ROCKEFELLER

Technology giant Apple Incorporated has threaten to file a case against a Chinese manufacturer who plans to make and sell Steve Jobs action figure around the world.

Represented by its lawyer, Apple sent a letter to Inicons warning them that they will face a civil case if ever they proceed to manufacture and sell the Steve Jobs dolls. Apple asserted in its letter that the company has no legal authority to sell the dolls, since the authority to make products out of the late Jobs is his former company.

Despite the threats, Tandy Cheung, the owner of Inicons asserted that his company is not afraid of the possible suit and proceed with their plan to sell the doll in February at $99 each. It can be recalled that when the press release stipulating that Inicons is eyeing to sell Steve Jobs doll was released, it gathered a lot of comments both negative and positive. Some people are happy with the impending release of the dolls, but many were also sad since the dolls is quite realistic and considered by some as mockery to the late Jobs.

(rockfellernews/rb)

Many android developers and SIM-card vendors including Apple have been trying to create a SIM card that is smaller than the already existing Micro-SIM used in the iPhone 4. Recently, a German company, Giesecke & Devrient, has launched the world’s smallest SIM card called Nano-SIM.

The company, that started SIM cards commercially 20 years ago, is going to exhibit the Nano-SIM card publicly at CARTES & IDentification 2011 trade show in Paris starting on November 15, 2011. The length and width of the SIM card is approximately 12 millimeters and 9 millimeters, respectively, which is about 30 percent smaller than the Micro-SIM. Not only the lengths and widths but also the thickness had been reduced by about 15 percent, according to the news release of Giesecke & Devrient.

Besides, the Nano-SIM is about 60 percent thinner than the SIM used usually by the mobile operators. The SIM cards are expected to be built using the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) by the end of 2011. G&D is now testing the SIM cards for different mobile network operators.

The use of the Nano-SIM will obviously reduce the space used for the SIM. G&D claims that the new SIM cards will be very helpful for the manufacturers as they can utilize the extra space to implant other components such as additional memory cards or larger battery. The most important advantage of the Nano-SIM is that it will help manufacturer to create thinner mobile phone devices.

The Head of G&D’s Secure Devices division, Axel Deininger, said, “The invention of the SIM card remains a milestone in the history of G&D. With the Nano-SIM, we have shown how this development can move closer to perfection.”

According to the Moor’s law, in every two years the integration density will be doubled in the VLSI devices. The company proved that by developing such a thin SIM card. The company is expecting to launch the SIM cards commercially with the proper mobile phone devices by eve of the next year.

(rockefellernews/rd)

Only one week passed after the release of the only authorized biography of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. However, within a week the book, entitled “Steve Jobs,” has become the 18th bestselling book of the year in United States, according to BookScan’s reports.

Simon and Schuster published the book, written by the former managing editor of Time Magazine, Walter Isaacson, on October 24, 2011. About 379,000 copies of the book have been sold in the United States in its first week on sale.

In the 656-page book, Walter mainly wrote about Job’s life and career and his cooperation in the modern technology. To complete the book, Walter interviewed a lot of people related to Jobs, both personally and professionally. He wrote both the bad and good sides of the late Steve Jobs that he found from the interviews.

The biography has beaten the next bestselling book of the week, John Grisham’s “The Litigators,” by more than three to one. It also outsold the third bestselling book, Bill O’Reilly’s nonfiction “Killing Lincoln” by more than eight to one.

(rockefellernews/rd)

Here is a piece of bad news to all the ardent supporters of United States president Barrack Obama, who is seeking reelection in 2012.

A recent report state that no less than the late Apple Chief Operating Officer (CEO) Steve Jobs has predicted that he will just be a one-term president. Yes, you heard it right guys! Even after his death, Jobs is still creating a buzz in the US political scene.

According to reports, when Jobs met Obama in 2010, he bluntly told the president that will not win his re-election bid. Jobs said Obama will not get a second term in his presidential post due to the pervasive anti-business climate in his administration.

Jobs cited excessive federal regulations and operating costs for businesses as harmful legacies of the Obama White House. Despite the revelation of Jobs, which can be found in his soon to be released biography penned by Walter Isaacson, Obama and his supporters are very confident he can win re-election next year.

Based on the latest political survey in the US, despite the ailing economy of America, Obama still takes a slim lead against his possible Republican rivals. Jobs was a co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc.

Jobs was co-founder and previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney.

(rockefellernews/rb)

The British brands consulting firm Brand Finance published the list of the world’s most valuable companies or brands in 2011, based on the worth of the brands, on Wednesday, September 15. Google achieved the first place in the ranking. Apple and Microsoft are second and third in the list respectively.

Brand Finance studied the cash flow and other financial activities of the brands to determine the worth of the brands and charted them according to the value. Google brand value rose 9 percent and the worth of Google’s trademarks and other intellectual property is $48.3 billion.

This year Apple is the most successful company and its brand is worth $39.3 billion as the new chat, which is about 33 percent more than the previous statistics. Apple, for the first time, passed Microsoft, IBM, Wal-Mart, and General Electronics.

On the other hand, Microsoft dropped to the third place with a brand worth $39 billion, which is 9 percent less than the value of the last year. However, it is predicted that the upcoming Windows 8 may raise the value of the brand.

Below the top three, the top ten includes IBM, Wal-Mart, General Electronic, AT&T, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America respectively. For the first time, in the list, all of the top four brands are tech bands, according to reports.

(rockefellernews/rd)

A buzz is circulating around the world today that retailer giant Amazon is set to join the highly competitive tablet computer manufacturing and selling war currently ruled by Apple.

Although there is no official confirmation from the company that the will indeed manufacture and sell tablets, all indications point to that direction. This early, industry experts said if Amazon decided to sell tablets it could sale three to five million units around the world.

According to reports, Amazon CEO Jeff Bozo has showed hints that his company would indeed go to that direction. The experts said if Amazon decided to sell tablets it should however sell its products at a cheap price for it to be compete against the big boys in the industry.

A tablet is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen. It often uses an onscreen virtual keyboard or a digital pen rather than a physical keyboard.

Amazon is a US-based multinational electronic commerce company. The company was originally named Cadabra, Inc., but the name was changed when it was discovered that people sometimes heard the name as “Cadaver”.

The name Amazon.com was chosen because the Amazon River is one of the largest rivers in the world and so the name suggests large size, and also in part because it starts with “A” and therefore would show up near the beginning of alphabetical lists. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys.

 

Apple is one of the biggest suppliers of computer software, iPhones, iPod, iPad, consumer electronics, computers etc. The company is well known for its web browser Safari, and a mobile operating system iOS. It has about 500 stores worldwide and also has an online store. However, Chinese authorities have discovered another 22 fake Apple stores in the city of Kunming, situated in southwest of China.

The news of fake Apple stores in Kunming arose last month when a visitor of the city found three such fake stores during his visit and wrote on a blog concerning about the stores where the salesman were certain that they were working for the real Apple company. After that, about 300 shops in Kunming underwent investigation in July.

According to the report of the China Daily on Thursday, the Administration for Industry and Commerce of China ordered the fake stores to stop the illegal use of Apple’s logo when the Apple China alleged the stores for violating copyright rules and for an unfair competition. The crackdown started earlier this month and the stores were ordered to stop using the logo by August 10.

The agency said that it would open a monitoring services and a complaint hotline in order to prevent further violations. But, it has not yet been known that whether the stores were selling the genuine Apple’s products or smuggled models.

“Chinese law protects trademarks and prohibits companies from copying the ‘look and feel’ of other companies’ stores. But enforcement is spotty, and the United States and other Western countries have often complained China is woefully behind in its effort to stamp out intellectual property (IP) theft,” Reuters on its report said.

In China Apple’s products are high on demands from consumers. But, Apple has only four official stores in China: two in Beijing and two in Shanghai. On the other hand China is the second largest market for downloads from Apple’s App stores.  Based on the huge demand on the product of Apple in China, it is the right time for Apple to increase its official stores and business centers in China.

(rockefellernews/rd)

This story might raise eyebrows but it is quite a frightening statistic.

According to reports, at the moment Apple Incorporated has more cash on hand than the entire United States federal government. This developed after the balance sheet for the US Treasury dropped down to  $73.768 billion.

That compares to the $76.156 billion Apple has in its deep coffers  a difference of $2.388 billion. For layman who has no  idea on the intricacies of the stock market, Apple makes more money than it spends while the US government spends more than it generates in tax-revenue.

In other words, Apple is doing a really good job at running itself, while the federal government is not. The federal government is not doing good at the moment since it is stuck in a relentless gridlock over how to raise the national debt ceiling.

To those who had no idea on debt ceiling here is a simple math for it: Imagine the entire US government pays its bills with a single credit car d.At the moment, the credit card is nearly maxed out. If the debt ceiling — the limit on our national credit card — isn’t raised by August 2, then the US won’t have enough incoming revenue to pay all of its bills.At the moment, the politicians disagree on how to go about fixing this problem, so they’re let our cash coffers dwindle perilously low, which is basically how we got to the $73.768 billion number.

For its part Apple is doing extraordinarily well. The iPhone maker brought in record profits in the third quarter of this year, about $5.5 billion, which has possibly set the Cupertino, California-based electronics giant on a path towards soon overtaking Exxon Mobile to become the largest corporation on the planet.

Hopefully US politicians can solve this fiscal problem soon, so that their economy would not sink. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers.The company’s best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software; the iWork suite of productivity software; Aperture, a professional photography package; Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products; Logic Studio, a suite of music production tools; the Safari web browser; and iOS, a mobile operating system.

As of August 2010, the company operates 301 retail stores in ten countries, and an online store where hardware and software products are sold.As of May 2011, Apple is one of the largest companies in the world and the most valuable technology company in the world, having surpassed Microsoft.Established on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California, and incorporated January 3, 1977, the company was previously named Apple Computer, Inc., for its first 30 years, but removed the word “Computer” on January 9, 2007,to reflect the company’s ongoing expansion into the consumer electronics market in addition to its traditional focus on personal computers.

As of September 2010, Apple had 46,600 full time employees and 2,800 temporary full time employees worldwide and had worldwide annual sales of $65.23 billion.

(rockefellernews/rb)

A rumor is spreading that, Apple is going to ship a new iPad later this year. The company is working on the new iPad, which is not the next version iPad 3 but the iPad 2 with a high-resolution screen.

Joshua Topolsky wrote in a post called “This Is My Next” on the placeholder site for the former Engadget crew that the team’s sources claim a new product in the iPad family will strike market in the coming Fall. According to the post, the new model would not replace the existing model, iPad 2, but is said to be a pro device that could read higher resolution videos as well as photographs. Joshua Topolsky wrote in the post that “The idea behind the product is apparently that it will be a ‘pro’ device aimed at a higher end market — folks who work in video and photo production possibly — and will be introduced alongside something like an iPad version of Final Cut or Aperture. This product is specifically said to not be the iPad 3, rather a complimentary piece of the iPad 2 line. Think MacBook and MacBook Pro.”

The news says, it is expected that the new tablet to have double the screen resolution of the presently used tablets and will support an impressive screen resolution up to 2048×1536.

However, the interesting news in the post is that Apple will start shipping the higher resolution iPad alongside the existing iPad 2 from September this year. In addition, the devices will have new software that will help the iPad to support all these higher-end applications such as high-resolution videos and photographs.

About the price of the iPad HD the Time Blog Techland says, “The screen itself would be so expensive that it’d be impossible to hit the $500 starting point pegged to the consumer versions of the iPad.” Now, the matter is that how the consumers will take the new product who has bought the iPad 2 a few months ago. Moreover, how will the consumers feel when their kit is gazumped just months later?

If “This is My Next” sources are believable then it is time only to wait for the iPad to come.

(rockefellernews/rd)

World’s most popular social networking website Facebook is now going to provide the iPad users the facility to use Facebook application on their own device and it is about one year that the device has been marketed. The most favorite social networking site Facebook plans that it is going to introduce free application for the iPad devices from the upcoming week. The application has been carefully designed and tested to ensure the quality of the product on the tablet.
According to Facebook, currently it has 500 million users among them about 250 million Facebook users currently are accessing Facebook using their mobile devices. The tablet computer iPad was first developed and marketed by the Apple Inc in April 2010.

The users of the iPad devices have been begging Facebook for such kind of application since the beginning. This application was in process for more than a year and now it is in the final stage of launching the application officially. According to a Facebook co-worker, the developer and the chief of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has been invested a lot of cash to get a unique design features for the application.
The application will support most of the Facebook features including more advanced features than Facebook itself such as photo sharing, chat and Facebook Group features. It also allows the users to shoot and upload or share photos and videos directly from the iPad’s built-in cameras. The developers and the designers of the application have tested the features. A person, who has seen the application, said, “The photo and video experience is amazing, offering full resolution and full screen images.”
Apple has sold more than 25 million iPad since the device was launched. Apple wishing that the introduction of the application will increase the sale of the devices. In addition, Facebook can bring a great revolution in the space by launching the new application. Without any question the upcoming Facebook application for iPad will be the most popular application on the device.
Now the matter is that, when the application will be launched. We are eagerly waiting for the innovative development.

 

(rockefellernews/rd)

Google.com, the worlds biggest and most popular search engine is no longer just a search engine. Besides being a search engine, it also offers advertising, web analytics, affiliate marketing and other products, where it seems like google is planning to eat up the whole internet business platform while leaving no leftovers. Even after all this, it seems Google is still not finished as it made an announcement on Sunday May 8 that it is going to enter the online music streaming market.

 

Amazon web service is a cloud service provider that allows users to download and stream music data, so it will not be much of a surprise that Google will be a top contender with its new music service, which will work in the same way more or less. But it will not exactly be a cutthroat competition because the venture of Amazon into the music download market is still not very consolidated as it did it as recently as this march, but nevertheless it does have a head start as its website and servers are already compatible with major smartphones like the blackberry or Android. But Amazon and Google are not the only ones at the party because Apple has also made a statement saying that it plans to launch a music service which will contend against Amazon and Google. Though it may seem as a very promising entry, Google is not fully prepared to launch itself in the market, as it claimed in a press conference, and the music service is still underdeveloped in its beta stage. It estimates that the time taken for them to launch it in a fully functional mode will at least be another year or so.

This may come of as good news to us consumers and commoners but bad news for businesses in this industry, due to increased competition and its notorious habit of altering the business model of a product by offering it for free. This is the salient reason, why google faces criticism from other businesses because it offers sells services or products for no charge thus demolishing its rivals. We cannot say who will be the most dominant one, but it is likely to be Amazon because it was the first among the three to launch this service.

(rockefellernews/yk)