News tagged ‘Microsoft’
Manuals on Amazon Suggest Late July Launch for Lion
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.
Apple surpassed Motorola and Sony in handset sales
Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users in 2010 (Thousands of Units)
Company |
2010 |
2010Market Share (%) |
2009 |
2009 Market Share (%) |
Nokia |
461,318.2 |
28.9 |
440,881.6 |
36.4 |
Samsung |
281,065.8 |
17.6 |
235,772.0 |
19.5 |
LG Electronics |
114,154.6 |
7.1 |
121,972.1 |
10.1 |
Research In Motion |
47,451.6 |
3.0 |
34,346.6 |
2.8 |
Apple |
46,598.3 |
2.9 |
24,889.7 |
2.1 |
Sony Ericsson |
41,819.2 |
2.6 |
54,956.6 |
4.5 |
Motorola |
38,553.7 |
2.4 |
58,475.2 |
4.8 |
ZTE |
28,768.7 |
1.8 |
16,026.1 |
1.3 |
HTC |
24,688.4 |
1.5 |
10,811.9 |
0.9 |
Huawei |
23,814.7 |
1.5 |
13,490.6 |
1.1 |
Others |
488,569.3 |
30.6 |
199,617.2 |
16.5 |
Total |
1,596,802.4 |
100.0 |
1,211,239.6 |
100.0 |
Source: Gartner (February 2011)
Today Gartner revealed the results of another research, where it was found that Apple's achievements in 2010 had led to the situation when the company's competitors experienced reduced sales and eventually lost significant market shares.
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Google topples Nokia and becomes a top smartphone platform maker
Yesterday research firm Canalysis revealed a new study, where it was found that last quarter there were sold 32.9 million smartphones, which are based on Google platform, including Android, Tapas and OMS. In turn, according to Reuters only 31 million of Nokia's smartphones with Symbian OS were sold over the same period of time, and that allows to conclude that Google has overtaken Nokia and became a top smartphone platform maker in the world.
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LG Is Disappointed By Windows Phone 7 Sales
This week James Choi, who is a marketing strategy and planning team director at LG, have an interesting interview to Pocket-lint, where he expressed his disappointment about Microsoft's Windows Phone 7:
"From an industry perspective we had a high expectation, but from a consumer point of view the visibility is less than we expected".
Microsoft will announce its own TV box later this year
New report published lately by The Seattle Times reveals that Microsoft may introduce its own TV platform to compete with Google TV and Apple TV later this year.
"Microsoft's going to make a splash in this market with a stripped-down version of Windows tailored for set-top boxes and connected TVs. The software is a version of its embedded device software, overlaid with the Windows Media Center interface, with media streaming and remote-control capabilities".
Apple ordered 65 million iPad screens for 2011
Last week another DigiTimes report had revealed that Apple ordered approximately 35 million iPad displays from LG and another 30 million from Chimei Innolux and Samsung.
According to the publication, these huge numbers show that Apple "is very optimistic about the tablet PC market in 2011, and it may also mean that Apple is overbooking panel capacity".
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Sony Has Launched iTunes Rival
Yesterday Sony has launched a new service of streaming music subscription to compete with Apple's iTunes, but in opposition to the latter it will offer another approach in digital music sales.
New cloud-based music service is called "Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity" and offers users to stream music they want to listen to, but not purchase and download it.
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Android Approaches iOS In Overall Smartphone Subscribers
Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Oct. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jul. 2010 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens |
|||
Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers | |||
Jul-10 | Oct-10 | Point Change | |
Total Smartphone Subscribers | 100.0% | 100.0% | N/A |
RIM | 39.3% | 35.8% | -3.5 |
Apple | 23.8% | 24.6% | 0.8 |
17.0% | 23.5% | 6.5 | |
Microsoft | 11.8% | 9.7% | -2.1 |
Palm | 4.9% | 3.9% | -1.0 |
Today comScore released its monthly smartphone mobile report, which shows again that the Android OS gains more and more points at the smartphone market, while RIM's BlackBerry and Apple's iOS continue to lose its positions. The report is based on the smartphone usage over a period between July and October of 2010, and shows that there 60.7 million people with smartphones in the USA, which is 14% more than three months before. According to comScore, every fourth mobile subscriber uses smartphone.
Other facts:
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Apple employees love Steve Jobs
Silicon Alley Insider formed a chart that shows us the approval ratings of various CEOs at major tech companies among their employees. So, the chart reveals that Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs is the most favored CEO, followed by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Eric Schmidt of Google. Yahoo CEO gets high-50s point rating, while Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, comes in last place. Earlier this year Steve Jobs was also called as “the world’s most valuable CEO”.
Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.6.5
As we promised, yesterday Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.5 update for Snow Leopard, which now available via Software Update. The public release is the same Build 10H574 that was seeded to developers on Monday. The 10.6.5 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. The full list of general fixes and improvements in Mac OS X 10.6.5, according to Apple, includes:
Apple was also interested in the Kinect technology
Last week Cult of Mac reported that Microsoft wasn't the first company that was really interested in the Kinect technology.
The history actually begins with Israeli military engineers, who developed Kinect camera and infrared sensor. According to the report, after inventing the technology they hired PrimeSense CEO Inon Beracha so he could "shop it around Silicon Valley and find partners to commercialize it".
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5.5 million iPhones were sold in the third quarter of 2010
Today Canalys released new data on US smartphones shipments which shows that Apple became the №1 smartphone vendor in the USA with its 26.2% share. Its main competitor is now Research In Motion with its 24.2% share.
But besides that Canalys also found that Google's Android mobile OS represented 43.6% of the market in the last quarter, which means it’s the best-selling operating system.
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iOS made Microsoft to focus on HTML5 instead of Silverlight
This week Microsoft had held its Professional Developers Conference where the company revealed its new focusing on HTML5 and slowed down its strategy for Siverlight. The core reason for that is Apple's iOS.
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Walt Mossberg has reviewed new MacBook Airs
Famous technology journalist Walt Mossberg published another review where he analyzes new MacBook Air notebooks and describes them as "gorgeous, very thin and light, but very sturdy aluminum computers".
After using notebooks for some time he made a conclusion that the 11.6-inch system is very iPad-like, the battery life of the devices is "strong" and the systems wake up from sleep every time almost instantly. Though such machines won't fit as primary computers, especially for power users, they should fit fine for light-duty users. Walt revealed that even the $999 model can run 7-8 programs at the same time, even if there are iTunes, Safari Web browser with couple of dozens of apps opened and Microsoft Office among them.
When Microsoft acquired Bungie Jobs Was Angered On Ballmer
After almost ten years it appears that after Microsoft's acquisition of Halo's creator Bungie Steve Jobs called Steve Ballmer to express his anger on this deal. Here is what said former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft Ed Fries in his recent interview to Develop:
"...[Jobs] was mad at Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because we'd just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer."