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Posts tagged with "2011"

Reminder: Apple Q1 Financial Results Today – 5 PM ET

Later today starting at 5:00 PM ET (2:00 PM PT) Apple will hold the Q1 2011 earnings call to announce their financial results, shortly after the markets close. An audio-only live streaming will be available at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq111/. We will offer a breakdown of the results and have a post in the homepage with continually updating notes from the earnings call.

Apple is expected to post blockbuster sales from the holiday season, with iPads and iPhones to lead and the new MacBook Airs to follow. In the last quarter, Apple posted record iPhone and Mac sales with 14.1 million iPhone sold, 3.89 million Macs and 4.19 million iPads.The company posted record revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced yesterday that he’s taking another medical leave of absence to focus on his health.

iPad 2 Coming on April 2nd or 9th?

As reported by MacRumors, according to German website MacNotes the next-generation iPad may launch in the first week of April, on the 2nd or 9th. The website reports that the iPad 2 will launch in the first “two Saturdays” of April. The first-generation iPad came out on April 3, 2010 – a Saturday.

Reliable sources told us about the upcoming launch of the Apple iPad 2: the first or second Saturday in April will see the first sales of Apples new tablet. The iPad 2 will sell US-only for three months, and Apple Store-only for up to half a year. In July, more countries will follow. Walmart, Best Buy and Co. maybe have to wait until October until they are allowed to sell Apples new tablets.

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Apple Announces iTunes Festival London 2011

Just like every year, Apple has announced the dates for the iTunes Festival 2011, which will take place at the Roundhouse in London. For entire month of July, more than 60 artists will perform 31 consecutive live performances – among these artists, Linkin Park, Duran Duran and Rumer.

Tickets for the iTunes Festival are free, and can be obtained by entering a series of competitions from Apple. You can apply to win the first free tickets here. Entrants must be UK residents and over 14 years of age – sorry US folks, but you can’t enter the contest.

Regular updates about new confirmed artists will be sent out through the website’s newsletter, but you can also follow iTunes Festival on Twitter, Ping and Facebook. In 2010, Apple reported that more than 2 million people applied for tickets.

AirPlay Devices To Explode in 2011→

AirPlay Devices To Explode in 2011

Engadget reports some statements from an interview with BridgeCo’s VP of Sales and Marketing Jordan Watters. BridgeCo is the company behind AirPlay that has signed an exclusive deal with Apple.

According to Jordan Watters, AirPlay devices could ultimately dwarf “made for iPod” audio docks by 2x to 4x.

“The ecosystem is already there,” he said smiling. And unlike iPod docks which are usually sold at a rate of one per iOS device, Watters sees consumers purchasing multiple AirPlay devices for every iOS device sold in order to enable whole-home distributed audio. In fact, growth could come as a “step function ramp sucking into the market,” Jordan enthused. In other words, he expects AirPlay growth to be explosive.

Personally, I agree with him. Since my first iPod, I haven’t felt the need of multiple docking systems as much as I’d like several AirPlay-enabled devices in my house and office now. I have an audio system plugged in my AirPort Express right now, and that’s it. As soon as Apple figures out a way to extend video through AirPlay to all apps and external devices, we’re going to see even more kinds of AirPlay devices.

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Apple Launches “New Year, New You” App Store Section

iTunes Connect went back online a few hours ago, and app updates started propagating again in iTunes. Together with the end of the “holiday shutdown” for iOS developers, Apple launched a new App Store section called “New Year, New You” to showcase apps “for health and wealth”.

The new section, though, isn’t limited at apps for fitness and health. Apple apparently has a broader view of new year’s resolutions, and decided to included productivity and entertainment apps in the list. For example, you can find apps such as OmniFocus and Things in there, Instapaper and Mortgage Pad, TED and Fitness for iPad. It’s a whole selection of great apps to start 2011 with a perfect app library on your iOS devices.

We think it’s a good idea. Check out the new section here.

Apple Announces Q1 2011 Conference Call For January 18

As noted by Setteb.it, Apple has scheduled its q1 2011 earnings call for January 18, 2011. The conference call will be streamed live on Apple’s website (audio-only) and a link to the webcast will be provided in the following weeks.

Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial results of its first fiscal quarter on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. PT. A link to the conference call webcast will be provided at a later date.

At the Q4 earnings call on October 18, Apple announced record sales for iPhones and iPads (14.1 million units and 4.19 million units, respectively), 3.89 million Macs sold and $20.34 billion revenue. At the conference call scheduled in January we’ll hear about the sales of the new MacBook Airs and iOS devices’ performances in the holiday season.

Will we get the chance to listen to Steve Jobs’ thoughts again? Who knows. We’re pretty sure it’s going to be fun and interesting anyway, and we’ll be here live discussing the results with you.

2011 Isn’t 1995 For Apple→

2011 Isn’t 1995 For Apple

But I look at who is making money. Back in 1995 developers were mostly making money from DOS. Remember, this caused WordPerfect and Borland to make bad bets. They bet on DOS for too long, while Bill Gates went and built some of the first and best Macintosh apps. The lesson, though, doesn’t pass from 1995 to 2011. Today where are most of the developers making their money? iOS (according to Sephora, Starbucks, OpenTable, eBay, and many other developers). So, Android has to convince developers to switch, or do both platforms at same time. That’s quite different.

I guess the social cycle theory doesn’t really apply to technology. Maybe because the factors that influence tech progress change at a faster rate than human ones.

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Steve Jobs: MobileMe Will Get “A Lot Better” Next Year

Surprised? MacRumors is reporting of a new email from Steve Jobs to one of their readers who, annoyed by MobileMe performance issues such as duplicate entries or unreliable syncing, emailed him to ask if Apple was working on it, to make it better. Jobs, as usual, replied with a very concise email saying that, yes, MobileMe will indeed get a lot better in 2011.

Q: I love my iPad and iPhone4 and am a huge fan of yours and all that Apple does. I desperately want to stay inside of Apple’e ecosystem as much as possible.

However, MobileMe is making it very difficult for me to do so. Unreliable/unpredictable syncing, creating duplicate entries (sometimes scores of them), etc. It’s almost unusable.

And I know from forums (including Apple’s own support boards) that I am not the only one experiencing these very real and frustrating problems.

Please tell me it will get better, and soon?

Jobs: Yes, it will get a lot better in 2011.

Sent from my iPhone

Of course it will get better. Apple is always working on making its product line better year after year and, even if some issues of MobileMe weren’t addressed during 2010, don’t forget Apple made Find My iPhone free, introduced note and iBooks bookmarks syncing, revamped the web UI of MobileMe. Changes were made in 2010, so perhaps 2011 will bring several performance improvements – we’re talking about speed, sync, support for multiple clients. And maybe some new features, too.

Also, don’t forget the data center Apple has been busy building in North Carolina. Because we’re pretty sure that will be behind MobileMe getting a lot better next year.

iPad 2 Coming in February 2011?

According to a new report from Digitimes, the iPad 2 may ship as early as February 2011 – in less than 100 days now. Foxconn’s plants in Shenzen have been recently notified that initial shipments, due in February, will reach 400,000 - 600,000 units:

The sources pointed out that the iPad 2 will ship as soon as the end of February in 2011. Apple originally planned to start mass production in January, but because the device’s firmware is currently still in testing, Apple has been postponing the schedule. Since Foxconn’s new plants in Chengdu are still in pilot production, iPad 2 will be mainly supplied by its Shenzhen plants, while the company’s upstream component partners have all been notified of the shipments schedule.

Rumors surfaced in November suggested that Apple would include a FaceTime camera in the next iPad, USB ports, Retina Display and a gyroscope. It is also believed that Largan Precision has been selected to be the camera lens maker of the next generation iPad.

Foxconn, of course, declined to comment on the new rumors.