Apple

Apple has become the second largest seller of music in America, behind only Wal-Mart. The statistic comes from market research group NPD; its chart is based on the number of sales rather than the actual revenue. To make for a fair comparison, it ... counts 12 individual song downloads on Apple's iTunes service as equivalent to one sale of a physical CD album. Apple was ranked fourth in the same study last year, but has now leapfrogged both Target and Best Buy. A spokesman for NPD said the change was "fairly understandable given the pressure that's been on CDs and the almost 50-percent growth in ... (view more)

The great missing iPhone mystery may have been solved. Bosses at Apple were confused that they'd sold 3.7 million phones in the United States and Europe, but only 2.3 million were actually registered on the phone networks which had signed deals to ... provide service for the iPhones. It turns out around 400,000 phones are registered with China Mobile, the country's leading cell phone carrier. The iPhone isn't sold in Asia, so it appears there's a rather ironic pattern by which the phones are manufactured in China, shipped to the US, and then unofficially imported back to China. Apple had ... (view more)

Apple products command premium prices. A quick scan of the computers on Amazon.com's Best Seller List will show Apple computers in 10 of the 25 positions. In that list, according to J.P. Morgan's industry analyst Ingrid Ebeling, the average Apple ... selling price is $1482. All other computers listed averaged less than $600. Three years ago, in 2005, when average industry prices were falling from $1042 to $957 for a PC, Apple Macs stayed solid at $1442. That means that in the last few years the average Mac price has actually increased. (Source: appleinsider.com ) That's a good thing, right? To be ... (view more)

Do you podcast? Podcasting is "is a collection of digital media files which is distributed over the Internet, often using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers." (Source wikipedia.org ) Last week, Apple ... officially filed for a patent on a new variant of podcasting medium. The company's proposal for a patent on the 'podmap' concept was filed in January 2007 but had remained undisclosed until just recently. (Source: appleinsider.com ) According to the patent filing, the concept involves four central components, which will become the crux of this audio- ... (view more)

Sales of Apple's iPhone remain strong as illustrated by the release of figures for the first quarter of fiscal year 2008 (last 92 days of 2007). The company reported that it sold 2,315,000 iPhones during this period, which also encompasses the ... holiday season. The latest figures provided by CEO Steve Jobs during his Macworld 2008 keynote presentation on January 15, stated that Apple has passed the 4 million unit threshold. (Source: arstechnica.com ) The impressive total amounts to an average of 20,000 units sold per day, giving the iPhone a 20 percent market share of international smart phone ... (view more)

There's no denying that Apple's got itself a bountiful hold on the digital music market. The company's hardware retails for more than comparably-equipped devices from the competition, and yet the Touch, Nano, and Shuffle all manage to maintain the ... company's massive lead. However, that advantage might be threatened where Apple seems strongest: online. For some time, Apple's virtual music store, iTunes, has been the front-runner in offering individual songs or entire albums for a reasonable price. Buying one song at a time has proven a dynamite marketing dynamic for Apple, which clearly ... (view more)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs made his much-anticipated annual speech at the recent MacWorld conference, introducing the "MacBook Air" before a highly receptive crowd. The three-pound computer is officially the thinnest laptop in the world and is able to ... slide inside a manila file envelope with ease. At its thickest point, the MacBook Air measures 0.76 inches and contains the same 80 gigabyte hard drive that would typically be found in a 1.8 inch iPod. The trackpad, which is used as a computer mouse, relies on the same touch screen technology used to manipulate an Apple iPhone. (Source: usatoday.com ... (view more)

Last week, Apple announced that it will be lowering prices on its UK iTunes store to reflect standardized pricing in Europe. The company currently pays more in Britain than to European record companies in order to sell music. (Source: apple.com ) ... "This is an important step towards a pan-European marketplace for music," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, in a statement. "We hope every major record label will take a pan-European view of pricing." And what happens if the music labels refuse the price reduction? In the same statement, Apple said it will, "reconsider its continuing relationship in the ... (view more)

A little more than a week ago, Wal-Mart Stores quietly chucked its video download offering into the waste bin. Introduced less than a year ago, Wal-Mart appears to have given up when Hewlett-Packard, its technology partner in the venture, cut ... support. (Source: zdnet.com ). This doesn't mean that downloading video directly to the consumer is a dead issue. This week, Netflix -- the company that sends DVD's to more than 7 million consumers in little red envelopes -- joined Apple and Amazon in experimenting with ways to offer complete media "choice" to the heretofore limited selections offered ... (view more)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has a nagging pet peeve: he absolutely hates waiting in long lines, be it for a coffee or a hamburger. The only difference between Jobs and the countless others who share his grief is that the tech magnate is actually going to ... do something about the situation, and likely make millions in the process. Jobs is in the midst of patenting a service that will allow customers to skip the line at coffee houses and fast food joints. If he had his way, Jobs would ensure that nobody would have to stand in a line ever again. The method is as simple as it is complex: a system that ... (view more)