Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
In the increasingly open modern web 2.0 climate one can sometimes get a little carried away and assume that dog-eat-dog ruthless competition between different companies is slowly giving way to a more progressive co-operative atmosphere of integration.
However nobody currently knows this to be false better than the employees and shareholders of Palm, after Apple recently updated their iTunes software to no longer function with the Palm Pre smartphone device. Unsurprisingly Palm’s share price plummeted immediately and the company now has a tricky problem on their hands.
For those new to the story, here’s a little background info: Palm’s Pre smartphone model is an intended rival to the iPhone, and was recently launched with the attractive feature of being able to sync…
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Some strange debates over at Guardian tech in the past fews days – about whether or not Apple is predominantly a software or a hardware company, and in which direction the tech giant will develop in coming years. The reason i consider it all a bit strange is not because of the quality of the article (Charles Arthur has once again done some thorough research), but simply because the whole thing seems to hint at an entirely false distinction when it comes to understanding Apple’s profit dynamics.
After all it may be obvious that in terms of actual revenue most of Apple’s turnover comes from hardware, with relatively tiny sums being derived from softeware such as iPhone apps or Mac OS X.…
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So, WOW comes once again to the iPhone (the previous incarnation of the app came in 2007). Only this time the whole thing is a little more professional than before. Like the earlier versions we again have the game being played remotely and streamed to the iPhone – though things seem to run a lot more smoothly with this new version.
It’s certainly not the finished thing yet (lag issues remain), but by then Apple shares will be soaring (apparently WOW is quite popular…). I don’t often go in for Wall Street speculating but I reckon the closer we get to a complete WOW app for the iPhone, the higher those shares will jump. According to a *quite* regular WOW player friend…
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Microsoft’s recent high-profile ad campaign featuring the American comic Jerry Seinfeld was not the success the company had hoped it would be. Responses were lukewarm at best, with most finding the ad to be slightly laboured and quite unfunny, like some awkward middle-aged attempt at quirky offbeat cool (read the original relevant blog post in our archive).
Anyway Valleywag has confirmed that as of tomorrow Microsoft will officially announce the termination of the working relationship with Jerry Seinfeld, stating that it had always planned only a brief working connection, and instead now focus on the new ad campaign, unveiled last week. Question is: is it any better than the old one? Or does the change of tact simply smack of panic and…
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Here’s an interesting statistic: Apple’s 2008 sales estimate for the iPhone is 10m, while the global mobile phone market as a whole is expected to shift 1bn handsets in the same period. Therefore, assuming these estimates end up being at least somewhat accurate, the iPhone will account for only 1% of mobile phone sales in 2008.
Question is; if the actual sales are relatively low (as they clearly are), how come the iPhone is pretty much far and away the most recognisable and ‘famous’ model out there?
With Apple having this week announced the details of their forthcoming updated and cheaper iPhone it seems a good time to consider this question. There is a range of possible explanations:
Hypothesis 1 – The iPhone…
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