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Opera Releases Coast Browser For iPad With Revolutionary User Interface
Apple Confronts A Thorny Memory Future as a Non-Samsung Customer
Nearly Two Out of Three American Smartphone Owners Do Not Plan to Purchase the New iPhone
Chitika Insights OS X, iOS Version Distribution - Summer 2013
Dropbox Like Microsoft In The Old Days; New Mobile App Coming - CEO Drew Houston
China Market: Apple Shares Over 64% of 2Q13 Consumer Tablet Sales - Analysys Report
Opera Releases Coast Browser For iPad With Revolutionary User Interface
Coast by Opera is intended to let you e-imagine Web browsing. Built from scratch for your tablet, Coast focuses on intuitive, swipe-gesture controls, which its developers contend allows you to focus on the web, not how you navigate it - “the browser that should have come with the iPad,” Opera claims.
Enjoy powerful, visual search
• Pull down to type in a web address or search Google. Search results and site suggestions deliver your content swiftly.
• Personalize how you enter the webKeep your favorite sites at your fingertips by dragging them onto the home screen. Create your own space and enjoy quick access to your most-loved content.
Get The Newest Content, Automatically
• Pages stay open and update silently in the background. You can easily swipe between sites and stay on top of their latest updates.
“Why is there a back button in iPad browsers”? Opera posits. “The iPad is, after all, designed for touch. You swipe, drag and use gestures to move around. Websites and apps today invite you to interact in new ways, but browsers have been stuck in a keyboard-and-mouse world. They felt outdated, and that bothered us. Why? Because we make browsers for a living. We are passionate about making the internet better.”
They thought they could do better. A lot better, which meant rethinking what a browser should be, and saw a great opportunity to build something from scratch. The result is Coast, a completely new browser, made simple and elegant and designed designed exclusively for the iPad. Every design element in Coast has been carefully crafted for iPad. It’s not just a mobile interface scaled up to fit a touchscreen, and there’s a lot of stuff you don’t see - technology that works under the hood, keeping you safe and secure.
Bookmarks are gone, replaced with iOS Home screen type icons. You can easily add or delete icons without leaving the page. There’s no Return button - just swipe back to where you were. A home screen search field displays three possible results as you type. To return directly to the home screen, tap a small button at the bottom center of the screen. To toggle between most recently visited sites, tap the button at the bottom right.
System requirements:
Requires iOS 6.0 or later.
Compatible with iPad
Free
App Store:
http://goo.gl/5HjWTP
Apple Confronts A Thorny Memory Future as a Non-Samsung Customer
Apple may be the most influential technology company in the world, but even its formidable status may not help as it tries to out-innovate Samsung, its primary competitor. That’s because any major innovation would likely demand greater memory capabilities -- and Apple has no memory making capabilities, while Samsung is the memory market leader, according to a new DRAM Dynamics Brief from IHS Inc.
Samsung is the leading supplier of both dynamic random access memory (DRAM) as well as NAND flash, both of which are essential components in nearly all of today’s consumer electronics, including smartphones and tablets where Apple enjoys great success, via its best-selling iPhone and iPad devices.
In the first quarter, Samsung’s revenue of $4.6 billion accounted for 36 percent of the total DRAM and NAND memory market of $12.8 billion. To put into perspective Samsung’s gigantic heft, its output exceeded that of No. 2 SK Hynix and No. 3 Toshiba combined. Samsung was also bigger than the accumulated totals of Toshiba, No. 4 Micron Technology and fifth-ranked Elpida Memory, as presented in the attached figure.
“While the argument can be made that Apple sees some benefits by not sharing critical prototype design information with Samsung, the fact remains that Apple limits its options by not doing business with Samsung, which places Apple at a disadvantage,” says Mike Howard, senior principal analyst, DRAM & Memory, for IHS. “The difficulties presented by this challenge become even more acute considering that the memory industry continues to consolidate, especially in DRAM. The recent closing of Micron’s acquisition of bankrupt Elpida means there are now just three major DRAM developers and four NAND developers left. As Apple’s memory suppliers get bigger because of consolidation, they are likely to gain more bargaining leverage. This is a trend all memory buyers will face, and Apple -- even with its heft -- is not exempt.”
A Matter Of Custom
Another obstacle for Apple could be that its memory suppliers are reluctant to develop custom products for Apple. Custom parts are risky, and Apple’s aggressive procurement tactics --negotiating by offering to buy at some of the lowest pricing --begets no love from the industry. Without custom products, Apple is forced to use off-the-shelf products that make innovation and differentiation more difficult.
But perhaps the most significant risk for Apple is that Samsung has complete control over its memory future. The South Korean electronics giant controls all of the major components that go into a smartphone or a tablet, such as the screen, the applications processor and the memory. Moreover, Samsung’s robust smartphone market share means it enjoys the requisite demand for designing and building fully custom products that it may choose not to make available to the market at large.
Apple, in contrast, has no such powers at its disposal, and remains at the mercy of its suppliers. One reason Apple has multiple sources for memory components is precisely because it can ill afford to be dependent on any single provider.
Apple’s Options
Apple’s options to address its memory challenge fall roughly into one of three categories: greenfield, partnership or acquisition. In effect, this means it could buy a memory design company to develop its own custom memory products; it can partner with memory companies; or it can acquire a large existing memory producer.
For the last option, Samsung is clearly not a candidate, while Toshiba and SanDisk seem unlikely because they only make NAND and are already in a partnership. SK Hynix has the appropriate product mix, but national concerns would likely make the deal difficult to swallow for South Koreans.
The only U.S.-based memory producer, Micron, could be a logical candidate. However, Apple’s requirements would strain its capabilities severely—unless the additional capacity brought by Micron’s purchase of Elpida were included, which may then give it too much excess capacity if solely devoted to Apple’s concerns.
All told, Apple faces significant memory challenges down the road, IHS believes. And while numerous paths are available for the maker to strengthen its handicap, it’s impossible to overlook the importance of memory as a critical component for years to come in the devices that Apple makes.
To this end, a competitive strategy in memory would go a long way in helping the company reinforce its status the electronic industry’s leading innovator.
For more information, visit:
http://www.ihs.com
Nearly Two Out of Three American Smartphone Owners Do Not Plan to Purchase the New iPhone
Ahead of Apple’s highly-anticipated iPhone announcement on September 10, new research reveals nearly two in three Americans (65 percent of all Americans, 59 percent of all current smartphone-owning Americans) would definitely or probably not purchase the new iPhone 5S expected to be revealed on Tuesday.
Further, only three percent of all Americans (5 percent of all current smartphone-owning Americans) said they would buy as soon as it is launched. The findings were released today in the 2013 iPhone Anticipation Report from BiTE interactive, the mobile application specialist for Fortune 1000 brands, which commissioned YouGov to poll the views of a representative sample of 1,087 American adults online between September 3-4.
The data also showed that a less expensive model would not significantly alter the purchase decision 68 percent of those who are not planning on purchasing the new iPhone said that a less expensive version would have no effect on their decision.
Additional key findings uncovered a number of interesting differences and a high degree of brand loyalty among Android and iPhone users.
The data include:
• Android owners were more than twice as likely as iPhone owners to say they probably or definitely would not buy the new iPhone (76 to 32 percent, respectively).
• Current iPhone owners were five times more likely than Android owners to say they would buy the new iPhone immediately or wait until they were eligible to upgrade (41 to 8 percent, respectively).
“We expected initial consumer enthusiasm over the iPhone 5S to be low,” says Joseph Farrell, EVP Operations, BiTE interactive, whose firm commissioned the research to gain a better understanding of the market demands for the new phone and the new operating system. “The S-models generally tend to be a minor model improvement which understandably generates less consumer excitement. However, we at BiTE think consumers will be excited in the coming months when they see the vast mobile commerce opportunities enabled by features such as the fingerprint scanner. This feature heralds the real beginning of mobile as a mass market transnational device.”
Most Wanted New iPhone Features
The research also asked current non-iPhone owners which features would make them most likely to switch from their current device to the new iPhone. Twenty percent of all respondents indicated that better hardware would make them switch (30 percent for Android owners, specifically) and 19 percent would switch if battery life were significantly longer (similarly, 30 percent for Android.)
“While the data into features gives us a great deal of insight into what non-iPhone users care about when they think of switching, its also important to note the strong (41 percent) amount of current iPhone owners that are planning on upgrading to the new model,” comments Brant DeBow, EVP of Technology, BiTE interactive. “Part of iOS continued growth has been turning new customers into repeat customers. Its a great sign for Apple that a good amount of their existing base is interested in the new phone before the specifics are even announced.”
Mr. Farrell adds that “Overall, the data underscores that if Apple’s goal with the release of a lower-cost iPhone were to increase U.S market share, the iPhone 5C would be a serious concern. With U.S. carriers subsidizing mobile phone purchases with multiyear contracts, the U.S. consumer is understandably far less interested in a lower cost iPhone.
“But that’s not Apples objective,” says Farrell. “Offering a lower priced iPhone to customers represents a powerful move to capture international markets, especially in Europe, China and India where carrier phone subsidies are banned or non-existent. With U.S. smartphone penetration approaching 65 percent, a potential iPhone 5C opens vast territories for Apple to effectively continue the iPhones and iOS expansion.”
BiTE interactive commissioned YouGov Plc to poll the views of a representative sample of 1,087 U.S. adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between September 3-4, 2013. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all U.S. adults (aged 18+).
For more information, visit:
http://www.biteinteractive.com/
Chitika Insights OS X, iOS Version Distribution - Summer 2013
Chitika Insights reports that this past summer, they observed North American iOS 6 users generating more than 92% of iOS traffic on iPhones and more than 82% of iOS traffic on iPads.
With the launch of new iPhones and iOS 7 at Apple’s Tuesday, September 10th, the interface is set to get a great deal of attention, and with this in mind, Chitika revisited overall iOS distribution through an analysis of tens of millions of iOS-based online ad impressions generated within the Chitika Ad Network from August 15th through August 21st, 2013.
As seen in the above graphs, iOS 6 adoption is pervasive across the iDevice ecosystem prior to full-fledged release of iOS 7, although iPhone usage is more weighted towards iOS 6 as compared to iPads. As stated in Chitika Insights prior report on iOS version distribution, a possible reason for this difference may be that many of the most noteworthy features in iOS 6 are geared more towards mobile usage (e.g. Facetime over mobile networks, turn-by-turn GPS). Earlier analyst estimates point to most tablets being solely WiFi-enabled, making some mobile-focused features useless on iPads.
In terms of iOS 7, while users of the OS beta version generate 1% of traffic on iPhones in the August survey, iPad users of the software contribute to less than 1% of all North American iPad traffic. Overall, this is a minor disparity due to the limited adoption potential of any beta OS, and based on past adoption rates of new iOS versions, its likely that users of both device categories will adopt iOS 7 at high rates. However, as with iOS 6, exact penetration rates for both iPhone and iPad users are likely to differ.
While new Apple desktop and laptops are not expected to be unveiled until the fall, Chitika obbserves that its worth noting the differences between the Apple mobile and desktop ecosystems in terms of version distribution. In the case of North America, Mac OS X distribution is much more widely distributed than its mobile counterpart. The data for the graph below were drawn from a sample of tens of millions of Mac desktop- and laptop-based online ad impressions observed within the Chitika Advertising Network from August 15th through August 28th, 2013.
These graphs showcase an ecosystem where users of different OS versions generate sizable percentages of overall Web traffic from the OS as a whole. However, this is to be expected due to Mac desktops and laptops having been on the market for some time. Apple was able to achieve sizable adoption rates of OS X 10.8 through means including pricing and a simple download option, making it likely that OS X 10.9 will see similar success following its full release later this year.
You can check it out at:
http://chitika.com/insights/2013/osx-ios-version-distribution-Q3
The full free Insights report “Pre-Product Launch Roundup: OS X, iOS Version Distribution” is also available as a courtesy to Chitika Insights’ professional readers. This premium, full report format provides a more thorough overview of the OS X and iOS version distribution study from Chitika Insights, including:
• An analysis of North American iPhone and iPad iOS version distribution
• An analysis of North American Mac OS X version distribution
• What these statistics mean for Apple in context with iOS 7’s public release
• Chitika Insights’ full research methodology
• An analysis of North American iPhone and iPad iOS version distribution report.
You can check it out at:
http://tinyurl.com/ot6xqcn
Dropbox Like Microsoft In The Old Days; New Mobile App Coming - CEO Drew Houston
In and interview with CNET’s Donna Tam, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston likened his company to the Microsoft of yesteryear with its “consumer and enterprise kind of crossover,” also noting that what the company is currently focused on is mobile, with a new mobile app coming that will be “a completely different experience.”
For the full report visit here:
http://goo.gl/8VxzdX
China Market: Apple Shares Over 64% of 2Q13 Consumer Tablet Sales - Analysys Report
Digitimes’ Adam Hwang reports that Apple occupied 64.6% of 3.576 million consumer tablets sold in the China market during second-quarter 2013, with overall unit sales increasing 5.2% sequentially and 52.8% on year, according to Analysys International.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20130905VL201.html
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