Apple reducing iPad 2 orders, but 'too early to tell' if it will be phased out

Apple has begun reducing orders for the iPad 2 ahead of the unveiling of a new third-generation iPad, but it's not yet known whether Apple will keep the iPad 2 around at a discounted price.

 Sources in Apple's supply chain told DigiTimes that orders for the iPad 2 are gradually dropping ahead of an anticipated third-generation iPad. While iPad 2 orders are being reduced, orders for the next iPad, reportedly set to launch in March of 2012, remain steady.

Various reports have suggested that Apple will continue to sell the iPad 2 at a discounted price after it launches a third-generation iPad. Apple already employs that strategy in offering the iPhone 3GS, first released in 2009, as an entry-level handset, in addition to the iPhone 4, released in 2010, and iPhone 4S, which just launched in October.

DigiTimes, which has a hit-and-miss track record with Apple-related rumors, also believes that the iPad 2 will remain available at a discounted price in order to take on Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire.

With the reduction in iPad 2 orders, sources reportedly told the publication it is "still too early to tell" whether Apple plans to phase out the iPad 2, or keep it around following the launch of a third-generation iPad. "More observations need to be done in 2012 before the picture becomes clearer," the report said.

Apple has found great success in continuing to sell older iPhone models at discounted prices. As of August, the iPhone 3GS was still the No. 2 selling smartphone in America, and Apple is rumored to still be producing 2 million per quarter of the two-year-old handset, which continues to often outsell newer Android handsets.

Numerous rumors have suggested Apple plans to expand its iPad lineup in 2012, offering more models with different features at a number of price points, much like it already does with its MacBooks. The next iPad is expected to feature a high-resolution Retina Display like is already found on the iPhone and iPod touch.

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Apple Loses European Market Share

It seems the Euro crises could be causing Europeans to look beyond expensive iPhones, and opt for cheaper alternatives powered by Google’s Android. A study by the Kantar Group, a research firm based in London, revealed that Apple’s smartphone market share declined in France, Germany, Italy and Spain to name a few in the last few months. [1]

 

Our $503 price estimate for Apple stock is about 25% above market price.

 

See our complete analysis for Apple stock here

 

Apple’s loss is Android’s gain

 

According to the report, during the 12 weeks ending November month, Apple’s smartphone market share declined from 29% to 20% while it declined from 27% to 22% in Germany. [1] The iPhone 4S helped Apple gain market share in the U.S. and Britain, but significant market share loss in Europe should be concerning Apple. Weakening global economy and fear of recessionary environment coming back in the near future could make this situation worse for Apple. Android, on the other hand, continues to flourish and enjoyed a dominant market share of 61% in Germany with the Samsung Galaxy II, its flagship product.

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Siri now available on jailbroken iOS 5 devices, including iPhone 4

A fully functioning port of the iPhone 4S’s hyped Siri voice assistant is now available for almost all jailbroken Apple mobile devices and huzzah, it’s legal!

The somewhat gimmicky Siri assistant has been the focus of the iPhone 4S’s advertising campaign, and the feature is suspected to be helping fuel major sales for that device. But as the program only officially works on the iPhone 4S, other iPhone owners have been wanting to get in on the action. To date, the options have been either illegal or fairly technical in execution.

But now a new hack called Spire allows for almost any jailbroken iPhone or iPad to run the lusted-after Siri. Specifically, it allows Siri to work on a jailbroken iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, third-gen iPod touch, fourth-gen iPod touch and first-gen iPad.

The free Spire app is available to download from the Cydia app store on jailbroken devices and takes about 100MB of space. The jalibreak developers who created it, Chpwn and Ryan Petrich, recommend users connect to a Wi-Fi network when downloading the app.

One issue that had plagued earlier Siri ports was legality and concerns about copyright infringement. But Chpwn writes that the new app uses a different method to obtain data that makes the app legal. He writes:

Spire uses a new method to obtain the files necessary for Siri, so it doesn’t have the copyright issues encountered by previous attempts. Similarly, rather than directing all traffic through a specific proxy server (and the associated privacy issues), Spire allows you to specify your own proxy server.

Will you give the Spire app a spin on your jailbroken iPhone or iPad?

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Nuance to acquire rival Vlingo to build a better Siri

Voice technology firm Nuance has agreed to buy its top rival Vlingo for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced this morning.

 

Nuance has been providing voice technology for years but has recently been getting a lot of attention for powering Siri, the well-advertised voice assistant on the iPhone 4S. Vlingo has been Nuance’s heated rival in the tech space, and interestingly enough, Nuance had sued Vlingo in court for patent infringement, while Vlingo bought its own set of patents to counter-sue Nuance and stop it in its tracks.

 

But the two are putting aside the lawsuits with the acquisition. Now they can work together to boost the power and innovation of natural voice technology. Most likely, they’ll do what they can to improve the highly-popular Siri and similar voice apps across mobile platforms.

 

“Inspired by the introduction of services such as Apple’s Siri and our own Dragon Go!, virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet is looking for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications and services,” said Mike Thompson, Senior VP of Nuance Mobile, in a statement. “By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand.”

 

Nuance appears to be on an acquisition streak in hopes of neutralizing the competition. Before Vlingo, Nuance agreed to acquire texting technology company Swype for a reported $102.5 million back in October. Nuance’s T9 predictive text software is a direct competitor to Swype’s technology, which lets people quickly draw from point to point on touch-screen keyboards.

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Jailbreak! iOS 5.0.1 gets untethered exploits for non-A5 chip devices

Hackers have just taken the wraps off some handy new jailbreaking tools for iOS devices.

 

The wares will work for any iOS devices running the 5.0.1 version of the operating system and will work for all of Apple’s mobile hardware lineup except the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2.

 

Thanks to iOS hacker pod2g, whose exploits form the basis of the jailbreak package, non-A5 devices can be jailbroken while untethered.

 

The fine folks at the Dev-Team Blog put the untethered jailbreak into redsn0w 0.9.10 (available now as a Windows or Mac download) and PwnageTool, and the Chronic Dev Team made a nice little Cydia package for your jailbreaking pleasure.

 

As previously mentioned, this jailbreak is compatible with most currently available Apple iOS mobile devices, including the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and the original iPad, as well as third-generation and fourth-generation iPod Touch units.

 

If you’re already running a tethered jailbreak, you can update to the untethered jailbreak via the Corona utility in Cydia.

 

An untethered jailbreak for A5 chip devices, including the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, is not yet available but is in the works, wrote pod2g just days ago.

 

“I know that a lot of people are waiting for the A5 jailbreak,” wrote the hacker on his blog. “I need to focus on A5 and hope I can find a path quick.”

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Google sees 700K+ Android activations daily

According to Google’s Android chief, Andy Rubin, you’re one of a growing mob of people tuning in and turning on to the open-source mobile operating system.

 

“There are now over 700,000 Android devices activated every day,” Rubin stated late last night on his Google+ page.

 

This statistic has more than doubled since last year, when Rubin tweeted that 300,000 new devices were being activated daily.

 

And during the company’s July 2011 earnings call, Google CEO Larry Page noted that the company had reached the 550,000 activations per day milestone. Around that time, Rubin stated Android’s rate of growth was growing by 4.4 percent every single week.

 

All these activation stats add up to some serious domination. Earlier this month, we reported that Android devices accounted for half the total mobile market for smartphones in the United States. Apple came in a distant second at 27 percent.

 

Also (and this likely has an impact on both the OS’s growth and total market share), Android overtook iPhone as the most desired mobile platform earlier this year. According to numbers from Nielsen from January 2011 to March 2011, more than one third of consumers indicate Android as their preferred operating system. That number had leapt up from around one quarter just a few months before.

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Windows Phone is still in trouble

Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform now has more than 50,000 apps available — a significant milestone, but one that still puts it far behind Apple’s 500,000 iOS apps and Google’s more than 380,000 Android apps.

At least things seem to be picking up for the platform on the app front. It took Microsoft over a year to reach 40,000 apps on Windows Phone, but only 40 days to add another 10,000, reports All About Windows Phone. But apps alone won’t sell consumers on Windows Phone, especially during its do-or-die year of 2012.

So what’s keeping the platform, which is reportedly still seeing slow sales, from finding the success of the iPhone or Android? As former Windows Phone general manager Charlie Kindel sees it, the real problem with Windows Phone doesn’t stem from hardware or software (which he deems “superior” to the competition), but instead is due to Microsoft’s inability to play nice with carriers.

The company has imposed strict hardware restrictions on hardware partners, which has led to only a few devices being developed, and it has removed carriers entirely from the Windows Phone update process. Those two elements have led to carriers preferring to push Android and iOS devices, instead of Windows Phone.

“Carriers own the marketing money and spend billions a year,” Kindel wrote in a blog post yesterday. “The money is provided by the other sides of the market: OS providers & device manufactures, but the carriers get to spend it; they are the aggregation point where the money actually gets spent. The carriers choose what devices get featured on those TV ads.  They also choose what devices to train their RSP (retail sales professionals) to push.”

While I don’t deny that carrier marketing efforts have influenced Windows Phone sales, the situation seems much more complicated. First of all, Microsoft was way too late to the game, launching Windows Phone at the end of 2010, while the iPhone and Android hit the market in 2007 and 2008 respectively. MG Siegler argues that particular point nicely.

Kindel also fails to mention the explosive failure of Microsoft’s Kin phones earlier last year, which surely turned off many consumers to any future Microsoft mobile platform. I also think consumers are more savvy than the marketing sponges Kindel takes them for. He assumes people will buy what carriers tell them to, when in reality having a product that is clearly superior to the competition (which Windows Phone certainly isn’t) is more important.

You can say that Windows Phone is superior as much as you like, but so far Microsoft has failed to prove that to consumers.

One of the big reasons Microsoft has failed to make much of a splash with the platform is that it’s going after the same market as the iPhone and Android, when it should be focusing more on users who haven’t yet considered smartphones. I previously argued that Nokia’s Lumia 800 is an incredibly important device for Microsoft, but in many ways its cheaper sibling, the Lumia 710, is just as significant.

The Lumia 710 opens the door to a wider market of users who don’t want to spend over $100 on a new phone (T-Mobile will offer it in the US for just $50 with contract). And its inexpensive hardware also makes it more suitable to the prepaid market, a quickly growing segment in which Microsoft desperately needs to find a foothold.

Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia also makes it well positioned to expand Windows Phone into international markets as well — though those will admittedly be less lucrative than dominating the U.S., Europe and Asia.

 

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iFans in a tizzy over Jobs' health

The National Enquirer, an American tabloid, reported on Thursday that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is seriously ill and quoted a doctor saying that Jobs might live for only six more weeks. The doctor came to the conclusion by "analyzing recent photographs of Jobs". The tabloid claimed to have taken the photographs while following Jobs to the Stanford Cancer Center at Palo Alto in California. Apple did not react to the report till late on Thursday night. 

While some may rubbish it as speculation, not everyone is optimistic because Jobs had taken his second medical leave in January, leading to renewed talks about his health. Besides, the medical history of Jobs is not too encouraging either: In 2004, he had undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer and in 2009, he underwent a liver transplant. 

The reaction over the report across India ranged from incredulity to worries over Jobs' health. "The six-week figure was arrived by someone looking at just the photo published by National Enquirer. That obviously can't be taken as credible information," said Amit Agarwal, renowned tech blogger who writes at Digital Inspiration. 

"Right now, Apple is very secretive and assertive with everything. Whether it's the procedure for allowing apps in app store or not allowing Adobe Flash on the iPad. A big part of this decision-making process is Jobs. If he leaves, maybe we can expect Apple to be a little less restrictive," he added. 

P R Rajendran, director of Chennai-based Next Wave Multimedia, a mobile app development company, is such a huge fan that he named his firm after NeXT, the company Jobs started when he was asked to leave Apple in 1985. "Jobs is my hero. His contribution to the tech world is immense. I wish him all the luck," he said. 

Rama Bethmangalkar, an Apple fan or iFan and an investment manager at VC firm Ventureast, has bought three generations of Macbooks, talks on iPhone, listens to music on an iPod and reads on his iPad. "Jobs has been an innovative leader and due credit must be given to him for the products that Apple has churned out. But it's not as if he was the only one who worked on all these products. The new leadership will follow the same pattern. So I don't think him not being there will be a huge detriment to the Apple's fortune," he said. 

Not everyone is so sure. "Jobs is supposed to be the brain behind most of Apple's innovations and the main decision-maker. There will be a definite impact on the direction Apple takes in the future if Jobs is not around," says Manoj Kumar, a tech-savvy ex-IITian, who works as a networking professional in Bangalore. 

Some also think it's time for Jobs to start planning his successor regardless of the rumours. Timothy D Cook, the company's COO has served as the acting CEO in Jobs' absence more than once. "But I think Jobs should name future leaders, especially since he has groomed some of the key personnel in the company," says Shuveb Hussain. 

Hussain heads the cloud computing division of K7 Computing, when not buying Apple products, reading about Apple or eyeing the latest Apple TV. "Jobs is human so there will be a point in time when Apple will have to function without him. He's an enigma, an icon and a hero to many. It would be curious to think about Apple beyond him."

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/ifans-in-a-tizzy-over-jobs-health/articleshow/7519798.cms

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Mini iPhone rumors and affordability

For a tech company known for selling premium gear at premium prices, Apple has made some peculiar--and welcome--moves lately. If new rumors of a cheaper and smaller iPhone are true, they're yet another indication that Cupertino has embraced a cost-cutting religion of sorts, one likely intended to ward off the Google Android juggernaut and build market share at the expense of short-term profits.

Here are three recent examples of Apple's newfound focus on competitive pricing:

1) iPad debuts at $499. When Apple debuted its touch tablet a year ago, nobody really knew what consumers would be willing to pay for a third mobile device that, feature-wise, fell somewhere between a smartphone and laptop/desktop. The iPad's $500-to-$830 price range now seems quite competitive, particularly considering new Android tablets such as the Motorola Xoom will sell in the $800 range. Of course, it's unclear whether the next-generation iPad will maintain its predecessor's pricing structure, or cost more as new features (e.g. cameras) are added.

2) Apple TV at $99. The set-top box, which cost $229 when it debuted in early 2007, underwent radical price-reduction surgery in September 2010 when Apple released a much-smaller model for $99. The diskless, more affordable Apple TV was clearly a response to market forces, where simpler media streamers like the Roku Player were selling well below the sub-$100 price range. Rather than add features to the original Apple TV and retain its premium pricing, Apple chose to duke it out with Roku for mainstream customers.

3) iPhone 3GS at $49. Sure, older-generation tech always costs less, but January's super-aggressive price cut for the 8GB 3GS--from $99 to $49--was a bold more for Apple, one no doubt designed to boost Cupertino's smartphone market share by making the iPhone accessible to a larger consumer base. And even if the 3GS is put out to pasture soon, Apple is showing it's serious about slowing the encroachment of Android devices, particularly at the low end of the mobile market.

OK, some of you will point out that the Mac's premium pricing doesn't exactly fit my thesis that Apple has found low-price religion. But when you consider that Mac sales in Apple's first quarter rose 23 percent year over year, cost-cutting in the personal computer market can wait.

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