12th.
Apple today announced that its magical and revolutionary iPad will be available in the US on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. In addition, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.
Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple's online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.
Earlier we wrote that Apple is planning to expand their iBookstore service internationally. Well, in their press-release Apple noted that iBooks will be available for other countries "later this year".
On the iPad's presentation Steve Jobs noted that the iBookstore will be available only in the USA at launch. But few days ago new Apple job listing confirmed that company is planning to extend its book-selling business to other countries. Their new vacancy for manager of "Asia Pacific & Canada" iBooks divisions shows that in the nearest future their efforts will be concentrated primarily on Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
The role includes: working with management, regionally and in Cupertino to determine strategies and priorities for iBooks in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries; identifying content providers to target, establish and develop relationships; working with legal and production teams to finalize relationships and secure content; and coordinate launches with partners, production, and marketing. This role will also be responsible for marketing the books offering on the iBooks store by coordinating with Apple's production teams, the marketing team, and the production and marketing teams of partners.
The successful employee will work in Sydney, Australia or Markham, Ontario.
It is possible that Apple looks for the possibilities to expand in other countries, though there are no open positions for that at the moment.
Site 9to5mac posted several interesting screenshots with iPad's Network System Preferences. These settings even include Tethering via Bluetooth or USB. Do you think AT&T will allow this?
Penguin, one of the biggest publishers, gave a very interesting presentation in London. Penguin CEO John Makinson spoke about eBooks, iPad Books and Apps.
Penguin is not using the ePub format for books, rather building the applications in html according to Makinson:
"We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about".
"So for the time being at least we’ll be creating a lot of our content as applications, for sale on app stores and HTML, rather than in ebooks. The definition of the book itself is up for grabs".
"We don’t know whether a video introduction will be valuable to a consumer. We will only find answers to these questions by trial and error."
Makinson sees ebooks hitting 10% of book sales next year (up from 4%). Take a look at the video:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently traveled to meet with executives at The Wall Street Journal and other publications. Today The Wall Street Journal reports that Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of parent company News Corp., confirmed that the newspaper will be present on the iPad. He also mentioned that Apple gave access to one of the tablet devices.
Mr. Murdoch said the Journal planned to be on Apple Inc.'s iPad tablet computer. "In fact, we've been allowed to work on one, and it's under padlock and key. The key is turned by Apple every night," he said in response to a question. "But we will be on that with The Wall Street Journal." Mr. Murdoch said he believed in a year or so there will be a half dozen or more devices on which consumers will be able to receive newspapers and other media.
One of the developers enabled a passcode lock in iPad SDK and then decided to type it incorrectly for a few times. After 5th try iPad proposed to make an emergency call.
This option looks pretty obscure but can be explained as a following to FCC regulations, that demand wireless phones to be able to make emergency calls (even in the cases when the device isn't currently active or assigned a number).
Jobs claimed at the iPad's keynote that it has a built-in speaker and mic, so does it really can make normal calls in addition to emergency calls?
The Examiner reporter Daryl Reino claimed yesterday the March 26 for iPad's release date is "very likely". He said he has information from some unnamed Apple store manager in Southern California.
Daryl also reported Apple employees will start training March 10, and the official commercials will begin to air on TV starting March 15. It will be emphasizing the e-book capabilities of the device. Those who camp out for the new device will receive some "special gift".
As we wrote before, some manufacturing bottleneck has been lengthening the production terms, but Daryl said it will not delay the launch of iPad (though the number of devices will be much more limited).
As you remember, Steve Jobs clearly said at the iPad's presentation that the device will have a 1 GHz A4 Chip. But after that event there was no information given about this secret two-letter name "A4". And this isn't usual, as almost every company reports the specification of every announced device before it'll come to market.
Later it was rumored that the chip is based on Cortex A9 with dual cores. But finally Arstechnica author Jon Stokes revealed that A4 is a 1 GHz custom system-on-chip with a single Cortex A8 Core and a PowerVR SGX GPU. Though the information is not announced publicly, the author is sure it is true.
Analyst Peter Misek from Canaccord Adams had issued a report about Apple. It says that iPhones sales are better than expected, but the iPad production has some "manufacturing bottleneck", that can cause a delay of the sales start.
"An unspecified production problem at the iPad’s manufacturer, Hon Hai Precision, will likely limit the launch region to the US and the number of units available to roughly 300K in the month of March, far lower than the company’s initial estimate of 1,000K units. The delay in production ramp will likely impact Apple’s April unit estimate of 800K as well. It is also possible that, given the limited number of units available in March, the launch will be delayed for a month".
He also thinks such a delay won't affect iPad sales in 2010 and 2011 (approximately 1,2 million and 3.5 million units respectively).
After the unveiling of iPad in January most of us understood that it looks like enlarged iPod Touch. French web-resourse Begeek.fr decided to think about what should we expect from Apple in the next years, so look what they concocted:
Yesterday the Associated Press announced plans to create a new unit named "AP Gateway". It will focus on creating an application for mobile platforms and particularly for iPad tablet device.
It is likely that their app will require a paid subscription, but at first it may appear as free, according to AP senior vice president Jane Seagrave.
AP Gateway will work with local news affiliates to create package of their own content.
Other publishers are still expressing concern over the profit that will be shared with Apple and the latter's unwillingness to report information about subscribers (which is important for marketing and tailoring publisher's content).