Skype on Thursday announced the new version of its iPhone application that brings video calling to millions of mobile users around the globe over both 3G and WiFi networks. Available to download from the Apple App Store today, the new Skype for iPhone App allows iPhone , iPad and iPod touch owners to make and/or receive free* Skype video calls for the first time. Users can now see their family, friends and colleagues around the world while talking to them. With approximately 25 million concurrent users logged into Skype at any given time**, the new Skype for iPhone makes it easier than ever to share moments wherever you are.
Goldman Sachs figures tablet shipments will grow 500% to 54.7 million next year – 37.2 million of them iPads – cannibalizing around 19 million notebooks and netbooks or ~35% of PC sales; the year after it’ll be 79.2 million tablets and 33% of the PC market. It expects PCs to grow only 8% next year. Since Microsoft and Intel haven’t mustered a significant response to the expected ARM-based iOS/Android barbarians at the gate – and may never get another chance – Goldman says that if its “tablet forecast is anywhere near accurate, this would be the first time in three decades that a non-Wintel technology has made legitimate inroads into personal computing” and “could have significant implications across the technology industry as a whole.”
The government’s second dragnet of alleged dealers in material inside information started Thursday with the arrest of James Fleishman, a salesman with Primary Global Research, a so-called expert-networking firm, along with Flextronics senior director of business development Walter Shimoon, AMD supply chain manager Marl Anthony Longoria and Taiwan Semiconductor North America bus dev manager Manosha Karunatilaka. As hired consultants Shimoon, Longoria and Karunatilaka allegedly told at least two unnamed hedge funds that were clients of Primary Global things they oughtn’t have. The Flextronics guy is charged with leaking information on Apple products like the iPad’s closely held code name K48 and its release date, sales figures for the iPhone and iPod and the design of a new iPhone to a witness who was cooperating with the Justice Department.
To commemorate e-SignLive’s new support for the Apple iPad, Silanis today announced Adrian Griffith of Oval Business Solutions as the November winner of the monthly iPad contest which closes December 31, 2010. Oval Business Solutions is a full service business consulting and application development firm based in the United Kingdom. The company specializes in productivity optimization - working with organizations of all sizes to increase efficiency through better systems and processes.
Google is supposed to unveil a beta Chrome OS on a generic Atom-based netbook Tuesday and put the Google-branded thing into limited circulation in the run-up to a commercial product next year. Reportedly no more than 65,000 of this first-stab widget will be made as an appeal to developers.
FocalPoint Business Coaching, the world's most recognized Business and Executive Coaching team today announced the release of the iPad edition of its entire Business and Executive Coaching library, now available at the App Store. The brands easy-to-navigate application is designed for Business Owners and Executives who are working with a FocalPoint Coach. The App contains the same content the brand has always used to successfully guide business improvement, but with the addition of intuitive links to take advantage of the innovative display and Multi-Touch interface
The U.S. International Trade Commission is going to investigate Apple’s patent complaint against Motorola and its Android phones. It could theoretically ban Moto’s widgets from American shores. Meanwhile, Moto has complained to the ITC about Microsoft’s Xbox. Microsoft, which is also suing Moto’s Android phones for patent infringement, recently lodged other litigation claiming Motorola is demanding way too much for IP needed in Xbox. Moto is sorta returning the favor.
I have been using the iPad now since its launch and mostly in the last 6 months in a specific way. I am not a gamer, I am a part-time browser, but primarily I am a full-time Enterprise user. If you have been following me on Ulitzer, you would have already read that I use my iPad whenever I travel as a replacement to my MacBook, for presentations, document creation, spreadsheets, email etc. It is such a delight now to travel light with such a powerful and mobile device. So those features I have mentioned above translate to the iPad applications created by Apple, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Mail etc, that have had much thought and design in the area of UX (User eXperience) by the Apple Engineers. I mention this because what became obvious within hours of getting my iPad was the fact that iPhone Apps, unless they are so simplistic, just suck on the iPad!!!
Anticipated iPad demand this Christmas reportedly has Apple’s Chinese iPad maker Foxconn bringing in added capacity. According to Digitimes, Foxconn, which is capable of producing 2.5 million units a month at its plants in Shenzhen – provided it’s got all the components – has also started mass producing the dingus at its new plants in Chengdu where it can currently churn out another 10,000 units a day. Quoting sources it says Foxconn plans to set up about 50 production lines in Chengdu where annual maximum capacity could reach about 40 million units. Jefferies thinks there could be rush orders as soon as next week. Digitimes also heard that iPad 2 could launch at the end of Q1.
Graphics Properties Holdings Inc (GPHI), which basically used to be Silicon Graphics, is suing Apple, claiming the iMac and Mac Pro willfully infringe on of its two floating point rasterization patents (Nos 6,650,327 and 7,518,615) and being willful it wants treble damages. Acer, Toshiba and Nintendo are also named in the suit, which was filed in New York and discovered by Patently Apple. GPHI is the asset management company owned by private investment funds and other institutional investors following the bankruptcy of Silicon Graphics last year. It owns 300 some odd patents used for graphics, computers and displays and is in business to make money by licensing the IP. It recently won an appeal in a case against AMD and ATI’s Radeon chip and upheld the validity of the ‘327 patent. GPHI filed another case last week against Gateway, Lenovo, Dell and HP on the same patents.
Apple updated iOS, its operating system for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, to rev 4.2, putting the three devices on a common platform for the first time. iPad can now do stuff like wirelessly print over Wi-Fi networks or AirPrint provided you have a sympathetic HP printer; multitask; find text on web pages; consolidate e-mails from multiple accounts in one inbox; thread messaging; store application in folders; and wirelessly stream music to stereos. Steve Jobs claimed the update “makes the iPad a completely new product.” Apple has also – usefully – made its “Find My iPhone” widgetry free. A map will show you approximately where it is and have it sound an alarm (another annoyance of modern living). It works with iPad too and in a pinch the dingus could be scrubbed clean.
In fact to be correct today is the day that iOS 4.2.1 finally becomes public and brings in line the coolest Tablet, with the coolest Smartphone. Apple have already posted the upgrade graphic and link to the iOS 4.2 page on http://www.apple.com and reports have it that the upgrade will be available from 10am PST today. If you have ready my other article on...Will the iOS4.2 Upgrade for iPad Make a Change to Enterprise Adoption? you will be aware of my thoughts.
Apple has been teasing everybody all day with a message on its web site that reads: “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget. Check back here tomorrow for an exciting announcement from iTunes.” The Wall Street Journal late Monday claimed it had cracked the code and that Apple had finally wangled the long-sought right to distribute the Beatles’ music. The paper said Apple was talking to the group’s record label EMI just last week and that “there is still a chance that Apple could change plans at the last minute.” It could not learn the terms.
Apple said Friday that it’s canning its rack-mounted Xserve servers because – Steve Jobs supposedly told an e-mail inquirer – “hardly anyone was buying them.” Good reason. Availability should cease rather abruptly come January 31 unless a petition that users have started persuades Apple to change its mind. Drives will be available until the end of 2011 or until they run out, whichever comes first. For the same money and ostensibly the same workloads Apple’s got a 12U (two across) tower system called the Mac Pro Server, normally a 2.8GHz quad-core Nehalem unit with 8GB of DDR3 memory and two 1TB drives – basically a high-end workstation that can also be had with one or two six-, eight- or 12-core Westmeres and a maximum four 2TB drives – but only six of ’em will fit where 36 Xserves used to go.
Apple has sued Motorola in federal court for allegedly infringing on six of its touch screen patents, fingering all nine of Moto's smart Android phones and accusing the OS, UI and apps of messing with Apple's IP. Apple has to be running scared; the Android-backed Open Handset Alliance now claims a 44% smartphone market share to Apples 26%. This all comes a month after Motorola sued Apple for patent infringement in the iPhone/Pad/Pod and some Macs.
After outlawing Adobe’s Flash on its widgets – now including not putting it on its brand new MacBook Airs – you want it, you load it – Apple has now “deprecated” Java on its Macs and its just-released Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3. A release note on the Mac OS X Reference Library tersely reads: “As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the Java runtime ported by Apple and that ships with Mac OS X is deprecated. Developers should not rely on the Apple-supplied Java runtime being present in future versions of Mac OS X. The Java runtime shipping in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, will continue to be supported and maintained through the standard support cycles of those products.”
Verizon started peddling the iPad this week beginning at around $630 with a Mi-Fi gismo to connect it to the Internet. But starting Armistice Day, November 11, it’s also gonna be selling Samsung’s seven-inch Flash-supporting Android 2.2 Froyo-based Galaxy Tab tablet – which is supposed to be the first real competitor to iPad. It’ll charge $600 without a contract. It’s got an optional 1GB $20-a-month data plan, or, if you like, $35 for 3GB, $50 for 5GB and $80 for 10GB. Galaxy can connect directly to Verizon’s network.
It looks like the notion of an app store is turning into an app mall full of boutiques including Mozilla, which has got a prototype of what it calls an Open Web App Store for apps “that are truly of the web,” built with HTML, CSS and JavaScript to work on computers and mobile phones and recompense the developer complements of an authentication model using existing identity systems like OpenID. It’s released the technical documentation and a developer preview ahead of Google launched its Chrome App Store. The widgetry supports Mozilla’s own Firefox 3.6 and later, Firefox for mobile, IE8, Chrome 6, Safari 5, Opera 10 and WebKit mobile.
I thought I would take a few minutes and think of what new features and directions the next iPhone and its supporting iOS could take. Now this is a little harder after what the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 has brought to the table and that we are only just using them both, but I will take a shot. With the new Apple Data Center I think that Cloud Computing will be more apparent for a iPhone 5 device. I believe that we will see as near as to a zero configuration device as we could hope for, based around MobileMe accounts. Though I am also certain that these types of devices will become more powerful in themselves.
Wall Street, which has turned Apple into a giant bubble lately, figured it must have sold at least 4.7 million, maybe even five million, iPads in the September quarter. Well, the punters were disappointed Monday when Apple, suggesting the dingus was supply-constrained its first full quarter out, said it only sold 4.19 million of the thing.
Apple’s Mac now commands an unprecedented 10.6% of the America PC market, pushing it into the number three slot behind HP and Dell, which together own almost half the market, and pushing it ahead of Acer, which is still number two worldwide, and U.S. number five Toshiba, according to IDC’s Q3 numbers. IDC doesn’t count iPads but allows that the evidently going-like-hotcakes device is having a halo effect on Mac sales while at the same cannibalizing some netbook sales, which continue to slow. The tabulator’s other findings mirror what Intel said when it reported its quarter: June and July were rocky, September the market rallied. IDC figures the global PC market grew 11% to 89.3 million machines in Q3, nearly 3% below obviously overblown expectations and like Intel it blames constrained consumer spending hitting back-to-school sales, particularly in the U.S., though the commercial refresh is still happening. The U.S., where 18.9 million PCs shipped, only grew 3.8% year-over-year against predictions of 11% and Q2’s actual 11.7%.
Wal-Mart has started selling the iPad out of hundreds of its shops and expects to be shuffling the things out at 2,300 stores as well as its web site by the shank of the Christmas rush. They will sell for list price and online orders will have to be picked up at the store. Wal-Mart follows Best Buy and Target in satisfying iPad lust. Electronista.com remarks that, judging by the iPhone, it’s early in iPad’s lifecycle to sign up the discount chain, suggesting it’s a squeeze-‘em-out competitive impulse.
At a guess one might think that Apple’s thinking saturation, especially ahead of the coming competition because Verizon Wireless, which doesn’t sell iPhones – though everybody seems to wish it did because its network is supposed to be better than AT&T’s – is going to start selling a version of the iPad at 2,000 locations come October 28. The move may or may not lend some substance to the rumors that Verizon will finally get an Android-fighting CDMA iPhone compatible with its network next year. Anyway, it’s going to be selling the less popular (more inventory-prone?) Wi-Fi iPad with its own personal MiFi 2200 mobile hot spot device. That means that users should be able to connect to the Internet if they’re anywhere near a 3G service.
Apple stock managed to open and close slightly above $300 for the first time in its life Wednesday juiced by the iPad’s potential, giving it a market cap of around $274 billion and making it the second-most valuable stock in America next to Exxon. Exxon’s market cap is a far distant $330 billion. The company reports its quarter on Monday October 19. Meanwhile, CNBC says Apple is gonna show off the next version of the Mac operating system on Wednesday October 21.
A question I often think about is inspired by you – by the comments we get on the DocuSign Facebook Page and the conversations we have on Twitter as @DocuSign. What features of DocuSign’s electronic signature platform are you interested in? To that end, I’ve looked at the topics we’ve covered: DocuSign brings electronic signature to iPad: [...]