Actually, we don't know how many Samsung has sold. They don't disclose that information, only very occasional hints to guide commentators towards optimistic figures. Amazon is the same with Kindle. Apple discloses sales and channel inventory every quarter. (Samsung are clearly doing pretty well with Galaxy, even if the real numbers are 30% lower.)
Back in the 60's we did maths like this at school:
A certain council has a long straight road, and three identical snow ploughs which clear snow at a constant rate (so speed is inversely proportional to depth of snow). One day it began to snow steadily. The council sent a plough along the road. After an hour they sent the second plough behind the first. After another hour, they sent the third plough. Some time later it was still snowing steadily, and the second and third ploughs simultaneously crashed into the first. How long had it been snowing before the first plough was sent out?
You'd get 30-40 minutes for a question like that, but you'd also be able to choose a different hard question. Oh look, someone's posted the solution if you're interested:
With Windows 8, there's a danger that Microsoft offers their installed base a clear future they don't want, and for the first time ever, the alternative looks a safer, more mainstream option. Windows 8 could end up being Microsoft's confession that it can't catch up with Apple. It'll be interesting to watch. Could it really be so much better than Apple that it matters?
The point is that iPads are being used to do nearly all the tasks that consumers, education and enterprise did use PC's for, so they are competing for the same sale in most cases. Programmers and other heavyweight content creators will continue to use a traditional PC or Mac, but they are numerically a minority.
You don't understand. iPhones aren't bought by end-users in a "smartphone market". The users rent a mobile service. With iPhone, Apple largely defines that service, which end users like very much. Apple is not selling a gadget to the end user, or even to the carrier. Apple sells the end user to the carrier, and the carrier can afford Apple's price. Other handset makers just aren't in a position to control the user experience let alone do better than Apple; they don't control the OS, and they don't control the services. So they won't get either the margins or the loyalty.
As regards Apple's "over inflated" share price, its price to earnings ratio is around 14, with earnings growing at 100% a year. Whereas Amazon's ratio is around 170, with earnings actually shrinking. Even if earnings growth stopped dead today, the P/E would be 10 within a year. The share price should actually be about 50% higher.
No, the Amazon shareholders really are totally crazy. Amazon's price to earnings ratio is 186, which means it would take you 186 years to get your money back if you bought and kept the company. This is bubble territory. Must be because they are growing so fast. Over three years their income has grown - oh, it's shrunk. What about comparable companies? Walmart PE 13; 3 year growth 15%; Apple PE 14; growth 420%.
Perhaps Amazon's share price should be $20. Then you could get your money back in under 20 years.
I'd be saying "Splendid idea, BBC. I can see you're not happy with the licence revenue. Go ahead and charge for everything instead. Set your own prices. We'll split off and keep the taxpayer funded web site, and you can go your own way."
Re: Why are they dumping Blackberries for Iphones?
If you don't want employees, you don't want Blackberry or iPhone. But if you want employees and employees want iPhone, iPhone is what you'll have to offer. And if you're deploying corporate web apps for use on tablets (equals, more or less, iPads), then they'll work identically on iPhones.
Staff want it, and the total ecosystem is superior.
Remember 2007/2008? iPhone was to be programmed with HTML5; platform specific third party apps were the evil past, said Steve Jobs. And then came the App Store.
It's true a 7 inch iPad won't give you the same experience. But if you just want to control your Apple gadgets in the home, a 7 incher lying around is probably what you want.
If he were still here, SJ would be happy to launch a seven inch iPad. When the time is right.
Just because something's true one day doesn't mean it's true the next. And Steve Jobs knew that. and exploited it for all he was worth. You thought Apple was in one place? Turned out they were somewhere else entirely a few months later.
From past news items, RIM must have made supplier commitments for 5 million or so Playbooks, but have stopped at about one million. Amazon must have taken over the design and supplier commitments, at a hefty discount. The deal is only just finalised, and RIM are now dumping their remaining Playbooks. Amazon have simplified Fire further to reduce cost. They haven't even got it working well enough for real demos yet, despite a supposed November ship date.
Amazon can make a good profit on the first four million, and then decide what to do next.
Amazon have never said how many Kindles they have sold. You don't even need a Kindle to buy ebooks from Amazon. You can use an IOS device, for instance, and there are over 200 million of them.
Of course there's prior art in the world of fiction for a brilliant little pocket screen that just does what you want. But nobody actually made one until Apple.
Like Google's, Samsung's own responses to iPhone weren't successful enough for their taste, and instead of working at it until they had something both original and competitive, they copied Apple and added a couple of features. After ten year's work, Apple wanted a little more differentiation.
Patents are a far from ideal tool to keep hold of your product's differentiation, but that's the tool Apple has. Far from being a novice at this, Apple has repeatedly been on the losing end big time. Numerous far east companies cloned the Apple 2 (see Wikipedia). It took Microsoft a decade to copy the Mac OS, but then Apple lost out in court, and Mac almost disappeared without trace. In getting multimedia into Windows, Microsoft copied Apple. But this time Steve Jobs negotiated a settlement that guaranteed five years more life for Mac, together with $150M cash, allowing Microsoft to "save" Apple.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Either way, it will drag on long enough for Apple to establish a new differentiator.
Apple is silent about even the existence future products. It's mainly about delaying any competitor response as long as possible, and protecting sales of the Apple product it will replace. Those are worth billions to Apple. Hype is worth only millions, and requires disclosing the existence of the product. And dirty hype, that Barry Shitpeas says Apple is deliberately manufacturing here, is seriously damaging to Apple. Why would they do that?
I'm not claiming that this wasn't Apple, or wasn't incompetent or perhaps immoral. Just that it isn't hype initiated by senior management.
Of course Apple know what they are doing. They WANT HTML5 to be a viable platform. They also prioritise their relationship with the user - hence the privacy bit. They want content providers to grow up and make business decisions instead of pouting and moaning about Apple's little shop.
And if you think Android is taking over, the latest mobile internet statistics (at marketshare.hitslink.com) shows: IOS 53%; Java ME 21%, Android 16%, Symbian 6%, Blackberry 3%, Windows 0.6%.
This is going to be a bigger category than DSLR. We want to put our good lenses on these babies and get connected aperture and focus, but however good Sony (NEX) or Samsung's Evil gets, they won't have the lens catalogue for another ten years (in other words, ever).
It's fine to whinge about the 30%. But you're whinging about a subset of just one hardware platform. Use Android or Blackberry, or Windows mobile or some other platform if you don't like it.
If you ran WH Smith you'd want a cut of FT sales made through you, wouldn't you? And you wouldn't want a sign up saying it was cheaper elsewhere.
Apple's HTML5 webkit browser has fast Javascript and is standard. It's a place outside Apple's control, where anyone can offer content. Including content that is accessed via IOS native Apps. And it's used by Google, Nokia, Blackberry. Apple gave their contribution to this away for all to use, commercially or not.
Remember when IE6 was a crippling dead hand on web innovation.
Remember how Adobe did its best to destroy the Mac platform with feeble support, terrible performance and endless crashes.
What you're objecting to is that Apple's business strategy, which they've been forced in to, is so superior, that people will willingly pay the 30%. When the so called competitors finally decide to compete, you'll have the world you want.
Apple wants a big enough open market where anyone can compete, and has worked really hard to make sure there is such a place: HTML5 / Webkit / no proprietary Flash. This is the place where the FT App has been "evicted". Apple's need is to prevent an innovation stifling monopoly like Microsoft's emerging again. Even if Apple is the monopolist, it would still stifle their innovation.
There is also the proprietary part of IOS, including the App store, which delivers quite a lot of benefits to publishers and users. Apple charges 30%, and quite reasonably says suppliers can't wander round inside this closed ecosystem inviting people to buy the same thing cheaper outside. That's the same mechanism that's destroying the High Street. (Go look at a product locally, then buy it cheaper on the web).
Instead of taking this as arrogant Apple greed, suggest an alternative that will enable a new economy to flourish for creators and consumers, without being smothered or hijacked by monopolists and gatekeepers.
Yes, Apple is shooting themselves in the foot with these moves. That's the whole idea. It's the only way to force people to move forward to the new economy. When they've got themselves organised, Apple will be happy to compete.
Unfortunately Google jumped ship from this strategy, which they shared, and now hope to be the new Microsoft.
... if that comes to pass, Apple Inc will have a market cap of $15 trillion. And to do that, it will have to take over several global industries. Or maybe Apple will be the de facto world government by then.
actually, you're effectively wrong; AAPL is underpriced
P/E is based on past twelve months earnings. In order for earnings to remain flat 12 months ahead, they'd have to _shrink_to match their rapid growth over the past year. If Apple simply stopped growing, then P/E would drop to about 10 in a year's time. But it's going to carry on growing. So without a share price rise, P/E will be down at 8 or so in a year's time.
Thus Apple is underpriced now, based on fundamentals. But when did the market consider fundamentals? Compare and contrast AMZN: P/E 86, slower growth, and smaller margins than AAPL.
Specific patents may look stupid, but they are the only weapon when a competitor copies your product. Apple just wants other manufacturers to make their own, recognisably different designs, not simply make Apple device clones.
When Android wasn't popular enough, Google copied iPhone designs into Android. And when Samsung's Android phones weren't selling well enough, Samsung deliberately copied iPhone so as to benefit from punter's recognition of iPhone. Then they copied iPad, and when iPad 2 came out, they copied again.
I have a little bit of sympathy for HTC, but for Samsung, none at all. They deserve the injunctions.
Other manufacturers cannot match the iPad or Macbook Air prices. OEM's asked for $100 a unit subsidy from Intel to compete with the Macbook Air in Intel's Ultrabook initiative.
This article is jumping to some major conclusions based on rumors from Digitimes.
The smartphone market is growing fast, not so much affected by the recession (human needs: 1. Food 2. Shelter 3. Smartphone 4... )
Apple is about to execute one of its overnight global product transitions. Naturally they would have orders in place for iPhone 4 parts until they are certain of the transition date. Then they'd trim back iPhone 4 part supply from the transition date.
Google's disregard of intellectual property is leading HTC and others into legal difficulties which may see their products banned from import to major territories. I'd expect them to be cutting back supplies a little in case courts find against them in the next 6 months.
And finally, Digitimes doesn't always get their facts right.
But it's still possible the recession will deepen this winter. But how would HTC & Apple know?
recap: It is (was) a cache of base station locations that you looked as if you might go near, often as much as 50 miles away from where you actually went - so that internet access is not required to deliver a quick initial response from location services on the phone. It was being held for weeks/months, and grew to a large size.
As such it was pretty useless for tracking you (far too vague). But now the cache has been reduced in size, it's info much more precise about where you've recently been.
Of course the worst thing is: if I get hold of your iPhone, I can tell you EXACTLY where it is. It's an outrage that Apple is shipping a device configured to reveal its own location to anyone who as much as sees it.
Don't be evil - haha. Google's whippersnapper CEO is sailing into a world of hurt. They've built their business too heavily on stolen IP (your privacy, everyone's copyright, GPL violation), for too long, and mobile is where it's coming unstuck. The carriers currently push out Android phones, because they are cheap and tick marketing boxes. But apart from geeks, the customers don't actually use Android internet features. Android tablets are stuck in the channel. Non-geeks don't buy them at all. This is a replay of Microsoft with music. Android is Playsforsure, and now Moto is Zune, which Google thinks Android partners will be happy about.
Apple wasn't worried by Moto patents; the ones everyone needs are FRAND-encumbered, so Apple can license on Fair and Reasonable terms. But Apple is having to use litigation to get a fair price. Just as they did with Nokia. The deal will get done, and Apple will pay the same as everyone else, just as with Nokia.
See what Android looked like nine months after iPhone was launched: http://gizmodo.com/334909/google-android-prototype-in-the-wild. Google and licensees definitely copied iPhone to get traction in the market.
Google have a dismissive attitude to the law. They control Android release by violating GPL. They claim patents are worthless and anticompetitive, yet their entire business was based on one (pagerank), and they pay billions to buy patents intending to use them as offensive weapons. Next they will probably subsidise a Moto tablet to get traction in the market. Then antitrust legislation will be against them too.
Google's greed and disregard of intellectual property is going to trip them up quite soon now. Buying MMI is desperation, not dominance. And MMI may actually cost them $19 billion, because they use the "double Irish" tax dodge to avoid paying US taxes. They'll have to pay those taxes to bring $12B into the US.
Classic, Rosetta and Carbon are all things Apple did that allowed old Adobe software to run. But Adobe did nothing for ten years to move to OSX's standard APIs. Adobe has hoped for 15 years that Mac would die, all the while getting half their revenue from Mac users. Cynical beancounter logic is what put them in this state, not Apple.
Look how comparatively ruthless Apple is being with Final Cut Pro in order to keep it at the cutting edge. Unlike Apple, Adobe hasn't been engineering-led for over a decade.
The banks create the money by inventing it and lending it, but they demand interest in addition to repayment. But the total amount of money they've invented is all there is; it's quite impossible for everyone to repay their loans with interest; the money doesn't exist.
Only two eventual possibilities: banks write off and foreclose and end up owning all the real assets, or: endless asset price inflation financed by bigger new loans putting more money out than the repayment and interest on the old loans.
You'd be forgiven for thinking fractional reserve banking is simply legalized theft.
USB was in later editions of Windows 95, and mandated in new PC's at that time. But USB was going nowhere until Apple delivered a captive market for USB devices with the USB-only iMac in mid 1998.
I didn't claim moral superiority for Apple's business model; just tried to remind people of it. USB for examole was dead in the water, despite being on most new Wintel PC's, until Apple shipped the iMac with no alternative interface. And that was a humiliating thing to do when Apple's own firewire was a far superior system.
I'm fine with people resenting Apple's success and profitability.
Microsoft / Apple was a copyright case based on "look and feel", not a patent case. But Sculley had licensed MS to use Mac GUI elements for Windows 1.0. The case failed because of this prior license and because look and feel is not copyrightable. So in future it's down to specific, nitty-gritty patents (not copyright) if you want to protect your designs. So we have patent wars.
Apple runs its business in a particular way, which allows it to move its customers forward over the long term, but requires a protected space in which to function. What they do is very different to simply making one or two gadgets. HTC and Samsung are gadget makers, in that they have no long term plan or structure, and design their products for a market environment over which they have no control. It's Apple who broke the power of the carriers with a spectacularly innovative product, leveraging government-mandated inter-carrier competition to create a direct relationship with users.
HTC made reasonably popular smartphones long before Apple, but now they all look just like iPhones. There is no doubt they, like Samsung, copied flagrantly. Apple has to protect the space in which it operates.
Bill Gates and Microsoft pushed tablet computers for a decade. Despite monopoly power, they were unable to make significant sales. It's quite obvious Apple didn't copy these tablets, and has no monopoly, but iPad is a huge success, which everyone is copying. Apple's method of working has repeatedly enabled it to rescue technologies that were going nowhere and bring them into the mainstream (eg USB, WiFi).
Apple is effectively the industry's first farmer; the others are hunters who simply exploit the market environment. They will kill the farmer and steal the contents of his barn if they can. Just as farming was the way forward, allowing culture and civilisation to become what it is, the way Apple does business is necessary for similar progress in the wired world. So far, no-one else has shown the required commitment to give up hunting for farming. But they will, because in the end, farming leaves no space for hunters.
Could it be that the supposed Nichicon caps were counterfeit? After all, Nichicon have a high reputation, and are Japanese, and the main cause of the epidemic was a stolen electrolyte formula that was incomplete, and that Chinese manufacturers passed amongst themselves. The new formula was needed to meet environmental requirements.
Apple's iMac G5 also suffered this problem, but there's been an extended warranty service in place.
I think commenters are a little harsh; electronic products from major manufacturers are incredibly reliable these days. Problems arise from change; in this change to a more environmentally friendly electrolyte, which Chinese manufacturers didn't know how to make. And Dell's special problem was how badly they cleared up the mess.
Obviously, anyone can call their application software store an app store, because that's what it is. But maybe they can't brand it App Store, because Apple has prior use. As far as I know, it was also Apple who first used "application" instead of "program" in about 1983.
Anyone can refer to their vacuum cleaner as a hoover, but only Hoover can brand a vacuum cleaner Hoover.
"The App Store" for Apple, and "the Amazon App Store" for Amazon sounds about right to me.
Microsoft were far from first with windows, so it must be "Microsoft Windows" for ever, as far as I am concerned.
eBay & Paypal are so expensive, there must now be an opportunity for competition. Personally I'm waiting for bank of Apple.
I think Paypal's problem is that when there's a dispute they don't want to be involved, so they simply reverse what they've done. i.e. they always unwind the payment, and say "sort it out yourselves".
On AVforums a popular small ads convention is to require payment as a gift, so the payer can't claim a refund for non-delivery.
Apple can pay the sort of prices Intel wants. The products won't appear on the open market to compete with Atom. Intel will be better prepared when the wheels completely fall off the X86 Windows duopoly (Windows 8 will also be on ARM, they say). Apple will prepay enough billions to make it a no-brainer for Intel.
A deal will take a year or two to work through. It may already have been done. Apple won't prepay just yet, to avoid showing their hand.
Remember, Steve Jobs has always hated suppliers that go into competition with him (Samsung, Rodime). And deep down, Intel hates X86 and has tried repeatedly to replace it.
It's subtler, but simpler than most seem to understand
Apple is covering the supplier's downside risk when investing for growth, and guaranteeing preferential supply.
There's a huge, competitive industry making components, which are bought for every kind of electronic device. Apple doesn't just want a huge supply of generic components, it wants very particular novel components, which often require brand new production facilities. Billion dollar investments in a cutthroat market are risky. Typically a novel device used to take nine months from first private showing to free availability. Apple wants huge, guaranteed supply of novel components switched on just a couple of months before free availability. They want no-one to see the product until they can buy it. It gives them a huge competitive advantage.
The purpose of Apple's up front prepayments to suppliers is to cover supplier cash flow to set up new production facilities, to commit to taking enough product to eventually pay those costs, and to ensure preferential supply when everyone else has copied Apple's product, and the component becomes mainstream.
This whole situation is one reason why Apple can never control the majority of the market as Microsoft did while it continues to innovate. Apple has no use for the bulk of the industry's production facilities. The exact opposite of Dell in its tin box glory days, when any old components could be bought at rock bottom price after customers had ordered their computer.
(we Apple customers, that is). We watch each move they make and analyse endlessly.
Apple may feel like Microsoft to you, but Apple has got where it is by placing itself between big business and the powerless end-user, forcing the incumbents to compromise by making commitments which free-for-all "open" business models cannot offer. Having done their deal, Apple make their "strict" offer to end-users, who can buy or not as they wish.
The have made life better for consumers (and originators) in, for example, recorded music publishing, mobile services, and software publishing. Others step through the doors that Apple holds open.
We feel fairly confident that Apple will behave well for several more years, because of the huge opportunities that they haven't yet succeeded with. Such as broadcast TV and payment services.
Apple is actually being rather careful with your privacy
It's a cache file of cell locations that you MIGHT go near, data downloaded FROM Apple. It PREVENTS the iPhone from covertly emitting location data. And location services on the phone can come up with an answer even when GPS isn't working (you're deep indoors, or maybe you haven't even got any GPS hardware). With it, location services doesn't need internet connectivity, and can use any one of mobile signal, WiFi signal, GPS signal, to come up with a location. Even then, the user is in full control of location visibility, on a global and per App basis.
The file doesn't tell anyone where you live, or work, or where you've been, except in the vaguest and most incomplete way imaginable. And seeing it requires physical access to your PC / iPhone. So the evil one has to know exactly where you are to find out within 50 miles or so where you may have been.
The existence of this cache file enables the iPhone demonstrably NOT to covertly emit any location info about you to Apple, because the answers to Location Services' questions are already on the phone.
Now the phone book is different. It's publishers should be locked up after paying every person listed thousands in compensation.
I don't know how the endgame will play out, but 60:1 doesn't actually mean much. Amazon set out right at the start of dot com to be the world's biggest book retailer, and for buying a book they of course offer the best experience. I suspect that in dollar value, the physical book:ebook ratio is also not much closer than 60:1.
Amazon cross-subsidizes and sells ebooks below cost; Apple doesn't. Amazon wants to be a content distribution near-monopoly, Apple doesn't; Apple is a platform company, Amazon isn't. Amazon wants to distribute on every available platform. Apple doesn't distribute on other platforms, but wants to define a user experience on their own platform with which other content distributors must compete. Apple's ibook store is a service publishers can use or not, but Amazon is company book publishers cannot currently live without.
IOS device users are far more numerous than Kindle device users, and spend far more on content than the average Android device user. I suspect IOS provides Amazon with more than 50% of Amazon's entire Kindle ebook sales.
Amazon has never disclosed how many Kindle devices have been sold, or what is the breakdown of Kindle ebook sales by platform. They can't be that proud of these data.
The print publishing business is burying its head in the sand over book downloads and very likely Amazon will take control, just as Apple did with the music business.
Samsung ripped off iPhone more totally than any other company, despite, or perhaps because of being in the privileged position of manufacturing supplier to Apple. Obviously, with Apple's minimalist designs, individual design elements are going to be pretty generic, but the overall package clearly copied both "trade dress" and patented elements. Carriers often push these phones to innocent punters with the line "it's basically the same as an iPhone". Whether you think this is, or should be illegal is a separate matter.
And it's not "pure greed" by Apple, it's survival; their entire business model is based on creating and defending a space where they can innovate, and impose changes their customers haven't asked for. They have to defend this turf. They do innovate, and don't simply toss interchangeable products into a generic market. Apple nearly died, in part through failing to protect their intellectual property.
Think of these lawsuits as Apple and the competing hoards clarifying exactly what is and what isn't Apple's intellectual property. A bit like a lion finally losing patience with a pack of hyenas.
If it's illegal then it'll be stopped, won't it, so there's nothing to worry about. But I don't think it is. Apple just want to prevent balkanisation of their user experience.
You can sell for whatever price you like through Apple, right down to zero. Apple charges 30% for their distribution, and that's that. Anyone who doesn't like it can deliver content and apps via the browser or via the PC/itunes (audio/video/books) and keep Apple out of it entirely. But if you want to use the proprietary app format, proprietary store, and, you have to offer not only the app but all additional proprietary content to the customer on the same terms as elsewhere. It has to be this way, because otherwise the customer experience will crumble away into the ghastly mess we see everywhere else.
Apple is not (yet) the consumer's worst nightmare. On the contrary, they have made themselves intermediaries between the individual and the greed and power of big business and thereby improved the consumer experience enormously. Yes, they have milked fantastic profits out of it, but that just shows that big business isn't offering what the consumer wants. Especially the mobile carriers.
There is no such species as "Apple customers". Every purchase of an Apple product is voluntary, and Apple products have very strong resale values, so it's easy to switch away.
So far, Apple has been consistent in supporting open standards, plus a proprietary platform. What they are doing is necessary to avoid a re-run of the Wintel era. What's missing is a viable competitor.
No one can be sure this really is royalty free, because patent battles haven't happened yet. Google aren't indemnifying users from litigation. So for now, it's not safe legally, is it? Quite apart from the billion or more devices in the field that are H264 accelerated, but can't be VP8 accelerated.
So what is the cost of making a digital copy? zero. And what is the cost of distributing it - a little bit more than zero. Once content is created, any volume publisher is making twice as much as Apple for doing nothing. Any volume publisher can pay Apple as little as they like by simply reducing their prices. If they give away their content, Apple gives away their content discovery and distribution.
The bigger problem here is that the prices publishers want for their digital content is typically higher than physical, when it should be less than a tenth of physical.
On Apple's side, Apple is trying to create a viable proprietary ecosystem. All they are demanding is that publishers don't use it to explicitly bleed it to death.
If you don't like this, buy an Android device. Or create a competitor ecosystem that actually works. Check out what Pixelmator and other real content creators think about Apple's 30%. They love it.
You might say that what Apple is doing is the responsibility of government. When governments have built the infrastructure for such a new economy, doubtless iTunes will shut down. Speak to your MP (haha).
. . . a one week delay in new model production ramp-up, than a permanent reduction in run rate.
One of a number of stories trolled in the last day or so to camouflage another price manipulation of AAPL share price via short selling. (others: iPhone 5 delayed; Steve Jobs dying).
Courier no more corresponded to the real world than the film the Matrix.
The reason iPad looks dull by comparison is that Apple spent a decade figuring out what could be done in the real world. That's also why it is so successful.
What Apple's approval process tries to prevent is leaking/theft of private data from the phone's system software via Apps. If you go through Pandora's own account creation process and give them all your details, then you are yourself bypassing any protection Apple might have been able to give.
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Re: Your move Apple...?
Actually, we don't know how many Samsung has sold. They don't disclose that information, only very occasional hints to guide commentators towards optimistic figures. Amazon is the same with Kindle. Apple discloses sales and channel inventory every quarter. (Samsung are clearly doing pretty well with Galaxy, even if the real numbers are 30% lower.)
Back in the 60's we did maths like this at school:
A certain council has a long straight road, and three identical snow ploughs which clear snow at a constant rate (so speed is inversely proportional to depth of snow). One day it began to snow steadily. The council sent a plough along the road. After an hour they sent the second plough behind the first. After another hour, they sent the third plough. Some time later it was still snowing steadily, and the second and third ploughs simultaneously crashed into the first. How long had it been snowing before the first plough was sent out?
You'd get 30-40 minutes for a question like that, but you'd also be able to choose a different hard question. Oh look, someone's posted the solution if you're interested:
http://www.austincc.edu/rgrmth/logic.htm#snowplow
Windows 8
With Windows 8, there's a danger that Microsoft offers their installed base a clear future they don't want, and for the first time ever, the alternative looks a safer, more mainstream option. Windows 8 could end up being Microsoft's confession that it can't catch up with Apple. It'll be interesting to watch. Could it really be so much better than Apple that it matters?
Re: iPad?
The point is that iPads are being used to do nearly all the tasks that consumers, education and enterprise did use PC's for, so they are competing for the same sale in most cases. Programmers and other heavyweight content creators will continue to use a traditional PC or Mac, but they are numerically a minority.
Re: Huh?
@Asgard
You don't understand. iPhones aren't bought by end-users in a "smartphone market". The users rent a mobile service. With iPhone, Apple largely defines that service, which end users like very much. Apple is not selling a gadget to the end user, or even to the carrier. Apple sells the end user to the carrier, and the carrier can afford Apple's price. Other handset makers just aren't in a position to control the user experience let alone do better than Apple; they don't control the OS, and they don't control the services. So they won't get either the margins or the loyalty.
As regards Apple's "over inflated" share price, its price to earnings ratio is around 14, with earnings growing at 100% a year. Whereas Amazon's ratio is around 170, with earnings actually shrinking. Even if earnings growth stopped dead today, the P/E would be 10 within a year. The share price should actually be about 50% higher.
Re: Crazy, crazy shareholders....
No, the Amazon shareholders really are totally crazy. Amazon's price to earnings ratio is 186, which means it would take you 186 years to get your money back if you bought and kept the company. This is bubble territory. Must be because they are growing so fast. Over three years their income has grown - oh, it's shrunk. What about comparable companies? Walmart PE 13; 3 year growth 15%; Apple PE 14; growth 420%.
Perhaps Amazon's share price should be $20. Then you could get your money back in under 20 years.
If I were the government . . .
I'd be saying "Splendid idea, BBC. I can see you're not happy with the licence revenue. Go ahead and charge for everything instead. Set your own prices. We'll split off and keep the taxpayer funded web site, and you can go your own way."
Re: Why are they dumping Blackberries for Iphones?
If you don't want employees, you don't want Blackberry or iPhone. But if you want employees and employees want iPhone, iPhone is what you'll have to offer. And if you're deploying corporate web apps for use on tablets (equals, more or less, iPads), then they'll work identically on iPhones.
Staff want it, and the total ecosystem is superior.
Steve Jobs - right and wrong
Remember 2007/2008? iPhone was to be programmed with HTML5; platform specific third party apps were the evil past, said Steve Jobs. And then came the App Store.
It's true a 7 inch iPad won't give you the same experience. But if you just want to control your Apple gadgets in the home, a 7 incher lying around is probably what you want.
If he were still here, SJ would be happy to launch a seven inch iPad. When the time is right.
Just because something's true one day doesn't mean it's true the next. And Steve Jobs knew that. and exploited it for all he was worth. You thought Apple was in one place? Turned out they were somewhere else entirely a few months later.
“This is so important to us, we can’t rush it.”
More like "This is going nowhere but we're too arrogant to admit it"
It is so like the endless stream of "initiatives" that MS announced over the years (eg at CES).
maybe it's profitable!
From past news items, RIM must have made supplier commitments for 5 million or so Playbooks, but have stopped at about one million. Amazon must have taken over the design and supplier commitments, at a hefty discount. The deal is only just finalised, and RIM are now dumping their remaining Playbooks. Amazon have simplified Fire further to reduce cost. They haven't even got it working well enough for real demos yet, despite a supposed November ship date.
Amazon can make a good profit on the first four million, and then decide what to do next.
Amazon have never said how many Kindles they have sold. You don't even need a Kindle to buy ebooks from Amazon. You can use an IOS device, for instance, and there are over 200 million of them.
Of course there's prior art in the world of fiction for a brilliant little pocket screen that just does what you want. But nobody actually made one until Apple.
Like Google's, Samsung's own responses to iPhone weren't successful enough for their taste, and instead of working at it until they had something both original and competitive, they copied Apple and added a couple of features. After ten year's work, Apple wanted a little more differentiation.
Patents are a far from ideal tool to keep hold of your product's differentiation, but that's the tool Apple has. Far from being a novice at this, Apple has repeatedly been on the losing end big time. Numerous far east companies cloned the Apple 2 (see Wikipedia). It took Microsoft a decade to copy the Mac OS, but then Apple lost out in court, and Mac almost disappeared without trace. In getting multimedia into Windows, Microsoft copied Apple. But this time Steve Jobs negotiated a settlement that guaranteed five years more life for Mac, together with $150M cash, allowing Microsoft to "save" Apple.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Either way, it will drag on long enough for Apple to establish a new differentiator.
HTC will be fine either way
Apple won't stop them making smartphones. Just ones that look exactly like an iPhone. So that'll be Windows phone.
"hype": extravagant or intensive publicity
Apple is silent about even the existence future products. It's mainly about delaying any competitor response as long as possible, and protecting sales of the Apple product it will replace. Those are worth billions to Apple. Hype is worth only millions, and requires disclosing the existence of the product. And dirty hype, that Barry Shitpeas says Apple is deliberately manufacturing here, is seriously damaging to Apple. Why would they do that?
I'm not claiming that this wasn't Apple, or wasn't incompetent or perhaps immoral. Just that it isn't hype initiated by senior management.
clueless
Of course Apple know what they are doing. They WANT HTML5 to be a viable platform. They also prioritise their relationship with the user - hence the privacy bit. They want content providers to grow up and make business decisions instead of pouting and moaning about Apple's little shop.
And if you think Android is taking over, the latest mobile internet statistics (at marketshare.hitslink.com) shows: IOS 53%; Java ME 21%, Android 16%, Symbian 6%, Blackberry 3%, Windows 0.6%.
Come on Nikon & Canon
This is going to be a bigger category than DSLR. We want to put our good lenses on these babies and get connected aperture and focus, but however good Sony (NEX) or Samsung's Evil gets, they won't have the lens catalogue for another ten years (in other words, ever).
title
It's fine to whinge about the 30%. But you're whinging about a subset of just one hardware platform. Use Android or Blackberry, or Windows mobile or some other platform if you don't like it.
If you ran WH Smith you'd want a cut of FT sales made through you, wouldn't you? And you wouldn't want a sign up saying it was cheaper elsewhere.
Apple's HTML5 webkit browser has fast Javascript and is standard. It's a place outside Apple's control, where anyone can offer content. Including content that is accessed via IOS native Apps. And it's used by Google, Nokia, Blackberry. Apple gave their contribution to this away for all to use, commercially or not.
Remember when IE6 was a crippling dead hand on web innovation.
Remember how Adobe did its best to destroy the Mac platform with feeble support, terrible performance and endless crashes.
What you're objecting to is that Apple's business strategy, which they've been forced in to, is so superior, that people will willingly pay the 30%. When the so called competitors finally decide to compete, you'll have the world you want.
People just don't get it.
Apple wants a big enough open market where anyone can compete, and has worked really hard to make sure there is such a place: HTML5 / Webkit / no proprietary Flash. This is the place where the FT App has been "evicted". Apple's need is to prevent an innovation stifling monopoly like Microsoft's emerging again. Even if Apple is the monopolist, it would still stifle their innovation.
There is also the proprietary part of IOS, including the App store, which delivers quite a lot of benefits to publishers and users. Apple charges 30%, and quite reasonably says suppliers can't wander round inside this closed ecosystem inviting people to buy the same thing cheaper outside. That's the same mechanism that's destroying the High Street. (Go look at a product locally, then buy it cheaper on the web).
Instead of taking this as arrogant Apple greed, suggest an alternative that will enable a new economy to flourish for creators and consumers, without being smothered or hijacked by monopolists and gatekeepers.
Yes, Apple is shooting themselves in the foot with these moves. That's the whole idea. It's the only way to force people to move forward to the new economy. When they've got themselves organised, Apple will be happy to compete.
Unfortunately Google jumped ship from this strategy, which they shared, and now hope to be the new Microsoft.
dream on, Tim...
... if that comes to pass, Apple Inc will have a market cap of $15 trillion. And to do that, it will have to take over several global industries. Or maybe Apple will be the de facto world government by then.
actually, you're effectively wrong; AAPL is underpriced
P/E is based on past twelve months earnings. In order for earnings to remain flat 12 months ahead, they'd have to _shrink_to match their rapid growth over the past year. If Apple simply stopped growing, then P/E would drop to about 10 in a year's time. But it's going to carry on growing. So without a share price rise, P/E will be down at 8 or so in a year's time.
Thus Apple is underpriced now, based on fundamentals. But when did the market consider fundamentals? Compare and contrast AMZN: P/E 86, slower growth, and smaller margins than AAPL.
specific patents are often stupid
Specific patents may look stupid, but they are the only weapon when a competitor copies your product. Apple just wants other manufacturers to make their own, recognisably different designs, not simply make Apple device clones.
When Android wasn't popular enough, Google copied iPhone designs into Android. And when Samsung's Android phones weren't selling well enough, Samsung deliberately copied iPhone so as to benefit from punter's recognition of iPhone. Then they copied iPad, and when iPad 2 came out, they copied again.
I have a little bit of sympathy for HTC, but for Samsung, none at all. They deserve the injunctions.
nope . . . .
Other manufacturers cannot match the iPad or Macbook Air prices. OEM's asked for $100 a unit subsidy from Intel to compete with the Macbook Air in Intel's Ultrabook initiative.
Maybe not the economy
This article is jumping to some major conclusions based on rumors from Digitimes.
The smartphone market is growing fast, not so much affected by the recession (human needs: 1. Food 2. Shelter 3. Smartphone 4... )
Apple is about to execute one of its overnight global product transitions. Naturally they would have orders in place for iPhone 4 parts until they are certain of the transition date. Then they'd trim back iPhone 4 part supply from the transition date.
Google's disregard of intellectual property is leading HTC and others into legal difficulties which may see their products banned from import to major territories. I'd expect them to be cutting back supplies a little in case courts find against them in the next 6 months.
And finally, Digitimes doesn't always get their facts right.
But it's still possible the recession will deepen this winter. But how would HTC & Apple know?
It's a cache
recap: It is (was) a cache of base station locations that you looked as if you might go near, often as much as 50 miles away from where you actually went - so that internet access is not required to deliver a quick initial response from location services on the phone. It was being held for weeks/months, and grew to a large size.
As such it was pretty useless for tracking you (far too vague). But now the cache has been reduced in size, it's info much more precise about where you've recently been.
Of course the worst thing is: if I get hold of your iPhone, I can tell you EXACTLY where it is. It's an outrage that Apple is shipping a device configured to reveal its own location to anyone who as much as sees it.
Wrong!
Don't be evil - haha. Google's whippersnapper CEO is sailing into a world of hurt. They've built their business too heavily on stolen IP (your privacy, everyone's copyright, GPL violation), for too long, and mobile is where it's coming unstuck. The carriers currently push out Android phones, because they are cheap and tick marketing boxes. But apart from geeks, the customers don't actually use Android internet features. Android tablets are stuck in the channel. Non-geeks don't buy them at all. This is a replay of Microsoft with music. Android is Playsforsure, and now Moto is Zune, which Google thinks Android partners will be happy about.
Apple wasn't worried by Moto patents; the ones everyone needs are FRAND-encumbered, so Apple can license on Fair and Reasonable terms. But Apple is having to use litigation to get a fair price. Just as they did with Nokia. The deal will get done, and Apple will pay the same as everyone else, just as with Nokia.
See what Android looked like nine months after iPhone was launched: http://gizmodo.com/334909/google-android-prototype-in-the-wild. Google and licensees definitely copied iPhone to get traction in the market.
Google have a dismissive attitude to the law. They control Android release by violating GPL. They claim patents are worthless and anticompetitive, yet their entire business was based on one (pagerank), and they pay billions to buy patents intending to use them as offensive weapons. Next they will probably subsidise a Moto tablet to get traction in the market. Then antitrust legislation will be against them too.
Google's greed and disregard of intellectual property is going to trip them up quite soon now. Buying MMI is desperation, not dominance. And MMI may actually cost them $19 billion, because they use the "double Irish" tax dodge to avoid paying US taxes. They'll have to pay those taxes to bring $12B into the US.
Google doesn't sell infringing devices
And that's the reason why Apple doesn't sue directly.
Apple is quite good at compatibility
Classic, Rosetta and Carbon are all things Apple did that allowed old Adobe software to run. But Adobe did nothing for ten years to move to OSX's standard APIs. Adobe has hoped for 15 years that Mac would die, all the while getting half their revenue from Mac users. Cynical beancounter logic is what put them in this state, not Apple.
Look how comparatively ruthless Apple is being with Final Cut Pro in order to keep it at the cutting edge. Unlike Apple, Adobe hasn't been engineering-led for over a decade.
No, they are insolvent.
The banks create the money by inventing it and lending it, but they demand interest in addition to repayment. But the total amount of money they've invented is all there is; it's quite impossible for everyone to repay their loans with interest; the money doesn't exist.
Only two eventual possibilities: banks write off and foreclose and end up owning all the real assets, or: endless asset price inflation financed by bigger new loans putting more money out than the repayment and interest on the old loans.
You'd be forgiven for thinking fractional reserve banking is simply legalized theft.
sorry, wrong
USB was in later editions of Windows 95, and mandated in new PC's at that time. But USB was going nowhere until Apple delivered a captive market for USB devices with the USB-only iMac in mid 1998.
There's nothing wrong with the antenna.
There never was, beyond the fact that it's a compromise. As is every other cellphone antenna design.
just to be clear
I didn't claim moral superiority for Apple's business model; just tried to remind people of it. USB for examole was dead in the water, despite being on most new Wintel PC's, until Apple shipped the iMac with no alternative interface. And that was a humiliating thing to do when Apple's own firewire was a far superior system.
I'm fine with people resenting Apple's success and profitability.
And if HTC is so wonderful, read this:
http://www.phonedog.com/2011/07/11/why-i-switched-from-my-thunderbolt-to-an-iphone-4/
Business is war
Microsoft / Apple was a copyright case based on "look and feel", not a patent case. But Sculley had licensed MS to use Mac GUI elements for Windows 1.0. The case failed because of this prior license and because look and feel is not copyrightable. So in future it's down to specific, nitty-gritty patents (not copyright) if you want to protect your designs. So we have patent wars.
Apple runs its business in a particular way, which allows it to move its customers forward over the long term, but requires a protected space in which to function. What they do is very different to simply making one or two gadgets. HTC and Samsung are gadget makers, in that they have no long term plan or structure, and design their products for a market environment over which they have no control. It's Apple who broke the power of the carriers with a spectacularly innovative product, leveraging government-mandated inter-carrier competition to create a direct relationship with users.
HTC made reasonably popular smartphones long before Apple, but now they all look just like iPhones. There is no doubt they, like Samsung, copied flagrantly. Apple has to protect the space in which it operates.
Bill Gates and Microsoft pushed tablet computers for a decade. Despite monopoly power, they were unable to make significant sales. It's quite obvious Apple didn't copy these tablets, and has no monopoly, but iPad is a huge success, which everyone is copying. Apple's method of working has repeatedly enabled it to rescue technologies that were going nowhere and bring them into the mainstream (eg USB, WiFi).
Apple is effectively the industry's first farmer; the others are hunters who simply exploit the market environment. They will kill the farmer and steal the contents of his barn if they can. Just as farming was the way forward, allowing culture and civilisation to become what it is, the way Apple does business is necessary for similar progress in the wired world. So far, no-one else has shown the required commitment to give up hunting for farming. But they will, because in the end, farming leaves no space for hunters.
Nichicon
Could it be that the supposed Nichicon caps were counterfeit? After all, Nichicon have a high reputation, and are Japanese, and the main cause of the epidemic was a stolen electrolyte formula that was incomplete, and that Chinese manufacturers passed amongst themselves. The new formula was needed to meet environmental requirements.
Apple's iMac G5 also suffered this problem, but there's been an extended warranty service in place.
I think commenters are a little harsh; electronic products from major manufacturers are incredibly reliable these days. Problems arise from change; in this change to a more environmentally friendly electrolyte, which Chinese manufacturers didn't know how to make. And Dell's special problem was how badly they cleared up the mess.
Obviously..
Obviously, anyone can call their application software store an app store, because that's what it is. But maybe they can't brand it App Store, because Apple has prior use. As far as I know, it was also Apple who first used "application" instead of "program" in about 1983.
Anyone can refer to their vacuum cleaner as a hoover, but only Hoover can brand a vacuum cleaner Hoover.
"The App Store" for Apple, and "the Amazon App Store" for Amazon sounds about right to me.
Microsoft were far from first with windows, so it must be "Microsoft Windows" for ever, as far as I am concerned.
Time for change?
eBay & Paypal are so expensive, there must now be an opportunity for competition. Personally I'm waiting for bank of Apple.
I think Paypal's problem is that when there's a dispute they don't want to be involved, so they simply reverse what they've done. i.e. they always unwind the payment, and say "sort it out yourselves".
On AVforums a popular small ads convention is to require payment as a gift, so the payer can't claim a refund for non-delivery.
Intel could easily manufacture ARM for Apple
Apple can pay the sort of prices Intel wants. The products won't appear on the open market to compete with Atom. Intel will be better prepared when the wheels completely fall off the X86 Windows duopoly (Windows 8 will also be on ARM, they say). Apple will prepay enough billions to make it a no-brainer for Intel.
A deal will take a year or two to work through. It may already have been done. Apple won't prepay just yet, to avoid showing their hand.
Remember, Steve Jobs has always hated suppliers that go into competition with him (Samsung, Rodime). And deep down, Intel hates X86 and has tried repeatedly to replace it.
Makes sense to me.
It's subtler, but simpler than most seem to understand
Apple is covering the supplier's downside risk when investing for growth, and guaranteeing preferential supply.
There's a huge, competitive industry making components, which are bought for every kind of electronic device. Apple doesn't just want a huge supply of generic components, it wants very particular novel components, which often require brand new production facilities. Billion dollar investments in a cutthroat market are risky. Typically a novel device used to take nine months from first private showing to free availability. Apple wants huge, guaranteed supply of novel components switched on just a couple of months before free availability. They want no-one to see the product until they can buy it. It gives them a huge competitive advantage.
The purpose of Apple's up front prepayments to suppliers is to cover supplier cash flow to set up new production facilities, to commit to taking enough product to eventually pay those costs, and to ensure preferential supply when everyone else has copied Apple's product, and the component becomes mainstream.
This whole situation is one reason why Apple can never control the majority of the market as Microsoft did while it continues to innovate. Apple has no use for the bulk of the industry's production facilities. The exact opposite of Dell in its tin box glory days, when any old components could be bought at rock bottom price after customers had ordered their computer.
We're not stupid ...
(we Apple customers, that is). We watch each move they make and analyse endlessly.
Apple may feel like Microsoft to you, but Apple has got where it is by placing itself between big business and the powerless end-user, forcing the incumbents to compromise by making commitments which free-for-all "open" business models cannot offer. Having done their deal, Apple make their "strict" offer to end-users, who can buy or not as they wish.
The have made life better for consumers (and originators) in, for example, recorded music publishing, mobile services, and software publishing. Others step through the doors that Apple holds open.
We feel fairly confident that Apple will behave well for several more years, because of the huge opportunities that they haven't yet succeeded with. Such as broadcast TV and payment services.
Actually, Inter own "i".
Intel documents always used to have a small note at the beginning that "i" was Intel copyright and not to be used elsewhere.
Apple is actually being rather careful with your privacy
It's a cache file of cell locations that you MIGHT go near, data downloaded FROM Apple. It PREVENTS the iPhone from covertly emitting location data. And location services on the phone can come up with an answer even when GPS isn't working (you're deep indoors, or maybe you haven't even got any GPS hardware). With it, location services doesn't need internet connectivity, and can use any one of mobile signal, WiFi signal, GPS signal, to come up with a location. Even then, the user is in full control of location visibility, on a global and per App basis.
The file doesn't tell anyone where you live, or work, or where you've been, except in the vaguest and most incomplete way imaginable. And seeing it requires physical access to your PC / iPhone. So the evil one has to know exactly where you are to find out within 50 miles or so where you may have been.
The existence of this cache file enables the iPhone demonstrably NOT to covertly emit any location info about you to Apple, because the answers to Location Services' questions are already on the phone.
Now the phone book is different. It's publishers should be locked up after paying every person listed thousands in compensation.
My real comment
. . . is undetectable.
endgame
I don't know how the endgame will play out, but 60:1 doesn't actually mean much. Amazon set out right at the start of dot com to be the world's biggest book retailer, and for buying a book they of course offer the best experience. I suspect that in dollar value, the physical book:ebook ratio is also not much closer than 60:1.
Amazon cross-subsidizes and sells ebooks below cost; Apple doesn't. Amazon wants to be a content distribution near-monopoly, Apple doesn't; Apple is a platform company, Amazon isn't. Amazon wants to distribute on every available platform. Apple doesn't distribute on other platforms, but wants to define a user experience on their own platform with which other content distributors must compete. Apple's ibook store is a service publishers can use or not, but Amazon is company book publishers cannot currently live without.
IOS device users are far more numerous than Kindle device users, and spend far more on content than the average Android device user. I suspect IOS provides Amazon with more than 50% of Amazon's entire Kindle ebook sales.
Amazon has never disclosed how many Kindle devices have been sold, or what is the breakdown of Kindle ebook sales by platform. They can't be that proud of these data.
The print publishing business is burying its head in the sand over book downloads and very likely Amazon will take control, just as Apple did with the music business.
precisely
Samsung ripped off iPhone more totally than any other company, despite, or perhaps because of being in the privileged position of manufacturing supplier to Apple. Obviously, with Apple's minimalist designs, individual design elements are going to be pretty generic, but the overall package clearly copied both "trade dress" and patented elements. Carriers often push these phones to innocent punters with the line "it's basically the same as an iPhone". Whether you think this is, or should be illegal is a separate matter.
And it's not "pure greed" by Apple, it's survival; their entire business model is based on creating and defending a space where they can innovate, and impose changes their customers haven't asked for. They have to defend this turf. They do innovate, and don't simply toss interchangeable products into a generic market. Apple nearly died, in part through failing to protect their intellectual property.
Think of these lawsuits as Apple and the competing hoards clarifying exactly what is and what isn't Apple's intellectual property. A bit like a lion finally losing patience with a pack of hyenas.
Apple doesn't control retail price
If it's illegal then it'll be stopped, won't it, so there's nothing to worry about. But I don't think it is. Apple just want to prevent balkanisation of their user experience.
You can sell for whatever price you like through Apple, right down to zero. Apple charges 30% for their distribution, and that's that. Anyone who doesn't like it can deliver content and apps via the browser or via the PC/itunes (audio/video/books) and keep Apple out of it entirely. But if you want to use the proprietary app format, proprietary store, and, you have to offer not only the app but all additional proprietary content to the customer on the same terms as elsewhere. It has to be this way, because otherwise the customer experience will crumble away into the ghastly mess we see everywhere else.
Apple is not (yet) the consumer's worst nightmare. On the contrary, they have made themselves intermediaries between the individual and the greed and power of big business and thereby improved the consumer experience enormously. Yes, they have milked fantastic profits out of it, but that just shows that big business isn't offering what the consumer wants. Especially the mobile carriers.
There is no such species as "Apple customers". Every purchase of an Apple product is voluntary, and Apple products have very strong resale values, so it's easy to switch away.
So far, Apple has been consistent in supporting open standards, plus a proprietary platform. What they are doing is necessary to avoid a re-run of the Wintel era. What's missing is a viable competitor.
It's simple:
Developers make IOS Apps for the same reason robbers rob banks. It's where the money is.
The real problem
No one can be sure this really is royalty free, because patent battles haven't happened yet. Google aren't indemnifying users from litigation. So for now, it's not safe legally, is it? Quite apart from the billion or more devices in the field that are H264 accelerated, but can't be VP8 accelerated.
ahemm
So what is the cost of making a digital copy? zero. And what is the cost of distributing it - a little bit more than zero. Once content is created, any volume publisher is making twice as much as Apple for doing nothing. Any volume publisher can pay Apple as little as they like by simply reducing their prices. If they give away their content, Apple gives away their content discovery and distribution.
The bigger problem here is that the prices publishers want for their digital content is typically higher than physical, when it should be less than a tenth of physical.
On Apple's side, Apple is trying to create a viable proprietary ecosystem. All they are demanding is that publishers don't use it to explicitly bleed it to death.
If you don't like this, buy an Android device. Or create a competitor ecosystem that actually works. Check out what Pixelmator and other real content creators think about Apple's 30%. They love it.
You might say that what Apple is doing is the responsibility of government. When governments have built the infrastructure for such a new economy, doubtless iTunes will shut down. Speak to your MP (haha).
Sounds more like . . .
. . . a one week delay in new model production ramp-up, than a permanent reduction in run rate.
One of a number of stories trolled in the last day or so to camouflage another price manipulation of AAPL share price via short selling. (others: iPhone 5 delayed; Steve Jobs dying).
Courier never existed
Courier no more corresponded to the real world than the film the Matrix.
The reason iPad looks dull by comparison is that Apple spent a decade figuring out what could be done in the real world. That's also why it is so successful.
Microsoft simply didn't do the work.
Pandora, not Apple
What Apple's approval process tries to prevent is leaking/theft of private data from the phone's system software via Apps. If you go through Pandora's own account creation process and give them all your details, then you are yourself bypassing any protection Apple might have been able to give.
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