Edible Apple

For the first time, Apple’s iPhone was the most popular phone in Japan during the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a report from The Mainichi Daily News. Contributing to Apple’s impressive showing – 26.6% share – was the release of the iPhone 4S.

Fujitsu Ltd., which took over the mobile phone operations of Toshiba Corp., came second with an 18.3 percent share and Sharp Corp. ranked third with 15.7 percent.

Total shipments in Japan surged 15.2 percent from a year earlier to 10.65 million units, of which smartphones accounted for 64.7 percent.

For all of 2011, shipments climbed for the second straight year, rising 5.0 percent to 37.96 million units.

via Mainichi

Rumors that Apple has plans to develop a smaller 7.85-inch iPad continue to trickle, with the latest report coming from Digitimes, which cites a source in the supply chain and relays that Apple will incorporate a slim bezel display for its miniaturized iPad. This iPad Mini, for lack of a better term, will be designed to compete with the Amazon Kindle Fire and smaller form factored tablets from the likes of Samsung.

Notably, the iPad Mini won’t feature the same Retina Display Apple currently employs on the iPhone 4S and the recently announced third generation iPad. This is likely due to cost considerations and to further differentiate the user experience from the more expensive and therefore more profitable iPad.

Although the 7.85-inch iPads may not adopt Retina displays as in the recently released new iPads, the 7.85-inch model is likely to use IPS/FFS panels from LG Display and probably AU Optronics (AUO).

Price wise, Digitimes’ source claims that Apple will price the iPad Mini in the $249-$299 range. Interestingly, Apple has iPad Touch models that cost more than that so it’ll be interesting to see if we’ll see a corresponding drop in those prices. Our guess is that we wont and that the iPad Mini might only come with 8GB of memory to keep the price so low.

via Digitimes

Check out this fascinating article from Wade Roush of Xconomy describing, in tantalizing detail, the mechanics behind Google’s acquisition process. While Google has had a number of acquisitions which failed to pan out (i.e Dodgeball), they’ve had many more successes than failures. Further, many of Google’s acquisitions (from Keyhole to Android) would go on to become integral parts of the Google we now know today.

How does Google go about choosing which companies to acquire? What steps does it take to ensure a seamless transition for the acquired company’s technology and employees?

Google has worked to refine a set of procedures and resources—a whole infrastructure, really—to make sure every acquired team finds a foothold within the company, a home where they can get to work on achieving their vision. The reorganization under Page was the starting point. “There has been a sea change that makes it easier to help people understand where they fit in,” says Butler. “If we are going to make an acquisition for Chrome, then Sundar [Pichai, vice president of product management] and his vice president and directors are going to be behind it, and there is going to be an executive at Google responsible for those people. There is always a sponsor.”

Butler herself is a key facilitator. Over the last year, she’s doubled the size of her integration team, from four to eight—and she says there are another 80 M&A experts across Google’s core product areas. There are specialists who handle setting up newly acquired teams with office space, desks, and chairs; making sure that patents, contracts, and other assets and obligations are smoothly transferred; training managers to understand how performance reviews, promotions, and other procedures work inside Google; and even transferring an acquired company’s software into Google’s code base. “My team works as the quarterback and keeps all the other teams moving,” Butler says.

Roush covers it all and a whole lot more. It’s worth your time to give it a read.

Well in case you had any doubts about how customers would react to the iPad 3, rest assured that Apple is selling them faster than they can make em’.

Apple told the USA Today that demand for their latest tablet is “off the charts” and that the first batch of pre-orders have already been sold out.

Customer response to the new iPad has been off the charts and the quantity available for pre-order has been purchased. Customers can continue to order online and receive an estimated delivery date.

As it stands now, shipping times for the new iPad have slipped to 2-3 weeks in the US. Just a few days ago, the estimated shipping time was for March 19.

via USA Today

Apple last week introduced a revamped version of the Apple TV. In addition to a completely new interface, the new Apple TV finally includes support for 1080p videos.

But is the Apple TV, with in 1080p in tow, even that useful? After all, the enhanced video quality is great but if the file sizes for TV shows and movies is excruciatingly large, 1080p will be more trouble than it’s worth.

But not to worry, Chris Foresman of Ars Technica points out that even though Full HD video includes 2.5 as many pixels, the corresponding file sizes are only about 1.5 times as big as its 720p brethren. Some examples highlighted by Foresman include the movie Hugo. The 720p version of Hugo checks in at 3.99GB while the 1080p version checks in at 4.84GB. Not too bad. And in case bandwidth an issue, note that the standard def version comes in at 1.74 GB.

So how does Apple achieve Full HD quality without upping the ante on file sizes to the realm of impracticality?

The reason that the 1080p versions of the iTunes Store videos can be a good deal better without doubling the file size—or worse—can be found in the tech specs of the new AppleTV and the new iPad. The AppleTV now supports H.264 compression for 1920×1080 resolution video at 30 frames per second using High or Main Profile up to level 4.0, the iPad and the iPhone 4S the same up to level 4.1. The profile indicates what kind of decompression algorithms the H.264 decoder has on board—the “High” profile obviously has some tricks up its sleeve that the “Main” or “Baseline” profiles known to previous devices don’t support. The level value indicates how many blocks or bits per second a device can handle.

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Though China Telecom recently began selling the iPhone, Apple’s share of the smartphone market in China still lags behind Samsung whose share is surprisingly 3 times as large as Apple’s. All told, Apple’s share of the Chinese smartphone market is 7.5% while Samsung’s is 24.3%.

As opposed to Apple, Samsung has been willing to play ball with all three of China’s mobile carriers – China Unicom, China Telecom, and China Mobile. Apple’s iPhone, on the other hand, was for the longest time available only on China Unicom before China Telecom began carrying the iPhone recently.

But the golden goose in this equation is undoubtedly China Mobile which has well over 650 million mobile subscribers. Now the reason Apple hasn’t thus far been able to get the iPhone onto China Mobile is because China Mobile employs a proprietary cellular standard on their network (TD-SCDMA) and Apple, to date, has balked at manufacturing an iPhone with hardware that can run on China Mobile’s network.

So in comes Samsung and picks up all the pieces.

The 16.8 percentage-point gap in China between Cupertino, California-based Apple and Samsung almost doubled from the third quarter. While Samsung is No. 1 and Apple No. 5 in China, the global story is different: Worldwide, Apple passed its Suwon, South Korea-based competitor to become the biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner.

Apple’s partnerships with China’s second- and third-largest carriers give it access to about 34 percent of the nation’s 988 million mobile users,

Now that Apple has jumped on the 4G LTE train with the iPad 3, it’s likely that the iPhone 5 will support 4G LTE as well. This is significant because previous reports have hinted that Apple will finally manufacture specialized iPhone hardware for China Mobile’s proprietary TD-LTE network.

Specifically, China Mobile Chairman Wang Jianzhou back in September intimated that Apple had given a thumbs up to producing an a TD-LTE compliant iPhone.

“We discussed this issue with Apple,” Jianzhou said in an interview, “we hope Apple will produce a new iPhone with TD-LTE. We have already got a positive answer from Apple.”

And during a China Mobile shareholder meeting held this past August, a company chairman reportedly boasted that a TD-LTE compliant iPhone was in the works. Further, in 2011, both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook held high-level talks with China Mobile executives regarding bringing the iPhone to the world’s largest carrier.

So while Samsung is sitting pretty for the time being, that dynamic may change in just a few months provided the iPhone 5 (or perhaps it will simply be called the new iPhone) hits China Mobile.

via Bloomberg

With the new iPad set for launch on March 16, Apple isn’t putting the old iPad 2 to rest just yet. On the contrary, Apple is keeping the 16GB wi-fi version of the iPad 2 available for purchase for only $399.

That’s great news for consumers, but not good news for current iPad 2 owners who want to sell their device and upgrade to the newest iPad model.

iPad 2 owners might have otherwise been able to sell their device for $399, but with Apple offering brand new iPad 2s at the same price point, that option goes out the window and works to compress the resale value of old iPad 2s.

So what’s an iPad 2 owner to do?

Well, there are certainly no shortage of resale options. eBay’s Instant Sale will reportedly net iPad 2 owners about $200 and Gazelle, whose commercials you might have seen, is open to paying $185 for the iPad 2.

If those figures aren’t appealing to you, fear not. Amazon will reportedly take that old iPad 2 off your hands for as much as $320, with higher prices for 3G equipped iPads.

The rub is that the purchase isn’t so much a purchase as it is an exchange for Amazon store credit. So Amazon is essentially using the program to generate more business for its online site.

To see why Amazon’s trade-in service is so clever, let’s try to think through the economics of an iPad trade. Say Amazon gives you $320 for your iPad 2. A company spokeswoman says that when people send in their gadgets, the company farms out the devices to a variety of third-party merchants, who then inspect, erase, and package  device for reselling… Where do these merchants resell your iPad? On Amazon, of course!

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Man, what the hell happened to Conan? Does he even try anymore? Is this the best him and his team can come up with?

What a joke.

Apple’s first “hub strategy”, so to speak, placed the PC at the epicenter of user’s lives and was first introduced in 2001 at Macworld when Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s “Digital Hub” strategy. 10 years later, Apple recognized the shifting technological landscape, and introduced iCloud in the process.

iCloud, as the name implies, enables users to seamlessly sync all different kinds of data between devices without having to lift a finger.

Incidentally, Apple may not have had the best track record with respect to cloud-computing, but they know talent when they see it and they once made a play at Dropbox a few years back. As the story goes, Apple offered Dropbox $800 million, an offer which Dropbox co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi ultimately turned down.

Jobs reportedly saw Dropbox, or perhaps more specifically the service they provided, as a strategic asset and he wanted in. But Dropbox’s co-founders wanted to run their own company and weren’t putting themselves up for sale. Following Dropbox’s rejection of Apple’s offer, Jobs chatted with the 2 co-founders for a while, giving them advice and answering their questions about various topics. And during the course of all this, he also issued a typically Jobsian threat, telling them that he was going after their market.

“He said we were a feature, not a product,” co-founder Drew Houston recalled.

All of that aside, Bill Gurley recently explained why Dropbox is so potentially disruptive.

Once you begin using Dropbox, you become more and more indifferent to the hardware you are using, as well as the operating system on that device. Dropbox commoditizes your devices and their OS, by being your “state” system in the sky. Storing credentials and configurations of devices, and even applications are natural next steps for this company. And the further they take it, the less dependent any user becomes of the physical machine (HW and SW) that is accessing that data (and state). Imagine the number of companies, as well as the previous paradigms, this threatens.

Astute analysis, but we think this more aptly fits when applied against seamless cloud computing on the whole. Apple’s iCloud thus far has amassed over 100 million users, this according to CEO Tim Cook who divulged the figure during a keynote presentation at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.

In any event, cloud computing services such as Dropbox may commoditize devices to a certain extent, this dynamic really applies only towards content. The nuance, though, is that the way users interact and use said content on their devices varies wildly. Sure, cloud computing may sync up all my photos, but the type of viewing experience offered by various smartphones is anything but consistent.

Related: Apple’s Finder team balked at incorporating Dropbox functionality into OS X

When Apple’s online store started accepting pre-orders for the new iPad, the demand was immense, crushing Apple’s capable servers in the process. Eventually, as far as we can tell, everyone who wanted to pre-order an iPad was able to do so, even if it took them a few tries to do so.

The Next Web notes that shipments for iPad orders have now slipped from March 16 to March 19, leading them to conclude that the first grouping of iPads available for shipment is now sold out.

This indicates that Apple’s first complete online batch of new iPads has sold out in the US and UK, with the next round arriving a week later. Since Apple normally dedicates a (large) allotment of iPads for sale in its physical stores as well as a lesser amount for retail partners like Best Buy and Radio Shack, this doesn’t mean it has sold ‘every’ iPad it made for the launch day, but it does show that the units allotted to its online store went quickly.

With a Retina Display and 4G capabilities, Apple’s new iPad is poised to be even more successful than the already popular iPad 2. What’s more, with the current iPad 2 16GB model now available for just $399, Apple is tightening the screws on the rest of the Android playing field.

Remarkable.

John Gruber, highlighting the impressive new iPad, wrote yesterday.

Two years after announcing the original iPad, Apple has produced a version that simply blows that original model away in every single regard. It’s faster, it’s thinner, it feels better in hand, it supports LTE networking, and yet battery life is better. The retina display is simply astounding to behold. Eight days from today they’re shipping a product that two years ago would have been impossible at any price, and they’ve made it look easy.

True dat.

via The Next Web

A few days ago Major League Baseball released the 2012 version of its MLB At Bat app. The app, which is a huge hit amongst Baseball enthusiasts lets fans watch and listen to games from their mobile device while also providing play by play coverage and informative graphical overlays alongside televised games.

And with Spring Training around the corner, here’s what all you Baseball die hards will be able to access:

• MLB.TV Premium subscribers can watch live video of over 150 Spring Training games
• MLB.TV Premium subscribers receive At Bat 12 for free
• Listen to available radio broadcasts of Spring Training games
• Follow batter-by-batter action for every Spring Training game
• Breaking news, schedules and interactive rosters and player stats for every team
• Customize At Bat’s home screen to feature your designated favorite team
• Enhanced video library archive, searchable by player, team or keyword

MLB.tv Premium membership costs $124.99/season or $24.99/month and lets users watch any game from the MLB website. These users can get the same service on their iPhone or iPad for $24.99/month. So essentially, you’re paying extra for having the convenience of mobile. These users will be able to access games via their Apple TV as well.

If you’re not an MLB.tv Premium member, you can make an in app purchase for $14.99/season or $2.99/month that’ll get you radio broadcasts from all the games and GameDay features. Essentially, you get everything minus the live broadcasts, though subscribers are granted one free broadcast game per day along with “live look-ins” that will let you check out live games when something important is going down.

You can check out MLB At Bat on iTunes as a free universal download – the above subscriptions are served as in-app purchases.

Related:

MLB.com CEO says iOS users are more likely to purchase content than Android users

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