Apple was responsible for one out over every five dollars spent on consumer electronics in the U.S. during 2012, a market research firm announced Tuesday. This while overall consumer electronics sales fell for the second year in a row.
The iPhone and iPad maker also ranked as the third largest U.S. consumer electronics retailer, just behind Best Buy and Walmart. Amazon and Staples rounded out and industry where only smartphones and tablets saw revenue gains last year...
It's hard to describe a company worth billions as 'scrappy,' but that's the image Apple has gained recently. To emphasize the point, a brand rating service Monday announced the iPad and iPhone maker was able to top rival Samsung despite a string of financial and competitive reversals. Apple's brand value rose to $87 billion, up from $70 billion.
And according to Brand Finance, the Cupertino, California company also saw its brand rating slip from AAA+ to AAA. In addition, Ferrari - not Apple - was named the word's most powerful brand...
While there's been multiple Apple rumors bandied about over the past few weeks, by far, the one receiving the most attention is the iWatch. Three major news outlets have now reported of its existence and the word is, Apple's bringing it to market.
Well if that really is the case, then it might want to hurry, or risk getting beaten to the punch by its fiercest competitor. That's right, Samsung has a smartwatch of its own. And if the alleged screenshots above are the real deal, then it's not too far off...
The battle between Apple and Samsung for smartphone supremacy rages on. While the two rivals accounted for more than half of smartphones sold during 2012, demand for the South Korean firm's phones rose nearly 86 percent while iPhone sales rose by around 22 percent last year. According to Gartner, the two companies took No. 1 and No. 3 spots in overall while ranking first and second in the growing market for smartphones, respectively.
This as the cell phone industry saw its first dip in sales since 2009. Other vendors, of course, were left fighting each other for scraps...
More indications that Apple may be slipping in the eyes of some consumers. Internet retail giant Amazon.com now has the best reputation among U.S. corporations, Harris Interactive announced Tuesday. Despite Apple winning the poll in 2012, Kindle-maker Amazon grabbed the top spot this year - ironically cited for its emotional impact on consumers despite operating a completely virtual business.
The online retailer also topped Apple, Google, Disney and others in the products and services category. This result only highlights Amazon's increased brand image in tablets, music, movies and cloud computing, areas bringing it into conflict with Apple and other tech players...
Samsung Executive Vice President David Eun during a panel at the D: Dive Into Media conference on Monday said its ongoing legal fight with Apple is "a loss" for innovation. And taking another page from Apple's book, the South Korean giant is plunking money into researching new technologies and better integration of its devices.
In fact, the company is turning the home turf of Apple and Google into a center of its own innovation by announcing the new Samsung Open Innovation Center in Silicon Valley...
Results of a new smartphone user satisfaction survey have some observers scratching their heads. Apple's iPhone 5 ranked fifth in the U.S., behind a number of Android devices from Motorola, HTC and Samsung. Due to Apple's past high ratings in customer satisfaction, the survey's findings prompted questions so far left unanswered.
According to a poll by OnDevice Research, Motorola's Atrix HD took first place in the U.S. user satisfaction scores, with the Motorola Droid Razr M, HTC's Rezound 4G, Samsung's Galaxy Note 2 and the iPhone 5 filling out the top five devices.
While Apple was named the top brand in overall mobile device satisfaction by U.S. consumers, Google ranked number two - even though it does not directly produce mobile devices...
Do you need another metric to follow in the race between Apple and Android? How about language?
That's the focus of a new report suggesting Apple's iPhone is predominantly focused on English-speaking nations while Android-powered Samsung smartphones are popular in Asia, Africa and South America, where English-speaking consumers are a minority.
After sifting through the Twitter accounts of both Apple and Samsung, a Saudi Arabian researcher at King Saud University (KSU) found 75 percent of Apple's followers spoke English, while about 35 percent of Samsung's online fans were non-English speakers...
There's an interesting report out this morning that takes an in-depth look at the so-called "frenemy" relationship between Apple and Samsung. The connections between the two are certainly odd, as they are competitors, supply chain partners and suing each other around the world.
Their latter association is perhaps the most known in recent years. The two companies' high profile court battles over who copied who have been very public, especially the most recent one in northern California. And according to Reuters, the whole thing started over the Galaxy Tab...
When it comes to Apple's push to enter emerging markets like China, India's huge pool of consumers has largely been overlooked. Indeed, one of that country's leading newspapers charged Apple has "ignored" India, until recently.
From adopting the Indian rupee in the App Store to including local musicians in iTunes, the company has increased sales by up to 400 percent in four months. However, Apple still faces a large gap: only ten percent of India's residents own a smartphone and rival Samsung is the clear leader, researchers say...
One needs not ask Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak twice to comment on Apple's moves. For better or worse, he always makes headlines, sometimes by dissing Siri or the iPhone 4S battery life and other times by firing pot shots at Apple for not building a phablet of its own. Speaking at the Business Week Best Brand Awards yesterday, the Apple employee #1 discussed the iPhone, Samsung and competition.
Though an Apple loyalists, Woz isn't gullible and certainly doesn't shy away from confessing that competition has caught up with Apple. Other vendors did pass the iPhone in certain features and Samsung, he says, is a big competitor now.
In fact, he openly says that the South Korean conglomerate currently makes "great products". But worry not: the top geek loves the company he co-founded and "if Apple made lousy products, I would not be in line". Jump past the fold for other noteworthy quotes and a nice video...
Apple's iPad mini is doing the job exactly as the company planned: slowing a slipping market share. The 7.9-inch device is working so well one analyst credited it for preventing Apple's fourth-quarter share of the tablet market falling below 49 percent.
Another, even more striking tidbit: the iPad accounted for one-in-six PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, per research firm Canalys. And if you counted tablets instead of PCs, demand during the fourth quarter would be up twelve percent to 134 million units. Instead, PC shipments fell by five percent in 2012, emphasizing how tablets such as the iPad could recharge a flagging industry...