Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones, 19.5 million iPads – $43.6 billion revenue and $9.5 billion profit in Q2 2013

apple-store-barcelona
Apple Retail Store in Barcelona, Spain

Apple just announced it earnings for the quarter ended March 30 2013 or Q2 2013 with revenue of $43.6 billion and net profit of $9.5 billion after selling 37.4 million iPhones and 19.5 million iPads.The company also sold 4 million Macs.International sales contributed 66% of the revenue. Apple’s enormous cash pile increased to $145 billion. Looks like iPhone sales are slowing down in anticipation of the newer model. Apple sold 47.8 million iPhones in previous quarter in comparison. Continue reading “Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones, 19.5 million iPads – $43.6 billion revenue and $9.5 billion profit in Q2 2013”

Wireless charging: The future or a passing fad?

tesla_tower1_lg

Wireless charging, much like many other technologies that find their ways into the hands of the everyday consumer has a long and unspectacular past. First attempted, at least in the public sphere, in the early 1900’s by one Nikolas Tesla, whose many brilliant ideas and even more spectacular failures (this being one of them) coloured a rather interesting period in innovation and developments for consumer-facing products. The idea was revived in the mid-2000’s by a number of independent individuals working out of MIT, Jeff Lieberman and Marin Soljacic and team. Wireless power transmission is a bit of a misnomer as wires are almost certainly involved in nearly every step of the way with the sole exception being the wire usually linking the power supply to the “sink” which is the device using the power in the first place.

Continue reading “Wireless charging: The future or a passing fad?”

Apple supplier Hon Hai shows record profits

Hon Hai or Foxconn Technology as it is popularly known as has reported earnings for the year with a net income of $3.2 billion. The company is  known for being the primary partner for manufacturing Apple’s iPhone, iPads in addition to other products.

Hon-Hai-Foxconn Continue reading “Apple supplier Hon Hai shows record profits”

Apple acquires WiFiSLAM indoor-GPS mapping company for $20 million

In a bid to strength its mapping application and positioning technology portfolio, Apple has acquired WiFiSLAM. The Silicon Valley startup has been working on improving on and facilitating indoor navigation using Wi-Fi triangulation as opposed to the GPS based system in place as of now.

wifi-slam-app Continue reading “Apple acquires WiFiSLAM indoor-GPS mapping company for $20 million”

Apple adds ‘In App Purchases’ warning to iTunes App Store

Apple has added an “In App Purchases” warning to apps in the iTunes App Store that contain such options. The move should serve well to let users know of prospective in app purchases in a single glance. The warning is currently noticeable only in the desktop version of the App Store but it is logical to assume that Apple will roll it out across their mobile platforms as well.

iTunes-in-app-purchases-iap Continue reading “Apple adds ‘In App Purchases’ warning to iTunes App Store”

Apple bags Microslot antenna patent

Apple has been looking to make serious changes to the exterior appearance of their devices as they have been applying for various kinds of patents like the fingerprint sensor, and now we have news that they have just been granted the patent for Microslot antenna by the USPTO which integrates cellular and wireless radio antennas into the case material.

Continue reading “Apple bags Microslot antenna patent”

Apple files patent for unlocking phone by identifying contacts’ faces

We have seen multiple patents filed by Apple in the past few months which relates to unlocking the device like the finger print scanner, the face recognition and now Apple has filed a patent which  unlocks the device only if you  can identify your contacts.

Continue reading “Apple files patent for unlocking phone by identifying contacts’ faces”

Exynos 5 Octa by Samsung reportedly features PowerVR SGX 544MP3

Samsung announced this CES the Exynos 5 Octa which has 4 ARM Cortex A15 cores and 4 ARM Cortex A7 cores for power management with whats called as Big little configuration. Now Samsung is known to boast their GPUs, but during their Octa announcement, they did not talk about the GPU they were using and Anandtech is now reporting that Samsung is using the PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU at 533 MHz.

Continue reading “Exynos 5 Octa by Samsung reportedly features PowerVR SGX 544MP3”

Apple cutting down iPhone 5 components due to lower demand than expected

Apple has been dominating the smartphone and tablet market from quite some time, but there seems to be a problem in their camp as there have been reports of Apple cutting down their order for the screens of iPhone 5 by almost half for the first quarter of 2013.

Continue reading “Apple cutting down iPhone 5 components due to lower demand than expected”

iPad beats competitors by far in terms of web traffic

We all know that iPad actually revived the tablet market, when Microsoft’s Tablet PC concept actually backfired. Now Chitika which is a mobile ad network has reported that still the iPad leads by far when it comes to web usage.

Continue reading “iPad beats competitors by far in terms of web traffic”

TSMC Reportedly to Begin Trial Production of Apple’s A6X Chip This Quarter

A new report from AFP claims that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will being trial production of Apple’s A6X chips sometime this quarter. The chip is currently used in the fourth generation iPad. By doing so, this will reduce Samsung’s role in Apple’s supply chain significantly.

The Taiwanese company has been contracted to manufacture the A6X chip, which drives Apple’s iPad4 tablet, with trial production set for the first quarter of this year, Taiwan’s Commercial Times reported.

The move is the latest in a strings of efforts by Apple to switch mass manufacturing contracts away from Samsung, it said.

Apple has been long rumored to switching its mobile chip manufacturing from Samsung to TSMC. The iPad maker, has been interested to remove Samsung’s presence from its iOS devices as the companies are involved in a number of patent infringement lawsuits around the world. The entire transition from Samsung to TSMC chips is expected to take as long as 18 months to complete.

Apple Acknowledges Do Not Disturb Bug

Earlier this week, MacRumors reported that some users discovered the scheduling portion of “Do Not Disturb” feature in iOS 6 feature fail to work after New Year’s Eve. The feature would turn itself on as scheduled, but would not turn itself off automatically. Now, Apple has acknowledged the bug in a support article and says that Do Not Disturb scheduling will begin working properly again after January 7, 2013.

Symptoms

After January 1st, 2013, Do Not Disturb mode stays on past its scheduled end time.

Resolution

Do Not Disturb scheduling feature will resume normal functionality after January 7, 2013. Before this date, you should manually turn the Do Not Disturb feature on or off.

To turn off the scheduling feature, tap Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb and switch Scheduled to Off.

 

Apple Airs “Do Not Disturb” ad

Apple released a new television ad featuring iOS 6’s “Do Not Disturb” feature. Professional tennis players Serena and Venus Williams are shown playing ping-pong against the narrator in a dream:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLJN_d2sVjk&feature=player_embedded

Ever had a really cool dream? I’m having one right now. I don’t want to be disturbed. And I won’t because before I went to sleep, I set this. Now my iPhone knows not to ring unless its important. Cause disturbing this would just be… Wrong.

Increase in iPhone and iPad Thefts Cause for Rise in New York City Crime Index

Today, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show that there has been an overall increase in the city due to theft of Apple products, according to The New York Times. There were 3,484 more major crimes in 2012 than a year prior, but Apple product thefts alone were 3,890 greater than in 2011.

Bloomberg said that thieves in New York prefer Apple products and notes that mobile devices from Apple’s competition, such as Samsung, were not included in the numbers. Bloomberg’s press secretary, Marc La Vorgna, also said New York’s overall crime figure saw an increase due to Apple products: “If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” he said.

The mayor suggested that citizens should keep their Apple products in a pocking, making the device harder to steal.