Tim Cook: Apple Watch on Schedule to Ship in April [iOS Blog]
During today’s earnings call covering the first fiscal quarter of 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared some new details on the prospective launch date of the Apple Watch. According to Cook, Apple Watch development is currently on schedule, and the company is planning to ship the device in April.
Development for Apple Watch is right on schedule, and we expect to begin shipping in April.
When the Apple Watch was announced, Apple gave a vague “Early 2015″ launch date for the device, making it unclear when it would actually ship. Several rumors recently pointed towards a March launch date for the device, but it appears it will actually begin shipping out to consumers a month later, in April.
Now that we know when the Apple Watch is expected to launch, the only unknowns about the device are battery life and its cost. Rumors have suggested that battery life will be somewhat disappointing, lasting approximately 19 hours during “mixed use.”
Cost is also up in the air, aside from a known starting price of $349 for the lower-end device. Pricing on the middle tier version is unclear, as is pricing for the high-end gold Apple Watch, which rumors suggest could sell for thousands of dollars.
Tim Cook: Apple Has Sold More Than 1 Billion iOS Devices [iOS Blog]
Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed on Tuesday during the company’s quarterly earnings call that it has sold more than 1 billion iOS devices to date since launching the original iPhone over seven years ago. According to Cook, the impressive milestone, which accounts for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, was reached in December and was helped along by a record-breaking 74.5 million iPhones sold in Q1 2015.
Cook emphasized that iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus demand was stronger than any other iPhone it has ever released, selling at a pace of roughly 34,000 devices per hour. The success of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus was aided by the widest international rollout of an iOS device to date, with the smartphone launching in more places than ever before and in a total of 130 countries.
1 Billion iOS devices shipped!!
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) January 27, 2015
Apple’s revenues soar thanks to iPhones and China
Well, it’s that time again. Apple has just released its latest batch of quarterly earnings, and wouldn’t you know it — the folks in Cupertino once again sold more iPhones than it has in any other quarter. We’re talking 74.5 million phones changing hands since October, up just about 50 percent from its last utterly insane holiday quarter. Apple doesn’t break down sales numbers by model, but its smartphones’ bang-up performance helped push company revenue to new heights; the company raked in a cool $74.6 billion in revenue, along with $18 billion in pure profit. That is crazy.
So the iPhones did extremely, ridiculously well – what about iPads? Apple only sold about 21.4 million, and while that’s not exactly a number to sneeze at, it’s significantly lower than the more than 26 million the company moved during the last holiday season. There are plenty of possible culprits here, from the less-than-game-changing upgrades the iPad Air and Mini lines received earlier this year, to the growth in demand for the iPhone 6 Plus, a device that not only closes the gap between phone and tablet, but also nets Apple more cash than the bog-standard 6. That sort of dip in performance doesn’t come out of the blue though — we saw it last quarter too, a phenomenon CEO Tim Cook referred to as a “speed bump”.
Bear in mind, we all expected this quarter to be a blow-out. After all, the last few months represent the first full quarter of sales for the company’s new iPhones and iPads, a big push into the holiday buying maelstrom and a more aggressive mobile stance in China. As usual, people are fingering that last, region-specific reason as a big, big reason for that growth. A quick look at Apple’s data reveals why: Greater China accounted for about $16 billion of the company’s overall revenue over the past three-ish months. That’s just about twice the number the region put up last year, making it only slightly less valuable than Apple’s business in Europe. Factor in a new report from analysis firm Canalys proclaiming Apple the victor in Chinese smartphone sales (beating Xiaomi, Samsung and Huawei in that order) and it’s not hard to see just how crucial China is to Apple’s future growth.
Noticeably absent from this first information blast is any word on Apple Pay, which is – among other things – is being baked into some 200,000 self-serve kiosks across the United States. Apple gets a tiny cut from each Pay transaction that gets processed, which could ultimately mean big bucks falling into the company’s coffers when phone and tablet sales slip into slightly more reasonable territory. Here’s hoping it’ll get a detailed shout-out in the customary earnings call, set to kick off shortly.
Filed under: Mobile
Source: BusinessWire
Sonos update makes it easier to play music in any room
Sonos’ big controller app update from last year was a case of two steps forward and one step back. It was slicker and made it easier to find music, but playing music got harder — among other issues, it required extra effort to send tunes to speakers around your home. Kinda defeats the point of multi-room audio, don’t you think? At last, though, it looks like Sonos is ready to tackle some of those biggest hiccups. An upcoming version 5.3 update (not shown here) will put an always available room menu at the top of every screen, so it should take less time to deliver a radio stream to the living room or a podcast to your kitchen.
There’s more: the Now Playing screen once again shows the track progress so that you can skip through long clips, and it’s faster to both get back to browsing music and crossfade tracks to avoid jarring breaks. The main problem? You’ll probably have to wait. Sonos is only making 5.3 available as an Android beta right now, and the finished version will arrive sometime in the “coming months.”
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Sonos Blog
Google Fiber officially arriving at Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
Google Fiber was initially started off in Kansas City, Kansas followed by Kansas City, Missouri. It was then made available in regions of Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah as well. Today, Google has announced the rollout of Fiber in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham.
Fiber will be accessible in 18 cities across these 4 regions, so a large number of users will be able to get their hands on Fiber for the first time.
The service was known to be arriving in these regions sometime soon and this announcement from Google has officially confirmed it for us.
Fiber brings blazing fast broadband internet to your home, which is up to 100 times faster than conventional broadband connections as Google proudly mentions.
Customers have the option of picking Gigabit Internet + TV for $130 a month, while the standard Gigabit internet option will set you back by $70 per month. Google is waiving off construction fees for both connections, which is a nice little perk.
But if you’re not looking to spend so much on broadband, Google also has a standard internet connection which is on par with today’s speeds. It offers 5 Mbps download speeds and will require you to pay a $300 construction fee up front or in instalments of $25 for 12 months.
If you are covered by either of the aforementioned cities, make sure you check with Google for a new connection.
Source: Google
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