App Store Sees Record Performance in Q2 2015 With 29% Increase in Revenue Year Over Year [iOS Blog]
During today’s Q2 2015 earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the App Store saw its best quarter ever, with 29 percent growth year over year. The entire services category, which includes the iTunes Store, App Store, Mac App Store, iBooks Store, AppleCare, ApplePay, licensing, and other services also reached a record quarterly revenue of $5 billion, up 9 percent year over year, with growth largely coming from the App Store.
According to Apple CFO Luca Maestri, the App Store remains “incredibly popular” with customers around the world, and in the March quarter, it saw 70 percent more revenue than Google Play.
Apple also an update on HealthKit-based apps, which are part of Apple’s recent health and fitness initiative, aggregating all of a user’s health and fitness data. According to Cook, HealthKit has been highly successful, and there are now 1,000 HealthKit-based apps in the App Store.
Along with HealthKit, Cook also touched on apps for the Apple Watch. There are now 3,500 Apple Watch apps available for download. Cook said customer response to the Apple Watch was “overwhelmingly positive” and that Apple “can’t wait to see more inspiring apps” for the Apple Watch as we creep closer towards the 2015 Worldwide Developers Conference.
MCX Member Best Buy Begins Accepting Apple Pay in App, In-Store Support Coming [iOS Blog]
On an Apple Pay update shared during today’s second quarter earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that Best Buy will begin accepting Apple Pay in its iOS app today, with full Apple Pay support coming to Best Buy stores later in 2015.
Best Buy’s move to adopt Apple Pay is notable because Best Buy was previously a member of MCX, the Apple Pay competitor that’s pushing the CurrentC payments service. CurrentC, which uses barcodes rather than NFC for payments, remains in testing and will launch later this year.
Best Buy follows MCX member Meijer in offering Apple Pay to customers, and while both companies signed exclusivity agreements, MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson has said that there are no penalties or fines for leaving the MCX program. MCX members are not able to accept both CurrentC and Apple Pay at the same time, so it remains unclear if Best Buy remains a part of MCX.
Apple also announced that the number of locations accepting Apple Pay has now tripled since the service first launched in October of 2014.
Ultrathin membrane makes plane cabins 100x quieter
While air travel is quicker and safer than driving, it’s also louder. The continuous low-frequency drone of the engines is why some people invest in noise-canceling headphones. To help reduce that non-stop hum, researchers at North Carolina State University and MIT have developed a thin membrane to be inserted into the lightweight honeycomb structure of planes and helicopters. “At low frequencies – sounds below 500 Hertz – the honeycomb panel with the membrane blocks 100 to 1,000 times more sound energy than the panel without a membrane.” said Yun Jing, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State University. The 0.25mm-thick membrane would only add an additional six percent to the overall weight of the honeycomb structure of aircraft. While that doesn’t seem like much, every ounce counts to airlines trying to maximize flight costs. It’ll be on them to decide whether they’d rather save money on fuel or makes cabins a better place for passengers.
Filed under: Misc, Transportation, Science
Source: NC State University
Supersonic air keeps train tracks clear when weather sucks
Unlike forest fires, you personally can’t do much to stop trainwrecks. With that in mind, the folks over at General Electric took a break from tracking your brain on BBQ and devised a way to keep one of the oldest forms of powered-transport on track in adverse weather conditions. You see, the Ardennes Forest in Belgium is legendary for its inhospitable conditions and to sidestep them and the mountains, trains were taking a longer, flatter and more expensive route. That wasn’t too economical. So, GE implemented what it calls the Advanced Rail Cleaner for trains on the route. Essentially, the ARC is a module that sits at a precise spot ahead of the front axle and uses high-pressure air (rather than lasers) moving at supersonic speeds to clear away any moisture and debris.
What’s more, special software detects when slippage starts and automatically engages the tool to blast away any contaminants. The result? European transport firm Heavy Haul Power International says it did something wasn’t possible before: pulling a 2,700 metric ton (just under 2,700 imperial tons) train through the “worst rail conditions imaginable.” All that to say, supplies should move a lot faster through the treacherous region from here on out. Too bad this sort of tech probably wouldn’t work on airplanes to keep runways clear for take-off and landing — we can always dream, though.
[Image credit: Stephan Rebernik/Flickr]
Filed under: Transportation
Source: GE Reports
Rubix’s wireless battery sticks to your phone with magnets
When you’re spending most part of the day out and about, chances are at some point you’ll have to whip out your portable battery to juice up your smartphone. This usually means stacking your phone on top of a cable-wrapped power bank, and then clumsily holding everything together with one hand. Doesn’t sound very 2015, does it? It’s annoying enough for a startup called Rubix to come up with a solution: slap a magnetized Qi wireless charging case (aka On Case) on your phone, and then let it snap onto a magnetized wireless charging battery (aka On Charger). Look ma, no cable!
The 13.9mm-thick On Charger consists of a 5,000 mAh battery with two output options: a fast 2A current over a USB cable or a standard 1A over close-proximity wireless transmission. Better yet, the charger also has a wireless power receiver at the bottom (as indicated by the circular groove to fit the ring on the top side), which means not only can you plonk it onto any Qi wireless charging station, you can also stack one On Charger on top of another that’s plugged in to charge them up simultaneously, albeit taking twice as long — theoretically five hours — if you give the bottom charger a 2A current over USB.
As for the On Case, Rubix’s Kickstarter launch will do the iPhone 6 first, followed by stretch goals to bring the magnet-only On Cases for the already Qi-enabled Galaxy S6 plus Galaxy S6 Edge, as well as the bigger On Case for the iPhone 6 Plus. The charger is designed to be flush with the iPhone 6’s case, and it isn’t far off from the Galaxy S6 cases’ shapes, so you should have no problem holding them together. And even if you hold just the phone part, the magnets are plenty strong to hold the battery, as we found out on a couple of prototypes. But is this battery-and-case bundle worthy of $89 and up? We’ll let you be the judge.
Filed under: Peripherals, Mobile, Apple
Source: Kickstarter
Apple sold 61 million iPhones last quarter, China now second-biggest market
Back in January this year, Apple recorded a blockbuster of a quarter thanks to holiday sales of its new, larger-screened handsets. It sold a whopping 74.5 million iPhones in the last three months of 2014, chalking up $74.6 billion in revenue in the process. While today’s second quarter results don’t quite match that number, Cook & co. still managed to rake in a respectable amount of cash: According to the report, Apple made around $58 billion and sold close to 61 million iPhones in the first three months of 2015 alone. That makes this one of the most successful March quarters ever in the company’s history. This is in large part due to Apple’s rising popularity in China. Indeed, the country is now Apple’s second biggest market, with Europe falling to third place.
Apple also continues to defy the global decline in PC shipments with 4.56 million in Mac sales, which is about 10 percent increase from this time last year. iPad sales, however, are on the decline; Apple sold 12.6 million of the tablets, a drop of about 23 percent from this time last year. Of course, as the Apple Watch only just went on sale in the past month, there aren’t any numbers for those just yet.
Developing…
[Image credit: AFP/Getty Images]
Filed under: Apple
Source: Apple
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