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Apple Posts Record Sales $46 Billion Revenue

Posted by Paul_Tarrant on January 25th, 2012

Apple has posted impressive quarterly earnings for the 14-week period ending on December 31, 2011. Apple has reported a quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion, as well as a quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share, and Mac, iPhone and iPad numbers were up year over year the company’s best quarterly results yet.

The company also said that the sales of iPhone and iPad also more than doubled. Apple said it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads in first Quarter, representing 128% and 111% unit growth from a year ago. Mac sales grew 26% to reach 5.2 million, while iPod sales dropped 21% to 15.4 million in the same quarter.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPad and Macs. Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline”.

Apple’s iPhone 4S – its latest iteration which was first launched in October– was a major contributor of the company’s record revenue. Beau Skonieczny, research analyst for computing practice at Technology Business Research (TBR), said in a statement that Apple’s aggressive global rollout of the iPhone 4S was also a key contributor to sales growth, and a testament to Apple’s continued efforts for rapid international expansion.

Blackberry Maker RIM Names Thorsten Heins As New CEO

Posted by Jeff_Morrow on January 24th, 2012

Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) have chosen a new inspirational CEO Thorsten Heins and its co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have stepped down. Chief operating officer Thorsten Heins – a RIM insider, will replace them on Monday.

The softspoken and bespectacled Thorsten Heins, who had worked at Germany’s Siemens AG for more than 20 years before RIM, failed to inspire Wall Street on Monday as he pledged to continue on the same path as his predecessors.

RIM’s co-CEO’s Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the men who engineered RIM’s rise, resigned on Saturday after intense investor pressure. Their presence had been seen as a big obstacle to a possible sale of the company, although Heins insisted that was not an option he was considering.

However, Lazaridis and Balsillie – two of RIM’s three largest shareholders with more than 5% each – will remain board members, while Lazaridis will also head a newly created innovation committee. Their new roles suggest continuity was a goal in the transition.

The new CEO, who scored his last major promotion as RIM was shedding some 2,000 jobs last June, said no further job cuts were currently planned and that with RIM’s $1.5 billion in cash he had no qualms in spending on right projects.

Apple Launches Free iBooks Author App

Posted by Danni_Ashworth on January 23rd, 2012

The Tech gaint announced a new App for budding writers called iBooks Author tool and another app that allows anyone to create our own ebook. Apple excecutive Philip Schiller, spoke at Guggenheim Musuem in NewYork that iBooks Author app as a content creation platform for the iPad2.

The new iBooks Author app is a free, downloadable Mac OS X application, enables users to create e-books using a simple drag-and-drop mechanism. With iBooks Author, users get basic templates that allow them to quickly create titles featuring both text and interactive elements, including images and videos. Users simply drag and drop their content from a Word document and the app will automatically format it.

Apple described iBooks 2 is designed to provide “gorgeous, fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more”.

It also offers :

Basic book templates with pre-defined colors, textures and fonts
A tool for building TOC
Ability to create and save custom templates
Support for widgets and support for importing from common word processing formats
Ability to add multimedia, including interactive 3D objects and HTML, anywhere on a page
Ability to export to PDF or to the iBooks format or to submit the book to the iBookstore for publication.

Twitter Acquires Canada Based Social Aggregator ‘Summify’

Posted by Kathryn_Bennett on January 21st, 2012

The social networking site Twitter looks to improve vastly with the announcement made on Thursday that Twitter has acquired ‘Summify’ – a canada based social news aggregator, run by two former roumanians. Summify has announced that it had been bought over by Twitter, and it will aid the micro-blogging giant work on helping users “connect and engage with relevant, timely news”.

The social news aggregator, Summify is a curation service that cherry picks the most important news from your twitter stream. Twitter, which is believed to be heading towards 500 million members, has acquired Summify for an undisclosed amount.

Twitter recently redesigned, adding a new ‘discover’ tab, through which users are served stories and videos based on their interests. Even the development team is constantly trying to make the site ‘stickier’ for new and old users alike.

The deal has taken effect immediately, with Summify’s operations being shut down and its team relocating to Twitter’s headquarters in San Fransisco.

Twitter’s latest acquisition comes after the microblogging platform underwent a massive site revamp in December, which analysts said was necessary for it to grow its user base and ad revenue.

Popular File-Sharing Site MegaUpload Shutdown By US Officials

Posted by Paul_Tarrant on January 20th, 2012

A widely popular file-sharing website ‘Megaupload’ has been shut down by officials in the US. One day after an extensive Internet blackout in protest of two pending anti-piracy bills, the Justice department on Thursday announced that it had charged the owners of Megaupload with online copyright infringment.

An indictment accused Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders atleast $500million in lost revenue. Federal prosecutors pulled the plug on HongKong-based Megaupload.com, arrested four execs in New Zealand and unsealed an indictment charging seven people with content piracy causing losses of a half a billion dollars.

The indictment prompted hackers to seek immediate cyber revenge, with the shadowy Anonymous group claiming it crippled the Department of Justice website.

Megaupload is a ‘digital locker’ that allows users to store files that can then be streamed or downloaded by others. Its subsidiary site MegaVideo became very popular for the unauthorized downloads of movies and TV shows. Users whose uploaded content proved particularly popular were paid for their participation.

The government site was inaccessible for hours Thursday, but a DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment on the cause.

China Toy Maker Says, No More Steve Jobs Action Figure

Posted by Kathryn_Bennett on January 19th, 2012

Chinese toy manufacturer In Icons posted a notice on their website stating, “Though we still believe that we have not overstepped any legal boundaries, we have decided to completely stop the offer, production and sale of the Steve Jobs figurine out of our heartfelt sensitivity to the feelings of the Job’s family”.

“We understand that this decision will cause many of the fans disappointment, but please forgive us as there is no other alternative unless to have the blessing from Steve Jobs family”, it added.

The ‘collectible figure’ was modelled on a 1:6 scale and came with two Apple logos – a risky move that undoubtedly made In Icons model even more vulnerable to legal action.

The company also promised that the customers who had pre-ordered the 12-inch doll, which complete with blue jeans, sneakers and black turtleneck sweater, were promised full refunds. The company had intended to start shipping the doll, which sold for $109.99 in February.

One thing is certain : these dolls are now going to be super expensive. One is already for sale on eBay for $2,500; expect that figure to grow in the future.

Apple To Unveil Digital Textbook Tools This Thursday

Posted by Paul_Tarrant on January 18th, 2012

According to the sources, Apple is expected to announce a new tool for creating textbooks which can be viewed on an iPhone or iPad. The latest word on the street is that Apple exec Roger Rosner is incharge of the company’s digital textbook tools.

Apple is set to unveil a new “digital textbook service” on Thursday and that Roser has been working on textbook creation tools for this week’s event. So far, Apple has largely embraced the ePub 2 standard for its iBooks platform, though it has added a number of HTML-5 based extensions to enable the inclusion of video and audio for some limited interaction.

Ars Technica says that Jobs had been closely involved with the textbook project and says it has sources who say he had been working on it for several years. The website says the announcement was originally planned for October last year at the same time as the iPhone 4S but was postponed.

Like the music and movie industries, Apple has instead built a distribution platform as well as hardware to consume it – but Apple isn’t a record label or production studio.

Samsung Says To Merge Bada OS Mobile With Tizen

Posted by Danni_Ashworth on January 17th, 2012

Samsung Electronics Co said on Tuesday that it is working on merge of its ‘bada’ mobile software with a platform backed by chipmaker Intel Corp in its latest push to diversify away from Google’s Android.

“We will have an effort that will merge bada and Tizen,” said Tae-Jin Kang, Senior Vice President of Samsung’s Contents Planning Team in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES-2012). Kang also said that he didn’t know when the work would be complete but that it was already underway.

Work has already begun on the merge, and when the transition is complete Tizen will fully support the Bada OS SDK. That means apps built previously for Bada should run just fine and that Bada developers won’t have to learn another SDK to code for Tizen – they can keep plugging away with what they already know.

Samsung, which emerged as the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturer on the back of booming Android models in the third Quarter, joined forces with Intel last year to strengthen its mobile software push.

Samsung uses Google’s Android platform for its high-end smartphones and tablets and also produces several phones that run on Microsoft’s Window Phone OS. Google’s Android accounted for 53% of the global smartphone market in Q3 and Samsung’s bada platform just 2.2%.

Intel’s New Chip Jabs Speed Than iPhone, Galaxy Nexus

Posted by Naomi Larkin on January 16th, 2012

Intel’s new chip for phones is surprising in many aspects, but the most exciting one is its speed. The “Medfield” Atom Z2460 for smartphones, announced at CES-2012, handily beats the fastest phones on the market.

Benchmarking tests carried out by AnandTech web said the results were as good as those found in tablets. It gave the new Intel reference design a class-leading test time of 1,331.5ms when running Java script, compared to 2,250ms for the latest iPhone and 1,988ms for Samsung Galaxy Nexus and 3,727.4ms for the most popular Samsung Galaxy S2.

Apart from this, Intel has announced its first mobile phone deals at CES in Las Vegas last week, revealing that Lenovo would be the first company to sell a device, launching the K800 in China, and that Motorola has signed a multi-year deal that will see it cell phones in the second half of this year.

The company also says that battery life remains good with greater power efficiency, despite the increased performance, because the chips only have one ‘core’, while some rival devices use twin or even quad-core processors.

Facebook Has Rolled Out New Feature “Listen With”

Posted by Samantha_Crowe on January 13th, 2012

The social networking site Facebook has rolled out a new feature “Listen With” that enables users to listen to songs with their Facebook friends. The new ‘listen with’ button in chat and news feed stories allow you to select a friend as your personal DJ.

Facebook users will be able to listen to music at the same time as their friends and discuss the tunes using Facebook chat, with PC Mag reporting that up to 50 people will be able to listen and talk about the tracks at the same time. However , both parties will have to be registered users of the service. The chat sidebar also allows listeners to discuss the music being played.

In a blog post published Yesterday, Facebook Product Designer Alexandre Roche said that, “the service will only work if both parties have access to the same online music programmes. At the moment, only ‘Spotify’ and ‘Rdio’ can be used in conjunction with ‘Listen with friends’ and more services are set to be announced further.”

The new features gives users access to over 15 million songs, and will also allow them to see what tracks are trending on the site, as well as letting users share music with friends, as part of a free service.