Apple and Samsung could have a decision on whether Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be temporarily banned in Australia next week pending trial for patent infringement. As part of the drama the Wall Street Journal said the court heard evidence from Apple’s then-chief patent counsel Richard Lutton that Steve Jobs tried to head off hostilities last year because Samsung was such a large supplier to Apple. Obviously since their litigation has gone global his phone call was futile. Some weeks ago Samsung informally agreed to withhold the challenged tablet from the Australian market until the court rules. It countersued in Oz on September 17 charging the iPhone and iPad with infringing seven of its patents.
Collin Stewart chip analyst John Vinh, who doesn’t follow RIM, thinks the company “has stopped production of its PlayBook and is actively considering exiting the tablet market.” He claims Quanta has stopped making the things and last week laid off a thousand production workers at the plant where it was making the widgets. He says RIM “has canceled development of additional tablet projects.” RIM denied it, calling the report that it stopped production “pure fiction” and claimed to remain “highly committed to the tablet market.” Undeniably, however, Best Buy, Staples and Office Depot have cut prices on the $500 dingus in some cases by as much as $200 and RIM itself cut prices by $100 in Canada last week.
Apple watchers are now pretty convinced that Apple will unveil the iPhone 5 next Tuesday since it sent the press a very pointed invitation to “talk iPhone” on its Cupertino campus. Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook is expected to usher the widget out. Reports continue to claim the thing won’t be available in shops until mid-October.
FedEx has cut its earnings guidance for the year ending in May on the expectation that shipment volumes will be weak. Demand for the consumer electronic gadgets made in Asia, particularly in China, has dropped. CFO Alan Graf said that though the slowdown extends to perishable foods, high-end apparel and automotive and industrial parts, “the primary driver of the reduced demand is lower sales of electronics products.” The slide started in July and is impacting Taiwan contract manufacturers like Compal and Quanta. So it looks like the holidays could turn sour. FedEx said retailers are keeping their inventories lean and it’s not predicting a “significant peak” season this year. However, it’s also not predicting a double-dip recession in the US, at least not yet. Graf said, “Our customers’ hair is not on fire. They’re just saying we’re taking it steady as it goes. It just feels completely different than it did back in ’08.” The company’s expecting the soon-to-be-announced iPhone 5 to boost volumes. Seeing momentum in the US “basically stall,” UPS CFO Kurt Kuehn said pretty much the same thing the week before, warning of a “bumpy ride” globally. When it reported its first-quarter results last week Fedex said US shipments fell for the second quarter in a row as the economy failed to grow as much as forecast. FedEx CEO Fred Smith blamed lack of confidence in US and European officials finding economic solutions for the lagging growth. FedEx’ US shipments dropped 3% last quarter; international packages fell 4%; domestic shipments in other countries were up 38%. Sales at FedEx jumped 11% to $10.5 billion. Its earnings were up 22% to $464 million or $1.46 a share. Graf said, “The US and global economy grew at a slower rate that we anticipated during the quarter. While FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight achieved improved operating results despite lower-than-expected growth, the more rapid decline in demand for FedEx Express services, particularly from Asia, outpaced our ability to reduce operating costs. We have slightly reduced our earnings forecast to reflect current business conditions and are aggressively working to adjust our cost structure to match demand levels.” The company’s Express revenues were up 12% last quarter while operating income dropped 19%. Revenues in its ground segment were up 16% to $2.28 billion and ground’s operating income was up 42% to $407 million. Economic worries typically see consumers and businesses switch to cheaper ground shipments to save money. FedEx now figures the best it can put on the bottom line at the end of its year is somewhere between $6.25 and $6.75 a share, down 10 cents from $6.35-$6.85. Wall Street was projecting $6.40. The company’s stock dropped 8.2% to $66.58, its lowest level since 2009 in response. It recovered a point Friday. UPS slipped 3.4% to $62.17 in sympathy. It slipped again Friday. FedEx handles shipments equal to about 4% of the US gross domestic product and 1.5% of the global GDP. It means to raise US rates 3.9% in January, which means UPS will do the same. FedEx’ projections are based on a 1.8% tickle in US gross domestic product this year, down from a previous calculation of 2.5%. Next year it now assumes a 2.5% rise, not 3%. UPS, which is putting $200 million into an expanded air hub in Germany, has said it expects US GDP will return to more normal growth in 2013 although it conceded it could take longer.
After Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin reached out to Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha in early July about the Nortel patents Google had just lost to a dangerous rival, Google wound up bidding $30 a share for the whole company on August 1. MMI was supposedly afraid it would be defenseless without its 17,000 patents. Advised by Frank Quattrone’s indomitable Qatalst Partners, it wanted $43.50 a share. Google went to $37. MMI dropped to $40.50, according to an SEC filing, and settled for 40 bucks a share, a tidy $12.5 billion and a 63% premium, $10 to maybe $15 more than MMI’s board originally thought it could get. Google shelled out $3 billion or 33% more than its initial offer in the absence of any rivals.
MediaPlatform, the enterprise video software company, today announced that its WebCaster software is the first to deliver live webcasts on the Apple iPad® using HTTP live streaming (HLS). WebCaster enables iPad users to view and interact with live presentations that integrate video streaming from Abode® Flash® Media Enterprise Server 4.5 and PowerPoint® slides. Enterprises adopting this technology benefit from giving their information workers greater mobility and remote participation in events, while leveraging the powerful network efficiencies and universal nature of Flash.
If you have have done native mobile app development on Android or iPhone (iOS) then you probably know that testing native apps is not that simple. On the other hand, testing traditional Web applications is pretty straightforward: Launch a Web browser, and you see exactly how the application works and how it looks. Read on and I will show how to test a native app in a similarly straightforward fashion after considering various alternatives. Option 1: Installing the app on the mobile device This option is great in that you can test the app on the actual device. However, getting the app on the device can be very time consuming. And, for each testing iteration, the app would have to be built, sent (or copied) to the phone, installed, and launched on the device. While you get to test on the actual device, the process is very slow. Just imagine if you need to make just a small change in the app.
While Steve Jobs deserves full credit for incredible achievements not only at NEXT and Pixar, I believe what enabled Steve Jobs to succeed at Apple was his application of the "Apple Brand" to the iPod. Apple Computer always had a cult-like group of followers who were willing to pay a remarkable premium for Apple's Macintosh line of PCs. Moreover, such people (and I was one of them) would not hesitate to vehemently evangelize the Apple vision and brand to any poor soul foolish enough to approach or befriend. For example, when I moved to New York City in or around 1993, I told a friend that I would simply not work for any company that had not chosen Apple as their computer platform. As a result I worked for firms like Ernst & Young (at the time Apple's financial auditor).
Yet several years later I found the burden of wearing the Apple "hair-shirt" too great and decided to defect to the world of PCs and UNIX and all thing outside the narrow little world of Apple. Yet the point I'm trying to illustrate is that Apple always had the ability to capture people's imagination and spirit and that this has been a characteristic of Apple that endured well beyond Steve Jobs's departure. What I believe is the event that unleashed the Apple "idea-virus" (to appropriate Seth Godin's most excellent phrase) is the iPod. Before the iPod a person needed to have a very very high level of faith and independence in order to join the Apple cult. To buy a Mac in 1987 I think the cost was in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. The number of people at that time who were interested in computers was very small. And within that small group, the number of people who were rich enough to buy a Mac was even smaller. And among that group of the rich, only a subset subscribed to the Macintosh Way (Guy Kawasaki's title for his book on the Apple brand and marketing strategy).
So the problems Apple faced early on never involved the brand itself, the loyalty of the followers, nor did the fervor or loyalty dissipate quickly after Jobs's departure. Rather, the issue was that when selling products to consumers, the "network effect" remains powerful and manifests itself even more acutely in consumer products than it does in business to business products. The real genius of Steve Jobs was to translate what was essentially a misguided approach to market expensive business machines to an approach to selling consumer devices such as the iPod and the iPhone. In other words, the entire winning strategy had been in place from the beginning, it was simply that the number of followers and the pool of people who could potentially be converted was too small.
One could argue that Steve Jobs was ahead of his time, and yet this misses the point. The vision which endures beyond Steve Jobs is that of how to design user experiences. When Jobs applied that vision to a market for business machines, he failed in every case (Apple, NeXT). Yet when Jobs applied his vision to a true consumer market (iPod, iPhone) his vision resonated and brought into sharp relief the difference between the status quo and Apple. Once infected with Steve's vision his iPod users and iPhone users could no longer defile themselves with "unbeliever" desktop, laptop, or tablet computers. So in my opinion once, realized and unleashed in the consumer space, wild horses cannot return the masses to a world where Apple does not thrive and grow.
Samsung won’t be selling or advertising any Galaxy Tab 10.1s in Australia before September 30. The Korean company agreed to a second blackout reportedly at the urging of a court down under that thought it would be right stupid for Samsung to follow through on its plans to field an allegedly different Australian version of the widget the week of September 12 only to have to withdraw it if Apple prevails at a formal hearing set for September 26 and 29 to sort out Apple’s motion for an injunction. Samsung followed through on its commitment to deliver three copies of the so-called modified Australian model of the Tab to Apple last week and, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, Apple thinks the device still infringes on at least two of its patents. As FOSS Patents case watcher Florian Mueller expected the modifications cost Samsung some functionality – well, at least according to Apple’s lawyers. Samsung’s lawyers say not. Florian says “The whole story of the Australian product being ‘different’ enabled Samsung to delay a formal decision by a month, and today Samsung was apparently afraid of a formal court decision against it and therefore agreed to delay the product launch once again. At this point Samsung can claim that it entered into this agreement ‘voluntarily,’ although it’s clear to an increasing number of people that Samsung is under serious pressure. But formally, an agreement is always voluntary, unlike a court ruling against someone’s opposition.” Apple is now supposed to explain to Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett, who owns an iPad, exactly what patents the reworked Samsung gismo infringes by September 2 and get into more detail by September 5. The Morning Herald said that “top executives and inventors from both Apple and Samsung may appear in person or over video link to explain their patents.” Samsung, meanwhile, is threatening to bring a countersuit against Apple’s iPad as well as challenge the validity of Apple’s patents. In a separate case Samsung Germany is forbidden to sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 anywhere in Europe.
Nobody else in the history of business has achieved what Steve Jobs has achieved as a CEO. He has taken Apple from its death bed (in 1997 it was dying) and made it the most valuable company on earth. Nobody else in history could launch a product the way Steve Jobs could do. Each of his product launches has become folklore. Remember when he pulled out the MacBook Air from an envelope? There is no doubt that he has redefined innovation. Nobody else in the history has designed 5 path breaking products.
I’ve been using Steve Jobs and Apple as examples in my software blog dedicated to the creation of Great Software. Although Steve Jobs is thought of as being the Mac/iPhone/iPad/iPod guy, he’s also a software hero. At least he’s one of my software heroes. Steve Jobs’ Apple doesn’t just build products. They understand the market and the consumers better than anyone else. And then they create something that defines and totally owns that market. Their deep understanding of the needs, wants and priorities of the consumer and their “make no compromises” approach allows them to do this.
Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook, who’s been filling in for Steve Jobs off and on for years now, sent an internal e-mail out Thursday that was, of course, leaked to the press. It reads: “Team: “I am looking forward to the amazing opportunity of serving as CEO of the most innovative company in the world. Joining Apple was the best decision I’ve ever made and it’s been the privilege of a lifetime to work for Apple and Steve for over 13 years. I share Steve’s optimism for Apple’s bright future. “Steve has been an incredible leader and mentor to me, as well as to the entire executive team and our amazing employees. We are really looking forward to Steve’s ongoing guidance and inspiration as our Chairman.
On Wednesday, August 24, 2011, Steve Jobs resigned from Apple as its CEO. He will stay as chairman of the board, handing over the CEO mantle to Tim Cook. Even though this was sort of expected ever since Steve went on his medical leave early this year, the news of his resignation came as a shock – that it finally happened. Much has been written since last 24 hours on his legacy and brilliance in the tech industry, his obsession with elegant design and simplification for users. He was way ahead of everyone else in this industry by not a year or two, maybe ten years. I love this poster of his words, so profound. Guy Kawasaki said that Steve was made of a different operating system than the standard entrepreneur/innovator.
Perhaps the ultimate adage in show business is, “Leave ‘em wanting more.” As a professional speaker for the better part of three decades, the constant reminder is it is “better to stop too early than too late.” And, this afternoon, Steve Jobs showed he knows that all business is show business as well as any executive who ever lived. Certainly, we hope and pray there is no subsequent annoucement about his health. However, why would he desire the role of Chairman of Apple’s Board of Directors if he didn’t plan on being around? Instead, look at what he has done. He returned to the company he had founded years earlier during a time it was on life support — with many investors calling for the corporate equivilent of “pulling the plug” — and simply turned it into the most valuable organization on the planet.
DigiTimes says it’s heard from its redoubtable downstream sources that Apple has scratched the notion of iPad 3 being available this year maybe because Samsung and LG can’t get decent yields on a 2,048x1,536 9.7-inch “retina display” panel and Sharp’s are too expensive. On top of which Apple’s high-resolution demands also mean a larger backlighting source and apparently a single-edge light bar won’t do plus the panel is reportedly having trouble meeting Apple’s physical thinness, rich color and toughness requirements. DigiTimes claims iPad 3 was supposed to launch in the second half “with a supply volume of 1.5–2 million units in the third quarter and 5–6 million in the fourth quarter.”
I wanted to use my article to tell you about some of the best productivity apps I have come across in the last year, which have really transformed how I work. If you are like me and constantly on the move and your Converged Mobile Device (SmartPhone and/or Tablet) has become your virtual office, then these mobile device apps could really helped you out, as they have me: # Evernote lets you gather notes, articles, ideas or presentations on your iPhone or Android phone and can then synch them to your computer. What makes Evernote worth the hype is the fact that whatever you note down gets almost instantaneously synced to the cloud. For instance, if you write a note on your iPad it will pop up on your Android Evernote or on Evernote.com and so on. This is very handy indeed, as the problem of transferring documents from one device to the other has been eliminated.
One of the screenshots Apple used to persuade the Regional Court in Düsseldorf last week that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a dead ringer for its iPad 2 and should therefore be barred in all of Europe except Holland because it infringes Apple design rights is inaccurate according to WebWereld.nl, a Dutch IDG publication, which went scurrying off to tell Samsung all about it. The point of the look-and-feel comparison on page 28 of Apple’s complaint (see below) is ostensibly to show that Samsung copied the iPad’s rounded corners, flat surface, metallic frame and icons. However, side-by-side the two devices look to be the same size when in reality they’re not.
Thirty years ago today the IBM Personal Computer was launched igniting a new way of computing that empowered individuals and forever changed the way we work and play. In talking with some of the early pioneers, they knew they were on to something but really had no idea just how impactful the changes would be. It was much more than just an affordable piece of hardware that could run programs. The PC legitimized and demonstrated to the world how individuals equipped with a useful tool could automate a task, eliminate paper, even run a business. No longer were employees limited to what the company MIS ( now known as IT ) department could provide at whatever schedule was dictated. The fact that the PC was also open enough to standardize interoperability, peripherals and third-party applications enabled an ecosystem to develop and scale at an exponential rate. Aside from pure work MIS tasks, individuals also took PCs home for desktop publishing, educating their kids and early gaming. A revolution was born.
Samsung has agreed to pull its Android-based Galaxy Tab 10.1 off the Australian market and cease advertising the thing pending a decision from the Australian Federal Court hearing Apple’s “look and feel” patent infringement complaint.
The advent of BYOD (bring your own device) culture to the Enterprise has ushered about the “app culture” faster for IT departments than expected. Analysts agree that key to IT’s future in mobilizing today’s workforce lies with mobile device management and the move toward an Enterprise App Store model that parallels the experience consumers find today via Apple and the Android Marketplace. Prosumers (professional consumers) expect the wealth & breath of applications within the Enterprise as well as outside. Having an Enterprise App Store allows the Information Worker to see what their company suggests is a productive app for their use, which is outside of their internal developments... as well as a way of providing in-house written apps, in a manner which is natural to their Prosumer employees. This is something that SAP and Sybase believe in completely and are already working on such models.
Apple is having Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produce next-generation chips for its mobile devices under a trial manufacturing run, according to a source Reuters says has knowledge of the matter. It appears then that Apple means to wrench at least part of its business away from Samsung with which it’s embroiled in a huge patent infringement battle. Samsung is also competing against Apple with a range of Android-based smartphones and tablets. Reuters suggests that orders could depend on yield rates but still look likely to start next year.
Apple delivered in spades Tuesday when it reported its third fiscal quarter ended June 25. It came in with revenues up 82% to $28.57 billion when all the smart money on Wall Street was expected $25 billion. And it earned $7.31 billion or $7.79 a share, up 124%, when only $5.85 was expected. And it delivered a 41.7% gross margin. It was, as they say, a personal best. Its stock after-hours ran up 25 point as though it was Google and tickled $400 for a while there, an all-time high. Apple said it sold 9.25 million iPads, up 183%, moving every widget it could make. Apple’s acting CEO Tim Cook described iPad 2 sales as “frenzied.” He said 88% of the Fortune 500 was testing the iPad and claimed that decisions are being made faster than other products in his experience. iPad sales to K-12 passed Mac sales in the quarter, which surprised Apple. It’s moving from enterprise pilots to penetration and couldn’t help but notice that other tablets aren’t getting any traction. The dingus appears to have gotten over its scarcity. There are reportedly 1.05 million iPads in the channel. Supplies have improved since June. Supply and demand are even in harmony in some countries. Apple sold 3.95 million Macs, up only 14%, figuring it lost some Mac sales to iPad but not as many as Windows did. Lion is due out Wednesday which it thinks could get some fence sitters to move. Anyway, Macs are doing way better than other PCs, which are showing only 2.6% growth. Half the Macs went to people who never owned one before. Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones, up 142%, a lot of them in Asia. The only negative was iPods, down 20% year-over-year to 7.54 million, to no one’s particular surprise given the super-saturated music market. Apple offered its usual conservative guidance for this quarter, predicting that it would see $25 billion in revenues and earnings per share of $5.50 with a gross margin of 38%. It attributed its softer-than-seasonal tepidness to the expected product transition, which may impact inventories. The Street is expecting $27.69 billion returning $6.36 a share. Apple’s treasure vault is now bulging with another $10.4 billion to tip the scales at $76.2 billion. It’s returned $2.5 billion to AppStore developers. There are now 100,000 apps for the iPad. International sales accounted for 62% of the quarter’s revenue. Cook called China, defined as the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, “key.”
Apple took its patent complaints against Samsung to the Korean’s home turf last Wednesday, escalating the dispute in which it has accused Samsung of “slavishly” copying the iPad and iPhone’s design and technology. Samsung retaliated Tuesday by going to the International Trade Commission (ITC) and questioning the parentage of Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod. It’s dreaming of an import ban. Last week, Samsung lost a bid in California to get copies of Apple’s next-generation widgets whereas Apple will get early versions of Samsung’s next generation.
Apple got a broad – some say “incredibly broad” – multitouch patent Wednesday on swiping and how many fingers do the swiping and we shall doubtlessly find out in the fullness of time after the liberal and tedious application of jurisprudence whether or not, as some suggest, it covers all capacitive touchscreens everywhere including tablets. It is patent number 7,966,578 entitled “Portable multifunction device, method, and graphical user interface for translating displayed content.” It governs how content moves around the screen when touched: one finger an entire page, two fingers just the content inside a smaller, so-called frame. It extends to productivity apps and maps.
iPad 3 rumors are back saying that the dingus will launch in September, six months early, to scare off would-be rivals. This time the Chinese-language Economic Times of Taiwan claims the device will have a screen resolution of 2560x1920, five to six times better than the iPad 2, and 3D capabilities for viewing movies and applications. MacRumors is uncertain and says the paper has been a “spotty source of Apple rumors.” It reckons Apple could put an iPad 3 out this fall but doubts the specs quoted, calling them “unbelievable.” Meanwhile, Bloomberg says iPhone , based on the A5 ARM chip, will be out in September to coincide with the release of iOS 5.