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Apple Announces iOS 5 Tech Talk World Tour 2011

Earlier this year, Apple was rumored to be considering a new edition of the Tech Talk World Tour, a series of developer-focused events in different cities to provide developers with additional sessions, trainings and answers to common questions outside of the typical WWDC environment. Apple has just announced the new iOS 5 Tech Talk World Tour, which will take place in nine cities this year:

We’re taking iOS 5 on a world tour and we want you to come along for the ride. Learn from Apple experts as you take your apps to the next level with the exciting new technologies in iOS. Space is limited, so register today.

The Tech Talk World Tour will start in November, and run through the end of January. The nine cities that will host the event are:

  • Berlin - November 2
  • London - November 7
  • Rome - November 9
  • Beijing - December 5
  • Seoul - December 8
  • Sao Paolo - January 9
  • New York City - January 13
  • Seattle - January 18
  • Austin - January 23

As Apple notes, all iOS Developer Program members are eligible to attend, however priority will be given to developers with at least an app available on the App Store. Tech Talk World Tour sessions are “highly technical”, Apple explains, as a team of expert will travel around the world covering advanced coding and design techniques that developers can implement in their apps.

Tech Talk is free and developers can register with their existing Dev account, however they can’t bring guests as registration is limited to those who got a confirmation email from Apple. Each Tech Talk will share the same agenda and sessions listed on Apple’s website, and developers can’t register for more than one city as Apple wants “to give as many developers as possible the opportunity to attend a Tech Talk”. Apple also states that pre-release software may be covered at Tech Talk, so developers will have to follow the iOS Developer Program License Agreement and Registered Apple Developer Agreement to not share confidential information.

Topics that will be covered in each Tech Talk session include iPhone and iPad User Interface Design, AirPlay, UIKit, Turn-Based Gaming with Game Center, AV Foundation, Core Image and Newsstand apps. Developers can register for Tech Talk World Tour 2011 on Apple’s official page for the event.

AT&T Activates More Than 1 Million iPhone 4S’ And Saw Strong Sales Of The iPhone In Q3

AT&T’s earnings call for the last quarter is on today and they’ve revealed that last quarter they sold 2.7 million iPhones out of a total share of 17.07 million iPhones that Apple sold over the same period. Unsurprisingly however, other non-iPhone, smartphones have become increasingly popular for AT&T with activation of 2.1 million such devices. iPhone activations were down significantly from the previous quarter in which they activated 3.6 million iPhones - although keep in mind that Apple also saw a decline in iPhone sales this quarter.

At the earnings call AT&T also noted that they had activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S’ as of Tuesday this week, making it AT&T’s most successful launch. For comparison, Sprint saw 200,000 pre-orders on the iPhone 4S launch day. Verizon has yet to reveal specific numbers for iPhone 4S sales, but have said they were very pleased with the reception.

[Via ZDNet, BGR]

Pogoplug Mobile: Cloud Free Media Streaming for iPhones, iPads, and Androids

Pogoplug Mobile takes aim at cloud streaming services that charge monthly or yearly fees for serving up streaming media, such as Amazon’s Cloud Drive & Cloud Player and iTunes Match. While Amazon has been pretty generous in giving you lots of free storage right off the bat, and iTunes Match will only cost $25 a year once it launches, Pogoplug Mobile takes your entire media library and makes it accessible through the Internet for a one time fee of $79. While the upfront charge could save you money in the longrun, you still need the upstream bandwidth and a media library stored on an external hard drive or SD memory to take advantage of its streaming capabilities.

The downside to Pogoplug Mobile is that you’ll have to use Pogoplug’s proprietary media library apps on your iPhone and iPad, meaning you won’t have music synced to their default locations as you’d have with iTunes in the Cloud. The upside, however, is that you’ll have access to your entire media library including music, movies, and pictures without having to store that content locally. Media access doesn’t necessarily require a mobile device either — Pogoplug will make available your entire library from the web if you log on from an office or campus computer. Provided you own lots of content not available in the iTunes Store, Pogoplug Mobile might be a great alternative if you want to free all of your indie artists from your home network.

Pogoplug Mobile is currently available for $79 in the United States and on pre-order for €59.99 in Europe.

Apple Updates “Remembering Steve” Page with Tributes From Fans

Last night, Apple updated its Remembering Steve page on Apple.com to include a selection of memories, thoughts and tributes sent by fans and members of the Apple community since Steve’s passing on October 5th. Apple says that over a million people have sent their personal messages to the [email protected] email address.

Over a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve. One thing they all have in common — from personal friends to colleagues to owners of Apple products — is how they’ve been touched by his passion and creativity. You can view some of these messages below.

And share your own at [email protected].

A private memorial for Steve Jobs was held with close friends and family last week. Apple is also planning a company-wide celebration of Steve’s life and accomplishments today at Apple’s campus, with some Apple retail stores closing briefly during the event.

Apple’s Q4 2011 Earnings Call: More Details & Interesting Thoughts From Tim Cook

Apple held its quarterly earnings call late yesterday and while the results from the September quarter were slightly below what analysts expected, it was still a great result and within Apple’s projections. We covered the main numbers in our post yesterday and included some graphic visualisations of those numbers (such as the one above), but if you missed that here’s a quick summary:

  • $28.27 billion in revenue (analysts expected $29.45 billion)
  • 17.07 million iPhones were sold (up 21% year-over-year)
  • 11.1 million iPads were sold (up 166% year-over-year)
  • 4.89 million Macs were sold (up 26% year-over-year)

But beyond these numbers there were a lot of interesting insights that CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer offered during the Q&A session. We’ve re-listened to the earnings call and included the most interesting snippets of that call in this article - answering questions from various analysts, the two answer questions on everything from iPhone rumors, iPad potential, Siri, China and what next quarter has in store for Apple. Be sure to jump the break to read it all.

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Apple Q4 2011 Results: $28.27 Billion Revenue, 17.07 Million iPhones, 11.12 Million iPads, 4.89 Million Macs Sold

Apple has just posted their Q4 2011 financial results. The company posted record-breaking revenue of $28.27 billion, with 11.12 million iPads, 17.07 million iPhones and 4.89 million Macs sold. The company posted quarterly net profit of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share. iPhone represented a 21 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter; iPod sales are down 27 percent from the year-ago quarter, but Apple reported the best iPad quarter to date with over 11 million units sold and a 166% increase over the year-ago quarter. For the next quarter, Apple set guidance at revenue of about $37 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $9.30.

Estimates and Previous Quarters

Wall Street consensus’ estimate was earnings of $7.28 per share and revenue of $29.45 billion; independent analysts expected earnings per share of $9.07 and $33.47 billion revenue. In Q3 2011, Apple said they expected revenue of about $25 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $5.50 in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011.

In Q3 2011, the company posted record-breaking revenue of $28.57 billion, with 9.25 million iPads, 20.34 million iPhones and 3.95 million Macs sold.. In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion. In Q4 2010, the company sold 3.89 million Macs, 14.1 million iPhones and 4.19 million iPads, which began selling during the quarter.

Q4 2011 Recap

Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter, which ended on September 25th, saw the release of updated MacBook Air and Mac mini models, OS X Lion on the Mac App Store and, later, on USB drive, as well as a new iMac for the educational market and a new Thunderbolt Display. The company was initially expected to unveil a new iPhone in September, but a media event took place in Cupertino on October 4th, nine days after the quarter ended. iPhone 4S sales numbers will be included in Apple’s Q1 2012, but the company has already announced over four million iPhone 4S units have been sold in the first weekend of availability.

As for the Mac, the MacBook Air is widely believed to have become the crown jewel of Apple’s portable business (which no longer includes the white MacBook, discontinued in July) that, alongside Lion, was expected to boost Mac sales in the September quarter.

On August 24th, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, and Tim Cook was elected CEO of the company. Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th.

On October 4th, Apple also announced over 6 million copies of Lion had been downloaded through the Mac App Store since July 20th (when the operating system went on sale), with Mac users approaching 60 million worldwide.

Q4 2011 Earnings Call

Apple will provide a live audio feed of its Q4 2011 conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and we’ll update this story with the conference highlights. Full press release is embedded after the break.

Notes from the call

  • Tim Cook: Steve Jobs’ spirit will always be the foundation of Apple.

  • New record sales for Mac and iPad in the September quarter.

  • Mac sales increased strongly in each operating segment.

  • iPod touch continues to account for half of all iPods sold.

  • iPhone sales double in Asia Pacific year-over-year.

- Ended quarter with about 2.5 million iPads in channel inventory.

  • 92% of Fortune 500 testing or deploying iPad.

  • 500,000 apps available in the App Store. Expanded the App Store to 123 countries in the September quarter.

    • - 30 new retail stores opened in the quarter, 21 internationally.

    • $3.6 billion revenue from Apple retail stores.

    - 77.5 million visitors in Apple retail stores in the quarter.

    • Average revenue per store is $10.7 million.

  • Apple has $81.6 billion in cash available.

  • Tim: We’re confident that we’ll have a large supply for the 4S in holiday quarter and set an all-time record for iPhone this quarter.

  • Tim: Progress in China has been amazing: Greater China revenue 2% in FY09; 12% in FY11. Fastest growing major region. $4.5 billion in revenue from China in September quarter.

  • Apple placing additional focus on other promising areas: Brazil, Russia, Middle East. There are several of these markets where Apple hasn’t been historically strong.

  • Tim: China – the sky’s the limit there.

  • Tim: As iPad competitors came to the market, our share went up.

  • Oppenheimer: Pervasive iPhone rumors had a definite negative impact on Apple’s business.

  • 40 million iPads sold on a cumulative basis.

  • Tim on iPhone 4S launch (4 million units) Vs. iPhone 4 launch (1.7 million units) last year: “That’s the mother of all uplifts”.

  • Tim: Number of people using Siri already is amazing. We see this as a profound innovation. Over time  many, many people will use Siri in a substantial way.

  • Tim: We spend a lot of time and money and resource in coming up with incredible innovations. And we don’t like when someone else takes those.

  • Tim: We still see iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 as incredible products.

  • iPad available in 90 countries.

  • Tim: We are in the main countries with iPad.

  • Tim: Everything we’re doing in the United States, we’re doing in China.

  • Tim: Cannibalization of PC market happening in two ways. Some people choose to buy an iPad over a Mac: a materially larger number of people buying an iPad instead of PC.

  • Tim: I’m not religious about holding cash or not holding it.

  • Tim: We could not be happier with our position in the tablet market. We have some incredible things in the pipeline.

    • Graphical Visualization

    We have compiled a series of graphs and charts to offer a graphical visualization of Apple’s third quarter. Apple’s Q4 2011 data summary is available here.

     

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    #MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday

    If you got a new iPhone 4S (or any model) over the weekend, why not buy some great apps at great prices? Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!

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    Adobe Releases Adobe Reader for iOS

    Adobe today released its popular Adobe Reader PDF reading application for iOS devices; the software, available for free on the App Store, runs natively on the iPhone and iPad as a universal app. Back in August, Adobe released CreatePDF for iOS, a utility to turn a variety of documents into Reader-compatible PDF files that preserved quality and accessibility standards with the inclusion of links, images, and footnotes. With the release of Adobe Reader today, Adobe is giving iOS users two tools to create and properly read PDF documents, respectively.

    Adobe says that Reader for iOS works with several PDF document types, including PDF Portfolios, password-protected PDF documents and Adobe LiveCycle rights-managed PDF files. Upon first launch, the app opens a document view with a Getting Started.pdf file ready to be viewed to get familiar with the app’s UI and controls. A scrubber bar along the bottom lets you quickly skim through pages, which can be displayed “continuously” in the reading view, or through a single-page visualization that will let you scroll horizontally between pages. You can pinch or double-tap to zoom, and rendering performances on zoomed documents seemed fairly decent on my iPhone 4. In PDF documents, text can be selected and copied to the clipboard, or you can search using the icon in the upper toolbar; a bookmarks icon in the bottom bar enables you to quickly navigate the sections of a document. One nice touch of Adobe Reader are “tap zones”, which in Single Page mode let you jump back and forward by tapping on the left and right edges of a document.

    PDF files can be emailed using Adobe Reader, opened with another app using the “Open In” menu, or printed through Apple’s AirPrint. According to Adobe, Reader for iOS is capable of viewing PDF Portfolios, PDF Packages, annotations and drawing markups as well as reading text annotations like sticky notes. In my tests, performances with a 350-page PDF document were similar to Apple’s iBooks, which can also preview PDFs. iBooks was slightly faster at page animations and rendering text while zooming on a document – the app has indeed been recently updated with bug fixes and performance improvements.

    If you need to preview specific PDF documents that might have some compatibility issues with iBooks, Adobe Reader on iOS might be a good choice. You can download the app for free on the App Store.

    A Graphical Visualization of Apple’s Past iPhone Launches

    As Apple’s new iPhone 4S has topped four million units sold in its first weekend, we thought it might be appropriate to look back at Apple’s iPhone launch history and the evolution of weekend sales figures over time. The original iPhone launched in the United States in June 2007, and Apple announced the 1 millionth unit was sold after 74 days. During the launch quarter’s earnings call, however, the company confirmed 270,000 iPhones had been sold in the first 30 hours of U.S. availability.

    Since the iPhone 3G, which followed the original iPhone in 2008 with a new design and 3G connectivity, Apple has always managed to publish press releases announcing at least 1 million iPhone units sold after the first opening weekend. Both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, launched in multiple countries on Day One, registered 1 million sales in the first weekend. The iPhone 4, announced at WWDC last year by Steve Jobs and featuring a completely new design with more powerful CPU and improved camera, was the first iPhone to break the 1 million figure and jump past 1.7 million units sold in three days.

    With the iPhone 4S, Apple went back to announcing “1 million units sold” – only with pre-orders and after 24 hours, not three days. In the launch weekend, as reported this morning, the company reported over 4 million iPhone 4S units sold in the seven countries the device launched on October 14th: US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia and Japan.

    Bigger weekend sales numbers are a result of the impressive growth of the iPhone in the past four years. Take a look at this graph we posted during the Q3 2011 earnings call in July: Apple went from 8.4 million iPhones sold in Q3 2010 to 20.3 million units in the third fiscal quarter of 2011. Launch days obviously attract far more “Apple fans” always waiting to get their hands on the latest device than “regular” sales weeks throughout the year, but clearly the popularity of the iPhone as a mass-market device is also affecting the lines around the world we see on every iPhone launch. It’s also widely believed that the iPhone 4S attracted several customers who bought an iPhone 3GS in 2009, and waited two years to get an updated model. The iPhone 4S is sold unlocked outside the US since day one, but it appears some US models have been sold without SIM-lock as well. According to Apple, unlocked iPhone 4S units will be sold starting this November.

    Check out the full-size graph of Apple’s iPhone launch history here, or click on the image below to enlarge.

    Data