Apple leaped past Samsung and LG to become the best-selling U.S. handset brand in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2011. In a quarter that featured the launch of the iPhone 4S and the addition of Sprint, Apple’s three available models combined to capture 43 percent of the U.S. smartphone market in Q4.
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Strange Flavour are back with a new spin on their hit slot car racing game SlotZ Racer!
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A stylus? Seriously? [...]
CNET:
Apple’s A5 processor includes noise-reduction circuitry licensed from a start-up called Audience, and a chip analyst believes that fact resolves an iPhone 4S mystery and explains why the iPhone 4 lacks the Siri voice-control system.
Audience revealed details of its Apple partnership in January, when it filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. Teardown work from iFixit and Chipworks revealed a dedicated Audience chip in the iPhone 4, but the iPhone 4S integrates Audience’s “EarSmart” technology directly into the A5 processor, the company’s S-1 filing said.
The explanation make sense even as it disappoints those of us with the iPhone 4 who were hoping to get Siri retroactive on our phones.
Former Apple employee Bob Borchers:
“What’s interesting is that the challenge Steve laid out for us when we created the iPhone wasn’t to make a touch-screen device that would play apps and do all of this stuff,” Borchers told students. “His [charge] was simple. He wanted to create the first phone that people would fall in love with. That’s what he told us.”
And that is why Apple is so successful.
John Paczkowski:
A German court has suspended an injunction that prevented Apple from selling or distributing online certain devices believed to infringe certain Motorola Mobility patents.
Google Inc has been quietly policing its online store for months now in an acknowledgement of malware’s growing threat to its increasingly popular Android mobile software.
The new sheriff in town is Bouncer: a security service Google put in place to scan new apps as developers load them onto Market, its applications store.
That must be wrong. Google is open and allows developers to do anything, right?
Certainly not safe for work or kids, but I laughed so hard. [...]
Market research firm IDC reported this week that Apple has surpassed LG Electronics to become the third largest mobile phone maker, behind Nokia and Samsung. Neither Nokia nor Samsung have anything to fear from Apple for the moment – they’re … Continued
After recieving help from an Apple Genius at a retail store, a customer started getting texts sent to the employees iPhone. While Gizmodo classified the mishap as a bug, Apple says the employee didn’t follow protocol. [...]
Vancouver Sun:
Canadian singles who use Android phones are more likely to have sex on a first date and partake in one-night stands, in comparison to those with other types of smartphones, according to a results of a survey.
Good to see the new RIM CEO isn’t wasting his time on things that won’t make a difference.
If you plan on giving that special someone an Apple gift for Valentine’s Day, you can now check to see when it needs to be ordered.
It’s a good thing Apple did Siri or Samsung would have run out of ideas. [...]
Josh Ong for AppleInsider: Investment bank Morgan Stanley believes Apple will partner up with both China Telecom and China Mobile “over the next year” to make its iPhone available on all three Chinese carriers, a move that could bring incremental … Continued
Tom Krazit, PaidContent:
There’s nowhere else in the world you can build a modern smartphone or tablet as cheaply, easily, and reliably as the massive factories of companies like Foxconn, which operate on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. The price for doing business with companies like Foxconn is living with the knowledge that these products are being built by people who have signed up for a modern-day version of indentured servitude.
So what can be done about that?
Federico Viticci:
In 107 days since iCloud went live, and 235 since Apple’s announcement at WWDC ’11, it appears the majority of third-party developers are still considering whether or not iCloud is something worth investing their time — and customers’ money — or not.
An interesting read.
Alex Spektor, Associate Director at Strategy Analytics, said, “Global smartphone shipments grew 54 percent annually to reach a record 155.0 million units in Q4 2011. Apple overtook Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume with 24 percent market share. Apple’s global smartphone shipments surged 128 percent annually to 37.0 million units, as distribution of the iPhone family expanded across numerous countries, dozens of operators and multiple price points.”
MG Siegler gives us a rundown of Motorola’s quarterly earnings. Hint: It’s not good — Motorola couldn’t ship as much as Apple sold.
AppleInsider:
The iPhone was dominant at AT&T, accounting for 80.8 percent of the 9.4 million smartphones sold through the carrier.In the previous quarter, the iPhone represented 56 percent of AT&T’s smartphone activations with 2.7 million units. The wireless carrier revealed that a majority of the 7.6 million iPhones it activated in the quarter were the iPhone 4S.
That’s impressive.
Horace Dediu:
The evidence I see is that Apple does not change pricing but rather stakes out a specific price point as resonating with consumers given their positioning. They then doggedly stick to it. Competitors tend to exploit open price points or try to position with specs on the same spots Apple occupies.
Apple doesn’t do anything based on what its competition does, including price. Apple’s products are priced fairly and at what consumers can afford, and are willing to pay. The proof is the 37 million iPhones, 15million iPads, 15 million iPods, and 5 million Macs the company sold last quarter.
Priceless cartoon.
[Via DF]
Matt Richman:
On Apple’s earnings call, Tim Cook told analysts that Apple sold over 62 million iOS devices during the fourth quarter, which is about 4 percent more than all of the Android devices sold during the same time period.
Clearly Apple is screwed and Android is winning.
Foss Patents:
The latest hostility is a new lawsuit filed by Motorola Mobility, with green light from Google, in the Southern District of Florida, seeking an injunction against the iPhone 4S and the iCloud over a package of six patents previously asserted against older Apple products in the same court.
Sounds interesting. It lets you create templates on the Web site to use on the iPhone, track clicks and views and schedule emails.
A new study from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech shows that Apple is growing faster in the smartphone market than Android. [...]
Bloomberg:
Verizon Communications Inc, the second-largest U.S. phone company, reported a fourth-quarter loss after booking a pension charge and having higher subsidy costs for rising iPhone sales.
While iPhone sales more than doubled from the third quarter to 4.3 million units, total smartphone sales fell short, signaling waning demand for handsets that run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system.
Because of the subsidies the carriers pay to Apple, higher sales of the iPhone mean more upfront costs but, in theory, more profits long term.
New York Times:
Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who made the BlackBerry a leading business tool but then presided over its precipitous decline, said they would step down on Monday as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of Research in Motion.
BWHAHAHAHAHA!
China Daily: China Unicom, the country’s second-largest telecom operator by subscriber numbers, said it has large stocks of Apple Inc’s iPhone 4S handsets available for purchase. That’s despite Apple’s Chinese stores halting supplies of the device and scalpers charging a … Continued
AmpKit LiNK HD is based on USB digital audio technology, providing high fidelity while eliminating crosstalk and feedback. It’s perfect for AmpKit’s authentic high gain amps.
Some nice features on the LiNK HD. AmpKit is my goto amp software on the iPhone and iPad, so I’ll be interested to see how this interface does. I’m expecting good things though.