Jul 15
Jul 15
Could the iPod Be On Its Deathbed?
Posted in: Apple, iPhone, ipod, itunes, Media Players, Phones, Today's Chili
Despite extra features like FaceTime, sales of Apple's line of iPods continue to drop as consumers use smartphones and tablets.
If sales of Apple’s iPod are any indication, the heyday of the MP3 player is over and done with.
iPod sales have been steadily declining since their peak at 22.7 million in December 2008, and analysts estimate another 7.2 percent drop over the quarter that just ended.
Apple still commands 70 percent of the MP3 player market, but it’s clear that other mobile devices, namely smartphones and tablets, can do the job of an MP3 player (while performing a myriad of other functions, too).
In September of last year, Apple dramatically revamped its line of iPods, even giving the iPod Touch some features that were unique to the iPhone 4 at the time, namely FaceTime. Smartphones are increasingly dominating U.S. mobile phone purchases, and as consumers purchase the feature-rich devices, they no longer have a need for the single-purpose MP3 player. Rumors have blazed for years that Apple would discontinue one (typically the iPod Classic) or more iPod models, but it hasn’t happened yet.
It’s worth nothing that for the first time since the iPod Touch was introduced, it’s not being included in Apple’s Back to School promo as a freebie with a Mac purchase. The iPod Touch was replaced with a $100 iTunes gift card — a freebie that can be used with almost any Apple device, and could help bolster their soon-to-be burgeoning iCloud streaming service.
It’s possible that Apple could lay an iPod, likely the old iPod Classic rather than the more popular iPod Touch, to rest at its upcoming September event.
But although iPod sales are shrinking, it’s hardly an issue for Apple. The iPhone 4 sold 18.6 million units in the first quarter of 2011 alone. And according to a study from Resolve Market Research, between 80 and 90% of tablet-owning respondents had an iPad or iPad 2. But, some analysts think Apple missed out on an opportunity for more sales.
“We believe iOS devices would have been up ~20 percent (quarter over quarter) if iPhone 5 had shipped in June,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said today. In late June, Google’s Andy Rubin tweeted that there are over half a million Android device activations happening daily, and yesterday, that number jumped up to 550,000 per day. Some of those extra purchases could have been iPhones, had an iPhone 5 been available.
Regardless, Apple still has a solid spot as one of the top three smartphone manufacturers in the United States. And as more and more people lay their MP3 players to rest, they’ll be turning to smartphones to plug in for their mobile music fix.
Jul 15
Casey Putsch from Putsch Racing recreates the 1989 Batmobile, complete with a street-legal turbine engine culled from a drone helicopter. It’s lean, mean, loud, and completely cool.
Jul 15
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion could budge into the home entertainment segment with a media-streaming box, according to rumors.
Jul 15
Android 3.2 SDK now available, new features get detailed
Posted in: Android, breaking news, developer, Google, GoogleAndroid, honeycomb, sdk, Software, Today's Chili
And just like that, it’s official. After hearing about the next incremental step in Honeycomb’s journey by way of Huawei’s MediaPad, we’ve seen breadcrumbs about its functional differences. Today, we’re being given the full shebang — Google has just made official v3.2, boosting the API level to 13 and releasing the SDK into the wild in one fell swoop. The new build brings along optimizations for a “wider range of tablets,” as well as “compatibility zoom for fixed-sized apps,” media sync from SD card (huzzah!) and an extended screen support API. Head on down to the links below for a closer look, and expect to see this rolling out to [insert your favorite Android tablet here] in due time.
Android 3.2 SDK now available, new features get detailed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jul 15
And no, they do not have DVRs in them.
Jul 15
Rumors that Amazon.com will soon unveil a 7-inch Android tablet continue to percolate. The new model will reportedly be designed to take on Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color.
Originally posted at Fully Equipped
Jul 15
Google Uses Theater to Promote Gmail?
Posted in: Gmail, Google, Today's ChiliThis article was written on February 14, 2007 by CyberNet.
Seeing that Google just opened their doors to new registrations it was a sure thing that they would really start to promote the service. In classic Google fashion they thought outside the box in order to include humor in discussing Gmail’s biggest features. Don’t understand? Let me present to you Gmail Theater (yes, this was really created by Google):
Gmail also has a Valentine’s Day related emoticon that you can take advantage of if you use Gmail Chat. It is the heart which can be sent by using the character combination “<3″ in your chat message. If you didn’t already know, Gmail Chat has a bunch of emoticons available for you to use that are actually “animated.” They aren’t anything overly special, but ironically they do a lot more than the Google Talk emoticons…which really boggles my mind.
It will also be interesting to see if opening Gmail up to new registrations (without the hassle of using a cellphone) will help Google’s traffic. According to Alexa it is the third most visited site right now only behind Yahoo and MSN, who are number 1 and 2 respectively. I pulled up the Alexa graph for Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, and Live.com to show you where their traffic has been at over the last several months:
As you can see, Google took the reigns for a little while, but it didn’t last very long. What was very surprising to me is the growth that MSN has been seeing, which appears to be at a more rapid pace than what Live.com is even seeing. One thing that is important though is that Microsoft has both MSN and Live.com in the top ten sites on the Internet while Google has itself, YouTube, and Orkut all in the top ten.
It will be fun to see the three biggest Web portals compete to win over the consumers, and it is all going to ride on who can be the most innovative. While I’m a huge fan of Google it wouldn’t surprise me if Microsoft or Yahoo had a trick up their sleeve, but maybe Google’s GDrive storage solution will give them more users?
Source: Google Blog
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
Related Posts:
- Will Google Release A New Logo With The New GMail Logo?Get Ready To See A Google Calendar And Links Bar In GMailMy Firefox GMail Chat TroubleshootingThe Google Mail LogoGMail Gets New Features – ‘Avatars’ And Sound
Jul 15
Report: 3.5 million 3D Blu-ray discs ‘sold’ in first year, half were bundled with hardware
Posted in: blu-ray, hdtv, Movies, samsung, sony, Today's Chili
If we’re looking at sales figures of 3.5 million units in the first year for a new laptop, smartphone, or camera, then we might be impressed. But 3D Blu-ray discs? When half were included in the box with a Blu-ray player? Man, that’s gotta sting. Those numbers are based on an IHS Screen Digest estimate, tallying US sales beginning in June of 2010 and ending last month, though many larger titles didn’t make their debut until later in the year. Still, if those results are even in the ballpark of official (unreleased) numbers from BD distributors, then things really aren’t looking up for 3D. With fewer than 100 titles even available on Blu-ray, however, we’re not really surprised that discs aren’t exactly flying off the shelves. Obviously, as a growing number of movies are filmed in 3D we’ll see BD title availability increase as well, but with the technology’s lackluster beginnings over the last year and no sign that consumers are ready to spend more to embrace that new dimension, 3D may continue its slow crawl toward the mainstream for some time to come.
Report: 3.5 million 3D Blu-ray discs ‘sold’ in first year, half were bundled with hardware originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jul 15
Apple’s 2TB Time Capsule offers a larger hard drive, as well as improved wireless networking performance.
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