News tagged ‘POI’
Japan Stops Selling Apple Products, China Reduces iPhone Price
Another report made by Nikkei reveals that most of the Japanese online electronic stores stopped selling iMacs, iPods and other products because of an Apple's request. At the moment Yodobashi Camera Co., Kojima Co., Bic Camera Inc. and Yamada Deni Co. Web sites point that Apple products were totally sold out or they are not for sale and may be available only in retail stores. Though Joshin Denki Co. and Amazon.com's Japanese store are continuing to sell iDevices.
There is also information from China Business News that China Unicom carrier will reduce the iPhone price from 6,999 yuan (~1050$) to 1,000 yuan (~150$). The company hopes that the smartphone will help it to boost its 3G network. Now China Unicom also considers making reduced rates for those of the subscribers who already have 3G devices to advance the growth of its data network.
Nokia loses money because of Apple
Finnish company Nokia admitted last week that the competition on the high-end smartphone market is high enough and it is finally affected on quarterly earnings. In the first quarter of 2010 Finnish cellphone maker earned 465$ million. In the same period of the 2009 they earned 162$ million. Well that can be explained by an economical situation in the world, but this year results were expected by analysts to be higher.
Nokia conceded the average selling price of their cellphone products dropped down from 66 to 62 euros. The numbers for smartphones are more significant - from 190 (first quarter of 2009) to 155 euros (first quarter of 2010).
Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is pretty obsessed about this fact:
"We continue to face tough competition with respect to the high end of our mobile device portfolio".
Apple Hired Games Manager For App Store
Recently Apple has hired new global editorial games manager for iTunes App Store. His name is Matt Cassamassina and he has over 13 years experience of games reviewing.
Matt started his game career with the launch of N64.com. Later this resource was bought by IGN, where he continued to work. In the gaming industry he is known as the expert and information source about Nintendo.
After his appointment he wrote in his blog:
"I will be leading the charge for games on the App Store, so whether you browse through iTunes, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, the games content you see will be handpicked and organized by me and my team. I couldn’t be happier."
Matt Cassamassina will start his work in Apple at the beginning of May.
App Store games became very popular since the release of iPod Touch. Profit from game creating and selling it on iTunes attracted many single developers which lead to a success of the iPhone and iPod Touch as handheld gaming devices. The popularity of App Store games is even frightening for Sony and Nintendo that are now looking forward to create something innovative in the gaming industry.
AT&T Prohibited Taking Vacations In June
Multiple sources from AT&T told Boy Genius Report resource that their company has prohibited taking vacation in June for all of its employees. It is obvious that such an order indicates the launch of iPhone will be in June.
"Same story as last year and the year before, but we've confirmed with multiple AT&T sources that the carrier has now put a block on employees taking vacations in June. The only time AT&T does a straight block like this is for iPhone launches."
Last years Apple showed new versions of iPhone at Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Few weeks later the device was selling in the U.S. This time the date for WWDC has still to be announced, but a number of rumors and hints points that event will be in late June, so we may expect a short interval of time between device introduction and its shipping date.
Apple sells 500,000 iPads and delays international orders
Apple today released the
Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.
Faced with this surprisingly strong US demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May. We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10. We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason—the iPad is a runaway success in the US thus far.
iPad's are unofficially avaliable in many different countries. However the prices are very-very high (double and even triple of US ones).
Another Rumor On The Next iPhone Features
A popular tech pundit John Gruber from the DaringFireball.net web-resource laughs at today's WSJ rumor about two new iPhone models coming this summer. He points at the lack of information in the article and hints at the features that he seems to know about:
"...And they have no actual details of the next-generation iPhone. Nothing. Not the A4-family CPU system-on-a-chip. Not the 960 × 640 double-resolution display. Not the second front-facing camera. Not even the third-party multitasking in iPhone OS 4."
Well, the multitasking and front camera were suggested before. But the higher resolution display is something new.
Digg's iPhone App Is Released
This morning Digg released their official iPhone app. It allows you to browse and interact with the popular news aggregator. You can view the top, recent and upcoming stories in any category; clicking a headline will lead to a built-in browser that will display a requested page. At the bottom of the screen you'll find a buttons to Digg or Bury (like or dislike) the story, Save The Story button (for this you need to be logged in with your Digg account), and an option of sharing the link. The latter is pretty convenient, as you can send the story to the Email, Twitter, Facebook or to the iPhone's clipboard.
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MicroUnity accused Apple in patent violations
California-based company MicroUnity System Engineering filed a lawsuit against Apple, Acer, HTC, LG, Google, Nokia, Motorola, Palm, Samsung, Spring, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and AT&T. It accuses these companies in infringement of 14(!) separate patents about mobile processors.
The lawsuit was filed few days ago in a District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, a place where patent complaints are filed commonly in hopes to get a favorable outcome. The devices named in the document are iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch (32 Gb and 64 Gb versions), Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One, Palm Pre and Nokia N900.
The patents that were named in the suit are listed below:
Analysts: Verizon will not affect Apple sales uprise in 2010
Whatever the outcome of Apple negotiations with Verizon will be, estimated sales of iPhones will equal 33 million devices in 2010, analysts say.
Moreover, Scott Craig, the analyst from Merrill Lynch, claims iPhone sales in 2010 won't be affected by the outcome of Apple and Verizon negotiations.
One way or another, Credit Suisse analysts reported of 75% chance of AT&T remaining iPhone exclusivity carrier also for the next year.
Apple Admitted Using Child Labour
Last year at least 11 fifteen-year-old children were working in 3 factories that supply Apple. They are situated in China, but Apple also has factories situated in Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Czech Republic, Thailand and of course United States.
Cupertino's company claims children are no longer used for work or at least they are no longer underage:
"In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment".
This is a citation from Cupertino's Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report. After studying of it we summed up a whole bunch of interesting facts...
Steve Jobs’s opinion of Flash on the iPad demo for WSJ
Steve Jobs called Flash technology a 'CPU hog ' and an "old technology" with numerous “security holes.” On the iPad demo with the Wall Street Journal that took place in New York Apple CEO attempted to persuade the WSJ honchos to bring the issue to the iPad.
The parties discussed one of the stumbling rocks- the inability of iPad to support Flash technology. The point is that the Journal invested a great deal of money in Flash enabling to deploy videos, slides and other interactive media.
MWSF 2010: Algoriddin’s djay 3, Frog Design apps, 4iThumbs, WebIS Informant
This time we talk about Algoriddin’s djay 3, new apps from Frog Design, 4iThumbs product and WebIS Pocket Informant organizer.
Algoriddin’s djay 3 is an excellent app with easy-to-use interface designed to allow you to mix and play music. The price is US 50$ in stores and on the website.
Opera showed their browser for iPhone
Opera had finally demonstrated new Opera Mini for the iPhone at the Mobile World Congress.
In comparison to the default iPhone browser it looks pretty quick - Opera Mini loads the New York Times like 5x faster than its rival. Its main disadvantage is that it lacks the all-important feature pinch-to-zoom, and the only alternative is a method of double-tapping the webpages. Generally, the iPhone owners will find that the usual silky smooth scrolling through favorite webpages and responsive interface are maintained at the very best.
Unlike other platforms, the iPhone variant actually remembers the website you happened to browse last - the feature that will obviously be favored by a legion of iPhone admirers.
Company says as soon as beta tag is removed the browser will be submitted for approval. And it is not obvious whether Apple approve it or not, because it maintains the option of rejecting any app that "duplicates functionality" of the apps Apple builds into the iPhone. Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner has his own point of view on this:
"Opera Mini is the world's most popualr mobile browser and users on the iPhone deserve a choice."
Publishers don't accept iPad business model
Steve Jobs’s attempts to convince publishers to provide the content in a useful digital form were not that successful and the negotiations initiated in February have "stumbled."
Some newsmakers report of "friendly" talks, but speak of Apple's business model as a crucial change for the publishing business. They aware of the impact iTunes had had on the songs industry in 2003. Then the number of downloads of single songs from Apple influenced the resulting purchases of the singers’ albums.
Apple has been conquering the e-reader market long before the new iPad was on offer. So that is not a surprise that such companies as Amazon, which previously dominated the market have to increase their prices in response to the iPad’s outbreak.
MacWorld Expo: The Beginning
MacWorld Expo 2010 started on the Feb, 11. We'll show you how that day and the MWSF generally started.