News tagged ‘report’

There are 30,000 games on the iPhone and this number is growing. People pay for games, but exactly how much do they pay? A new report from mobile app analytics company Flurry gives some impressive numbers. Flurry estimates that users spent $500 million on games in the US AppStore during 2009. This is up from $115 million in 2008. Compared to the overall U.S. console and portable video game market, the iPhone/iPod Touch now represents 5% of total video game sales. In just the portable videogame market, the numbers are even more exciting - Apple has 19% of portable games revenue.

The numbers are especially painful for Sony who had four times as much revenue as Apple in 2008 which dropped to just over half of Apple's revenue in 2009. With the iPad coming soon the iPhone OS will grab even more of that Portable Gaming revenue.

Navigon created a series of regional U.S. GPS turn-by-turn navigation applications for the iPhone. Each costs just $24.99. This is significantly cheaper than its more comprehensive MobileNavigator North America ($79.99).

These apps divide the United States into three overlapping segments, permitting customers to purchase discounted versions covering their area of the country. Additional regions are available through in-app purchasing for $12.99. Here are AppStore links: U.S. East, U.S. Central, U.S. West.

Navigon reports that сгккуте prices are valid through April 12th. After that date MyRegion apps will cost $29.99 for the application and $14.99 for in-app expansions.

Macworld reports they have information from vendors who wish to stay anonymous that Apple will no longer sell screen protectors (and any other adhering products) for their devices. Some sources say the reason is an installation difficulty that leads to a higher rate of returns. Another explanation is that Apple tries to reduce the impression that its products require screen protection.

It is interesting that ban is related to any films, even anti-glare and those for the laptops, so many case vendors are looking now for the best and quickest way to repackage their products.

Apple hasn't yet commented on this situation.

Almost twenty years ago Scientific American posted an article of Xerox PARC. Its authors were thinking about the future technology and decided the next stage of it will be the ubiquitous computers.

"Ubiquitous computers will also come in different sizes, each suited to a particular task. My colleagues and I have built what we call tabs, pads and boards: inch-scale machines that approximate active Post-It notes, foot-scale ones that behave something like a sheet of paper (or a book or a magazine), and yard-scale displays that are the equivalent of a blackboard or bulletin board.”

They were right - tabs are the iPhones and iPods Touch and pads are iPads. But does it mean that we can expect from Apple something really huge like big-screen hubs? Such devices have already been developed (the best example is Microsoft's Surface table, the other one is Samsung MultiTouch Board shown on the picture), but they are still too expensive because of a flat-screen TV components.

The Wall Street Journal has information that nearly 10,000 iPhone users regularly access the Microsoft employee mail system. Such a number represents almost 10% of the company's global staff.

It is really interesting as Microsoft executives are not happy to see their employees using products of rival companies. Its CEO Steve Ballmer already had an accident last September when he caught a man from the company's personnel who tried to snap a photo of an entrance with his iPhone. At that moment he was so angry he put the phone on the ground and pretended to stomp on it. After that he walked away.

The WSJ also reports:

"...the company in early 2009 modified its corporate cellphone policy to only reimburse service fees for employees using phones that run on Windows Phone software."

It is obvious the company tries to reassure its employees to use its software and hardware, but they continue to hide and even customize their iPhones to make them look more like generic handsets.

Members of AAPL Sanity Board at Investor Village resource decided to study the iPad order numbers. By 11:05am EST they received fifteen confirmations about 74,000 orders (the device went up for pre-order at 08:30 am EST).

But there were other who became interested in the dynamics of iPad sells. Valcent Financial Group says about 51,000 orders in 2 hours, Silicon Alley Insider reports about 20,000 devices reserved per hour.

Fortune predicts Apple may have only 300,000 iPads available for sale right now. It also reports 91,000 devices were sold in six hours since 08:30 am.

9to5mac reports that the latest iPhone 3.2 Beta 4 SDK has the new gestures folder. And there are two new types of commands (3Tap.plist and LongPress.plist), that are certainly not implemented in the iPhone SDK 3.1.

Apple will probably allow developers to use these new capabilities in the next version of the iPhone OS. We might even see these next month in the shipping version of the iPad.

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 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.

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.

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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).

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...

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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).

Grooveshark is a web app that allows you to listen to music on-demand through the Internet without any charge (it requires only a Grooveshark VIP subscription for $3/month). The song can be chosen from the gigantic 7-million song catalog.

Grooveshark creators claim it supposed to be released in App Store but it wasn't because Apple has been "ritually rejecting" the app for "primarily selfish reasons". TechCrunch reports there were spent months of waiting for Apple approval. After Grooveshark's patience gave out they decided to release its iPhone application via Cydia.

From now on you can download it from the Big Boss Cydia Repository.

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