News tagged ‘price’

Research firm Gartner has published sales forecasts for the tablet market, stating that a lack of momentum from competitors will allow iPad to be absolute leader during the holiday shopping season. Looking further ahead, Gartner predicts that Apple will maintain more than 50 percent share of this market segment through 2014 even as Research in Motion’s QNX and Microsoft's Windows 8 platforms are expected to build up some momentum. Research vice president at Gartner Carolina Milanesi explains:

“This is because Apple delivers a superior and unified user experience across its hardware, software and services. Unless competitors can respond with a similar approach, challenges to Apple’s position will be minimal. Apple had the foresight to create this market and in doing that planned for it as far as component supplies such as memory and screen”.

Gartner has lowered its estimates for sales of Android tablets in 2011 by 28% over second quarter’s projections, noting very weak adoption due to its interface issues, high prices and limited app availability.

The company expects that Android will see growth as Google releases its next-generation Android’s "Ice Cream Sandwich" and addresses fragmentation across the Android ecosystem. However, according to Gartner's sales forecasts, Android tablets will not catch up the iPad by the end of projection period of 2015.

Popular games Asphalt 6: Adrenaline and Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD developed by Gameloft are now available for free for a limited time. Regular price is $4.99 for iPhone version and $6.99 for iPad version. The lowest price on sale was $0.99, it's never been fully free. Now it is, so go ahead and download.

Asphalt 6 is a arcade racing game with superb enviorments and fast-paced racing, there's over 55 events, across 11 leagues. Drive cars such as Astion Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini and even Ducati's. The single player campaign is quite long for being on the iOS, but that's not all, there's also multiplayer support via the Game Center.

Download Asphalt 6: Adrenaline
Download Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD

Recently in an interview on State of the Union of CNN channel, Jim Hoffa, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union President, claimed that Apple is unpatriotic as it outsources manufacturing in other countries.

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Apple reportedly has made a deal with Simplo and Dynapack to produce and supply a thinner and lighter battery for the iPad 3. Such battery means that the company may work on the iPad with a potentially thicker high-resolution Retina display. The cost of new batteries is 20-30% higher that the current iPad batteries but provides longer service life and higher safety.  Mass production of such batteries are planed on the first quarter of the next year.

With the upcoming iPad 3 to feature a thinner, lighter battery module that is widely believed to be priced 20-30% higher than iPad 2’s, Simplo Technology Co. and Dynapack International Technology Corp., both Apple Inc.’s contract suppliers of iPad and Macbook battery packs, will hence secure a surefire profit drive for the near future.

Institutional investors pointed out that the battery pack for iPad 3, scheduled to be massively produced in the first quarter of next year, has been redesigned to be thinner and lighter with a longer service life than iPad 2 edition’s.

Apple’s sales in China are up sixfold and reached $3.8 billion in second quarter revenues. Chinese market remains largely untapped and Apple could increase iPhone sales there by reaching agreements with additional Chinese carriers. However until now Apple hasn’t succeeded in reaching the agreement with the largest wireless operator China Mobile, and the sole Apple’s carrier in this country remains China Unicom. Moreover, according to DigiTimes, Apple’s iconic smartphone will compete with devices from both carriers:

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A new report claims that Apple has made a deal with Largan Precision and Genius Electronic Optical to build and supply 8-megapixel camera lenses for the company's forthcoming next-generation handset.

“The two companies are reported to continue supplying lenses for Apple’s newest iPhone 5 with an 8-megapixel camera. With relatively higher production yield, Largan, commanding nearly 20% of the global market, will reportedly garner a big order from Apple.”

Both companies were previously responsible for production of 5-megapixel lens modules for the current-generation iPhone 4. Today’s report claims the two companies will compete and work together as they continue to share Apple has one of their largest customers for the upcoming next-gen iPhone. Last year both companies covered 27.5 percent of global market share and it could move even higher as iPhone sales continue to grow. It’s not surprising that Apple continues to source parts from multiple suppliers. This is a move that is common for the company in an attempt to create competition amongst suppliers, drive down prices, and increase production quality while reducing risk.

Parallels launches version 7 of their well-known virtualization software allowing Mac users to run Mac OS X and Windows on a single machine. The version 7 reportedly includes 90 new enhancements. Among them:

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CNET reported that Apple once again have lost another unreleased iPhone model in Sun Francisco. As CNET claims, the device was lost in July.

Apple representatives contacted San Francisco police, saying the device was priceless and the company was desperate to secure its safe return, the source said. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like, the source said.

Rumors claim that Apple managed to electronically trace the phone and found it in a single-family home in San Francisco. Apples representatives and local police visited the house and spoke with a man in his twenties who was in Cava 22 then the device was lost. The police searched the house but didn’t find anything. Whether or not, Apple did not file a police report about the missing phone.

You probably remember that last year Apple lost a prototype of iPhone 4 at a bar near the company's headquarters. This device was sold to Gizmodo. Apple initiated legal action that ended just couples of days ago.

As New York Post reports (via BGR), Amazon is preparing to release the rumored Android-based tablets that will cost “hundreds less” than $499 current base model of iPad 2. It is likely that “hundreds less” implies $299.

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Apple stated to AllThingsD that offering of TV show rentals via iTunes was discontinued. Now users can only buy full episodes for just a dollar more than the previous rental price. The main advantage of buying full episodes is the possibility of re-watching them as many times as you want.

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Research firm NPD has recently announced results of its Mobile Phone Track report for the second quarter of 2011. Android is still leading the U.S. smartphone with 52% of the market; Apple's iPhone has 29% while BlackBerry devices only 11% of the market. But the 14-month-old iPhone 4 is continuing to lead the market in sales, and the 8 GB 26-month-old iPhone 3GS takes the second place, perhaps, because its that price now dropped to $49.

Here are the top five best-selling phones during Q2, via NPD’s Mobile Phone Track service:

1. Apple iPhone 4
2. Apple iPhone 3GS
3. HTC EVO 4G
4. HTC Inspire 4G
5. Samsung INTENSITYII

Reuters reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that Apple is preparing to launch a cheaper 8GB version of the iPhone 4 this fall.

A Korean company is currently manufacturing the flash drive for the 8GB iPhone 4, as one of the sources said on Tuesday, refusing to name the company. At present, Apple sources its flash drives from South Korea's Samsung Electronics and Japan's Toshiba.

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Technology company Apple is now worth as much as the 32 biggest euro zone banks. That's the result of the DJ STOXX euro zone banks index fall, driven by sharp declines in the share price of big banks such as Spain's Santander, France's BNP Paribas, Germany's Deutsche Bank and Italy's Unicredit. Earlier on Friday the DJ STOXX euro zone banks index fell 4 percent, valuing its 32 members at $340 billion. That's based on the market capitalization of their free-float shares, which for some French banks in particular is less than 100 percent. In contrast, Apple's market capitalization has soared to $340 billion on the back of the success of innovative technology products like iPods, iPhones and iPads.

The Next Web reports that Hewlett-Packard engineers have tested webOS on iPad and to their dismay they found out that webOS runs on Apple’s hardware more than twice as fast as on the TouchPad hardware.

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As DigiTimes reports, despite Apple’s orders for touch panels from iPhone and iPad 2 have considerably grown for the third quarter, the company is said to place orders at about half the price of previous orders. This initiative could mean that Apple either attempting to lower BOM thus increasing margins at the expense of manufacturers, or the company is preparing for cutting prices ahead of new devices releases. The reports wrote:

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