When 38-year-old Donald Goodrich walked into the Apple store at the Kenwood Towne Centre in Cincinnati, Ohio he probably did not know he was going to end up being arrested shortly after. Goodrich was upset that his iPhone was not working properly and he told an Apple employee that he was upset. As a matter of fact, Goodrich stated he was, “So mad, I could pop a 9mm at it.”
The Apple employee told the employee that there wasn’t a need for shooting the iPhone. Goodrich insisted “I’ll do it right now. Look!” After that, he took opened his shirt which had a 9mm hand gun in it. The employee said that she’d get the iPhone fixed, but told the manager to cal the police. Goodrich was charged with aggravated menacing and causing fear of harm to the employee.
Goodrich was also charged with a concealed weapons charge for not telling the police he had a gun. However Goodrich did have a concealed weapons permit. The incident took place on October 1.
Shan Sadiq | July 21, 2009 | 1,417 views | Comments Categorized under Apple Inc., RIM
Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff released a mobile manufacturer market share chart today. The chart shows Nokia as having the top market share at 39%. Nokia also tops industry-wide profits at 60%. Interestingly enough, Apple has a very very small market share but a large cut of the profits at 20 percent.
Motorola has about 10 percent of the market but makes no money. Sony Ericsson also has around 10 percent of the market and makes no money.
Apple has a larger share of profits than Research In Motion but RIM has a slightly larger market share.
Cote Collaborative analyst Michael Cote suspects that AT&T may cut its entry level iPhone plan price by $10.00 when Apple introduces the new iPhone this summer. The current entry level iPhone plan costs $69.00 a month. The price cut would reduce the entry level cost by 14%. The 14% drop in monthly fees will help Apple get more iPhone sales and help AT&T win more subscribers.
According to Michael Cote, the current price of a two year iPhone contract does not address the whole market. He uses Wal Mart as an example. Wal Mart iPhone sales have not met expectations.
AT&T may also be willing to lower the price to extend its exclusivity with Apple. It is rumored that Verizon may start offering the iPhone sometime next year.
VentureBeat is reporting that Google intentionally chose not to use multi-touch for Android because Apple asked them not to implement it. Apparently not having multi-touch has been one of the biggets complaints from people using the Android. An Android team member reported this to VentureBeat. The Android team member went on to report that he was glad Google did not use multi-touch for their open source operating system because Apple has won a patent for it. The patent puts Palm at risk because they have a new operating system coming out for their Pre phone that utilizes multi-touch.
Google has had a strong relationship with Apple as Eric Schmidt is on their board of directors. The iPhone also comes bundled with several YouTube services such as YouTube and Google Maps. Google Search is also the default for Safari on the iPhone. Both companies are also rivals of Microsoft.
Will multi-touch be implemented in future versions of Android? That remains a big question mark because of the patent. Given the effort Google has put into the Android project and also wanting to capitalize from selling games, it may become necessary. Apple’s relationship with Google may become a bit more iffy as future versions of Android are released into the mobile market.
Apple rejected an iPhone application that lets users wobble breasts. The application, appropriately named iBooble, was rejected because of its mature content. It must be noted that the breats in iBooble are being covered by a bra. So the application does not contain nudity. (more…)
The rumors about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) selling their beloved iPhones at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is getting closer to being true. Today Bloomberg contacted several employees at different Wal-Mart stores across California (more…)
If the rumor is true, it would be a major win for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT). Boy Genius Report has it that Wal-Mart will be selling a 4GB iPhone 3G model for $99 with a 2-year agreement. Apple originally dropped the 4GB model and replaced it with an 8GB model. Currently Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) sells the 2-year contract 8GB iPhone for $199 and the 16GB iPhone for $299.
Do I believe this rumor is true? Not really. Wal-Mart’s customer demographic are not really the same as Apple fanboys. Selling the phone for $99 makes the brand look cheap. Plus if the rumor is actually true, then Apple would be sending people away from their own retail stores.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is developing voice recognition search technology and releasing it to the Apple iPhone first and then is expected to offer it on the Android mobile platform later on. The application is expected to launch soon.
“This is an expansion of types of applications Google has already been developing,” stated Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “Google has GOOG411, which is the underlying technical engine. They also have a voice-search client for the BlackBerry which is limited to maps. So this is an evolutionary step.”
When someone uses the application on the iPhone, they can ask any question. The question is converted to a digital file, sent to Google servers, and passes it to Google’s search engine. The search engine will then send the results back to the caller. Yahoo! and Microsoft already have established similar services in the past.
Shan Sadiq | November 10, 2008 | 301 views | Comments Categorized under Apple Inc.
SquareTrade released a study that highlights the iPhone’s reliability. The company analyzed over 15,000 new phones covered by its warranty plan and found that iPhones were twice as reliable as BlackBerry devices in the first year of ownership.
iPhones had a 5.6% failure rate in the first year of ownership. BlackBerry phones had a 11.2% failue rate in the first year.
Amit Chowdhry | November 4, 2008 | 825 views | Comments Categorized under Apple Inc.
Tony Fadell was the Senior Vice President of the iPod Division at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). In the 1990’s, Fadell created a company to become the “Dell of Consumer Electronics.” One of the ideas he came up with was a small hard disk-based music player. Since Fadell could not find a second round of funding for Fuse, the company he created for the product, he took his ideas to some of the more established audio companies.
The first company he approached was RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ:RNWK). He did not stick around there for more than 6 weeks. Then he brought his idea to Apple and he stayed for 7 years. His contributions at Apple have created enough of a buzz to sell 160 million iPods. The iPod comprises of about 20% of Apple’s overall sales.
Today it was announced that Tony and his wife, Danielle Lambert VP of Human Resources is stepping down from the company. Mark Papermaster will be assuming the Tony’s former role at Apple. Papermaster was previously an executive at IBM. Papermaster will have some big shoes to fill. Papermaster was one of the main architects of the Power PC processor.
IBM actually filed a lawsuit against Papermaster for violating a noncompete agreement last month according to The Wall Street Journal.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has blocked Opera Software ASA (OSL:OPERA) from releasing their own browser software into the App Store. The Opera browser is already supported by Windows Mobile and many people use it as their default rather than Internet Explorer. It seems that Microsoft is giving users more choice when it comes to mobile devices.
Since the co-founder and CEO of Opera, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner was interviewed by The New York Times a few days ago, there has been speculation for why Apple blocked them. The biggest reason is that Opera directly competes with the Safari web browser. Another reason why it is possible that Opera was blocked is that it has a Javascript interpreter built-in which has a tendency to use up a lot of memory and crash often.
Apple’s Safari browser has a lot of positives to it, but it does not support Flash for the iPhone. Apple tried to compensate it’s lack of Flash-support by providing a separate YouTube program that automatically full-screens any videos that are watched. But is that really enough?
I’m A PC and I’ve Been Placed Outside of an Apple Store
Those of you who walk into the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) store in Birmingham, England will notice that there is a massive kiosk in the front covered with I’m A PC ads. The kiosk recommends people to record their voice saying, “I’m a PC” in a recording device. This is one of the many marketing tactics that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is taking against as part of their $300 million campaign.
Crispin Porter & Bogusky is the advertising company helping Microsoft plan the “I’m a PC” ads. You may also have remembered that Microsoft created the advertisement with a Mac though. AppleInsider revealed the details of the story.
AT&T recently announced that iPhone owners will get unlimited free access to over 17,000 of the company’s WiFi hotspots. AT&T made similar announcements earlier this year but never kept its word. This time around, it looks like the offer may just stick. iPhone owners were notified of the perk by text message.
Certain BlackBerry devices will also get free access to the WiFi hotspots.
An unlimited data plan is required to use the free WiFi.
Amit Chowdhry | October 22, 2008 | 1,744 views | Comments Categorized under Apple Inc.
Joel Podolny is the former Dean of the Yale School of Management. Podolny will be joining Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to become the dean and VP of Apple University. Podolny worked at Yale for about 3.5 years before stepping down.
Podolny will be officially leaving his post as dean on November 1st. Podolny will stick around at Yale until the end of the year to help transition Sharon M. Oster, a teacher that is stepping up as the interim Dean.
Many big IT companies have special training schools where they prep employees before stepping up as full-timers. This is especially big in India where companies like Infosys, WiPro, and Tata bring have major training programs to understand the basics of software engineering. Personally, I participated in the Infosys program.
Some examples of other companies that have training programs include Walt Disney’s Pixar University, McDonald’s Hamburger University, and University of Toyota. Podolny’s specializes in organizational-behavior. Podolny is currently researching how leaders influence their qualities in major companies.
I’m assuming that when Apple starts hiring new college grads, they will be attending Apple U. to build a foundation of Apple’s corporate culture. These new college grads will also probably learn how to develop software that revolves around Apple hardware.
