Edible Apple

Citing a high-ranking source at a major electronics retailer, Technobuffalo reports that Apple’s rumored HDTV will likely see the light of day by April, or May at the absolute latest. As for the TV itself, it’s rumored to be a 42-inch OLED described as being ‘gorgeous’ and ‘very thin’.

While we don’t know if the set will be running it’s own version of iOS, we do know that will have deep integration with devices running the popular operating system. They’ll also sport Siri style voice controls as well as facial recognition software, and plans for the TV’s voice control system are said to far exceed what’s currently in use on the iPhone 4S. And if the user opts to not use voice, an iOS device can be used as a stand in remote. Apple execs are reportedly describing the new product line as a “hub” to your life, replacing the PC as the most-used device in a consumer’s home. Welcome to the “Post-PC Era.”

Our source said Apple is exploring the notion of using the set to control other connected devices in the home; think along the lines of ovens that pre-heat while you’re watching TV before dinner, and garage doors that can be closed by voice command while you sit on the couch. No details were given as to whether Apple would consider manufacturing such devices, though given their history, a “Made for iPod” style accessory program would be a natural fit for a TV-based connected home system.

Our source also said the controls for the television set would be unconventional and unique. The TV will follow the Apple tradition of going into power-saving sleep mode more often than actually turning off. Thanks to facial recognition software, something we’ve known Apple has been playing around with for some time now, the television will reawaken when someone it recognizes walks in the room. Should two recognized users be present in the room at the same time, an iOS app can be used to tell the set which person should be given control.

Well the report certainly sounded credible at first, no? But we quickly became skeptical, to put it mildly, when we saw mention of ovens and garage doors. A 42-inch OLED though? Intriguing. The only question, though, is price. There are no shortage of amazing HDTV sets on the market. A quick trip to Best Buy reveals a plethora of incredible LED sets from the likes of Samsung and LG. OLED is nice, but Apple will need more than an incredible picture to compete in an aggressive market with already paper-thin margins.

The new interactive textbooks Apple showcased last week are quite similar to the highly praised and innovative iPad app “Our Choice”, which of course is based on a book by Apple board member and former Presidential candidate Al Gore. And not surprisingly, Apple’s textbook creation framework is similar in nature to the easy-to-use framework developed by Push Pop Press, an iPhone development company founded by former Apple engineers Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris.

Facebook, oddly enough, actually acquired Push Pop Press this past August, claiming that they have no interest in getting involved with digital publishing but rather want to integrate “some of the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press” into Facebook.

This past Friday, AppleInsider published an interesting rumor claiming that Steve Jobs had at one point met with Matas and warned him that Push Pop Press’ physics engine was built using patented Apple technology and that if Push Pop Press continued to exist in the dynamic book building sphere, they’d be risking a lawsuit from Apple. Indeed, AI claims that an ultimatum from Jobs served as the impetus behind Push Pop Press’ sale to Facebook a few months back.

A key element of the patent conflicts surrounded the “physics engine” Matas was credited with designing for the new company; Matas is listed as a contributor to a number of patents that are assigned to Apple. In many states, work created while employed by a company belongs to that company and can’t be used without permission after the employee leaves.

Over the course of 2011, while Push Pop Press developed its publishing tools and worked with Apple board member Al Gore to deliver his “Our Choice” book as a flagship example of what the new publishing platform could deliver (shown below), Apple itself was busy working on developing its textbook strategy.

Apple had already delivered its Xcode 4.0 and iAd Producer development tools in 2010, delivered last year’s new iBooks app alongside iPad 2, and was preparing to release basic EPUB support in Pages 09. But it was also deep into development of its iBooks 2.0 strategy revolving around the iBooks Author and iTunes U initiatives announced earlier today, at the heart of which were textbooks aimed at deployment on iPad.

Now this of course all sounds very dramatic: Jobs, Apple CEO and co-founder, issuing an ultimatum to an upstart and innovative company comprised of former Apple engineers.

But in-the-know Apple blogger John Gruber writes, citing his own well-established sources, that no legal threat was ever made.

The story I’ve heard is a little different, and a lot less dramatic. What a well-informed little birdie told me is that it wasn’t a legal threat over patents or technology, but rather something more like Panic’s classic story about iTunes and Audion (or maybe you more like Jobs’s hint regarding the then-upcoming iPhoto at the end of that tale). I.e. that Jobs more or less warned Push Pop Press that Apple was going in the same direction, in a big way. A competitive warning, not a legal threat.

While we have no way of knowing which version is more accurate, Gruber’s story jibes a bit more with a story we heard about Jobs and Apple’s attempt to acquire Dropbox.

According to Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston, Apple offered Dropbox $800 million but negotiations ultimately never went anywhere because Dropbox wanted to remain an independant company.

Jobs smiled warmly as he told them he was going after their market. “He said we were a feature, not a product,” says Houston. Courteously, Jobs spent the next half hour waxing on over tea about his return to Apple, and why not to trust investors, as the duo—or more accurately, Houston, who plays Penn to Ferdowsi’s mute Teller—peppered him with questions.

So yeah, take that for what it’s worth.

Apple’s retail guru Ron Johnson may have left the company, but Apple remains steadfastly committed to rolling out more and more retail shops across the globe.

In that vien, livemint reported last week that Apple is considering opening up its first retail store in India. Interestingly, the option for Apple only became available recently following the Indian government’s about face with respect to allowing “full ownership of single-brand retail stores by foreign companies.”

Of course, it’s not as if Apple products can’t be found in India as Apple has reseller agreements in place with large retailers such as Imagine and iStore.

While it remains unclear to what extent Apple may explore retail options in India, the “doors are now open” a government official said.

The government last week notified the single-brand retail policy, allowing 100% FDI in single-brand retail trading and consequently set the stage for global retail firms to roll out investments to open fully-owned stores in India. The move freed up the 51% limit that had been in place.

However, proposals involving FDI beyond 51% will have to mandatorily source at least 30% of the total value of the products sold from Indian small industries, village and cottage industries, and artisans and craftsmen.

When asked whether the 30% local sourcing clause will be a hindrance, the DIPP official said, “Let Apple finalize its business plan and the investment it wants to make. If they tell us that the 30% sourcing is a problem, at that stage we will look into it,” he said.

Apple, per usual, had no comment on the matter.

Apple isn’t exactly synonymous with seamless cloud computing solutions, but Apple’s iCloud roll-out thus far has seemingly gone off without a hitch.

Speaking to Apple’s iCloud initiative, Tim Cook noted during Apple’s recent earnings conference call that the company viewed iCloud not merely as a product or service, but as an integral part of the company’s future. More specifically, Cook noted that over 85 million people have already signed up for the service.

It’s almost cliche to say it, but a clear factor in the success of iCloud is the simple fact that, as Steve Jobs explained when  introducing the service, “it just works.” The seamless syncing across devices of songs and documents, all for free, works quietly in the background as user’s don’t need to fiddle with login names and clunky preference panes etc.

The development and release of iCloud, Tim Cook explained, was a “fundamental shift recognizing that people had numerous devices and they wanted the bulk of their content in the cloud, and easily accessible from all the devices.”

Interestingly, Apple’s initial cloud strategy included an attempt to acquire Dropbox. The company, however, refused an $800 million acquisition offer from Apple, but not before Steve Jobs warned them that Apple was going after their business in a big way.

Further highlighting the seriousness with which Apple views iCloud, Cook didn’t mince words: “It’s just not a product. It’s a strategy for the next decade.”

For the first time in history, Nintendo anticipates that it’ll experience its first annual loss since 1981.

Bloomberg reports:

Nintendo Co., the world’s largest maker of video-game machines, forecast its first annual loss in at least 30 years after the yen reached a postwar high and the new 3DS console had weaker-than-expected sales.

The net loss may be 20 billion yen ($264 million) for the year ending in March, compared with a previous projection for a 20 billion-yen profit, Kyoto, Japan-based Nintendo said in a statement yesterday. That compared with the 12.2 billion-yen average profit of 22 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Nintendo, which gets about 80 percent of its revenue from the Americas and Europe, is predicting lower profit after the yen gained against the dollar and surged to a decade high against the euro, trimming the repatriated value of overseas sales. President Satoru Iwata cut the price of the 3DS by 40 percent in August as gamers flock to Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and iPad, and Facebook Inc.’s website.

Apple’s not the only company with record breaking iPhone news this week. AT&T earlier today reported their earnings for the December quarter and noted that they actiavted 7.6 million iPhone 4S devices during that period, a figure significantly higher than the 4.2 million iPhone activations Verizon reported recently.

The 7.6 million iPhone activations represents an all-time quarterly high for AT&T, and incredibly, iPhone sales comprised 80.8% of AT&T’s total 9.4 million in smartphone sales. And of those 7.6 million actiavtions, AT&T noted that the majority of them were for the iPhone 4S

In the fourth quarter, the company set a new record with 9.4 million smartphones sold, nearly double the number sold in the third quarter and 50 percent more than the previous quarterly record. Fourth-quarter smartphone sales represented more than 80 percent of postpaid device sales. Both iPhone and Android device sales set records. During the quarter, more than 7.6 million iPhones were activated, the majority of which were iPhone 4S, which went on sale Oct. 14, and more than twice as many Android smartphones were sold versus the fourth quarter a year ago. iPhone sales were helped by a superior customer experience, with AT&T delivering download speeds up to three-times faster than on other U.S. carriers’ networks.

All told, AT&T’s revenue for the quarter checked in at $32.5 billion, a 3.6% increase from teh same quarter a year-ago.

Following Apple’s blowout quarter this week, Tim Cook sent a company wide email to Apple employees inviting them to a Town Hall meeting which was held yesterday. In addition to going over their record breaking quarter, Cook also delivered some welcome news to the Mac faithful.

9to5Mac reports:

Cook announced that Apple employees will soon be given $500 discounts on purchases of new Macs and $250 discounts on purchases of a new iPad.

The new discount program will officially kickoff at some point during the month of June. A major caveat is that Apple employees may only utilize this opportunity every three years, and employees must have been working for Apple for at least 90 days.

Google’s struggle to prop up Google+ as a legitimate rival to Facebook is ongoing. The search giant is working hard to leverage their other brands into more Google+ users, and while it’s certainly working in that regard, user engagement on the site remains piss poor.

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The Apple blogosphere is still aflutter with Apple’s outstanding earnings results from the December quarter, but a new iPhone rumor managed to sneak into the news stream today courtesy of Seth Weintraub.

Citing a reliable source at Foxconn, Weintraub writes that iPhone 5 production is set to begin and that sample devices are already making the rounds there. A few varied form factors are reportedly floating about, yet a few features are reportedly common between all of them.

4+ inch display (made by LG on at least one of them).

No teardrop-shaped devices, as rumored in the lead up to the iPhone 4S. Samples so far have been symmetrical in thickness (also longer/wider).

Neither of the sample devices have the iPhone 4/4S form factor.

Neither of the devices are the final versions.

While this of course extremely speculative, it does jibe with some previous iPhone 5 rumors we’ve seen, namely that Apple’s next-gen iPhone will sport  larger screen and come in an entirely new form factor. And it’s nice to see that that teardrop mumbo jumbo is no longer a talking point. Sure, it might look good as a prototype, but ergonomically it’s probably not terribly conducive to an enjoyable user experience.

Anywhoo, John Gruber of Daring Fireball typically has some solid sources within Apple and he takes issue with Weintraub’s report that iPhone production is about to commence, simply stating, “No it’s not.’

As for the report of a longer and wider form factor?

Gruber notes:

Longer and wider? Sounds like bullshit. I can see Apple putting a bigger display on a device of the same size. I can’t see them making a bigger device.

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Adam Lashinsky’s new book Inside Apple (available now on Amazon as an e-book) and, suffice it to say, it’s chock full of new and interesting information that Apple fans will find of utmost interest.

And especially because Apple is a notoriously secretive company, sometimes even the most mundane of details about how the company works are shrouded in mystery, and therefore, intrigue.

A few months back, Lashinsky wrote an article for Fortune where he described, somewhat briefly, a typically-annual Apple gathering dubbed the “Top 100″. The gathering was/is comprised of the 100 employees Steve Jobs would take with him in the hypothetical scenario where he’d be forced to branch off and start anew. In other words, the best of the best.

Naturally, being chosen to attend the Top 100 gathering was an honor and an extremely coveted distinction. The individuals chosen for the gathering weren’t necessarily all high-ranking executives as low level engineers would sometimes be chosen at the expense of certain department VPs.

“Hurt feelings over exclusion were the norm, which is what Jobs expected and even relished,” Lashinsky writes.

As you might expect from a company like Apple, the Top 100 gathering was “shrouded in secrecy”, with Apple going so far as to institute a rule that prevented attendees from driving themselves. Rather, they had to drive to a pickup point and hop on a bus to the destination point, which for many years was the Chaminade Resort & Spa in Santa Cruz, California before it was moved to the Carmel Valley Ranch in recent years.

So secretive were the details of the Top 100 meeting that Apple had the meeting rooms swept for bugs beforehand. Jobs was known to forbid food servers from entering the room while products were being shown. He once encouraged attendees to introduce themselves to the person sitting next to them to ensure that no one had snuck into the room.

Wow, it’s surprising he didn’t have special employees taste the food to check for poison!

Once all the over-the-top security measures were taken care of, Jobs was able to get down to business.

Once ensconced at their exclusive off-site, the Top 100 were treated to a thorough review of Apple’s product plans for the next eighteen months or so. Jobs sat at the front of the room, kicking things off with a presentation that described his vision for the company and then presiding over presentations by other executives.

Highlighting the seriousness to which Jobs took these meetings, his presentations were said to be as informative and as serious as his famous keynote presentations. Each day, there’d be about 6 presentations from Jobs and his executive crew, each coming in at about 1 hour long.

One executive recalled how nothing in those meetings was off-limits. Whereas Apple typically exerts control over the narrative behind its products, the Top 100 meeting provided an avenue where employees could discuss and debate anything they wanted without having to worry about secrecy or repercussions from questioning the powers that be.

The meetings were intended to allow the level of leadership below the executive team – people who in such a siloed and segregated company wouldn’t ordinarily interact with one another – to bond.

Tantalizingly, the Top 100 meeting also served as an opportunity for Apple to reveal upcoming products to the lucky employees in attendance.

Lashinsky notes, for example, that Apple’s retail plans along with the original iPod were both unveiled at these Top 100 meetings long before being introduced to the public. While this might not seem all that surprising, remember that secrecy at Apple is paramount and that the company has security measures in place to ensure that the only employees aware of an upcoming product are the ones working on it.

Sidenote: Given the tepid response to Jobs’ original iPod introduction, we wonder what the folks at the Top 100 thought about Apple’s first music player

Lashinsky notes that the last Top 100 retreat attended by Jobs was in November 2010 where the big reveal was the iPad 2, complete with the ingenious smart cover. This was a solid 4 months before the official iPad 2 announcement.

Products aside, the Top 100 meeting also provided Apple employees unfettered access to Jobs and his cadre of trusted executives in the form of a Q&A session. In once instance, Jobs was asked why he wasn’t more philanthropic. In classic Jobs form, he bluntly responded that it was a waste of time.

In another portion of the book, Lashinksy noted that Jobs’ goal was to create value in Apple as a company so that shareholders could accumulate wealth and give it away at their own discretion.

Jobs was notoriously stingy when it came to giving away money. He argued privately that the most philanthropic action Apple could take was to increase the value of the company to share-holders could give away their wealth to causes of their choice, not Apple’s.

Interestingly, the Top 100 wasn’t always and exclusively comprised of Apple employees. Every so often, an executive from another company would be invited along, such as Intel CEO Paul Otellini and some of Apple’s “key contacts at AT&T.”

Lastly, and somewhat comically, one former Apple manager said that many employees who weren’t invited along to the retreat would indulge themselves in a “tounge-in-cheek” Bottom 100 lunch while the chosen few were out getting a glimpse of the future with Jobs and co.

It’s hard to keep up with all of the legal entanglements Samsung and Apple are currently embroiled in. The two companies have legal proceedings in-play across 4 continents and in over 10 countries.

One of the busiest jurisdictions with respect to Apple and Samsung’s ongoing legal dispute is Germany where Apple achieved some success in the past to the extent it secured a ban on the original Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet for infringing upon Apple owned design patents. And just last week, Apple filed two new lawsuits in Germany targeting 10 Samsung smartphones and 5 Samsung tablets.

So yeah, keeping track of what’s going on can be taxing.

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Apple reported yet another blowout quarter this afternoon, thanks in large part to over 37 million in iPhone sales.

The figure in and of itself is certainly impressive, but when you contextualize the figure while looking back at Apple’s annual iPhone sales since 2007, we can really see the extent to which Apple’s iPhone is a freight train that Android simply can’t stop.

Matt Richman writes:

In 2009, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007 and 2008 combined. In 2010, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007, 2008, and 2009 combined. Last year, Apple sold 93.1 million iPhones, slightly more than it did in in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined. The pattern continued.

Hot damn.

Apple last quarter had a slight misstep when its earnings fell short of analyst expectations for the first time in years. Of course, the delayed release of the iPhone 4S had something to do with revenue coming in below expectations. But during last quarter’s earnings conference call, Apple CEO Tim Cook boldly predicted that December quarter would likely set an all time iPhone sales record.

Earlier today, Apple released its earnings results from the quarter gone by and the results are astonishing.

Record breaking iPhone sales. Record breaking revenue. And last but not least, record breaking earnings. Hell, record breaking everything.

All told, Apple, during the last three months of 2012 posted revenue of $46.33 billion and a quarterly profit of $13.06 billion. Earnings came in at $13.87, well above Wall Street estimates. During the same quarter a year-ago, Apple reported revenue of $26.74 billion and a quarterly profit of $6 billion with an EPS of $6.43. The consensus on Wall Street came in at $10.08 per share on anticipated revenue of $38.85 billion;

That’s right folks, a company with the second largest market cap on the planet was able, in just a span of 12 months, to double, DOUBLE, it’s earnings. For a company as large as Apple, that’s absolutely unprecedented.

Leading the charge, as you might expect, was the iPhone. During the quarter gone by, Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones, completely obliterating even the most bullish of Wall St. projections while setting a new iPhone quarter sales record in the process. Year over year iPhone growth came in at 128%.

But the iPhone wasn’t the only device to see a huge uptick in sales. Apple last quarter sold 15.43 million iPads, a 111% increase from the same quarter a year-ago and yet another all-time sales record. The previous iPad sales record was 11.12 million.

What’s more, Mac sales did better than expected with Apple recording 5.2 million Macs sold, a 26% increase from the same quarter a year-ago. And guess what, folks, Mac sales during the December also set a quarterly sales record.

The only device that saw a decline in sales, as you might expect, was the iPod. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods during the quarter gone by, representing a 21% decline from the same quarter a year-ago. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

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

MacStories has put up some illustrative charts depicting Apple’s epic growth over the past few years. Check it out here.

Lastly, you don’t want to put too much weight into after-hours trading, but last we checked, shares of AAPL were trading at $454.

Wowsers.

Verizon today released its earnings results from the December quarter and reported a loss of $2.02 billion, or $0.71 a share. During the same quarter a year-ago, the US-based carrier reported a loss of $2.64 billion.

Apple wise, Verizon sold an impressive 4.3 million iPhone devices. All told, smartphone sales for the quarter came in at 7.7 million units, meaning that Apple’s iPhone accounts for over 55% of every smartphone Verizon sold during the quarter.

As for the compay’s quarterly loss, two issues are at play.

One, Verizon had a one-time adjustment to the value of its pension plan last quarter which affected operating income. And two, keep in mind that Verizon, like every other carrier, pays large subsidies to Apple for the iPhone. Consequently, Verizon makes a profit on each iPhone sold months after the point of sale.

Usually, Verizon’s overall revenue increase is driven higher monthly wireless service revenues, as it gains customers. But this quarter, the largest contributor to the rise in revenue was phone sales, which doubled from last year to $2.2 billion.

Verizon Wireless added 1.2 million new subscribers on contract-based plans, which are the most lucrative. It was the second-best result in the last two years, further solidifying the company’s position as the industry leader, with 87.4 million phones and other devices on contract-based plans, and 108.7 million total.

Later today, Apple will release its own earnings with some analysts expecting Apple’s December quarter iPhone sales volume to come in in the 32 million range.

via Yahoo

Eddy Cue, Apple’s current Senior VP of Internet Software and Services, first became a household name following the debacle that was MobileMe. If you recall, the MobileMe launch was an utter disaster and public relations nightmare for Apple. The botched launch prompted Jobs to call a meeting with the entire MobileMe team where he said everyone “tarnished Apple’s reputation” and that everyone should hate each other “for having let each other down.”

Not one for apologies, Jobs named a new executive to hed up the MobileMe initiative right on the spot – Eddy Cue.

Now in a soon-to-be-released book by Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky titled Inside Apple, Cue is described as Apple’s “dealmaker” and the man responsible for hashing out and negotiating those ever so tricky and complex licensing deals with content owners.

MacNN reports:

Cue was the man responsible for finalizing negotiations with the record companies for iTunes as well as movie studios and TV producers for the iTunes Store. It was Cue who has remade the less-successful MobileMe service into iCloud, persuaded Steve Jobs to go with ARM and not Intel for the early iPhone, and who (according to the book) actually led the initial iPhone discussions with AT&T.

Apple has long been praised for having an exceptionally strong executive team, which is why investors were and remain confident that Apple can continue to lead the way in technological innovation even in the absence of co-founder Steve Jobs. So while executives like Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall are well known, it’s interesting to see the role some of Apple’s other executives play.

More recently, Cue was seen on stage during Apple’s textbook event last week and is rumored to be involved with the negotiations with TV networks surrounding Apple’s rumored HDTV.

Lastly, Apple this past September awarded Cue 100,000 shares of restricted stock which are now worth over $40 million. Half of the shares, however, vest in August 2013 while the other half vest in August of 2015.

An increasing amount of Apple’s income is derived from China, and while the bulk of those revenues come from iPhone, iPad, and iPod sales, Mac sales there are growing tremendously and are even outpacing Mac sales growth here in the US, according to a recent research note from analyst Ben A Reitzes of Barclays Capital.

“We believe Mac sales remain relatively strong even as the economy weakens, benefiting from new stores in China and strong sales of the MacBook Air,” Reitzes explained. “Even though the economy and HDD shortages are concerns that could limit upside, we remain comfortable with our estimate for 22% (year over year) Mac unit growth for (the fourth quarter of calendar 2011) given overseas momentum — especially in China where growth is much higher.”

Apple of course isn’t shy about how important China is towards their continued growth. Indeed, during an earnings conference call this past August, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company hadn’t even scratched the surface with respect to sales in China. And with rumors continuing to point towards the iPhone landing on China Mobile – the largest cell carrier on the planet – Apple’s revenue there may be on the cusp of exploding.

Lastly, Reitzes anticipates that Apple’s Mac sales for the December quarter – the results of which will be released on Tuesday – will be higher than expected due to strong Mac sales in China.

via AppleInsider