Apple Testing Smaller iPad: WSJ

Apple is beginning to test a smaller iPad, with a screen around the size of 8-inches, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The iPad maker is reportedly working with its component parts suppliers in Asia to test the smaller iPad, although that is no guarantee that Apple would market the device.

Apple founder Steve Jobs had stated late in 2010 that smaller iPads were near useless unless you could “use sandpaper” to file down your fingers. The current iPad has a 9.7-inch screen.  And the new iPad 3, expected to be unveiled at an Apple event March 7, should have the larger, 9.7-inch screen, and will include a 4G version, said the WSJ recently.

We’ve long stated here that the impact of a 7-inch iPad on the car AV market would be significant.

Analysts said a smaller iPad would help Apple compete against devices such as the 7-inch Kindle Fire.

Source:  The Wall Street Journal

Apple iPad 3 Due Next Month: Report

Apple will announce in early March a new iPad that will ship shortly after, reported the AllThingsD blog affiliated with the Wall Street Journal Thursday.

The next gen iPad will debut at a special event in San Francisco and should be similar in form to the iPad 2 but faster and with a better display and graphics processor.

Source: AllThingsD

Best Buy Blunders, Fails to Ship Christmas Orders

Best Buy blundered late in the holiday season, notifying some customers that orders they placed weeks prior would not ship.

The big box giant acknowledged that orders for popular items placed over Black Friday and Cyber Monday exceeded supplies, leaving it in unable to meet demand.  Best Buy offered free shipping this year, aggressively competing against Amazon.com, but was apparently unprepared for the surge in sales.

A Best Buy spokeswoman told several news outlets that overwhelming demand of hot products led the company to cancel orders.

Although it affected less than 1 percent of Best Buy shoppers, the order cancellations invited a flurry of angry postings on the web.   Laptops and video game consoles were among the products cancelled.

Some customers were notified their orders were cancelled as late as December 21.  Others, were notified on December 16, according to some of the forum posts.

Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities wondered if the bad press would scare some people away from ordering from bestbuy.com in the future, reported SFGate.com.

“This was a rare situation based on a high volume of orders over a short period of time,” said spokeswoman Susan Busch. “There was an unacceptable delay between order confirmations and cancellations, and for that we are very sorry. The challenges related to this situation are being addressed.”

CEO Brian Dunn told analysts earlier this month that Best Buy’s aggressive online promoting had led to high store traffic and sales increases in stores open for at least 14 months.

Online sales overall are up 15 percent to $32 billion so far this holiday season, while total sales are up just 2.5 percent, said Reuters.

Best Buy is not the only mass merchant to stumble in online execution this holiday season.   Target’s website was overloaded in September as consumers rushed to buy a new Missoni clothing collection.

Source: Wall Street Journal, SFGate, Reuters via USAToday

 

iPhone 5′s “Revolutionary” Interface

Late last week Forbes.com ran the headline “‘iPhone 5: Most Revolutionary Interface in History.’” What is expected to be so revolutionary about the new iPhone is an astonishingly simple and powerful voice control system. If it proves true, it will alter our use of phones in the car.

Forbes, 9to5Mac and a prominent Apple follower Jason Schwarz are claiming Apple’s newest phone–to be unveiled Tuesday–will let you ask it to “send John a text message and tell him to meet me at 5,” and the phone will send the text. So, safe texting in the car…check.

If you like, the phone will read back your text so you can double check it. You can then say “yes” or “no.” If no, the phone asks you to “speak again.”

Apple is also working to allow users to ask for a specific song to be played, said 9to5Mac. Currently Voice Control only allows albums, artists, and playlists to be chosen with your voice. If so, that’s another check for safe music control in the car.

If the rumors are true, the new feature called “Assistant” would “explode the possibility of new information that you can deliver through voice command to the car in a safe manner,” said Aamp of America CEO Ron Freeman. He added, “We have been working in this direction. It’s exciting to me because it expands the possibilities of things that can happen in the car in a safe, convenient way.”

“Assistant” might also lead to a new class of apps that could work safely in the car.

To activate Assistant, the user holds down the home button for a couple of seconds and then a microphone appears in part of the screen.

9to5Mac says you can tell Assistant to “remind me to buy milk when I arrive at the store,” and it will. You can tell it you have a meeting with Joe Smith and it will enter it in your calendar.

You can hold a conversation with the phone too. If you ask it to set up a meeting with Joe, it will ask you which email address to use.

Apple is also expected to provide a verbal friend finder. If an approved friend asks, “Where’s Joe,” the phone, enlisting its GPS capability, will tell him.

You can also ask your phone factual questions to receive answers such as how many feet in a mile.

The feature is the outcome of Apple’s purchase of Siri and its joint work with Nuance, and a new, powerful A5 chip with plenty of processing power.

Now we just need to wait til Tuesday, to see if Assistant is the real deal.

Source: Forbes, 9to5Mac

First Cellphone with Facebook Button: $49

New phones with dedicated Facebook buttons are heading for the market with AT&T taking pre-orders on the first such model called the HTC Status.

The Status was first unveiled in February as the ChaCha, joining another HTC phone with a Facebook button, called the Salsa.

The Status-at $49 with contract–will also be sold through Best Buy.

It gives you a full keyboard, with front and rear facing cameras (5 MP and 1.3 MP). When you push the Facebook button on the bottom of the phone, you are lead directly to Facebook where you can post photos or other contact automatically, depending on what you are doing on your phone at that time.

You can read more about the phone here.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Steve Jobs to Unveil iOS5 June 6

Updated: There’s no word on whether we’ll see a new iPhone next Monday, but we will see the new software for iPhones, iPad and iPods at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and Steve Jobs will be the presenter.

In addition to showing off iOS5 next Monday, June 6, Apple will also unveil  details on a new iCloud service that is expected to serve up music and movies from the cloud and a new Mac OS X called Lion.

Plus there is a rumored iOS5 feature that may have implications for the car.

TechCrunch has been reporting that the new iOS5 operating system will include Nuance voice technology “fully baked” in the iOS software. Although TechCrunch says the first version of iOS5 won’t include voice control, the feature could be available for developers to use in new apps, says Appolicious.

These are just rumors, but for 12 volters, it leads to some interesting speculation on iPhone control while driving.

To confuse matters, iOS4, we’re told, already offers some limited voice control over phone commands and many search and play functions of the iPod, said a car kit maker.

So we’ll just have to wait until Monday for answers.

While Apple announced it will introduce a new iOS5 on June 6, the actual iPhone 5 is not expected until September.

–Lynn Shannon and Amy Gilroy

Source: Apple, Appolicious, TechCrunch

Apple to Intro Curved Glass iPhone 5: Report

Apple has already purchased 200 to 300 glass cutting machines because the iPhone 5 will have a curved glass cover, say Taiwanese suppliers, according to DigiTimes.

The glass slicing machines are presently being stored at various assembly plants waiting to be pressed into service.

DigiTimes says there is no set timetable yet for the iPhone 5, as suppliers are still working to improve yield rates on the glass cover, glass cutting, lamination and touch sensors.

Numerous reports around the Web say the iPhone 5 is not expected to arrive until September.

Also, during the weekend, Apple began revamping its retail stores, placing an iPad 2 next to all products, effectively turning the iPad 2 into a digital sign that displays information about the other products in the store, said TG Daily.

Source: DigiTimes, TG Daily

iPhone 5 May be Delayed

Apple may delay until August or September, the launch of its next iPhone, as the company’s iconic product appears to be under more intense competitive pressure.

A Barclay’s Capital analyst forecast the delay in a research note Tuesday, said The Street. Typically the iPhone is refreshed each June.

Meanwhile the iPhone continues to lose share as new and improved Android phones hit the stores. Checks at stores by BTIG analyst Walt Piecyk showed the 4G Thunderbolt from HTC was outselling the iPhone 4 at 28 percent of the locations, said the Boy Genius Report on March 31.

Android also ratcheted up 7 percentage points in market share from November 2010 to February 2011 in the U.S. It’s now widened its lead on Apple’s iOS with a 33 percent slice of the smartphone market (accounting for one out of every phones sold), said Comscore.

Source: The Street, PC Magazine, Boy Genius Report

Apple iPad 2 Delayed: Report

Those waiting for the new version of Apple iPad will have to hold out even longer. Apple is delaying the launch of the iPad 2 from April until June, due to problems in production at Tawain’s Hon Hai facility.

Reuters sites a report by Taiwanese brokerage Yunta Securities, claiming that “issues,” in production are taking some time to resolve.

A delay til June would result in a sizable reduction in iPad sales this year. Yunta predicts volume would drop to 23 million units from its earlier forecast of 30.6 million units.

The new iPad is expected to offer front and rear cameras with a slimmer form factor and a better display.

Source: Reuters

LG’s G-Slate Gets 3D

LG said its upcoming G-Slate will offer the unusual feature of recording in 3D.

The device will come bundled with red-blue 3D glasses for 3D viewing while shooting, said the AP.

The G-Slate will debut this spring on T-Mobile’s 4G network running the latest Android Honeycomb OS and sporting a 3D 8.9-inch screen.

It uses a rear-facing stereoscopic video recorder with 1080p for HD video capture and a 5MP camera with LED flash. The front facing camera allows video chat over cellular or WiFi with Google Talk.

Electronista notes that LG has a lot riding on the success of the tablet. The company lost over $226 million in the fall and blamed the decline on its failure to compete in top-end smartphones and in tablets.

The G-Slate uses a Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and supports Flash. It delivers 720p HD video playback on the device and has an HDMI output to show 1080p on 3D and HD displays, announced T-Mobile and LG on Wednesday.

The tablet includes 32 GB of internal memory and has a built-in gyroscope, accelerometer and adaptive lighting.

Source: T-Mobile, AP via Yahoo! Finance, electronista

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