News tagged ‘music’

Today market research company Strategy Analytics reported on its research which covers «connected TV players», such as Ruku and Apple TV. The report shows that Apple is expected to reach sales of 4 million Apple TV boxes for 2011, leading the growing market with a 32 percent share.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to a new research carried out by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Apple’s October Mac sales in the United States were up 19% year-over-year. That means that the company could reach analysts’ expectations and sell 5.1-5.3 million units for the full quarter.

Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray shared the latest domestic sales data from the NPD Group on Monday, which showed Mac sales up 19 percent year over year in the month of October. As sales continue to pick up leading up to Christmas, he sees Apple selling between 5.1 million and 5.3 million Macs during the December quarter.

Those numbers would represent year over year growth of between 23 percent and 28 percent. Consensus on Wall Street has called for Apple to report sales of about 5.2 million Macs during the quarter.

Last quarter Apple managed to sell 4.89 million Macs. These very numbers spurred analysts to push their Mac estimates to over 5 million.

Unfortunately, the iPod shipments in the United States are continuing to decrease. In October the iPod sales were down about 18% year-over-year. That might be connected with the fact that more and more consumers prefer to use smartphones for portable music needs rather than music players. Nevertheless such decline is smaller when it was expected. Analysts predicted a 20% drop for this quarter. That is why Munster suggests that Apple may sell approximately 16 million music players in for the full quarter.

The late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was nominated by "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams for Time Magazine "Person of the Year", so he could become the first person to be posthumously awarded the distinction.

"One guy, who changed our world, and I said to Seth Meyers [Saturday Night Live head writer] as we walked across Sixth Avenue, 'Just look with me on this one block walk at how he changed the world around us. Look at how he changed the world,'" Williams said during his nomination speech. "So may he rest in peace, Steve Jobs, and the spirit he represents, are my nominee for Person of the Year."

Nevertheless, it is quite difficult to deny that “the iPhone has changed the world as much as the Bible has.” Jobs was already nominated for Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”, but Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg won last year. Will see who will be a winner this year. The award will be presented in December.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times is pretty sure that Apple is building a television set. It is believed that the TV set will include Siri voice recognition service. Apple could announce the new set by the end of 2012 with public reliance in 2013. Anonymous sources say that an Apple television is a "guaranteed product for Apple" because "Steve thinks the industry is totally broken."

The rumors about Apple’s television set have been circulating for years, perhaps as far back as 2007, since the launch of the first iPhone. Some days ago we reported that Apple now is making prototypes of the Apple TV.

It’s the stuff of science fiction. You sit on your couch and rather than fumble with several remotes or use hand gestures, you simply talk: “Put on the last episode of Gossip Girl.” “Play the local news headlines.” “Play some Coldplay music videos.” Siri does the rest.

As the line between television programming and Web content continues to erode, a Siri-powered television would become more necessary. You aren’t going to want to flip through file folders or baskets of content, checking off what you want. Telling Siri to “play videos of cute cats falling asleep” would return an endless YouTube stream of adorable napping fur balls.

Bilton also reports that Apple still has “quite a bit of work to do on the project.” But the launch of the new Apple’s television set is just a matter of time.

Ten years ago, on October 23rd, Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod. This music player seems to be partly responsible for Apple’s comeback and success. It also paved Apple the way to the consumer electronics market. Macworld provides a nice story detailing how the iPod came to be:

Behind every successful product lies a problem in search of a solution. The inspirational problem, in the iPod’s case, involved the pitiful state of the young MP3 player market in the late 1990s.

Portable MP3 players had been around since the mid 1990s, but Apple found that every one on the market offered a lackluster user experience. Steve Jobs had a strong term for gadgets like that: “crap”. Everyone at Apple agreed.

Initial reaction to the iPod wasn’t favorable. Customers complained against lack of wireless and space. They called it “lame” and thought that the iPod would never start taking off. But time tells that all those critics were wrong. Now iPod line of  portable music players is one of the most popular worldwide. Ten years after the launch, the iPod has sold over 304 million units.

As both LATimes and Wall Street Journal report, citing sources familiar with the matter, that currently Apple is in talks with major movie studios for deals that would allow users, who purchased movies on iTunes Store, to stream them via iCloud on their Apple devices.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to TUAW, Apple is about discontinuing the iPod classic and iPod shuffle as a part of “product transition”  this year.

It seems that the "product transition" Apple mentioned on the last earnings call could very well be within the iPod line. Specifically, if you want to buy an iPod shuffle or iPod classic from Apple, you should do it sooner rather than later. We've heard those two iPods are getting the axe this year.

The iPods now only make up for 8% of Apple’s total revenue. As the below graph shows, iPod sales have been falling over the last few quarters and although Apple doesn’t break these figures down model by model, its believed the iPod touch is what has held iPod sales up. The iPod nano also appears to be safe for the time being. The last official word about the iPod Classic came from Steve Jobs over a year ago. He said that they had no plans on discontinuing the iPod Classic at that time. Now, it seems they have changed their plans.

Read the rest of this entry »

As AUSBT reports, Quantas Airlines is going to launch a six week trial service allowing passengers to watch movies on offered iPad 2. Passengers can use a ‘Q Streaming’ app on iPad 2 to stream movies from in-flight Wi-Fi access points. This six week trial service will be offered only on one Boeing 767-300 that can carry 254 passengers.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to data from market research firm NPD (via BusinessInsider), Apple’s Mac sales in U.S. are up 22% year-on-year for two month of the third quarter of this year, leading the company to a new record for quarterly sales of Macs. Gene Munster, analyst from research firm Piper Jaffray, attributed so high sales to launch of new Mac mini and MacBook Air line in July, which is expected to account for 10 to 20 percent of total sales of Macs over the third quarter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Tim Cook started redirecting customers’ e-mails to Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president for Internet services. Cook confirmed 9to5Mac that Cue was officially promoted to a senior vise president position.

From an internal Apple email sent by Tim Cook:

It is my pleasure to announce the promotion of Eddy Cue to Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services. Eddy will report to me and will serve on Apple’s executive management team.

Eddy oversees Apple’s industry-leading content stores including the iTunes Store, the revolutionary App Store and the iBookstore, as well as iAd and Apple’s innovative iCloud services. He is a 22-year Apple veteran and leads a large organization of amazing people. He played a major role in creating the Apple online store in 1998, the iTunes Music Store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008.

Cue's promotion may be the first move in a reshuffling of Apple's leadership. The position of Chief Operating Officer is now vacant. Apple’s COO was Tim Cook until his ascension to the CEO position. And soon a position of a senior vice president for retail will be vacant as he takes the CEO position at J.C. Penney.

The career of one of America’s most innovative businessmen has been more than just a string of moments, but these 10 peeks at Steve Jobs’s formidable presence will remind you of why his resignation is such a momentous event.

1. Steve Jobs demos Apple Macintosh, 1984

Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh to the world. Computing would never be the same.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday Apple released a beta of the iTunes Match for developers. Apple described the system as follows:

iTunes Match stores your complete music library in iCloud, allowing you to enjoy your collection anywhere, anytime, on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or computer.

Read the rest of this entry »

The most long-standing rumors regarding Apple's future products are rumors about television sets. The Australian site Smarthouse reported last month that Apple was in discussions with LG about producing a panel for a 55-inch TV based on OLED technology.

The Korea Times now reports that these rumors are groundless.

“It’s true that Apple has keen interest in TV, allowing users to stream music, videos and TV shows via iTunes, though that needs some iPhone and iPad integration, however, Apple is still pessimistic about using OLED displays,” said one source.

“Because Apple is worried over higher costs and technology-related issues linking to large-sized OLED displays, it is groundless that Apple has asked LG Display to supply its OLED screens for its upcoming televisions,” added the source.

Sources also added that Apple is likely to stick with more proven LCD technologies for any such television products.

“Apple has no interest in using OLED screens on its popular devices. The upcoming iPad 3 will also adopt picture quality-enhanced LCD screens, while the next iPhone will follow suit. Three or four more years will be needed to see OLED-embedded digital devices from Apple,” said a top-level executive from one of Apple’s suppliers.

9to5mac reports that Apple might launch the next-generation iPhone on October 7, with pre-orders likely starting on September 30, a week before the launch.

Apple currently plans to begin pre-orders for their next-generation smartphone in the final days of September. The company has still not finalized the pre-order start date, but is debating between Thursday, September 29th and Friday, September 30th. The 30th seems more likely at this point according to one of our sources.

If pre-orders scheduled for September 30, so Apple would need to unveil the new iPhone in September. Many believes that Apple will announce new device at the traditional Fall media event: whereas the company has usually preferred September to hold a music event to announce new iPods and new versions of iTunes.

If Apple doesn’t release a new iPhone this summer, the company is expected to unveil the device as its usual event in the Fall, with iCloud, OS X 10.7.2 and iOS 5 also believed to drop by then.