The iPhone may not have near field communications installed, but that's not stopping companies from trying to integrate the tech. US Bank proves that yet again today by unveiling its new NFC-enabled iPhone case.
The case is a major part of the bank's new Go Mobile payment service, which will allow US Bank customers to pay for goods and services from their checking, savings or credit accounts using an NFC-compatible device...
Pulse, the popular news aggregator app akin to Flipboard, was updated today with the ability to browse your Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube streams. If you thought that getting your favorite best news content in one place was all the rage back when developer Alphonso Labs launched the app in 2010, you'll want this update for it brings your favorite social feeds in one place, with one clean interface. I'm a big fan of Flipboard which already provides these features, but if you prefer Pulse you can now jump into the 21st century...
Last week, Tim Cook made it clear that Apple intends to beef up its presence in China. The CEO said that although the country is only its second largest market right now (behind the US), it will soon be number one.
With that, comes a report today that Apple has introduced a new interest-free installment payment option to its web store in China as a way of enticing potential customers that may not have enough cash on-hand...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NNNHLjMc9I
Many watchers, this author included, never thought phablets would make an impact. But they are taking off, mostly due to Samsung's Note series, an Android-driven smartphone/tablet computer hybrid (hence, a "phablet") introduced in October 2011. It tallied a respectable ten million shipments as of August 15, 2012. Not bad for a product category that virtually didn't exist a couple years back. Its successor, the Galaxy Note II, was released in August 2012. With its massive 5.55-inch screen sporting the native 720p (1,280-by-720) resolution, it's the perfect epitome of the phablet trend.
There's no denying that phablets are slowly but surely becoming the new normal as deep-pocketed smartphone users now yearn for devices with a greater screen real estate and more computational power to handle even more tasks previously handled by the struggling notebook or the traditional PC. That being said, today we're asking you to opine on whether or not Apple should release a phablet of its own, a 5+ inch iPhone of sorts...
When it comes to industrial design, watchers stubbornly refuse to give Apple's boss Tim Cook the benefit of the doubt. Cook is not a product person, critics argue.
He's a numbers guy who obsesses over spreadsheets while paying little attention to product design, haters often cry. And because of this, Apple of course is doomed.
Journalist Nick Bilton shares an interesting little anecdote in his Sunday piece for The New York Times that I think proves the opposite, that Tim Cook is very much aware of the importance of design in product development...
Apple Mac holiday sales in the US rose by 5.4 percent, countering the PC industry's overall 2.1 percent decline. The new numbers by research giant Gartner indicate Apple shipped 2.1 million Macs during the fourth quarter, up from two million for the same period in 2011. Meanwhile, pretty much every other vendor experienced a decline, with Dell reporting an abysmal sixteen percent decline.
Dell's US market share slid to 19.2 percent, down from 22.5 percent in 2011. All told, Apple now holds a 12.3 percent share of the US PC market, up from 11.4 percent last year, putting the company in the No. 3 spot, right behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell. PC vendors are now seeing US households letting the computers "age out" as they increasingly use tablets like the iPad for common tasks such as e-mail and web surfing...
AAPL fell briefly below $500 this morning following The Wall Street Journal and the Nikkei newswire reports of the iPhone 5 part orders halved amid what's being claimed a 'weaker-than-expected' global demand for the handset. Specifically, shares briefly sank to $497 in pre-market trading Monday as investors reacted to the news.
It's the first time since February 2012 that AAPL tanked below $500 a share. AAPL lost nearly 26 percent since a September 2012 all-time high of $705.07 a share. In the last three months alone, the Apple stock lost seventeen percent of its value. Rival Samsung seized its opportunity, having released this morning official numbers proving flourishing sales of its Galaxy S smartphone series, which surpassed the accumulated sales record of 100 million units (from the supply side) since its launch in May 2010...
Hot on the heels of reports that Apple has had to cut iPhone 5 part orders due to weaker-than-expected demand, Samsung has announced that its handset sales are still flourishing.
It appears that the Korean company's popular line of Galaxy S smartphones has recently reached a major milestone, crossing the 100 million unit mark in less than three years...
The Wall Street Journal issued a report late last night, claiming that it had it on good authority that Apple has been telling its suppliers to cut their iPhone 5 part orders due to, what is believed to be, weak demand.
The publication's sources, who — you guessed it, are familiar with the situation — say that Apple has cut orders for multiple iPhone 5 components, but say screen orders specifically have been cut by nearly 50 percent...
You may have heard that Facebook has issued invites for a media event due this coming Tuesday to “come and see what [they're] building”. People in the know claim the news conference is a pretty big deal as Facebook could announce a brand new mobile operating system, even a so-called Facebook Phone of some sort. And now, another source has stepped forward with knowledge that the social networking giant will also launch an iPad version of its mobile Messenger app, which in a recent update has gained VoIP capabilities...
The days when PCs ruled the computer market are quickly coming to a close. The familiar battle between PCs and Macs is quickly morphing into an iOS versus Android landscape. As consumers opt for tablets over PCs, shipments of Wintel devices will drop to 65 percent in 2013 amid double-digit tablet growth.
After PC shipments fell 10 percent during the holiday fourth quarter of 2010, the 2013 PC marketshare will drop to 65 percent, down from 72 percent last year, according to researchers at Canalys. The reason: PCs - be they desktops, notebooks, or netbooks - are no longer needed for common computing tasks, such as reading e-mail and browsing the web...
As talk continues of an upcoming T-Mobile iPhone deal, and rumors continue to swirl of a China Mobile partnership, a new report today says that the Cupertino company could potentially add another major carrier to its stable: Japan's NTT DoCoMo.
Like China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo is its country's largest wireless provider, and its 60 million subscribers account for nearly half of all Japan mobile users. But last November, it suffered its biggest ever net loss of customers. And it blames the iPhone...