Apple’s App Store just crossed a major milestone this afternoon. Just a few moments ago, the digital storefront passed the 50 billion download mark, bringing the company’s “50 Billion App Countdown” to an end.
The winner of the countdown promotion, who has yet to be revealed, will be given a $10,000 iTunes gift card, good for apps, videos, books and music. And fifty additional lucky winners will receive $500 gift cards… Read More
Much is being made of Samsung’s hoard of cash, estimated at $28.5 billion once the South Korean conglomerate’s debt is taken into consideration. At any rate, the Galaxy maker has watched its net cash almost triple in the past year, thanks to double-digit profits fueled by the rising sales of its mobile division which makes smartphones and tablets.
In just three years, mobile phones have grown to be 74 percent of Samsung’s profits, overshadowing sales of LCD TVs and memory chips. On other words, three out of every four dollars Samsung earns come from mobile devices.
However, Apple remains the industry’s most-profitable player, retaining a $145 billion cash pile while offering anxious investors a $100 billion stock buyback. Is Samsung destined to follow Apple’s footsteps, or repeat the errors of other Asian giants, such as Panasonic, drowning in debt? Read More
You wouldn’t know it by reading through the latest tech news headlines, but Apple is on track to have another stellar year. It’s already recorded two record-breaking quarters, and it has yet to launch a new or refreshed product.
But not everyone is ignoring Apple’s success. Fortune today released its annual, high-profile ”Fortune 500″ list of the largest companies in the United States. And the iPad-maker has risen up several spots from last year, to #6… Read More
Looking at tech news headlines from the past few months, you’d think Apple was in trouble. And not just “we had an off quarter” trouble, but “is Apple the new Research in Motion” trouble. Some folks even think Tim Cook could lose his job.
But looking at the bare numbers seems to suggest the exact opposite. The company just reported a record-breaking quarter. It has more than $130 billion in cash. And according to a new report, it has nearly 40% of the US smartphone market… Read More
Although we continue to hear reports regarding Apple’s work on a full-blown television set, pundits remain skeptical that the project will ever see the light of day. They say the margins are too small, and the demand for internet TVs is too weak for Apple to make a move.
But the latter part of that theory isn’t entirely accurate, according to a new report from media research firm TDG. Their studies show that Smart TV adoption is actually growing rapidly around the world, with 25% of broadband households now owning at least one set… Read More
The iPad mini has been extremely successful for Apple since it launched late last year. How successful? Well according to a new report, it accounted for more than 60% of the 19.5 million tablets the company sold last quarter.
Apple’s iPad sales showed significant growth last quarter–they were nearly double what they were during the same 3-month period last year. And a lot of industry watchers have attributed the jump to the mini’s popularity… Read More
Back in February, Leap Wireless submitted a rather alarming filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It had been seeing much weaker demand for the iPhone than expected, and it was only on track to sell through half of its first-year commitment.
But apparently, the problems were only temporary. Yesterday, the company—who sells the iPhone through its subsidiary Cricket Wireless—reported its earnings for its first operating quarter this year, and it told investors that it is seeing much better iPhone sales… Read More
Last month, I downloaded Path for iOS for the third time to try out the app’s new 3.0 update, and I thought to myself “this app is so beautiful.” It’s just too bad that no one I know uses the decidedly more intimate social network.
But just because no one I know uses it, doesn’t mean that no one is using it. Dave Morin, the company’s founder and CEO, announced earlier today that Path has just crossed a major milestone in its short life: 10 million users… Read More
We don’t usually go in for conspiracy theories, but one is drawing quiet a bit of attention – and factual basis. Has corporate giant Samsung, stung by its more than $1 billion patent lawsuit loss to Apple in 2012, waging war on the iPhone maker? A number of signs point to the affirmative, including an apparent tactic to swamp any critics with pro-Samsung comments.
Along with blatant examples of the business press spinning news against Apple and for Samsung, there has been reports of fake Samsung product reviews. Additionally, we’ve seen up-close attempts by pro-Samsung ‘trolls’ to dominate comments… Read More
Apple just announced its earnings for its first quarter of 2013, second fiscal quarter, and despite all of the lead-in ‘doom’ talk, the numbers are actually very impressive. The company beat Wall Street projections in nearly every metric.
We’re just finishing up the conference call, where Tim Cook and company have made several announcements and dropped a number of impressive statistics. And as usual, we’ve rounded up the 15 most interesting points for you… Read More
The news headlines for Apple have been getting progressively worse over the past few months, as rumors continue to swell of falling iPhone and iPad demand, and the company’s stock dipping below $400 for the first time since 2011.
But it looks like they might be able to change the conversation. Q2 numbers are out, and Apple beat Wall Street projections in nearly every category, selling 37.4 million iPhones, 19.5 million iPads and producing $43.6 billion in revenue… Read More
The shift to mobility has certainly hurt the ability to pick clear winners and losers. In the era of beige-box PCs, bean-counters could glance at market share data. But growth of smartphones and apps shattered such easy measurements The battle between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android is more of an optical illusion where the “winner” can triumph in terms of market share, but lose when it comes to revenue.
Still, people want clear winners and losers and Time magazine is just the latest to answer the call. According to the magazine’s website, the winner is – well, that really depends… Read More
Despite the fact that it has numerous challengers, Apple’s Safari has dominated the mobile browser space. And that continues to be the case today, according to a new report from web analytics firm Net Applications.
The firm’s data, which stems from its web network that sees more than 160 million visits to more than 40,000 websites each month, shows that last month, Safari accounted for 61.79% of the mobile browser traffic… Read More
Apple has come under heavy fire in recent years by critics for outsourcing its manufacturing jobs to Asia. Folks don’t like the fact that while the US struggles with unemployment, it pays Chinese factory workers to build its products just to save a few dollars.
In response to the criticism, Apple posted a new page on its website last year touting the more than 500,000 jobs it’s either created or supported in the US with its business. In fact, according to its records, its app economy alone created 80,000 jobs last year… Read More
It looks like folks wondering how Apple did financially last quarter will find out in just a few short weeks. The Cupertino company announced this afternoon that it will be releasing its financial results for Q2 2013 on April 23.
Apple’s earnings reports are typically a major affair in the tech world, and this one is particularly important. The iPad-maker’s stock is at its 52 week low, and it needs to post some big numbers to change the conversation… Read More
Yesterday, we bid farewell to one of the most infamous jailbreaks of all time: evasi0n. Born on February 4, it lasted nearly 6 weeks before Apple finally disabled it by way of the iOS 6.1.3 software update it issued yesterday.
It certainly served its purpose though. According to Jay Freeman, aka Saurik, Cydia saw more than 18 million unique iPhones, iPads and iPod touches, running iOS 6 (or later), visit during the jailbreak’s 6-week long run… Read More
Following this morning’s release of iBooks 3.1, which brought about expanded Japanese book support, Apple has posted a press release to make its move into the country’s e-book game official.
The announcement includes further details about the Japan iBookstore launch, as well as quotes from Apple’s SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue and various publishing firm executives…
The long-awaited iOS 6.x jailbreak, known as evasi0n, has been dubbed the most popular jailbreak ever. And rightly so. In its first 10 minutes, it was used by over 100,000 people. And 4 days later, that number grew to 7 million.
Today, nearly a month after evasi0n’s release, there’s a new statistic out. Evad3rs team member pod2g just passed along the news from Saurik that more than 14 million devices have now been seen running Cydia on iOS 6.x… Read More
Apple is widely expected to do some major updating to its tablet line this fall. The latest reports allege that the company is going to give its 9.7-inch iPad a complete makeover, and squeeze a high resolution Retina display into its smaller sibling.
The latter scenario is particularly interesting, because screen resolution has been the one complaint users have had with the current iPad mini. But according to new data from iSuppli, consumers may end up paying more for the extra pixels… Read More
Well known and respected Asymco analyst Horace Dediu is out with a new report this week entitled ‘Counting stool legs.’ The piece takes a look at Apple’s newly-introduced revenue categories—mainly iTunes, which now includes sales from OS X, iWork, and Apple’s other pro tools.
The big takeaway here is that, under this new structure, iTunes can no longer be considered a ‘break even’ business. Because, as Dediu points out, the combined sales from iTunes and accessories is now bigger in terms of revenues than any other phone vendor, except for Samsung… Read More
