Why HP TouchPad will fail against Apple iPad 2, Galaxy Tab and other tablets
the TouchPad is capable enough to take on iPad 2 does not arise. What is of interest is how big a dent it will create in the sales of iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1, the duo that rule the roost in the tablet market now.
Take a list of specifications offered by the TouchPad and compare it to Apple iPad 2′s spec sheet, the balance apparently tilts in favor of the TouchPad. But the devil is in the details. On a lot of crucial points, the TouchPad comes a cropper against its more established rival.
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HP says the TouchPad has got a big brain that gives you blazing speed, helps you go into the next level of multitasking and offers superior graphics performance.
The tablet is powered by the 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core APQ8060 processor. It sports front-facing 1.3MP camera and digital microphone for live video calling as well as dual-band Wi-Fi.
Analyst: Apple will drop iPhone 3GS to free with launch of iPhone 5
Last week, Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank said he believed Apple would release a “mid-range” iPhone 4S (with pre-paid calling and data option) alongside its new iPhone 5.
Keith Bachman of BMO Capital says there will be no iPhone 5, just an iPhone 4S, which will be Apple’s updated new smartphone.
Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford Bernstein notes that Apple needs to offer a cheaper a iPhone, in general, and could possibly do so this year.
Finally, Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital added to the fun this morning saying he expects Apple will drop the price of the iPhone 3GS to $0 with contract and the iPhone 4 to $99 with contract, when it rolls out the iPhone 5, whenever that is.
Rumor: Apple to launch iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 by September?
Katy Huberty from Morgan Stanley just returned to the U.S. after undisclosed meetings in Taiwan (possibly with Apple suppliers), when she informed investors that production for the next iPhone will “begin ramping up aggressively” from August to the end of 2011, according to Fortune. Based on her information, she believes these devices will be available to consumers by the end of September, and that Apple will be offering both the next-gen iPhone as well as a lower priced iPhone concurrently, according to AppleInsider.
Her colleague at Deutsche Bank, Chris Whitmore, made even bolder claims today by telling clients to “expect” both a pre-paid, unlocked iPhone 4S and a newly designed iPhone 5. He believes $349 would be the magic number to enable Apple to capture new customers, particularly in parts of the world where carriers do not subsidize the cost of handsets with a contract — that’s “1.5 billion potential customers in 98 countries, two thirds of whom prefer pre-paid plans” according to Fortune. As Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune noted, “Whitmore does not cite any sources or claim any inside knowledge for his two-iPhone theory.”
Apple cuts developers slack on in-app subscription plan
Subscriptions might make you think this only applies to traditional media, such as magazines and newspapers, but as allThingsD pointed out, “Apple’s language seems to indicate that this will apply to all subscription apps–’magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc. — which would include video services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, and music offerings like Rhapsody and Spotify.’”
This meant developers needed to cough up 30 percent of their subscription revenue to Apple. It was enough of a turn-off that the UK’s Financial Times created a Web-based app that took readers out of the native app, as reported by The Next Web.
Hat tip to MacRumors’ Jordan Golson for finding the changes in Apple’s guidelines, which removes the “requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase.” Seems like something got to Apple, which was going to enforce these guidelines as of June 30. This was what was supposed to take effect in a few weeks:
11.13 Apps can read or play approved content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is sold outside of the app, for which Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues, provided that the same content is also offered in the app using IAP at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app. This applies to both purchased content and subscriptions.
Apple, Google, Facebook turn N.C. into data center hub
It would be unfair to call Maiden, population 3,409, an unlikely place for a new data center.
Large cloud providers are building monolithic facilities in areas that offer relatively low-cost land as well as abundant and somewhat inexpensive electricity.
Western North Carolina, where Maiden is located, fits such a bill.
Google has already built a $600 million data center in Lenoir, N.C., less than an hour’s drive from Maiden. And Facebook is building a $450 million, 300,000 square foot data center in Forrest City, N.C., just over an hour way.
When Google announced plans for its North Carolina data center in 2007, Scott Millar, president of the Catawba County Economic Development Corp., was hopeful that the decision would draw the curiosity and interest of other tech firms.
Now, Millar said, “I think the dynamics that brought Google are still in place for others.” The addition of an Apple data center has only increased interest in the area, he noted.
“Having the Apple brand in our community says to a lot of folks that if Apple’s investing here, then we can invest here,” said Millar.
It also has intangible benefits, particularly among young people who see the Apple logo and think, “Maybe there is a future for me here,” he said.
The region is appealing to data centers partly because it has a good electric grid. There’s a long legacy of furniture and textile manufacturing, both power-intensive industries.
Tax breaks help as well. Apple has received 10-year 50% break in real estate taxes and an 85% break in personal property taxes. The economic development effort also includes fast turnaround on permits, and for Apple, a building inspector was stationed on-site to help speed construction, said Millar.
Apple iPhone 5 and 4S 8MP camera and SIM less design coming soon
The iPhone 4S will also be equipped with ARM technology in its Cortex A9 processor. There were rumors about Apple going with a dual core processor, mimicking a trend set by Android smartphones. Other hardware upgrades include additional internal antennas that can serve as an international phone with CDMA and GSM. This also allows the device to be compatible with both Verizon and AT&T networks.
The launch for iPhone 4S is said to be sometime in the late summer month possibly as early as July. As for the iPhone 5, it will make its debut in the spring of 2012 according to rumors.
Apple Says ‘App Store’ Isn’t Generic in Suit Against Amazon
Apple Says ‘App Store’ Isn’t Generic in Suit Against Amazon
By Karen Gullo – May 20, 2011 6:52 AM GMT+0700 Tweet inShare.0More
Business ExchangeBuzz up!DiggPrint Email . A customer demonstrates Apple Inc.’s App Store on an iPad tablet computer. Photographer: George Frey/Bloomberg
Apple Inc. (AAPL) said “app store” isn’t a generic term that can be used by Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and denied the words together stand for a store for application programs, the iPod maker said in its trademark case against the retailer.
“Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words ‘app store’ together denote a store for apps,” the company said in a filing today in federal court in Oakland, California.
The term isn’t commonly used by businesses to describe download services and, because the mark “app store” isn’t generic, Amazon’s Appstore for Android service isn’t an “app store,” Apple said in the filing.
Apple is seeking a court order to prevent Amazon.com from using “App Store” to sell software applications for mobile devices, according to a March 18 complaint. Amazon.com countered in an April 26 court filing that the words together are a generic term that Cupertino, California-based Apple doesn’t have exclusive rights to use.
How Apple rewrote the rules of retailing
They grew faster than any other retailer in history” in the first three years, says Robin Lewis, co-author of The New Rules of Retail, who points to their numbers.
Take last quarter’s results. Apple Stores’ sales shot up $1.5 billion, or 90%, to $3.2 billion in its fiscal second quarter compared with the same period a year earlier. It didn’t hurt that the maker of must-have iPhones, iPods and Mac computers cranked out another hot seller, the iPad. Apple sold nearly 4.7 million iPads in the quarter, and industry tracker iSuppli expects it to sell almost 44 million for the year. The attraction helped bring in 33% more store visitors during the quarter vs. a year ago. What other retailer has a following that will camp overnight in front of stores to be the first on the block with an iPad?
PHOTO: Apple Stores around the world
The Apple Stores’ debut defied logic at the time. Conventional wisdom was that computer retailing was a cut-throat and risky business. That was made clear when Gateway, now owned by Acer of Taiwan, rolled the dice to expand from online sales to its ill-fated Gateway Country Stores, only to shutter its remaining 188 stores in 2004.
Despite the odds, Apple is now the case study for the retail industry of today.
“They basically took the old book of retail and threw it out and started over,” says Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray. “The irony of the whole Apple retail story is that nobody believed it could work. Nobody believed a computer maker would make a good computer retailer.”
Apple Isn’t Frittering Away Its Growth Opportunities
If Apple were a one-product company, we’d be uncomfortable throwing around those kinds of numbers, but Apple isn’t just the iPhone/iPad company. In fact, with the exception of the iPod, every single one of Apple’s product lines is contributing to double-digit revenue growth.
The iPad: An Entirely New Product Category
The newest of Apple’s product lines, and essentially an entirely new product category, the iPad has been a stunning success. As Apple is still selling the second iteration of the iPad as quickly as they can be manufactured, we think that momentum will continue through 2011 and 2012 at the very least.
That said, estimating the eventual size of the tablet market is difficult, as today it isn’t so much of a “tablet market” as an “iPad market.” Although PC manufacturers have been taking stabs at producing a mass-market tablet computer, Apple was the first company to succeed. (We suspect that this is because the company already had a massive base of iPhone users that were essentially using a miniature version of a tablet.) It is possible, in our view, that the iPad will remain the standard for the tablet market–similarly to how the iPod quickly became (and has remained to this day) the dominant personal media player. Our view is that, after explosive growth in 2011 (during which we expect Apple to sell about 40 million iPads), unit sales grow at an average of 55% per year, with Apple selling 80 million iPads in 2015.
However, given that the tablet market and the iPad are still in their infancy, it is possible that the tablet market turns out to be just a fad. It is also possible that another tablet maker can knock Apple from its perch. In the eventuality that Apple does not sell another iPad after 2012, our fair value estimate would fall from its current $475 into the high $300s.
We Think the iPhone’s Days of Explosive Growth Are Nearing an End
We expect the iPhone to continue to gain market share in 2011 and 2012, but after that we think it will have become a mature product and that growth will slow accordingly. At the end of our five-year forecast period, we expect Apple will have a market share of approximately 15%, only slightly higher than it stands today.
How Apple Outsmarts Its Competitors
the iPhone’s many features and shared their goals for the device, which has now become a major business for Apple.
During that meeting, they made a comment that I believe is really the heart of Apple’s secret sauce and the cornerstone of how it continues to outsmart its competitors. They laid the iPhone on the table, with it turned off, and asked me what I saw. I told them I saw a 3.5 inch blank screen. They said that from Apples point of view, the “magic” of the iPhone is strictly in the software. And, they de-emphasized the hardware.
Yes, the iPhone was a slick smartphone with a great screen and, at the time, it broke new ground in smartphone design, and Apple was very proud of that. However, with the iPhone turned off, it had very little value. But once it was turned on, the iPhone’s OS and apps turned it into a completely different device. While it was a phone, the software made it much more—it became a vehicle for applications. It also had another component that really made it sing and dance; it was also an iPod and was tied directly to iTunes. Now it morphed into a much broader multi-purpose device. It was a phone, a vehicle for apps, and an iPod, which made it a great personal mobile entertainment system.