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Apple said it removed AppGratis for violating a clause in the iOS developer guidelines that prohibits apps from mimicking the official App Store. But there's a disconnect between AppGratis's official statements about how it promotes apps and how it attracts developers for such promotion. Specifically, AppGratis gives developers an estimate of where in Apple's App Store rankings an App can land based on how much the developer is willing to pay, according to a document from the company's pitch that a source in the developer community sent us. For example, this document shows AppGratis estimates a ~$300,000 buy will land an app in the top five slot in the US version of the App Store.
We've been doing significant testing lately with video out using various iOS devices for an upcoming project. In doing so, we waded right in the middle of a strange video out mystery. .../... In short: it appears the Lightning Digital AV Adapter has a SoC ARM CPU with 2Gb worth of RAM
"Due to an unprecedented rate of return of employees following the Chinese New Year holiday compared to years past, our company has decided to temporarily slow down our recruitment process," the company said in a statement. "This action is not related to any single customer and any speculation to the contrary is false and inaccurate." Like other Chinese contract manufacturers, Foxconn, the trading name of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, relies on a large number of migrant laborers from across the country who journey home for the most important holiday of the year. Many do not make it back to work, but Foxconn spokesman Louis Woo said this year they saw as many as 97 percent of employees return.
Asymco's Horace Dediu comes with an interesting finding: "As Apple introduced a new set of revenue categories, the performance of its “minor” businesses has become clearer. When seen this way, as a percent of total, iTunes begins to look increasingly as a viable “leg stool” upon which Apple rests. .../... Adding the Accessories business (which includes Apple TV and is showing in Orange above) these “other” businesses are already bigger than the Mac. Of course, content, software, accessories and services depend on a healthy device business, but the size of these ancillaries are beginning to be substantial and Apple’s ecosystem may begin to be valued more than just as an incentive to buy the devices. Indeed, if seen in isolation, iTunes+Accessories combined is a bigger business in terms of revenues than any of the other phone vendors except Samsung.
According to Canaccord Genuity, Samsung and Apple have 103% of the smartphone market's profits. They are basically the only two companies making money manufacturing phones.
"Analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco has crunched the numbers on the iTunes Store—which now includes the original music service as well as the App Store and iBookstore. He concludes that it's a $12-billion-a-year business for Apple and the app developers, music labels, and TV and movie studios who sell through it. Consider this: In its 2004 fiscal year, Apple pulled in a total of $8 billion in revenues."
For years, people have been predicting the death of Microsoft's Windows dominance. And in the last two years, it's finally happened. The rise of iOS and Android have made Microsoft's operating system significantly less important.
Luckily for Microsoft, this hasn't meant the death of its business overall. Thanks to the strength of its Office franchise and its Servers and Tools business, Microsoft is still very healthy.
But, there's no escaping that Windows is what drives the whole company. CEOSteve Ballmer calls Windows, "the heart and soul of Microsoft from WindowsPCs to Windows Servers to Windows Phones and Windows Azure." And that heart is beating a little bit more weakly today than it was in say, 2005.
This chart from Asymco earlier this year illustrates the decline of Microsoft's Windows monopoly as Apple has risen. There are other illustrations of the same thing here and here.
According to Asymco's Horace Dediu, Samsung is blowing all the companies away in advertising. But advertising isn't Samsung's only marketing expense. It also has big, crazy launch parties and promotional discounts. If you look at Samsung's full marketing expenses, you get a better idea about the incredible amount it cost Samsung to become the world's biggest smartphone company.
While Apple is now committed to Intel in computers and is unlikely to switch in the next few years, some engineers say a shift to its own designs is inevitable as the features of mobile devices and PCs become more similar, two people said. Any change would be a blow to Intel, the world’s largest processor maker, which has already been hurt by a stagnating market for computers running Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows software and its failure to gain a foothold in mobile gadgets.
As handheld devices increasingly function like PCs, the engineers working on this project within Apple envision machines that use a common chip design. If Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook wants to offer the consumer of 2017 and beyond a seamless experience on laptops, phones, tablets and televisions, it will be easier to build if all the devices have a consistent underlying chip architecture, according to one of the people.
l'histoire d'imsense et de son rachat par Apple racontée pour la première fois in extenso et en video dans "On refait le Mac" ...
According to Gene Munster, opening weekend sales grew 70 percent between the 3GS and the iPhone 4, and then an astounding 135 percent between the 4 and the 4s. That's acceleration. iPhone 5 sales, meanwhile, grew only 25 percent. That's massive deceleration.
A brief, visual history of the personal computing battlefield since 1975
Price and shipping might not seem like the traditional remit of a user experience team, but they should be. .../... If you look at it from a customer perspective, there's no mystery to the success of the iPhone: it fits your life better. It only seems mysterious when you can't understand why someone would choose a slower processor, smaller screen and fewer megapixels. The mystery comes from measuring the wrong metrics and, indeed, trying to measure intangibles which can't be calculated in a spreadsheet.
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For the three months ended in February, Apple had 38.9 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, up from 35 percent for the same period ending in November. Android fell to 51.7 percent over the same period, down from 53.7 percent. The United States is not the world, but it is a leading market for smartphones. So, it's worth paying attention to these trends. Apple has been able to eat into Android's lead thanks to increased distribution and lowered pricing. The iPhone wasn't available from Verizon until February 2011, four years after it debuted on AT&T. It later joined Sprint, then some regional carriers, and this year it's going to T-Mobile. Apple offers the iPhone at a variety of prices on Verizon and AT&T, from $0 to over $400. A free-on-contract iPhone has made it an option for more people. Android is a great operating system available on a number of excellent phones, some with gigantic screens. It's odd that it's gone flat. It's not just a U.S. phenomenon for Android, either.
An "Easter egg" is a hidden message or joke that software developers sneak into their projects.Google has hidden one in its new, high-end Chromebooklaptop, the Pixel. One of Google's developer's spilled the beans about it to reviewers at Wired.Open the Chromebook and tap out this code using Pixel’s directional keys: up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right, then B, then A. That combination is actually a "famous" Easter Egg key called the called the "Konami Code." It comes from old-school video games, and was often used to hide extra, secret features in the game.
Inevitably nicknamed the iWatch, the Apple device, on which the company is characteristically not commenting, has the tech world in a frenzy of sci-fi speculation. James Bond, Dick Tracy, Inspector Gadget – the techno watch has been a mainstay of fanboy fiction for generations. But the internet revolution seems to have largely bypassed the watch, until now. Apple reportedly has 100 employees looking at the device that will take advantage of recent developments in hi-tech curved glass, cheaper sensors and better voice recognition software. What will the iWatch do? Monitor your health? Act as a credit card? A wrist-bound GPS? Laser cannon and teleporter? We'll have to wait and see but to be honest if that's all it does, you may as well strap an iPhone to your arm. Apple has a history of delivering surprises and the iWatch would be its first big new product since the death of founder Steve Jobs. The company will want to make a splash. Especially as arch-rival Google has its own "smart watch" in development and is already testing Google Glass, web-connected specs. Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook too are watching developments and have their own plans. Last year analyst Forrester issued a report describing wearable computing as "the new platform war". Tech analyst Juniper Research estimates that wearable computing will generate $800m (£500m) in revenue this year and $1.5bn in 2014. Annual unit sales of wearable computers will rise from 15m this year to 70m by 2017.
Let's call it Apple Store Magic Techdom
"Apple, if it were just a media company, would be pretty fearsome. Its iTunes business is on pace to do $8 billion in annual revenues. But, fund manager Eric Jackson at Forbes noted something interesting about iTunes this quarter. It was flat on a sequential basis, despite the fact that Apple added 75 million new iOS devices. iTunes revenue was $2.1 billion. Over the last four quarters iTunes revenue is basically flat going from $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion. Meanwhile, iOS devices have gone from 365 million to 529 million, a significant jump. Pulling further back, as we did in this chart, over the last 11 quarters, iOS devices are up 5.3X, while iTunes is only up 2X."
There can be no doubt that one of the hottest startups of the last couple of years has been social sat-nav smartphone app Waze. Not surprising in an era when – largely due to Apple initially dumping Google Maps in iOS 6 – everyone woke up, as if from some slumber, about the importance of decent mobile maps. Something many had taken for granted was thrown into sharp relief, especially when it became clear that even the mighty Apple was capable of royally screwing up its own maps product. So it comes as almost no surprise to us that there are rumours flying around that Apple is sniffing around Waze with a view to a possible acquisition. After all, Waze is already a data partner for Apple’s Maps app and wasthe only app to gain meaningful marketshare after the Apple Maps fail. We have reached out to both. An apple spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation.” We got a “we never comment on rumors” from Waze. [UPDATE: Another source confirms that negotiations are advanced, but Waze wants $750M and Apple is willing to do $400M plus $100m in incentives. Waze had less than $1M in revenues last year (primarily from ads). Negotiations may take awhile.]
Microsoft and Apple are currently locked in something of a Cold War over the future of SkyDrive in the iOS App Store.
Sources close to Microsoft have detailed to TNW a difficult, and perhaps unresolvable situation between the two companies that underscores the difficulty with certain Apple rules concerning its app marketplace, and how far the company is willing to go to protect its vaunted 30% cut of in-app revenues.
The difficulty began when Microsoft rolled out the ability for SkyDrive users to purchase more storage space on the service. From that point, the company was not permitted to update its application in the iOS App Store.
The reason? It doesn’t pay Apple a 30% cut of subscription revenue generated by the application through the paid, additional storage. Microsoft, TNW has learned, has a new version of the application ready to go, including a key bug fix that would rectify a crashing bug, but cannot get it through.
Microsoft does not appear keen to pay Apple the 30% cut, as it lasts in perpetuity, regardless of whether a user continues to use an iOS device or not, as the billing is through their Apple account.
Therefore, if a user signed up for a few additional gigabytes on their iOS device, and then moved to Android or Windows Phone or not phone at all, for the length of their account, Apple would collect 30% of their fee for storage. This hasn’t sat well with Microsoft.
Microsoft has persisted in trying to work out a compromise with Apple, but has thus far failed to come to an agreement. The company offered to remove all subscription options from its application, leaving it a non-revenue generating experience on iOS. The offer was rebuffed.
If a service has a subscription option, it seems, and it is not listed in the iOS store, the application cannot, and will not be allowed. That is, unless you are small enough that Apple doesn’t bothers to check. I assume that smaller companies could slip under the radar.
In 1984, the New York Times ran an article slamming the concept of windows-based operating systems.
Nicholas Carlson just pointed it out as an example of why you shouldn't listen to gadget reviewers. He's right about that as far as it goes: You shouldn't listen to gadget reviewers. It only leads to heartbreak.
But the New York Times article is actually amazingly prescient, if you think about the future of computing today.
What's magnificent about Apple's iPad and Microsoft's new Surface? They let you focus on a single task, by design.
Apple's capital expenditures for the last year were $8.3 billion, which is significantly above its rivals, as this chart from Horace Dediu at Asymco shows.
Dediu believes Apple's capex is significantly above its peers because Apple is investing in data centers like Google, and process equipment like Intel. As a result, its quarterly spending is closer to Google plus Intel.
More mystery around the fate of Color, the ill-fated social-mobile-photo startup that became a laughingstock of Silicon Valley after raising $41 million to launch an app that proved to be a dud.
The Next Web had reported that the failed startup was getting bought outright by Apple for "double-digit millions."
Not so, says AllThingsD's Liz Gannes: Apple is paying Color a token amount, between $2 million and $5 million, to hire away 20 or so members of Color's engineering team.
Apple thankfully didn't obscure the details of its A6 slide at the launch event, which gave us a Samsung part number: K3PE7E700F-XGC2. Through crafty navigation of Samsung's product guide, Brian Klug got us the details. The K3P tells us we're looking at a dual-channel LPDDR2 package with 32-bit channels. The E7E7 gives us the density of each of the two DRAM die (512MB per die, 1GB total). The final two characters in the part number give us the cycle time/data rate, which in this case is 1066MHz.
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