Keeping you in the loop on just a few of the things happening around Apple this past week.
The return of Google maps. While Apple works away on fixing its flawed Maps app, Google released its new Maps app for iOS this week (after lots of speculation that it might not). And it’s getting something that Apple’s Maps app didn’t get: rave reviews. “It’s free, fast and fantastic,” said NY Times reviewer David Pogue. “Most of the people loading the new Google Maps on their iPhones will be pleased to welcome back an old friend,” wrote Ed Baig of USA Today. “The new Google Maps app arrives with the all-important audible turn-by-turn navigation feature (in a robotic sounding female voice) that was left out of its predecessor.” And from Jon Fingas of Engadget: “We’ll admit that Apple’s solution is easier on the eyes, but accuracy trumps prettiness (and occasional at-a-glance readability) any day.” Google Maps, now available in the Apple App Store, is “designed from the ground up to combine the comprehensiveness and accuracy of Google Maps with an interface that makes finding what you’re looking for faster and easier,” says Google. How’s Apple’s fix going? Don’t know yet. But we do know it’s not so popular in Australia, where police issued a warning to those relying on Apple’s maps to be careful after several motorists were taken off the beaten track, literally, in the Murray-Sunset National Park and were stranded for up to 24 hours.
A lukewarm greeting in China?Apple’s iPhone 5, which went on sale in China this week, didn’t get the exuberant welcome that the iPhone 4S enjoyed earlier this year when Chinese consumers rioted to get their hands on the smartphone. Apparently there were only a few people in line at Apple’s new flagship store in Beijing’s popular Sanlitun shopping district. How bad is that? Depends on who you ask. Peter Misek of Jefferies cut his first-quarter iPhone sales estimate today to 48 million from 52 million.“Some of our Chinese sources do not expect the iPhone 5 to do as well as the iPhone 4S,” he wrote in a note to clients, adding he wasn’t sure how much the snowy weather and the required pre-ordering affected the lines. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, meanwhile, thinks the iPhone concerns are overblown and said he remains “comfortable” with is call for sales of 45 million iPhone this quarter, including 4 to 5 million from China. Munster gives three reasons why the lack of lines might not add up to poor demand: First, Apple is using the reservation system it put in place after the iPhone 4S riots, which means less lines. Second, Apple is selling the device through two times as many point of sales than it did with the 4S. And third, “According to a post on Sina Weibo reported by Reuters, China Unicom noted that it had 300k iPhone 5 pre-orders ahead of the launch compared to 200k for the last iPhone pre-orders the company had done,” Munster said. FYI, Apple’s fiscal first quarter ends this month and it reports results in January.
Shares fall. The China reception, in part, prompted UBS analyst Steve Milunovich to issue a cautionary note on Apple shares as he cut his target to $700 from $780. Milunovich trimmed his iPhone unit shipments by 5 million for each of the next three quarters, saying his sources believe the iPhone 5 may not do as well as the iPhone 4S in China. He also expects the iPad mini to cannibalize sales of the larger iPad and that Apple growth estimates might be “aggressive given the European economy.” Even so, Milunovich kept his buy rating on Apple’s shares. “We expect that China Mobile may start to sell iPhones in the December quarter, so a summer 5S with TD-SCDMA and fingerprint recognition is possible,” he said in an investor note. “Apple is driven to make beautiful products. Whether it is an iTV, wearable computers, or another new product category, we have faith that innovation is not dead.” Even so, Apple shares plummeted. They closed down $19.90, or 3.8 percent today, to $509.79 – a dramatic drop from the more than $700 they were trading at in September. Some prognosticators are prognosticating they are headed below $500 in the coming weeks. We’ll see.
Status update. Is iCloud down or is it just you? Can’t get on the App Store and wondering why? Wonder no more. Apple posted a new status page – with, as you would expect, a simple that’s easy to read – that details the status of its various cloud services, including iCloud, all its stores and services including Maps, FaceTime, iChat and Siri. Last time I checked, it showed greens – for Normal – across the board.
The best of iTunes. Apple announced the “best” apps of 2012 this week, giving top honors to Action Movie FX, a free app that lets you add Hollywood special effects to your iPhone and iPad movies. The best game of the year was the $2.99 Rayman Jungle Run from Ubisoft. The best iPad app is Paper by FiftyThree, a free drawing app, while the best iPad game is The Room by Fireproof Studios. Apple also gave its nod to books, music and movies, calling out Wes Anderson as best director for Moonrise Kingdom (I agree) and Joss Whedon for writing and directing the best blockbuster, The Avengers. You can view all the “Best of” winners when you log into the iTunes stores.
Apple TV is coming — in the next three years. How do I know? Internet browser pioneer-turned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said so. He doesn’t know what it will look like, how it will work or if we’ll see it in 2013, 2014 or 2015. But he does know that whatever Apple comes up with, everyone will copy. “There’s a pattern in our industry, Apple crystallizes the product and the minute Apple crystallizes it, then everyone knows how to compete,” Andreessen said at the DealBook conference in New York this week. Andreessen wasn’t the only one talking up the idea of Apple building a smart TV. After Apple CEO Tim Cook told NBC’s Brian Williams last week that TVs are an area of “intense interest,” Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty laid out the case for why a smart TV or iTV makes sense. “CEO commentary, supply chain data points, and patent filings point to significant work on a TV platform. While we see several ways Apple could enter the market, we believe the strategy could focus less on content and more on operating system – including search, ease of use, interaction with and control of TV sets.” She also said a recent survey showed that owners of at least one Apple device are nearly four times more likely to buy an interactive TV than those who don’t use any Apple devices. And 46 percent of those surveyed said they’d pay more than $1,000 for an iTV, while 10 percent said they’d pay more than $2,000. Which is why reports that Apple is in the early stages of testing a TV set with some of its suppliers in Asia aren’t a surprise.
The Mac startup chime. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office granted Apple a trademark on the Mac startup chime – you know, that sound you hear when the system boots up to tell you all is well (listen here). (It’s also the sound Wall•E makes after getting his solar fix in the morning.) The folks at Patently Apple got hold of the trademark, which describes the quirky and offbeat startup chime this way: “The mark consists of a synthesizer playing a slightly flat, by approximately 30 cents, G Flat/F Sharp major chord The mark is a sound.” So it’s not only figuratively offbeat, it’s literally offbeat as well.
Patent news roundup. Apple, which has been going to court over its iPhone patents, was on the losing side of an argument in court this week. The jury found that Apple had infringed on three patents held by MobileMedia Ideas, which is a holding company of Nokia and Sony and owns more than 300 patents. The ones Apple has been found to infringe on have to do with call handling, call rejection and the camera. Damages have to be determined….You may recall that last week that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tentatively ruled the “Steve Jobs patent” invalid. (Apple’s lawyers call the patent that because Apple’s co-founder is listed as an inventor for many of the multi-touch features in iOS, like scrolling). Anyway, Apple lawyers and Morrison & Foerster sent a letter to the ITC about the whole thing because Samsung alerted the ITC about the USPTO’s tentative ruling because the ITC has determined that Samsung infringes the Steve Jobs patent, also known as U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949. Still with me? I didn’t think so, which is why I suggest you read the many articles on the topic written by Florian Mueller on the Foss Patents blog.
An unusual Apple user. Samsung’s President and Strategy Chief Young Sahn said in an interview with the MIT Technology Review that he’s a big user of Apple’s gadgets – even though he thinks Samsung’s Galaxy is a better smartphone. “I use a Mac, actually, at home. I’ve always used Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad. I also have the Galaxy…If you look at the strengths of Apple, in a way it’s not the product per se. It’s that consumers like their ecosystem such as iCloud. I like that my family 6,000 miles away in Korea is able to see my schedule and see all of my contacts and photos. It is sticky, but it is a proprietary architecture.Look at your phone [pointing to my Samsung Galaxy Nexus]. It’s a better phone, in my view. It’s a better display. It’s faster. But eventually the connected ecosystem is really critical.” The complete interview is here.
Another Steve Jobs Action Figure. Yes, another Steve Jobs action figure has popped up, this time showing an older Jobs, in black turtleneck and jeans, sitting on a leather couch. Even though Apple and Jobs’ family have quashed other toymakers’ efforts to bring an action figure to market based on Apple’s co-founder, Tokyo-based Legend Toys says it will sell the $199 figure in the U.S. later this month, according to Cnet, which has lots of pictures of it. “We have heard that Apple tried to stop several companies from selling Steve Jobs figures,” the firm’s Yuichi Kimura told the news organization. “We do not have any permission from anyone and we don’t think it is necessary to obtain permission from anyone.” I guess we’ll see about that.
Have a safe weekend.
Source: http://www.forbes.com
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