Business, Financial & Legal - Page 249

Tim Cook had some interesting things to say during the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, where the Apple CEO touched on a number of topics, including some rumors of a next-gen iPhone including a larger screen.

Cook talked about the user experience, saying that the experience is more important than what cranks along inside of the phone. When talking about a larger screen size on the iPhone, Cook said:

Japan's mobile market is a new territory for Apple to conquer, but it looks like last year was good to them as the iPhone maker scooped up the top spot in Japan's mobile phone market for a twelve-month period for the first time ever.

Apple took 16% of Japan's mobile market - this includes smartphones and feature phones - in Q4 2012, giving them an overall 15% share of the year as a whole. This pushes Apple just ahead of Japan locals Sharp and Fujitsu who both held 14% share eacj, according to a new report from Counterpoint Research.

Apple have previously taken the top spot in Japan's mobile industry but it has always been short lived and usually happened at the beginning of new product launches, like the iPhone 4S' launch in 2011. Apple reaching the top is a big fact, with Sharp being knocked off their top spot after a six-year run as number one.

On their rampage for world domination, Corsair have just acquired Scotland-based Simple Audio. Simple Audio have been around for five years and is mostly known in Europe for their networked set-top receivers.

These receivers are capable of sharing music from PCs, Macs, TVs, iPods and MP3 players, so we should expect Corsair to expand their audio lineup in the coming months and years. Corsair's acquisition will see Simple Audio's products jump across the pond, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Corsair haven't said anything about the amount of money they paid for Simple Audio, but the American computer component maker have said that they'd been checking out Simple Audio's dance moves for a while now - even since 2010 - and felt that now is the right time to acquire them.

In a new Harris poll that sought the opinions of more than 14,000 people, Amazon has come out on top in two of the six categories. The poll asked respondents to rank companies based upon six criteria: social responsibility; emotional appeal; financial performance; products and services; vision and leadership; and workplace environment.

Amazon pulled out a win in the "emotional appeal" and "products and services" categories. Amazon managed to place in the top five for the other four categories. Overall, Amazon managed to come out with a grade of 82.62, which makes this the fifth year in a row that they placed above 80 out of 100.

"Our results show that Amazon has managed to build an intimate relationship with the public without being perceived as intrusive," Robert Fronk, executive vice president of Reputation Management at Harris Interactive, said in a statement. "And as the company that is so widely known for its personal recommendations, more than 9 in 10 members of the public would recommend Amazon to friends and family."

Numbers from AdDuplex show that Nokia has roughly 75 percent of the Windows Phone market. AdDuplex's numbers are usage numbers from the company's ad network. While the numbers only come from 294 applications, which creates a fairly small and unreliable sample size, general questions, such as the top manufacturer, can be asked fairly reliably.

As you can see, Nokia holds just over 75 percent of the Windows Phone market. HTC comes in second with just over 10 percent. From there, the numbers drop off pretty significantly. It's no surprise that Nokia is leading the market; it's Lumia line of devices are solid and Nokia has worked closely with Microsoft.

We're always on the lookout for data and trends. We'll keep looking to see if we can come up with some interesting trends in the Windows Phone market.

As an Australian myself, it hurts so much to see products so over priced here versus other places in the world. The government here hates it, as they lose out because consumers purchase the goods overseas, bypassing the GST (goods & services tax) that they would normally make.

The Australian government are now stepping in, with the government's IT Pricing Inquiry into something that is known as the "Australia Tax", which is now going after the big boys in Microsoft and Apple. The committee has issued three summonses to appear before the inquiry today to three repeat offenders: Microsoft, Apple and Adobe.

These three companies will appear before the House Committee on March 22 at 9:30am to answer concerns raised by Choice and the ACMA in regards to the "Australia Tax" on goods sold across the country. Federal Member of Chifley, Ed Husic, said:

Blackberry has announced that they have no plans to launch the new BlackBerry 10 devices in Japan. According to BlackBerry, "Japan is not a major market for BlackBerry and we have no plans to launch BlackBerry 10 devices there at this time." Part of this could be to the fact they have just 0.3 percent of the market currently.

After all, why launch a device in a country when they appear to not be very keen on your previous devices. This appears to be the logic BlackBerry is operating off of as they say the cost of translating BlackBerry 10 to Japanese is just to high for them to consider it a good investment.

Current BlackBerry owners can rest easy knowing that BlackBerry will continue to offer to support to existing owners in Japan.

ORIGIN has announced a new way to contact their customer support. The new method is a bit different than most companies and should help users reach technical support in the most convenient way possible. ORIGIN's Nexus client will allow users to chat with technical support while in-game or on the desktop.

Along with contacting support, the client will allow users to chat with friends, take screenshots and video, and live broadcast gameplay. A nice feature of being able to contact support in-game is the ability to be looking at exactly what isn't working while talking to support. This allows you to get the best description of the problem.

Kevin Wasielewski, CEO and co-founder of ORIGIN PC:

The Mac Pro will no longer be sold in Europe after March 1. The issue apparently stems from new regulatory standards that Apple's Mac Pro fails to meet. It's not clear which standard isn't met by the machine, but Apple apparently doesn't want to update it to meet the standards.

Resellers will be able to continue selling the Mac Pro beyond March 1, though stock will not be replenished. Final orders for Mac Pro units must be placed with Apple before February 18 so that they can be delivered before March 1. The following letter was sent to retailers:

Apple has posted up a job listing for a Plastics Design Engineer, and that has, of course, sparked questions about whether or not Apple is planning to produce a budget iPhone using a plastic case. The job listing is looking for a Manufacturing Design Engineer with a focus in Advanced Plastic Tooling and Process.

Of course, an engineer hired at this late date would be unlikely to be working on a device rumored to launch later this year, though they could be working on future designs. Most of Apple's products have utilized aluminum, though plastic is still used in keyboards, Apple TV, Airport Extreme, and other accessories.