Edible Apple

In an effort to obtain customer feedback about potential new products, Best Buy sent out a survey to customers wherein the retailing giant makes reference to a 42-inch Apple HDTV.

The big box wants to know how you feel about it based on some proposed promotional verbiage which boasts that “Apple finally reinvents what a TV can do,” saying that it’ll run iOS, support iCloud, be controllable from an iPhone or iPad, and have access to Netflix, YouTube, and Flickr — in other words, it’s an Apple TV wrapped in an actual television set, exactly as you’d expect.

Slightly stranger, though, is that Best Buy says it’ll have an “iSight” camera — a brand Apple hasn’t actively used in some time for its webcams — and that it’ll be ready for Skype, which probably isn’t the way Cupertino would want to position the TV’s video call capabilities with FaceTime on deck. Best Buy pegs the set at 42 inches and slaps a $1,499 price tag on it, a fairly hefty premium over models from top tier manufacturers in the same size class; even many 46-inch models retail for less.

via The Verge

Steve Jobs once said, with regard to smartphones, that “”if you see a stylus, they blew it.”

Apparently Samsung disagrees with that sentiment. During today’s Super Bowl – great game by the way – Samsung unveiled its latest commercial, this time for the upcoming Galaxy Note which features, you guessed it, a stylus. And making a cameo was Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher who signs a Note device with said stylus.

Check it out below.

Barron’s reports:

Citigroup’s Richard Gardner this morning reiterates a Buy rating on shares of Apple and a $600 price target after hosting a meeting on Thursday with chief executive Tim Cook andCFO Peter Oppenheimer on Apple’s campus.

Among the “key points” Gardner gleaned was that Cook reiterated a view that expansion in theiOS operating system platform will lead to tablet sales eventually surpassing the volume of sales of traditional PCs.

The Verge reports:

Apple has been forced to remove its 3G iPad 2, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 devices from the online German Apple store today, following a dispute with Motorola Mobility

…

Update: It appears that Apple has successfully convinced a court in Germany to suspend enforcement of this injunction, according to AllThingsD. It’s unclear at this time exactly why this suspension was awarded, but it’s most likely being provided so that Apple can appeal the issue to a higher court.

Earlier today, Faceboko CEO Mark Zuckerberg uploaded a photo of his desk to Facebook. Seems like the Facebook wunderkind is a fan of the MacBook Air. And taking a look around the office, seems like Facebook HQ is quite Mac heavy.

All in all, this isn’t too surprising. It was revealed during Facebook’s IPO filing that the Zukerberg, like Steve Jobs, will only be taking a $1/year salary.

Following all of the hoopla surrounding Facebook’s IPO announcement comes this interesting nugget from Electronista:

The SEC filing behind Facebook’s long-expected IPO has seen company founder Mark Zuckerberg take an Apple cue in his pay. The CEO earlier this month requested that, as of the start of 2013, his base pay be cut from as much as $500,000 in 2011 to just $1, much like Apple co-creator Steve Jobs. Zuckerberg is known to have taken advice from Jobs and considered his success an aspirational goal.

Like Jobs, most of Zuckerberg’s value will come from his stake in the company. At 28.4 percent ownership, the executive is estimated to be worth about $25 billion. While the strategy has been used by other CEOs, the $1 salary is usually a sign of confidence as well as an incentive to make sure the company succeeds.

AppleInsider reports:

In an update to his LinkedIn profile spotted by several European publications, Microsoft’s marketing manager for Xbox UK and head of product marketing for all of Microsoft UK, Robin Burrowes, reveals he’s jumped ship for Apple, where he’s been hired to help grow Europe’s App Store marketing segment.

Burrowes tenure at Microsoft saw him work on Xbox for roughly seven years, where he was most recently responsible for all product, business and marketing management of Xbox LIVE in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Relaying a report from Daiwa Securities in the Commercial Times, Digitimes reports that Apple will unveil its next-gen iPhone at WWDC 2012, scheduled for June 2012.

The iPhone 5 will continue to utilize glass to glass (G/G) touch panel technology which will benefit current touch panel suppliers TPK Holding and Wintek, the paper quoted the securities house as saying.

It’s admittedly too early to tell what production timeline Apple is operating under, but feature wise, the iPhone 5 is rumored to sport an A6 processor while also including support for 4G LTE networks.

Foxconn, Apple’s largest manufacturing partner, recently received a few sought after tax breaks that will result in the Asian-based company opening up a plant in Brazil and manufacturing iPads.

The Brazil-based Folha website reports:

The determination provides for exemption or reduction of the IPI (Excise Tax), PIS and Cofins for companies investing in research and development of technology products.

According to the ordinance today, the rule will apply to tablets with touch screens, no keyboard and weighing less than 750 grams.

Also included as accessories, cables, power supplies and manuals that are related to the tablets.

With the iPad 2 weighing in at a tad over 600 grams, Apple’s market leading tablet clearly falls under the exception.

Notably, Apple is taking a keen interest in Brazil and looks at it as an extremely important market, second of course to China. During Apple’s earnings conference call last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook stressed that Brazil was squarely on Apple’s radar.

We’re selling in Brazil through carrier partners and online. We’re selling in Russia through carrier partners and reseller partners. We’re selling in India through carrier partners and reseller partners. I’ve tried to be clear in the past that we have our time and energy in China at the moment. We’re not ignoring others, but we’re spending less time in the others. Brazil is the next country, we’ve begun to go deeper in that country.

During the recent holiday quarter, sales in Brazil climbed 118% year over year.

That said, the presence of an iPad manufacturing plant in Brazil should do wonders for Apple’s interest in making inroads there. As it stands now, high taxes on imported foreign made goods result in products like the iPad costing nearly twice as much as they do in the US. For example, a base model iPad 2 – which sells for $499 here in the US – might cost in the $900 range in Brazil.

Foxconn already has two plants in Sao Paulo and has already invested $300 million into a third that will likely be tailored for iPad production and will accommodate 1,400 employees.

Originally, Foxconn was hoping to begin iPad production in July 2011 before they became entangled in a dispute with the Brazilian government.  With all of the aforementioned roadblocks now out of the way, iPad production should begin relatively shortly.

Lastly, it’s worth pointing out that Apple in January reportedly hired former Sony executive Anderson Teixeira – who was born in Brazil by the way – to head up the company’s Latin American division.

CNET reports on the latest developments in the fascinating story behind the fall of MegaUpload and its founder Kim DotCom. The U.S Justice Department is currently trying to extradite DotCom and other MegaUpload bigwigs from New Zealand where they were recently arrested amidst a haven of exotic and lavish items.

As part of the indictment, there are passages describing how DotCom and co were interested in copying YouTube’s videos and putting them onto their own site en masse. Below are emails between two of MegaUpload’s managers, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, from April 2006.

“Do we have a server available to continue downloading of the Youtube’s vids?” van der Kolk wrote Ortmann according to the indictment. “Kim just mentioned again that this has really priority.”

“Hope YouTube is not implementing a fraud detection system now…praying,” Ortmann responded. Awhile later, van der Kolk wrote back that he didn’t see how some of YouTube’s unpopular videos could help “jump start” MegaUpload.

“Well we only have 30 percent of their videos yet,” Ortmann wrote. “In my opinion it’s nice to have everything so we can decide and brainstorm later how we’re going to benefit from it.”

Check out more int he full article.

In the high-tech bubble that is Silicon Valley, engineering talent is king, and the battle for that talent is often  fierce. Indeed, Steve Jobs was so paranoid about other companies stealing his employees that the “About This Mac” option on the Apple menu bar – which used to list the names of employees involved in the development of a particular OS – now simply contains, you guessed it, solely technical information about the computer.

And of course, there’s also the famous story of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer absolutely losing his mind upon finding out that a top executive was jumping ship for Google. “Just tell me it’s anywhere besides Google”, Ballmer reportedly said.

In short, companies aren’t just interested in keeping the employees they have, they have a vested interest in keeping their employees from joining a rival firm.

To that end, a number of high-profile companies, including Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Pixar, Intuit, and Lucasfilm, are being sued for entering into agreements which prevented them from recruiting employees – via cold calling – from company’s that signed on the dotted line.

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Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster issued a research note today lending even more fodder to the Apple HDTV rumor mill.

“We recently spoke to a major TV component supplier who has been contacted by Apple regarding various capabilities of their television display components,” Muster writes. “We are confident that Apple will enter the connected TV market, but timing remains uncertain. More specifically, the hardware could be ready quickly, but the timing and scope of a revamped TV content solution is unclear.”

So Apple will enter the TV market but the timing remains uncertain? Hmm, I could have told you that without talking to anyone.

Munster has long been a proponent for an Apple HDTV set going as far back as 2009 when he predicted that Apple would enter the TV market within 5 years. Now it’s very likely that his prediction will come to fruition, but in all seriousness, a prediction with a 5-year window is a bit absurd.

Munster also notes that Apple is investing in manufacturing facilities capable of churning out displays as small as 3.5 inches and as large as 50 inches. A few weeks ago, the USA Today said that Apple’s HDTV efforts were well underway but that they were having trouble securing licensing deals. What’s more, the report claimed that Apple is currently exploring 42 and 50-inch LCD sets with embedded Wi-Fi functionality. More recently, and take this with a grain of salt, Technobuffalo reported that Apple is working on a 42-inch OLED set with built-in face recognition.

Software wise, Munster anticipates Apple could implement a few solutions to distinguish its product from an already saturated HDTV market.

• Apple could enable its television to manage a consumer’s live TV service from within a unified interface, like TiVo, but without a set-top box.
• Apple could offer access to live TV from network programming in combination with Web-based video services.
• Apple could offer monthly subscriptions on an a-la-carte basis for live TV packages with content from content providers; this is the most challenging scenario due to existing licensing arrangements, he notes.

“We believe that Apple only enters mature markets with the goal of revolutionizing them, as it did with the smartphone,” Munster adds. “In television, we see an opportunity for Apple to reinvent how consumers discover and enjoy video on their TVs and mobile devices (live TV, previously aired shows, movies, user generated content, etc.). Without a revamped TV content solution, we do not think Apple enters the TV market. Since we know Apple is exploring television hardware, we are therefore led to conclude that the company is exploring a solution for live TV, and this solution could be one that has not yet been taken mainstream.”

Rumors surrounding an Apple HDTV reached a fever pitch a few months ago when Steve Jobs, in his biography, noted to Walter Isaacson that he had ‘finally cracked’ the challenge of delivering an integrated TV set.

via AppleInsider

Apple yesterday announced that it had hired Dixons CEO John Browett to take over Ron Johnson’s spot as the company’s Senior VP of retail. The selection of Browett was notable for a few reasons. One, Browett has a lot of international experience. And two, as noted by many, Dixons operates a number of stores in the UK that have consistently been ranked dead last in terms of reputation and customer satisfaction.

As a result, one Mac user decided to email Apple CEO Tim Cook to voice his concern about Apple’s latest hire. And much to his surprise, Cook actually wrote back.

Tony,

I talked to many people and John was the best by far. I think you will be as pleased as I am. His role isn’t to bring Dixons to Apple, [it's] to bring Apple to an even higher level of customer service and satisfaction.

Tim

Steve Jobs would occasionally respond back to user emails and it’s nice to see Cook keeping that mantle alive and well.

via MacRumors

Apple this past quarter shipped a whopping 37 million iPhones, setting a new quarterly record as iPhone sales grew 128% year over year.

The achievement was enough for Apple to slightly edge out Samsung with respect to smartphone sales during the recent holiday quarter. A few days ago, Samsung reported shipping 36 million smartphones as the Korean based company reported $4.7 billion in profits during the Q4 of 2011.

Looking back over the past year, Samsung edged out Apple in smartphone sales during the June quarter while Apple bested Samsung during the March quarter. All told, Apple in 2011 sold 93 million smartphones while Samsung managed to sell 95 million smartphones. And while Apple’s iPhone growth is certainly impressive, Samsung didn’t slouch off in that department either as their year over year growth checked in at 278%.

Of course, when it comes to profit share in the smartphone market, Apple simply can’t be touched. Hell, when it comes to profits period, Apple can’t be touched. With revenue of $46.33 billion in the last quarter, Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters in corporate history. The short of it is that Apple’s business model generates a whole lot more money with less.

In any event, the research firm IHS last week released a chart charting smartphone shipments over the past few quarters.

So while things are looking up for Apple and Samsung, the same can’t be said for Nokia as the company continues to struggle to regain its footing after being blindsided by the iPhone. And despite positive reviews surrounding their Windows Phone 7 based Nokia Lumia lineup, customers simply aren’t picking them up en masse.

Jon Rubinstein, who former served as the senior VP of Apple’s iPod devision, has left Hewlett-Packard according to a recent report from Arik Hesseldahl at All Things D.

Rubinstein is said to have no immediate plans, and had completed a 12- to 24-month commitment to stay with HP after the acquisition. “Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well,” HP spokeswoman Mylene Mangalindan said.

In a brief comment to AllThingsD, Rubinstein said, “I am going to take a well deserved break after four and a half years of developing webOS.”

Rubinstein, you might remember, had long worked with Apple and worked with Steve Jobs going all the way back to their days at NeXT. After retiring in the mid-2000′s, Rubinstein re-emerged with Palm where he helped spearhead their efforts to take on the iPhone with the Palm Pre. What transpired was a bitter back and forth between the two companies, with Steve Jobs reportedly going so far as to call Rubinstein up and yell at him for allegedly poaching Apple engineers. And, you might also remember, the drama surrounding Palm’s repeated efforts to enable the Palm Pre to sync up with iTunes.

The end of the entire saga is well known: The Palm Pre failed to gain traction in the marketplace and Palm was subsequently acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2010. From there followed a series of corporate missteps with the end result being the upcoming release of webOS as open source. Remember the ill-fated HP TouchPad?

“Rubinstein’s departure is no big surprise,” the report notes. “Sources said he hadn’t been seen at HP’s offices following the decision by former CEO Léo Apotheker to get out of the business of making WebOS-based hardware.”

A few weeks ago, before official word of Rubinstein’s departure emerged, a report claimed that Rubinstein was currently “hiding out” and busying himself with spending his millions.

Not a bad, Ruby. Not bad.

Related:

Jon Rubinstein compares the HP TouchPad to the early days of OS X

Jon Rubenstein has never used an iPhone

What Jon Rubenstein learned from Steve Jobs

Earlier today, Amazon released their earnings results from 2011 holiday quarter and, suffice it to say, they’re no Apple.

Though overall revenue came in at $17.43 billion, up 35% from the same quarter a year-ago, the company’s actual profits declined by a whopping 58% to $177 million. All told, Amazon reported earnings of $0.38 a share, almost double the Wall St. consensus of $0.17. Last year, however, Amazon recorded net income of $416 million and EPS of $0.91.

Interestingly, the company didn’t disclose any specific Kindle Fire sales figures, though a recent report from a research company claims that Amazon thus far has sold upwards of 6 million Kindle Fire units. Now if that’s anywhere close to being true, you’d think that Amazon would be touting those figures. Perhaps its possible that Amazon just doesn’t want to set a yardstick for Kindle Fire sales prematurely.

As for Amazon’s steep drop in profits, note that Amazon reportedly loses a small bit of money on each Kindle Fire it sells. In turn, Amazon is hoping to pick up the monetary slack via sales of its Amazon Prime service.

Still, Amazon did mention that Kindle sales, in the aggregate, tripled during the holiday shopping season.

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