It always slightly baffles me why Apple have not reaped the rewards of their success through a Technical Education Department, like so many other technical companies. When you have a great product and a ripe demand ready for the picking, it is a win:win situation, where the vendor has the ability to direct and advise development practices on said product, through education. This in turn can lead to increased adoption, standardization, innovation and reduced support cases/development errors (bugs). So as far as I know, it is down to Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), that we have just seen in San Francisco this month (June), to train the faithful within sessions by Apple Engineers and outside of that, by their great Developer Community. This secondary group being helped by some elite and studious developers to create materials for publication in book format or hands-on training courses themselves. I have always been an advocate of Training Through a Recession... Could Just Help You Out and that 2011 will be the year when the Corporate Developer Goes Mobile. On the first subject there are many great books around and my taste is currently being satisfied mainly by APress. Here are a few more reviews for their iOS books...
About 30 percent of enterprises -- that’s medium, large, as well as small enterprises -- are using app stores to deploy some of their applications at some level. As enterprises and most business users rapidly adopt smartphones and make them mission-critical to their work and lives, tablets are fast on their heels as a similar major disruptor. These fast-moving mobile trends together are also escalating demand for enterprise app stores.
Netbiscuits, a provider of software service for mobile sites and apps, announced on Wednesday that its board has nominated Craig Besnoy to become the company's new managing director in North America. Stepping into his new role today, Besnoy will be responsible for Netbiscuits' growth strategy in the United States and other markets on the American continent. In response to rising market demand for mobile websites on the back of device proliferation in North America, Netbiscuits Inc. is expanding its U.S. operations by opening new offices in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The successful Enterprise Mobility Guide 2011, that was published by Sybase two months ago, is finally available on your iOS device in iBooks format. If you're like me and have embraced a mobile lifestyle, so much so that you want your publications on your device, this is it! This inaugural publication contains the Latest Tips, Trends and Success in Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Application Development from experts in the field of Mobility. These experts are formed from within Sybase and SAP as well as Partners and respected Analysts, for example Accenture, Google, Motorola, Orange, RIM, Samsung, Verizon, Yankee Group and the Enterprise Mobility Forum.
I thought I would get the iThain's iPhone Crystal Ball out again, polish it up and gaze a few months ahead towards the end of 2011. First of all I have to say that I do not think we will see the device until the latter half of this year, maybe just before the end of the year holidays would not be a total surprise. I believe the reason for this will not because of component supply issues, but due to the fact that it has only been on release within Verizon for a few months. This would be a break from the norm, of the usual yearly cycles of updates for the iPhone, but this will not effect the hype and demand! Now I have said that, I am also thinking that the iPhone 5 will be such a great leap forward that the delay will be Apple's way to make sure enough there is enough supply to satisfy the demand when it hits the streets. I do expect that we will get some hints during WWDC, though Apple have said outright that this year's WWDC will not be a platform for any hardware launches. OK, my iPhone Crystal ball has now booted up, so here are the things I would like to see happen for the iPhone 5…
It only took Samsung a week to lodge revenge suits against Apple in South Korea, Japan and Germany claiming that iPad and iPhone infringe its patents. According to Reuters the five South Korean, two Japanese and three German patents relate mostly to power reduction during data transmission, 3G widgetry for reducing errors during data transmission and wireless data communications technology. Patent watcher Florian Mueller figures it’s just a matter of time for Samsung, a key Apple supplier, to press its charges in a US court, at least as a counterclaim to Apple’s suit accusing Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy tablet and phones of brazen copying.
It’s not going to surprise anyone that Apple’s fiscal Q2 numbers were light on iPads given its obvious inability to meet demand, but what may surprise Google and its many Android followers was the surge in iPhone sales to 18.65 million units, a 113% jump in growth year-over-year, significantly ahead of IDC’s 48% growth projection. Apple said sales of the dingus were up 155% in the US and 250% in China, where alone it represented a bit under $5 billion, up 4x. iPads, whose future seems assured given what Apple called a “staggering” iPad lust resulting in the “mother of all backlogs,” only hit 4.69 million units in the quarter, reportedly demanding every widget Apple could make and turning into $2.8 billion in revenue.
Brazil, for all its bubbling BRIC status a notoriously hard place to do business with – harder still to repatriate money from – is anticipating that Apple’s iPad maker Foxconn will move there and start churning out the widgets by the end of the year. This according to what the country’s science and technology minister, Aloizio Mercadante, told the press reportedly ahead of working out infrastructure issues with the Taiwan-based company like electricity, logistics, airports and broadband. The government is interested in seeing its people armed with tablets and is apparently willing to negotiate tax concessions. An in-country plant, presumably located in a duty-free zone, could circumvent Brazil’s crippling import duties, perhaps serving as a supply point for the rest of South America.
Seems we’re going to be treated to another Steve Jobs first early next year: an authorized biography called iSteve: The Book of Jobs based on what publisher Simon & Schuster says will amount to three years of secret interviews with the iMaven, his family, Apple people and competitors by his Boswell, Walter Isaacson. Presumably Jobs wanted to tell his side of the story before it’s too late. The interviews started when Jobs turned Apple over to COO Tim Cook and went off to have a liver transplant.
Apple and its iPad are supposed to dominate the tablet market into 2015 when, according to Gartner’s crystal ball, its market share is supposed to drop from 69% this year and 64% next year to a mere 49%. Google’s Android is projected to garner 24% in 2012 and 39% in 2015, leaving 22% for everybody else. Gartner thinks RIM and its QNX-based Android app-running Playbook will capture a 10% share by 2015, up from 5.6% this and 6.6% next year.
The day after my last tweet regarding the lack of any new information about my abducted daughter Sofia since March 4, I received an updated letter on Thursday, April 7, 2011, from the State Department on Sofia's welfare in Syria. Sofia was abducted by her mother from the United States to Syria last July, following her diagnosis of GDD with possible autism. She had 13 remaining medical appointments left at the time of her abduction, none of which she was able to keep.
Despite nail-biting concern over possible component shortages because of the Japanese tragedy – lately about whether it’ll have a steady supply of batteries – Apple’s web site started forecasting iPad 2 deliveries in another two-three weeks on Monday, better than the three-four weeks it was previously estimating. The improved outlook seems to be true of all the markets where the widget’s been introduced.
Those rumors about Apple paying top dollar for iPad parts because of the trifecta disaster in Japan may be true. DigiTimes claims the company has “agreed to absorb all the additional costs in exchange for smooth shipments” for upstream components, pushing any shortages off on rival tablet makers if they can’t match Apple’s wallet. It says Apple wanted four million iPad 2s a month in the second quarter and that suppliers of anisotropic conductive films (ACGF) and ITO materials have enough inventory to last through May but June may be dicey.
With the ever-increasing popularity and acceptance of tablets, ebook readers, etc., it is little surprise that the traditional form of paper books and it's ecosystem is coming under immense pressure to survive and remain profitable. How long will the paper book and related industries, merchants, suppliers and consumers be able to resist the onslaught of electronic media alternatives? Or though it will shrink it will manage to survive by sticking to its core characteristics? There was news here in the UK a couple days back about HMV considering selling off Waterstone's, the popular book chain. HMV struggling in it's traditional media market is not a new story. The way we consume media, music, movies and news has been changing for the past several years. The businesses which adopt have a chance to succeed. The ones who don't will struggle. Analysts have been writing about the truth is that the music industry is in a near-death spiral. According to Forrester Research, U.S. music sales and licensing revenues plummeted from $14.6 billion in 1999 to less than half that figure - just $6.3 billion - a decade later. The print industry is struggling equally spectacularly. In the US alone the newspaper industry is losing billions of dollars through loss of advert revenue, a large extent to online, electronic and social media channels.
California Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd ordered that Steve Jobs, still on medical leave, be deposed for no more than two hours about the allegation that Apple made it impossible for the iPod to play music bought from RealNetworks’ music store. The judge figures Jobs has “unique, non-repetitive, firsthand knowledge.” The order stems from a monopoly maintenance suit lodged in 2005 over Apple’s so-called FairPlay Digital Right Management software that allegedly overrode RealNetworks’ Harmony technology restricting iPod downloads to Apple’s iTunes store and only letting iTunes music play on iPods. The now-discontinued FairPlay was ostensibly supposed to prevent piracy.
Despite the fact that iPad 2 is in hysterically short supply in the United States – and apparently likely to remain so for at least the next month or so – and despite the fact that events in Japan have raised doubts about iPad’s component supply line – Apple put out one of its rare press releases Tuesday to say that the widget will go on sale in retail stores at 5 p.m. on Friday March 25, as planned, in 25 more countries. Apple will start taking online orders at 1 a.m. Friday morning. The company also said that the dingus would be available in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and other unidentified places in April. It didn’t say whether it thought that there would be enough to go around.
Need to get that contract executed today, but you are sitting in the airport heading to a conference? The popularity of Apple's iPad and iPhone mobile devices are liberating employees and users from their desks, and with SmartSign Web allows them to sign anywhere, anytime. The iPad holds the particular promise to accelerate the mass adoption of electronic signatures. Imagine walking into your local bank to open an account and the bank employee hands you an iPad to affix your signature to the account application or the check signature card. Or when you are returning a vehicle off lease at the dealership, quickly go through the vehicle inspection and sign off right there with the iPad.
Bertrand Serlet, the head of Mac OS X, is leaving the company to “focus less on products and more on science” according to Apple’s press release Wednesday. He will be replaced by his number two Craig Federighi, Apple’s VP of Mac software engineering, who will report as Serlet did to Steve Jobs. He has been managing the Mac OS software engineering group for the past two years and will be responsible for Mac OS X’ continued development. Serlet figures “the transition should be seamless.” Serlet, a veteran of the seminal Xerox PARC, has been with Jobs for 22 years at both NeXT, where Mac OS X first took shape, and then followed him to Apple. He succeeded Avie Tevanian as senior VP, software engineering in mid-2003 and was responsible for Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard.
Apple sued Amazon last Friday for infringing its July 2008 App Store trademark claiming it’s using it will confuse consumers into thinking Apple sponsors and approves the Android software site. It wants an injunction as well as unspecified damages, Amazon’s profits and costs. In case it means something Amazon styles it Appstore and Appstore only went live early Tuesday morning with 4,082 apps and a free giveaway of the Angry Birds Rio game.
There are no official numbers yet but multiple channel checks by Wall Street suggest that Apple sold somewhere between 400,000 and a million iPads over the weekend. That’s more than the 300,000 the first iPad did its first weekend out. They went mostly to people who didn’t own an iPad yet according to Piper Jeffrey analyst Gene Munster who surveyed 200-odd buyers. The dingus, priced at $499-$829 like the original, went on sale late Friday. Retail stores, including Apple’s own, are reportedly tapped out, with limited restocking. Apple’s web site started showing shipping delays of three-four weeks for the thing by Sunday, a timeline that was pushed out to four-five weeks Tuesday.
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Mastek, the global provider of vertically focused enterprise technology and platforms, has announced the completion of its iPhone and Blackberry Mission Leadership® app project on behalf of global business execution consultancy McKinney Rogers. Mastek had been tasked with delivering iPhone and Blackberry apps as well as Offline apps with synchronisation specifically designed to assist senior executives and enhance business intelligence across the organisation especially while they are in transit (i.e. in-flight) and on location where online connectivity may not be possible. The technology has been designed with CEOs in mind, allowing board members and senior executives to drill down into minute detail to all aspects of their business critical communication and information sharing channels, across large global organisations. The apps are being extensively used by consultants and executives at McKinney Rogers, who are currently in the process of rolling out the apps to their client base.
XS2TheWorld, a mobile marketing and mobile application building specialist, has partnered with Transmission TX to launch 360° Video, a mobile app which puts the user at the centre of moving video, creating interactive, immersive worlds on the iPhone 4 and iPad. The app goes further than ever before in creating branded moving worlds that users can enter, control and explore. Working in a similar way to online 360° images, and using the accelerometer on the iPhone 4 and iPad, the mobile app places the viewer at the centre of moving footage so they can look around the environment and even interact with elements such as text, images or links. A brand could, for example, use this mobile marketing tool to create an immersive world from a skiing video, allowing the viewer to look up, down to the side and behind during a slalom run as if they were within the video itself. A bar or hotel could film a live tour through their property, giving the viewer the opportunity to look around at guests walking through the space, and stop and interact with signs or maps.
To get here, over that last 8 weeks, we have mentioned using a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) - the Sybase UnWired Platform (SUP) to create Mobile Business Objects (MBO's) that abstract our datasources and define what will be synchronized to our iOS Mobile Client. Now that we have built and tested our client, the next step is en-mass roll out of the application, to the Mobile Devices in our Enterprise. What we need to have is the control over Provision, Production and Decommission, within our Enterprise but always maintaining Device Management & Security... Enter Afaria, with an Afaria client available on the App Store. Remember the Afaria Client will need to connect to a back end Afaria Server.
iPad 2 sales start Friday evening at 5pm March 11 depending on where the store is. Apple starts accepting online orders for the dingus at 1 a.m. Pacific Time Friday. On Wednesday the company released the iOS 4.3 update to its mobile operating system a couple of days sooner than expected. It reportedly boosts the original iPad’s browser speed by 18%. Apple also updated the SDK and its Xcode 4 IDE as well as its HTML 5 ad creating tool iAd Producer.