Apple Conference Call: “Future Product
Transition”

post from TheAppleBlog on 20 April 2010 09:29:00 PM. © TheAppleBlog

In a question related to revenue for next quarter, the response included four factors: a stronger U.S. dollar, a Mac portable transition, the educational buying season, and a “future product transition.”

The “future product” could be the new iPhone, which is expected to launch in June. As for the portables, while the MacBook Pros were just updated, the MacBook awaits a refresh, as does the MacBook Air, assuming it’s not discontinued.

Besides that enigmatic statement, there were more than a few interesting questions and answers for this call.

The iPad was a popular topic. While units sold wasn’t updated at the call, next quarter iPads will be reported as a “line item on our data summary,” meaning units sold and revenue. That’s a clear indicator of success. More concretely, the iPad 3G will ship on April 30 in the U.S., and come to nine additional countries in May. There are more than 5,000 accessories compatible with the iPad, and more than 3,500 specific apps for the iPad. Price came up more than once, which Apple considers to be “aggressive” on the iPad. Nonetheless, regarding price cuts, the reply was “nothing to announce today.”

It was just so awkward hearing someone praise AT&T.

The iPhone, which sold a record 8.572 million units, saw a 41 percent jump year-over-year, three times better than the overall smartphone market. The iPhone is seeing crazy growth in Asia Pacific, Japan, and Europe, up 484, 183, and 133 percent respectively. The iPhone in China is seeing a sales increase of nine times and revenue doubling, but that has more to do with the lackluster launch than real success so far.

In an awkwardly answered question about iPhone exclusivity, it was admitted that multiple carriers increases units sales and market share where it’s done, but that “the formula doesn’t work in every single case.” Also, AT&T has made some “big strides” in network improvement. Good grief, why not just admit AT&T pays more per phone than Verizon ever will and be done with it. It was just so awkward hearing someone praise AT&T.

Speaking of awkward, in response to a question about whatever happened to the Apple TV, it was stated sales are up 34 percent YOY, but that’s still a “small” number that we will likely never learn. There was a little rationalizing about how the Mac and the iPhone compete in much larger markets, hundreds of millions of units sold per year, so that’s why the Apple TV remains a “hobby” for Apple. Note to Apple: 200 million televisions were sold last year.

Additional random bits:

Not much was said about the Mac, except that you can forget about a MacBook mini because Apple executives can’t think of “a single thing” a netbook does well.
As for the iPod, as noted, while sales were flat, revenue was up. That’s because the iPod touch saw 63 percent sales growth.
Apple still owns about 70 percent of the media player market.
Half of people buying Macs in Apple Stores continue to be new to the platform.
There are now 286 Apple Stores, which saw 47 million visitors last quarter.
Apple expects to open 25 Apple Stores in China, up from two, by the end of 2011.
Apple has $41.7 billion in cash on hand, enough to purchase Adobe twice over and put an end to Flash without the passive-aggressive behavior.
Apple considers the advertising initiative iAd a “toe in the water,” or possibly in Google’s eye, depending on how you look at it.
As always, the company is excited about the “product pipeline.”

Overall, a great quarter and a pretty good conference call. I’m looking forward to “future product transitions” for all.

Read The Full Article:
http://theappleblog.com/2010/04/20/apple-conference-call-future-product-transitio
n/

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Googly's Alphabets in The Zoo Educational App
featured by Apple

post from on 20 April 2010 09:00:00 PM. ©

Googly has released Alphabets in the Zoo 1.0, their first app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-12354.htm

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Will Gawker face potential lawsuit over iPhone
leak

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 20 April 2010 08:35:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Although Gawker Media appears to be confident it will avoid any legal trouble after publishing detai...

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http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=e94e16c214b0b602c991c5c428ea3cba

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Claim Chowder: Tomi Ahonen on iPhone Sales

post from Daring Fireball on 20 April 2010 08:17:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Tomi Ahonen, former Nokia executive and self-professed expert on mobile phones, 11 days ago:

You read it right. I am writing the first history of the once-iconic iPhone, written now in early April 2010, before Apple has released its first quarter earnings for 2010. This is literally the peak of the short reign that Apple’s iPhone had as the most emulated smartphone. […] And mark my words, the numbers are now very clear, Apple’s market share peak among smartphones, and among all handsets, on an annual basis, is being witnessed now. Yes its true, Apple cannot grow market share into 2011. But its not for reasons you might think.

[ten thousand words of gibberish snipped]

The Apple iPhone sales pattern differs from all other major smartphone makers because Apple only releases one new model per year. So the sales take off strongly and then decline as the rivals keep releasing newer phones. Apple’s best quarter is its Christmas quarter. This year they were not able to grow market share. And we already know, that Apple’s January-March quarter was a heavy fall from the Christmas level of sales (as it always is, this is the normal pattern).

Apple, today:

The Company sold 8.75 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 131 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

So the “heavy fall from the Christmas level of sales” we “already know” about was, uh, an increase of 50,000 iPhones. This was the most iPhones Apple has ever sold in a quarter. (And does not count the 63 percent year-over-year growth in sales of the iPod Touch.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/04/iphone-in-memoriam-a-history
-from-its-peak-moment-who-copied-whom.html

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Unaffiliated Apple Analysts Out-Perform Wall
Street Analysts Again

post from Daring Fireball on 20 April 2010 07:49:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Turley Muller was the most accurate, once again. (And even he vastly underestimated the total number of iPhones sold.) If you’ve got money invested in Apple stock, take note of these track records.

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Read The Full Article:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/04/20/apples-blow-out-quarter-the-bloggers-calle
d-it-the-street-blew-it/?source=yahoo_quote

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Apple execs highlight early iPad success, Apple
TV growth

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 20 April 2010 07:15:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Following Apple's announcement of its strongest non-holiday quarter ever, company executives answere...

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http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=fc100932f157a2b249452b592c27ecf2

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High DPI Web Sites

post from Daring Fireball on 20 April 2010 06:43:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

Dave Hyatt on CSS pixels and high-resolution displays, from back in 2006. Also highly informative.

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Read The Full Article:
http://webkit.org/blog/55/high-dpi-web-sites/

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Microsoft already showing new Zune HD

Director James Gunn may have seen the next-generation Zune, based on an account of a visit to a Micr...

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http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=46aecb06913b1acec194dea5ddc73ab3

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A Pixel Is Not a Pixel Is Not a Pixel

Peter-Paul Koch on CSS pixels and display resolutions. Informative, as always.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/04/a_pixel_is_not.html

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Regarding Flash Player for Smartphones

Kevin C. Tofel:

Whether you agree with Apple?s steadfast refusal to allow Flash on its mobile devices, the lack of Flash doesn?t appear to be hurting Apple device sales. Even without Flash support, Apple recently reported it has sold a total of 50 million iPhones and in only a few days, 500,000 iPads, not to mention a vast number of iPod touch devices. Some consumers do refuse to buy a Flash-less Apple device, but I?d wager that they?re in the minority.

Number of iPhones with Flash Player: 0.

Number of competing phones with Flash Player: 0.

We keep hearing that the second number is going to change. If and when it does, we’ll see whether it’s a competitive problem for the iPhone and iPad.

And for what it’s worth, I still haven’t seen a definitive answer as to whether Google plans to make Flash Player a standard component for Android, even when Adobe releases it.

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Read The Full Article:
http://gigaom.com/2010/04/19/adobe-ceo-has-his-own-reality-distortion-field/

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