They’re more in a dictatorship mode where they say, ‘This is what you have to do or you don’t get the iPhone.’ Being arrogant with your partners in big markets doesn’t pay off.Vasyl Latsanych, Vice President of Marketing at Russian mobile carrier OAO Mobile TeleSystems • Offering his employers’ explanation for the iPhone’s extremely high price — which have reportedly topped $1000 at times — compared to other smartphones available in Russia. As the author also notes, the majority Russian consumers do not sign long term contracts for mobile service, removing any incentive for carriers themselves to help subsidize the high cost of some devices. Think this is the sort of thing investor’s were worried about last week when asking Apple CEO Tim Cook about entry barriers in emerging markets? source (via • follow)
» To put this in perspective: The previous version of OSX, 10.7 Lion, took nearly four months to reach 6 million users. in a weekend, Mountain Lion is already halfway there.
Here are a couple of iPhone prototypes from 2006, images of which surfaced as a result of the current Apple vs. Samsung trial. Does the one on the left look familiar? On top of this, did you know that one of the design inspirations for Apple was Sony? Seriously.
The earliest known iPad prototype: Here’s a bit of history that NetworkWorld surfaced as a result of the Apple/Samsung lawsuit — back in 2002, Apple was already working on tablet prototypes. (“I actually don’t know which model shop made this,” noted Jony Ive during testimony in the trial, “but I recognize this as a model that was produced during our exploration.”) Here’s what the prototype looked like. A couple interesting things: First, no buttons. Second, it looks like the monitor half of an old iBook. Third, it’s very thick compared to the current iPad models. But clearly, this was the iPad before all the rough edges were sanded off.
Is Apple’s iPhone slimming back even more? The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is working with multiple companies on a new display for the planned iPhone 5 which combines the touch input and display into a single piece of LCD — which has the side effects of making the screen thinner and simplifying the supply chain Apple uses to create the devices. They have to keep up — their chief cell phone competition, Samsung, is coming up with some screen innovations of its own on its Android devices. (graphic via WSJ)
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At its gleaming store, RadanMac offers the latest Apple gear - the new iPad, iPhones, iPods, laptops, all-in-one desktop computers and more.
But this is no ordinary Apple store. It’s in Tehran, where Apple and other U.S. computer products are banned under U.S. sanctions that have been in place for years.
Despite the embargo, RadanMac is one of an estimated 100 stores in the Iranian capital that openly sell Apple products, often at little more than U.S. prices.
“Business has been booming for the last three years,” said Majid Tavassoli, the store’s owner, in a phone interview. He said his company employs more than 20 staffers and has been supplying Apple products to Iranian buyers since 1995.
The company also has a servicing unit and a business sales arm whose clients have included the Central Bank of Iran, state television channels, newspapers and design professionals.
Meanwhile in the U.S., Apple Store managers in Atlanta are going after customers that speak Farsi. (It’s worth noting, by the way, that the machine on the left is not an iPad, but an iMac model that’s about a decade old.)
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BlackBerrys were in fact considered in the survey but given very few respondents reported being a BlackBerry user, their numbers were not statistically relevant. Of those considering themselves smartphone owners, only 9 percent reported being BlackBerry users.Tucked away in this Obvious Survey is Obvious post over at POLITICO, which shows President Barack Obama has a commanding 49-31 percent lead over Mitt Romney among iPhone/Android users, is one of the saddest statistics about Research in Motion we’ve ever come across (via hypervocal)
Samsung Electronics defeated Apple in the latest spat in the rivals’ patent wars when a British judge ruled Samsung’s Galaxy tablets did not infringe the U.S. company’s designs for the iPad because they were “not as cool.”
In Monday’s High Court judgment Judge Colin Birss said that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets belonged to the same family as the Apple design when viewed from the front, but the Samsung products were “very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back.”
“They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool,” he said. “The overall impression produced is different.”
READ MORE: Samsung wins court case against Apple because it’s “not as cool”
Defeat disguised as victory.
![Uh-oh: Facebook mobile apps modifying users’ address books
You might want to uninstall the Facebook app: There are reports that Facebook’s iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps are infiltrating the address book that comes preinstalled on these devices, erasing contacts’ email addresses, and replacing them with their Facebook address (you know, the [name]@facebook.com email address that everyone’s given and many don’t use). This is bad enough, but to make matters worse, the @facebook.com addresses —which are supposed to redirect to users’ Facebook inboxes — apparently aren’t working all that great. The end result is that emails sent by many well-intentioned mobile users are disappearing into the abyss, irretrievable by their intended recipients. Presumably, affected users are also losing the real email addresses of their friends. This is, to put it lightly, completely inexcusable, and it doesn’t take too much thinking to conjure up many, many disastrous scenarios that could result from a reckless policy like this. (Photo: AP; Clarification: the iOS danger is specifically related to version 6, which is in beta, though if you have an Android or Blackberry device, this is an issue now. Thanks to ligerxx for reaching out.) source
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You might want to uninstall the Facebook app: There are reports that Facebook’s iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps are infiltrating the address book that comes preinstalled on these devices, erasing contacts’ email addresses, and replacing them with their Facebook address (you know, the [name]@facebook.com email address that everyone’s given and many don’t use). This is bad enough, but to make matters worse, the @facebook.com addresses —which are supposed to redirect to users’ Facebook inboxes — apparently aren’t working all that great. The end result is that emails sent by many well-intentioned mobile users are disappearing into the abyss, irretrievable by their intended recipients. Presumably, affected users are also losing the real email addresses of their friends. This is, to put it lightly, completely inexcusable, and it doesn’t take too much thinking to conjure up many, many disastrous scenarios that could result from a reckless policy like this. (Photo: AP; Clarification: the iOS danger is specifically related to version 6, which is in beta, though if you have an Android or Blackberry device, this is an issue now. Thanks to ligerxx for reaching out.) source
This is what it looks like when Apple shuts down a service. But its successor, iCloud, is doing OK: It has 125 million users.
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