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发帖数: 3492 | | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 2 Mon, 23 Jul 2012 21:00:01 PDT
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today released a significant new report
outlining his estimates of Apple's product launch schedule for the second
half of this year, pointing to all-new iPod touch and iPod nano models as
well as new iPhone and iPad mini models and tweaked internals for the full-
size iPad.
Kuo's report also touches on the Mac side, reiterating his earlier claims
that Apple will be launching its 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro in that
timeframe. He believes, however, that impact from the launch will initially
be muted amid tight supplies and consumer budgets that will likely
prioritize purchases of new iPhone and iPad mini models.
We think consumers who initially planned to purchase the 13” MacBook Pro
and Air will turn to the 13” Retina MacBook Pro instead because it has an
attractive panel, its price is similar to MacBook Pro and it has a better
balance between power consumption and form factor. However, as supply is
limited due to panel and assembly yield rate issues, shipment of the 13”
Retina MacBook Pro won’t be able to satisfy demand. And we think consumers
’ budgets will transfer to new iOS products after Apple launches them,
which suggests that overall MacBook shipments will not grow meaningfully on
the 13” Retina MacBook Pro.
While early 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro sales may be modest, Kuo does
believes that with Retina displays clearly being the future of Mac notebooks
the stage will be set for explosive growth heading into 2013.
As for the iMac, Kuo believes that new Ivy Bridge-based iMacs have been
delayed by screen lamination issues, with Apple's supply chain status
suggesting it will be a tight schedule to meet an end of September launch
for the updated models.
The chances of the new iMac debuting in September are slim. But, judging by
the current supply chain situation, it could be rolled out by end-September.
[...]
[Supply chain] shipments for Mac desktop models will be low due to inventory
adjustment in July, and will see the most dramatic MoM rise in August as
shipments for the new iMac begin.
Several other sources have claimed that Apple will be targeting an October
launch for updated iMacs, although there has been disagreement over whether
the new models will include Retina displays, which are almost certainly the
most highly-anticipated feature in the product's future. Kuo's report does
not address whether or not he believes the feature will be included in the
next revision or held for a later update. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 3 Mon, 23 Jul 2012 21:22:21 PDT
In line with a fresh report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo
claiming that Apple will be updating the iPod touch later this year with an
"all-new" design using the same in-cell touch display technology rumored to
be used in the next iPhone, Japanese blog Macotakara reports that Apple will
also be moving the iPod touch to a 4-inch display from the current 3.5-inch
display. Apple is otherwise said to be basing the iPod touch's internals
on the iPhone 4S, although the case will include a "buffed aluminum" rear
shell rather than the glass back of the iPhone 4S or the mirrored aluminum
of the current iPod touch.
According to asian source, new iPod touch (5th generation) will have 4 inch
LCD which is the same size with coming iPhone 5.
CPU or other spec is considered to be same with iPhone 4S, and has different
back-case design, which will be not mirror polished but buffed alminum one.
And it seems to be prepared black and white color model.
Rough mockup of fifth-generation iPod touch with buffed aluminum rear shell
and larger display
The report's source also indicates that there is an additional hole in the
lower portion of the rear shell, separate from the camera found on the
current model. It is, however, currently unknown what the function of the
hole will be. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 4 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 06:23:19 PDT
AT&T today announced financial results for the second quarter of 2012,
revealing that the carrier activated 3.7 million iPhones during the quarter,
down from 4.3 million in the previous quarter as customers begin to slow
their purchases ahead of the next-generation iPhone launch.
Notably, AT&T's 3.7 million iPhone activations accounts for roughly 73% of
the carriers 5.1 million total smartphone sales during the quarter, down
slightly from last quarter's share. With smartphones now accounting for 77%
of AT&T's total postpaid device sales, the iPhone represents approximately
55% of the carrier's total phone sales to contract customers, down slightly
from last quarter's 60% share.
AT&T sold 5.1 million smartphones in the second quarter. Smartphones
represented 77 percent of postpaid device sales. At the end of the quarter,
61.9 percent, or 43.1 million, of AT&T's postpaid subscribers had
smartphones, up from 49.9 percent, or 34.1 million, a year earlier. AT&T's
ARPU for smartphones is twice that of non-smartphone subscribers, and about
88 percent of smartphone subscribers are on FamilyTalk | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 5 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 06:38:46 PDT
FOSS Patents reports that Apple has been granted an expanded sales ban on
Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.7 over design infringement, with a German court
issuing a preliminary injunction ruling that Samsung may not sell the device
anywhere in the European Union. A sales ban in Germany has been in effect
for a number of months now under a decision related to its larger sibling,
the Galaxy Tab 10.1, but today's decision extends the ban to all EU
countries.
The lower court had originally entered an EU-wide preliminary injunction
against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 affecting not only Samsung's German subsidiary
but also its Korean parent company and, as a result, the Samsung group as a
whole. It then modified that order so as to apply only to the German
subsidiary, holding that Apple had not proven that the Korean parent company
has an "establishment" in Germany. The appeals court, however, disagreed
and found (already in the Galaxy Tab 10.1 decision) that Samsung's German
subsidiary is effectively an establishment of the Korean parent company,
even though it formally claims to be an independent legal entity.
The appeals court did not, however, find in Apple's favor regarding the
Galaxy Tab 10.1N that Samsung released with a tweaked design to skirt around
an injunction on the original Galaxy Tab 10.1. That design was a product
of close collaboration between Samsung's designers and lawyers in order to
address the court's findings of design infringement in the original model.
The report notes that these rulings are still preliminary, with Apple still
pushing forward on two separate cases against Samsung in the German courts
covering a total of five tablet and ten smartphone models. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 6 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 07:13:06 PDT
FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller reports that recently-filed court documents in
the ongoing U.S. patent and design dispute between Apple and Samsung reveal
that Apple is seeking a total of $2.5 billion from Samsung to cover
alleged infringement by Samsung's mobile products. From the court filing:
Samsung has reaped billions of dollars in profits and caused Apple to lose
hundreds of millions of dollars through its violation of Apple's
intellectual property. Apple conservatively estimates that as of March 31,
2012, Samsung has been unjustly enriched by about [redacted; presumably $
;2 billion] and has additionally cost Apple about $500 million in lost
profits. Apple also conservatively estimates that it is entitled to over &#
36;25 million in reasonable royalty damages on the proportionately small set
of remaining sales for which it cannot obtain an award of Samsung's profits
or Apple's own lost profits, for a combined total of $2.525 billion.
Mueller notes that Apple is not allowed to collect both royalties and
profits from a single device, and thus focuses its claims on the $2
billion figure related to design infringement, as that tactic would allow
Apple to request both lost profits of its own and unfairly earned profits by
Samsung on those devices. In calculating the royalty rates it believes it
is owed for Samsung's use of Apple's intellectual property, Apple arrived at
the following figures:
These are the per-unit royalties that Apple calculated for its different
intellectual property rights-in-suit:
- $2.02 for the "overscroll bounce" (or "rubber-banding") '318 patent
- $3.10 for the "scrolling API" '915 patent
- $2.02 for the "tap to zoom and navigate" '163 patent
- $24 for use of any of Apple's design patents or trade dress rights
On a separate note, Apple's filings also reveal its estimates of how much it
should pay in royalties for Samsung's patents, which are related to 3G
standards and are required to be licensed under fair and reasonable terms.
While Samsung has been requesting a royalty rate of 2.4% on Apple's sales of
3G devices, Apple argues that the amount should only be one-half cent per
unit based on Samsung's small share of essential 3G patents and a belief
that the royalty should be calculated on the cost of the baseband processor
rather than the entire device.
As part of the ongoing court case, Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Samsung CEO
Choi Gee-sung back in late May, but the negotiations yielded little progress
. Reuters reported yesterday that the two executives met again last week
but that the sides remain far apart in their valuations of their respective
intellectual property. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 7 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 07:35:23 PDT
Bloomberg reports that Apple is taking an interesting step into security
research publicity, agreeing to present at this week's Black Hat conference
in Las Vegas for the first time in the conference's 15-year history.
While many major technology vendors have overcome their reluctance to making
a public showing at the conference, Apple, now the world’s most valuable
company, has had no problem snubbing a community whose aim is to unearth its
vulnerabilities.
That will change Thursday when Dallas De Atley, manager of Apple’s platform
security team, is scheduled to give a presentation on key security
technologies within iOS, the operating system for iPhones and iPads.
The report notes that Apple's security researchers have attended the
conference in past years, but the company has kept a low profile with its
presence. Apple researchers were reportedly scheduled to give a panel
presentation back in 2008, but the session was canceled once Apple's
marketing team learned of the plans.
“Bottom line — no one at Apple speaks without marketing approval,” [Black
Hat general manager Trey] Ford wrote in an e-mail. “Apple will be at Black
Hat 2012, and marketing is on board.”
The annual Black Hat conference has been a popular venue for security
researchers to release their findings on vulnerabilities in OS X, iOS and
other platforms. Apple has sometimes moved very quickly to patch holes
disclosed at the conference, such as in 2009 when Apple released iPhone OS 3
.0.1 to address an SMS security vulnerability revealed at the conference
just one day earlier, although the researchers had previously been in
contact with Apple about the issue. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 8 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 09:40:21 PDT
Apple today sent out what it is says is the final reminder that it will be
shutting down its iWork.com service as of July 31. The reminder is
essentially identical to a previous message that went out earlier this month.
Dear iWork.com user,
Remember, as of July 31, 2012, you will no longer be able to access your
documents on the iWork.com public beta site or view them on the web.
We recommend that you immediately sign in to iWork.com and download all your
documents to your computer. For detailed instructions on how to save a copy
of your documents on your computer, read this support article at Apple.com.
Moving forward, you can use iCloud to store your documents and make them
available across your computer and your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Learn
more about iCloud.
Sincerely,
The iWork team
iWork.com launched as a free beta in January 2009 as a service for sharing
and collaborating on iWork documents, with Apple intending to eventually
offer the service for a fee. The iWork.com service never exited beta,
however, and with iCloud offering new options for moving documents around
the company has decided to eliminate the program. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 9 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:15:53 PDT
Radio Shack has begun offering "refreshed" and "remanufactured" iPhone 4 and
4S models for a significant discount. The iPhone 4S is available from Radio
Shack on AT&T and Verizon starting for $99.99 with a two-year contract,
and the iPhone 4 on the same carriers for free.
According to Radio Shack:
Refreshed phones are models that have been restored and repackaged
internally (no full warranty), while remanufactured are used phones provided
from a third party that have been remanufactured with a new warranty.
Those looking for an iPhone 4S will be able to purchase a refreshed or
remanufactured model on AT&T for $99.99 (iPhone 4S 16GB) and $149.99
(iPhone 4S 32 GB). Verizon models of the iPhone 4S are available for $
99.99 (iPhone 4S 16 GB), $199.99 (iPhone 4S 32 GB) and $299.99 (
iPhone 4S 64 GB).
Additionally, users buying phones on Verizon also receive a $50 Radio
Shack gift card.
Radio Shack has been fairly active offering special promotions and deals for
the iPhone and iPad. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 10 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:07:58 PDT
Philip Elmer-Dewitt has put together his list of analyst expectations ahead
of Apple's quarterly earnings report this afternoon. The list includes
estimates from 68 analysts: 34 "independent" and 34 "institutional" who work
for large investment houses or research organizations.
As usual, the independents are much more bullish than the institutional
analysts. The independent consensus expects earnings per share (EPS) of $
;12.31 on revenue of $41.49 billion. The institutional consensus is EPS
of $10.33 on $37.21 billion in revenue. This is a 12% difference on
revenue and a 19% difference on EPS.
Apple will announce its earnings for the third fiscal quarter of 2012 (
second calendar quarter of 2012) and host a conference call regarding the
release this afternoon at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific. The earnings
release itself typically comes in around 4:30 PM Eastern. MacRumors will
have live coverage of the proceedings.
Last quarter the company earned $11.6 billion in profit on revenue of &#
36;39.2 billion. For the second fiscal quarter, Apple has issued guidance of
$34 billion in revenue with profits of $8.68 per share. The company
typically exceeds its guidance by a significant margin. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 11 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:16:19 PDT
CNET reports on the discovery of Windows malware embedded within an iPhone
application available through the App Store. But rather than a directed
attack at Windows users, the malware appears to have been accidentally
included from an infected developer's system. The malware is also
relatively old and easily detected by most antivirus software for Windows
once the App Store package has been unwrapped.
The malware was first discovered by a user posting in the Apple support
forums who noted that a download of Instaquotes-Quotes Cards For Instagram
from developer Ilyas Hassani triggered warnings from the ClamXav antivirus
software for Mac. While the Windows malware obviously could not harm the
user's OS X installation, it was flagged as an infected file posing a danger
to Windows systems. After learning about the discovery, CNET performed
additional testing on the download to confirm that it was not a false
positive.
Since the downloaded .ipa file is a package, these executables could be
extracted using the package manager Pacifist, and then more accurately
scanned. Afterward, other malware programs like Sophos that initially missed
detecting the malware instantly picked it up and described it as "Mal/
CoiDung-A," a worm written in visual basic that installs files within the
Windows system directory and then modifies the Windows registry to execute
the malware when the system is restarted.
Copying the malware to a Windows virtual machine running the latest version
of Microsoft Security Essentials resulted in the malware being immediately
detected and removed from the system.
It is unclear exactly how or why the malware came to be included in the App
Store package, but it seems almost certain to have been an accidental
inclusion. As delivered inside the application package, it appears to pose
no harm to Windows users, who would have to decompress the package and
manually run the infected file in order to expose themselves to the malware.
The infected application debuted in the App Store on July 19 and is
currently still available for download after a temporary price drop from &#
36;0.99 to free over the weekend. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 12 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:36:18 PDT
Apple today announced financial results for the second calendar quarter and
third fiscal quarter of 2012. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $
35.0 billion and net quarterly profit of $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per
diluted share, compared to revenue of $28.57 billion and net quarterly
profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago
quarter.
This will be considered a big "miss" for Apple, as it is dramatically weaker
than what analysts were expecting. The company did beat its own guidance,
however. Last quarter, Apple said it would make $34 billion in revenue
and earnings of $8.67 per share.
Gross margin was 42.8 percent, compared to 41.7 percent in the year-ago
quarter, and international sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter's
revenue. Apple's quarterly profit and revenue were both company records for
the June quarter. Apple also declared a new quarterly dividend of $2.65
per share payable on August 16 to shareholders as of the close of trading
on August 13.
Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 26.0 million, up 28 percent from the
year-ago quarter, and the company sold 17.0 million iPads, up 84 percent
year-over-year. Apple sold 4.0 million Macintosh computers, a unit increase
of 2 percent over the year-ago quarter. The company also sold 6.8 million
iPods, representing a 10 percent unit decline year-over-year.
“We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,
” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire
MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS
6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products
we’ve got in the pipeline.”
Apple's guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012 includes expected
revenue of $34 billion and earnings per diluted share of $7.65.
Apple will provide live streaming of its Q3 2012 financial results
conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story
with coverage of the conference call highlights. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 13 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:41:11 PDT
In Apple's earnings press release issued just moments ago, Apple CEO Tim
Cook officially announced that OS X Mountain Lion will indeed be launching
tomorrow, July 25.
“We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,
” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire
MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS
6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products
we’ve got in the pipeline.”
OS X Mountain Lion will be priced at $19.99 and will be available via
the Mac App Store.
Apple followed a similar tactic last year, announcing at the start of its
July earnings conference call that OS X Lion would launch the following day. | w********1
发帖数: 3492 | 14 Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:14:25 PDT
Apple held its Q3 2012 financial results conference call this evening. We
have posted a full transcript of the call.
From the call, Apple discusses their expectations for the next quarter which
runs through July, August and September. In particular, Apple CFO Peter
Oppenheimer expects gross margins to decline in the next quarter due to a "
Fall transition". He was unwilling to provide more details on direct
questioning:
A: "Fall transition" that I spoke about is driving most of the decline that
we see sequentially in gross margin. Not something that we're going to talk
about in any level of detail today. We could not be more confident in our
new product pipeline.
Apple uses such terms as "Fall transition" to represent changes to their
product lines. Lower expected gross margins could point to new products
with lower prices. The obvious speculation would point to the much rumored
smaller/cheaper 7.85" iPad. Whatever the "fall transition" is, Apple
expects it to take place before the end of September in order for it to
impact the next quarter.
Apple was also asked about the impact of rumors and speculation on their
sales
Q: Rumor and speculation, how much does it hurt sales in the quarter?
A: There's a lot of speculation out there. It's difficult to sort out but I'
m fairly convinced that there's an incredible anticipation out there for
future products. As you would expect given what we've been able to deliver
in the past. I think it's a reasonable amount.
And later...
Try very hard to keep our product roadmap secret and confidential. We go to
extremes to do that. That, however, doesn't stop people from speculating or
wondering and they'll never do that. The great thing about this country is
that people can say what they think and so-forth. I'm not going to spend any
energy trying to change that. I'm glad that people want the next thing. I'm
super happy about it. There are obviously quite a few that want what we're
doing now as well. I'm not going to put any energy into trying to get people
to stop speculating. I don't think it would amount to anything.
Finally, Apple is still optimistic about the Apple TV, and continues to
believe in it despite it being a comparably smaller market.
Q: Did you give an Apple TV number and updated thoughts?
A: Sold 1.3 million last quarter, up more than 170% year over year. Brings
fiscal year to 4 million units. This is pretty incredible. Still at a level
that we would call a "hobby" -- continue to pull the string to see where it
takes us. Not one to keep around projects that we don't believe in. Lot of
people here that believe in Apple TV. Continue to invest.
Q: Don't do hobbies to be hobbies -- do it to make something bigger?
A: We do it because we think it'll leave us somewhere. We'll see. 4 million
isn't a small number and there are a lot of believers in it.
We have a full transcript available from the call. |
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