Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) hasn’t been as successful as Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) in the LTE modem segment, but that may all change in 2016 as it is being rumored that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is leaning toward the chip vendor’s XMM 7360 LTE modem in lieu of Qualcomm’s offerings, which have been in use in iPhones for several generations now.

Venturebeat, citing anonymous sources, revealed that a variant of the next-generation iPhone — aimed at Asian and other emerging markets —  will feature Intel’s new XMM 7360 modem:

Intel has been gunning hard during the past year for a place in the iPhone and now appears to have succeeded, at least partly. The 7360 chip will ship inside a special version of the iPhone that will be marketed to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, the sources said.

Like Qualcomm’s X12 modem, the Intel XMM 7360 offers LTE Category 10 connectivity, which is achieved through 3x carrier aggregation. The cellular modem can attain download speeds of 450 megabits per second. The modem was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month, with commercial availability slated for the second half of 2015. Apple engineers have allegedly traveled to Intel’s R&D facility in Munich, Germany to work with the chip vendor on the modem.

One of the major issues with Intel’s LTE offering in 2014, the XMM 7260, was finding manufacturers that were willing to use the modem in their SoCs. Samsung and LG used the modem in a few of their products, with a few versions of the Galaxy Alpha and Galaxy Note 4 featuring the XMM 7260 module, as well as LG’s first in-house SoC — Nuclun.

Managing to get its cellular modem on the iPhone will be a major win for Intel, and will be yet another blow for Qualcomm, which has already lost Samsung as a customer for its Snapdragon SoCs — at least in high-end devices — this year. Intel is readily acknowledging that it is far behind Qualcomm in the mobile application processor segment, but by making power efficient LTE modems and offering integrated solutions for mid-tier devices aimed at emerging markets, such as the Zenfone 2, it is turning into a credible threat in this space.

The post Next iPhone May Feature Intel’s Blazing Fast XMM 7360 LTE Modem appeared first on VR World.

Jeff Gordon, HTC’s (TPE: 2498) senior global online communications manager, described iPhone as a “boring” handset due to its lack of unique features on his tweeter on Jan. 28, despite Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) record-high quarterly revenues.

“Congrats to Apple on an amazing quarter. It’s not that I dislike Apple — in fact I use a MacBook Air — but that I find the iPhone terribly boring,” he said. “The iPhone is ‘a boring, easy choice’ that fails to fit his desire for ‘a phone that’s more unique, more personal, more stunning when I take it out of my pocket.’”

Gordon’s remarks were referred to Apple’s selling a higher-than-expected 74.5 million iPhones and generating a record-high US$74.6 billion in revenues in the last quarter of 2014, led by the new big-screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Gordon said that his company’s 2015 product roadmap will be “best ever,” with “some huge surprises that will blow you away,” but he did not elaborate.

HTC has invited the press to an event which was scheduled to be organized on March 1, which will be one day before the Mobile World Congress tech fair that will take place in Barcelona between March 2 and March 5.

He did not elaborate.

Earlier this month, the Taoyuan-based phone vendor sent out invitations to media outlets for an event to be held March 1, one day before the Mobile World Congress (MWC) tech fair that will take place in Barcelona between March 2 and March 5. HTC did not reveal any detail of the event but it was speculated that the company will launch the successor to its flagship HTC One M9 during the event, which will also be the world’s largest mobile phone trade show, in a bid to steal the spotlight from other handset manufacturers.

In the meantime, “Hima,” which will come along with a 5-inch quad-HD screen with a resolution of 1440X2560 pixels, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core chipset, 3GB of RAM, a 20.7 –megapixel rear camera, a 13-megapixel front camera and a 3,500mAh battery, is alleged to be the next-generation HTC flagship phone.

The post HTC Manager Describes iPhone as ‘Boring’ appeared first on VR World.

An anonymous U.S.-based brokerage said on Feb. 2 that Samsung (KRX: 005930) will become the major supplier for the processors for Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) next-generation iPhone series in 2015.

The latest research by the brokerage said that Apple is trying to diversify its foundry suppliers since 2015, now that it had previously partnered with only one foundry for each generation of processors, including with Samsung for the 32-nm and 28-nm processes, and with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC)(TPE: 2330) for the 20-nm process.

The brokerage firm’s name cannot be revealed under new rules by Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission now that the firm’s latest research report offers specific forecasts that may impact the market.

The brokerage firm said that with broader offerings in the pipeline such as a larger iPad and a low-end iPhone, it seemed to be clear that Apple will have a much more diverse semiconductor portfolio.

“Our view is going forward, with so many more products, it becomes easier for Apple to use multiple foundries, and to split manufacturing by products,” the brokerage said.

Given Samsung’s bullish outlook on its 14-nm process and TSMC’s guidance that the 16-nm process will only make a single-digit contribution to its revenues by the end of 2015, Samsung will likely get the orders for new iPhone chips in 2015, the brokerage said in its research report.

The report predicted that that TSMC will continue producing the A8 chips used in the current iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models in the first half of 2015. The report said that TSMC could also make the 20-nm chip for a low-end iPhone and a 16-nm chip for a high-end iPad in the second half of the year.

The brokerage’s latest research report estimated that TSMC’s revenues from Apple will grow from 6.5% of total sales in 2014 to 9.6% in 2015. For the second half of this year, 
the report said, TSMC’s revenues from Apple are expected to drop by around 40% from the same period a year earlier, assuming that Apple switches to Samsung for the new iPhone chips.

The post Samsung May Become Major Processor Supplier for Apple in 2015: Research appeared first on VR World.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has reported its best fiscal quarter ever, with revenue and profit figures surpassing analyst expectations. The numbers speak for themselves, both in nominal terms and with respect to year-on-year growth. In fact, this is the most profitable quarter in corporate history, surpassing the quarterly earnings records of Gazprom, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, which were previously in the top three.

For the first fiscal quarter of 2015 (ending December 31, 2014), Apple reports a quarterly profit of $18 billion from revenue of $74.6 billion, a year-on-year revenue growth of 29.5% and profit growth of 27.2%. In this fiscal quarter, diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $3.06, a 47.8% increase from last year’s $2.07 diluted EPS. This surpasses analyst expectations of $2.60 earnings per share.

Guidance for second fiscal quarter indicates that Apple is likely to earn $52 to $55 billion in revenue. The company has announced cash dividends of $0.47 per share, payable in February.

In this quarterly report, we can glean a few things about Apple’s business so far. In gist, the company performs well during holiday seasons. The iPhone has been the biggest driver of revenue for the company in this quarter, so far, even amid the iPhone 6 having a slow start. The iPad, however, has performed dismally. And in a surprising twist, China has become a big driver of growth for the company, even with some initial hiccups in the launch and sales of the iPhone 6.

iPhone in the stocking. Apple’s best quarters prior to this one had been the first quarters of fiscal years 2012, 2013 and 2014, which fall in the months of October through December. This suggests that, as expected, holiday sales are a big revenue driver.  For Q1 FY2015, Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones, up from 51 million in the same period last year — a 46% year-on-year growth.  This is the first full fiscal quarter after Apple launched the iPhone 6 and 6 plus, and even with some initial concerns about the whether the bigger form factor of the plus will sell, as well as supply issues at the start of the iPhone 6’s product cycle, sales figures for Apple’s smartphones will suggest that it’s a runaway hit.

Will the iPad be sustainable? The short answer is “yes” — at least Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks so. For this quarter, iPad sales actually fell 21% year-on-year, which may be an indication that the company’s latest tablet lineup has weakened, even as the prices for previous-generation iPad Air and iPad Mini models have been reduced. One school of thought will say that iPad sales are being cannibalized by the iPhone 6 Plus on the low-end and the MacBook air on the higher-end. However, Cook is still optimistic about the product line, and that these sales figures are still within expected range. Cook admits that “the upgrade cycle is longer” compared to smartphones, speaking during investor guidance. “I believe that over long arc of time that the iPad is the great business, I also have visibility obviously of what’s in the pipeline and feel very, very good about that,” he adds.

Scaling the great wall. Apart from record-breaking revenues and profits in the past quarter, Apple is also seeing promise in a market that had been considered difficult for western firms to break into: China. Today’s largest economy is also the fastest-growing market for Apple’s goods. Revenue for this market amounts to $16.1 billion, comprising 21% of the company’s earnings during the period. This is a 70% growth from the same quarter in Fiscal Year 2014, and a 157% quarter-on-quarter growth.

This means Apple was able to bounce back after a disappointing iPhone 6 launch, in which the product was severely delayed in the market. Another feather on Apple’s cap: the iPhone has taken top spot in smartphone shipments in China, according to Canalys, even beating Xiaomi.

Watch out for April. Since taking over the reins, there has always been question whether Tim Cook will live up to his predecessor’s legacy. It was, after all, during the second tenure of Steve Jobs as chief executive when Apple bounced back with the iMac, then followed up by other revolutionary products like the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and the like. This record quarter is testament to Cook’s ability as a strategist, even as Apple has only been continuing existing product lines, so far.

This April, however, Apple expects to launch its first wearable, the Apple Watch. “The creativity and software innovation going on around Apple Watch is incredibly exciting and we can’t wait for our customers to experience them when Apple Watch becomes available,” says Cook. It may be argued that Apple is already coming late in the smartwatch game. But perhaps the quality of the platform and ecosystem will be the main differentiator, just as the apps and the App Store had been a game changer in the smartphone industry in 2007. “The number of developers that are writing apps more for it are impressive and we’re seeing some incredible innovation coming out there,” Cook adds.

Will 2015 be Tim Cook’s year? With an expanding business, impressive cash stockpile and an ambitious foray into the wearables market, it looks like an exciting year ahead for Apple.

The post Apple’s Q1 FY2015: Most Profitable Quarter in Corporate History appeared first on VR World.

Xiaomi said on Jan. 15 that the Mi Note, its brand smartphone with a 5.7-inch screen, will be available in Taiwan as soon as the second quarter.

In addition to Taiwan’s market, Mi Note is also facing direct competition from Apple’s iPhone 6 series as well as other phone-tablet hybrid handsets of similar size in both China and Taiwan. Despite the announcement of the plan to introduce Mi Note to Taiwan during the second quarter, Xiaomi, however, did not reveal more details of a specific date or even the price for the new handset.

Mi Note is regarded as a high-end device, that will come along with a 5.7-inch full-HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz quad-core processor, 3GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel real camera, a 4-megapixel front-facing camera, a 3,000mAh battery and dual-SIM 4G LTE connectivity. The brand new smartphone will be sold at US$287 each for the 16G model and US$362 each for the 64G model when it is introduced to China’s market this March, Xiaomi said.

Mi Note Pro, a higher-end smartphone, is also introduced at the same time, while it will be sold at US$412 each for the 64G model. It will feature hardware improvements such as a 64-bit Snapdragon 810 processor, a quad-HD display, 4GB of RAM and LTE download speeds of up to 450 mega-bits per second.

Xiaomi has been recognized as “China’s Apple” since it was founded in 2010, while most of its smartphones’ features are very similar to its iPhone counterparts. The Beijing-based phone maker sells low-cost feature-rich phones, including the flagship Mi series and low-end Redmi models, and has teamed up with many Taiwanese suppliers such as Foxconn Technology Group (TPE: 2354) and Inventec Corp (TPE: 2356).

Canalys, a market research firm, said that during the second quarter of 2014, Xiaomi overtook Samsung Electronics Co (KRX: 005930) as China’s top smartphone maker for the first time, holding a 14% share. Samsung and Apple, the only international vendors in the top 10, together accounted for a 18 percent share of the world’s largest smartphone market, Canalys said without disclosing individual market share for Samsung and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). IDC ranked Xiaomi as the world’s third-largest smartphone maker in the third quarter of 2014. Meanwhile, Xiaomi expects to ship 100 million smartphones this year, a leap from 61.1 million last year.

The post Xiaomi to Introduce Mi Note to Taiwan in Q2 appeared first on VR World.

Remember when we originally reported that Apple had finally admitted that people who had left iOS and iMessage for Android or Windows phone were experiencing issues with getting messages or sending messages? And that Apple had finally owned up to the fact that they were to blame for probably millions of missed phantom messages? Well, after owning up to the problem and realizing what the issue was, Apple has finally introduced a fix.

So, if you’ve left Apple and ditched iMessage for Android or Windows phone, but are having problems getting messages from friends you can now deregister your phone number from Apple’s iMessage database. The process to deregister your iMessage account from your phone number is a simple one. You simply head on over to Apple’s iMessage deregister site and do the following steps:

If you still have your iPhone, you can actually put your SIM card into your iPhone (before you sell it or give it away) and prevent this whole thing from even being a problem before it starts.

If you no longer have your iPhone, you can still deregister from Apple’s iMessage by entering your phone number into the field on the page and then getting a confirmation number from Apple via SMS (yes, Ironic) and using that confirmation number to deregister your phone number from Apple’s iMessage service. This should free 99% of people that were having problems with SMS after leaving Apple.

So, if you plan to ditch Apple, remember to deregister your phone number from iMessage and if you ever had an iPhone with iMessage, its probably a good idea to deregister as well. The real question will be whether Apple will be found liable for anti-competitive behavior as there have been rumors that this was an Apple problem for quite some time and it took the company at least a year or so to own up to it. In fact, many Apple users that left the company for another brand eventually came back due to the high volume of missing messages, not knowing that the reason was squarely because of Apple.

The post Having SMS Problems After Ditching Apple and iMessage? appeared first on VR World.

Ever wondered how wacky kart-racing games might look like in real life? Well, you probably can now, with this crazy innovation that turns a lovable little iPhone-based toy into an RC Mario Kart racer.

RomoCart is the name of this simple, independent project by Ken Kawamoto and Tomoaki Akitomo. It takes control of a Romo robot, which is actually a product of a previous Kickstarter project, and takes it onto a projected virtual race track. With a nifty and simple little trick called projection mapping, they were able to create an actively changing race course depending on the actual terrain the track is projected to.

Using ample camera tracking, and an RGB depth sensor, any room suddenly transforms into a Romo racetrack, with objects lying on the floor to be treated by the projected map as either makeshift doodads or imaginary obstacles. Users can then proceed to take the Romo bots on a tour around the track.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a race track if there aren’t multiple units involved, and remember what we said a bit earlier about kart-racing? Probably the most exciting part of this innovation is its unit tracking system. Yes, not only is the RomoCart able to adapt to whatever surface it is projected to, but it is also capable of tracking the Romo units as they run along the course in real time.

In the demo video, the devs showed how your Romo unit can launch virtual missiles to shoot against other competing Romo units, with the included proper special effects. Even better, each unit can be programmed to react to other different virtual elements or objects placed onto the virtual environment. Virtual banana peels for example, will make Romo units spin out of control upon contact, and a speed boost power up can temporarily jack up the speed of the Romo unit.

As cool as the concept is, the idea is well, just an idea for now. It’s not a launch project whatsoever, though the developers hints that they might release the source code for other Romo owners to experiment with. But if you need more details now, you can always visit their development blog (in Japanese).

The post RomoCart Transforms Rooms Into Instant Race Courses appeared first on VR World.

The history of sapphire screens on Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) products is a short and eventful one, despite not a single product shipping with a screen protected by the strong material. What was once one of the most hotly anticipated features of the iPhone 6 never materialized, and pushed the sapphire supplier over the edge into bankruptcy. But, questions remain as to whether the deal between the two companies was a fundamentally fair or flawed one  —  that was set up without the proper due diligence.

When the iPhone 6 launched without a sapphire screen, Apple was silent to the reason why this occurred. After all, well placed leakers had fairly convincing pictures and videos of screen protectors for the iPhone 6 which, by their sheer strength, had to be made of something other than regular plastic or Gorilla Glass. The absence of the sapphire-based screens led many to question as to if the upcoming Apple Watch was in danger, as sapphire would be even more critical to the smartwatch than to the iPhone 6. But while Apple was silent on the issue of sapphire, only confirming its non-use when the iPhone 6 launched, the bankruptcy filing of  GT Advanced Technologies (OTC Pink:GTATQ) was the first step in finding out what exactly happened to Apple’s sapphire ambitions.

For most of 2014, GTAT was a stock market darling. In November of 2013 Apple announced that it GT Advanced Technologies would be its sapphire supplier, sending the company’s stock into the stratosphere. Apple’s orders accounted for approximately 80% of GTAT’s projected 2014 revenue (estimates peg this to be around $700 million), and Apple loaned it $439 million to upgrade and expand its facilities to meet the expected demand from the iPhone 6 and Apple smartwatch.

Then on October 7, bankruptcy.

Who’s to blame?

While GT Advanced Technologies has filed for bankruptcy, its filings with the courts don’t entirely paint a clear picture why the firm said it was going under. GT Advanced Technologies lawyers have petitioned the court to keep the contracts and other confidential documents between it and Apple sealed.

The best indicators come from reports by securities research firms. In a note to clients, Gilford Securities said that Apple may have forced GT Advanced Technologies to begin loan repayments early as it may have believed GT Advanced Technologies was not hitting performance targets. As mentioned by MarketWatch, Pacific Crest Securities published a note that said the firm’s researchers believe Apple was unimpressed with the quality of sapphire produced by GTAT and decided to source it elsewhere — but requiring Apple to still pay back the loans.

While the company’s lawyers fought to keep the most revealing documents about its relationship with Apple — including the contracts — they also asked the court to render the contracts the two companies have null and void saying that they imposed  “oppressive and burdensome terms and obligations on GT.”

“GT believes that it has many claims against Apple arising out of its business relationship with Apple.”

Then things got better

On October 23 GT Advanced Technologies published a press release announcing that it had reached a settlement agreement with Apple. The agreement holds that GT will wind down its sapphire production business in addition to liquidating its furnaces in order to pay back Apple.

“We are pleased with the settlement that we have negotiated with Apple,” Tom Gutierrez, president and chief executive officer of GTAT said in a statement.

“Apple put a lot of effort into an ambitious new sapphire manufacturing process with GT which is not ready for production,” Apple said in a statement. “We’re going to continue evaluating GT’s progress on larger sapphire boule development, as well as consider other options for the facility.”

But the agreement was still unfair

In all likelihood GT Advanced Technologies asked the court to keep its contract with Apple sealed, along with other key documents, because the agreement would be viewed by the public and stakeholders as fundamentally unfair for GTAT. The opportunity for massive windfalls of profit, but punishing clauses in the event that GTAT could not meet Apple’s expectations.

It could be that if GT Advanced Technologies’s biggest voting shareholders got word of this agreement there would be a coup of sorts, as shareholders would recognize the dangers of this contract. It appears (though the contracts are still sealed) that Apple was given too many outs in the event that this new sapphire process simply did not work.

Apple might not have deliberately bankrupted GT Advanced Technologies, but GT Advanced Technologies’s decision to sign on to this contract with Apple without negotiating a better deal set in place the path for  its  downfall.

The post Anatomy of a Deal: What Went Wrong Between Apple and GT Advanced Technologies appeared first on VR World.

After years of making plastic phones, Samsung ( KRX:005935)  decided to make the switch to metal with the Galaxy Alpha. The device has a lot of points in its favor, which include a metal frame around the sides of the device, as well as high-end hardware and a small form factor.

Touted to be Samsung’s answer to the iPhone, the Galaxy Alpha is 0.2 mm thinner than Apple’s offering. While the external design of the Alpha clearly draws a lot of parallels with the iPhone 6, both devices differ vastly when it comes to the hardware itself. For one thing, the Galaxy Alpha features a back cover and battery that are easily removable.

As for gaining access to the internal hardware, iFixit found in its Galaxy Alpha teardown that the device comes with the same sandwich layered design as the Galaxy S5, which involves removing the display to get to the internal components. The back of the device does feature screws that secure the midframe, but the section itself is removable only from the front. What this essentially means is that to get to the motherboard, you have to remove the display assembly, a feat that requires considerable effort due to all the adhesive.

The assembly itself on the Galaxy Alpha at 1.4 mm was found to be half the width of the panel on the iPhone 6. Another interesting feature discovered during the Galaxy Alpha teardown was that the inclusion of a gasket around the headphone jack, which is usually seen on devices that offer water resistance, like the Galaxy S5. It is likely that Samsung was going to offer a similar resistance to dust and water, but had a change of mind mid-way. As far as the hardware is concerned, the device features an Exynos 5430 SoC, a touchscreen controller from STMicroelectronics, a Wolfson WM5110E low power HD audio chipset and more:

• Intel PMB9933 P10 DS XG726G H1429 F429A549
• Maxim Integrated MAX77804K (System PSoC)
• Broadcom BCM4753IA
• Wolfson Microelectronics WM5110E Low Power Audio System
• RF Micro Devices RF8095 F14N6GS
• Skyworks 7851 0268
• Intel PMB5747
• Samsung S2MPS13 Power Management IC
• SWKT GRG78 Antenna Switch Module
• SKC TI 45I AHCX
• 04424 02163 S3FWRN S42403

The Galaxy Alpha teardown resulted in the device getting a final score of 5 out of 10 on iFixit’s scale, with high points for user removable battery and modular components. However, addressing minor issues – like changing the connector on the home button – requires the removal of the display assembly, which can complicate things further.

The post Galaxy Alpha Teardown Finds Modular Hardware, Sturdy Build Quality appeared first on VR World.

Thanks to our friends at ecoATM, we were able to gather some really interesting statistics about people’s trade-in/recycling behaviors after the iPhone 6’s launch. ecoATM is a company that owns and operates 1,100 machines across the United States that allow people to trade in their electronics and have them recycles for an instantaneous cash payout. ecoATM has been in this business for quite some time so they have experience with new product launches and sudden jumps in trade-ins.

As such, it comes as no surprise that they have some really interesting data about the iPhone 6 launch’s impact on iPhone trade-ins nationwide. Thanks to their data, we can see exactly what people are upgrading from as well as what kinds of devices are being replaced the most by iPhone 6s and 6 pluses.

So, what do these colored dots translate to? What do the blue (light), green (medium), light green (high) and orange (enormous) demand dots come down to?

EcoATM Trade-in Map

Since the iPhone 6 and 6 plus became available, ecoATM saw an increase of 80% on iPhone-related activity across their entire network of kiosks. And specifically in California, trade-ins were up 104% and in Texas 92%. EcoATM says that they normally expect such jumps in these areas because these regions are populated with plenty of techies. They did, however, discover some outliers including Tennessee, which saw an increase of 195% and Massachusetts with an increase of 168%. When looking at the map, it does seem a bit odd that the Tennessee/Kentucky/Ohio area is so dense with trade-in activity but the stats don’t lie. They also saw New York increase 92%, like Texas, which isn’t surprising considering how many iPhone users live in New York City alone.

In addition to actual iPhone trade-in’s ecoATM’s own site saw a huge amount of increase interest in their phone recycling for cash kiosks. Their website has seen a 200% increase in sessions since the launch as well as their kiosk locator page saw an increase of 250% during the same period since the launch.

People were also checking the prices of specific devices before they went to the ecoATM Kiosks (which you can do here)

The iPhone 5S saw an increase of 205% of inquiries, the iPhone 5C saw an increase of 110% and the iPhone 5 saw an increase of a whopping 480%. Clearly, you can tell that the majority of people looking to upgrade to the iPhone 6 are people with iPhone 5’s which makes sense since that would have been 2 years ago when people first signed their new 2-year contracts. Additionally, the iPhone 4S saw an increase of 100% in inquiries and the iPhone 4 saw a pretty sizable 240% increase as well.

But Apple’s iPhones weren’t the only devices that started to get more trade-in interest, there was plenty of interest in trading-in Samsung devices as well. The fairly new Samsung Galaxy S5 actually saw an increase of 77% in inquiries while the Galaxy S4 saw the biggest increase among Samsung devices with a 110% increase. The Galaxy S3 saw an increase of 63% and all Galaxy Notes (Note, Note 2, and Note 3) saw an increase of 93% in inquiries.

Overall, if you take all of this trade-in data into consideration it really seems like the iPhone 5 was the primary device that people were looking to replace with an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, which admittedly isn’t very surprising. What may actually be more interesting is the regional increases, especially in Tennessee. Either way, there is a lot of very good data about the needs and wants of iPhone users and it really looks like a lot of people buying the iPhone 6 were already iPhone users and many of them were very likely iPhone 5 users too.

The post iPhone Trade-in Statistics After iPhone 6 Launch appeared first on VR World.

Ever wonder what people in other countries are paying for their shiny new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 pluses? Well, we’ve decided to look into the current Apple  listed prices for officially launched (or about to launch) countries in Europe, Asia and North America.

Last time we looked at iPhone prices was with the iPhone 5S and by that point there were already dozens of countries launched. So, this time it was decided to start from the beginning and to continue to follow the market as it moves forward. There have already been reports of iPhones selling for over $1,500 in some markets, but the majority of those are grey market iPhones and can effectively be sold at any price that someone is willing to pay. Those prices do not officially reflect Apple’s own pricing or MSRP that they recommend to carriers.  Even so, there are some pretty outrageously high prices coming straight from Apple’s own site.

iPhone6 Pricing

The prices as you can see above are specifically organized using Apple’s own iPhone 6 prices listed on the various regional sub-pages. The countries listed above are in order of lowest iPhone 6 Prices in blue and iPhone 6 Plus prices in orange. The iPhone 6 Plus prices actually vary from country to country with some actually costing more than in certain countries where the iPhone 6 is more expensive. This very likely has to do with how Apple structures the price differences between the two devices as well as how the local currency is converted to US dollars. All currencies have been converted to US Dollars in order to make the comparison easier for a table like the one above.

For example, the iPhone 6 is $898.49 in Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and Finland. This is why there is a flat line in the graph, they all have their prices in Euros and have the exact same price in terms of Euros. All other countries have their prices in different currencies and some even have slightly different taxes. The difference in taxes or other external factors are why Italy and France nearly top the list for iPhone prices because they use the Euro but have higher prices than the rest of Europe. However, Turkey still wins when compared to the rest of the world (at this given moment) with an iPhone price of $1,049.20 and an iPhone 6 Plus price of $1,182.20. That’s a solid $500 more for the iPhone 6 in Turkey than in the US for the exact same product.

Some interesting surprises were that the UAE’s prices were so close to the US market’s when adjusted for currency prices and that overall APAC (Asia Pacific) pays less than Europe and South America for iPhones. Additionally, Japan surprises with the lowest prices of all the countries in the world, even the US, very likely due to the US dollar to Yen conversion rate being at its lowest in years. Some other historically expensive markets will very likely beat these iPhone 6 prices in the future, like Brazil and Jordan, but Apple is not officially selling the iPhone 6 there yet. In fact, the Foxconn factory in Brazil where the iPhone is made for the Brazilian was on strike for 5 days earlier this month and may have affected the release date and final price of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. We will revisit the iPhone 6 Prices and the iPhone 6 Plus prices as Apple rolls out the rest of the world’s markets where iPhones are wanted. Right now, there is supposedly a very large grey market for iPhone 6s in China where it can already be purchased in Hong Kong, just across the border.

The post iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 Prices in Different Countries appeared first on VR World.

There is no denying that Apple (NASDAQ: APPL) is a different company from the days when Steve Jobs walked the halls of the company’s Cupertino headquarters. Apple is now run by Tim Cook, Steve’s operations guru that managed to enable Apple’s ruthless efficiency and even more importantly their absolute profit margins. It comes as little surprise that Apple comes off as feeling dull to many since Jobs’ death in four years ago in 2011. Sure, four years is a long time in the tech world, but when it comes to a company like Apple, it takes time for someone’s impact to wane, like Jobs’.

Let’s not forget that Jobs’ helped Apple introduce a plethora of new products to the market, all with varying levels of wild success, but one of the most important things about the man is that he stuck to his guns. Very rarely did Jobs compromise or waver in his decisions and one of those decisions was that the iPhone needed to be a certain size in order to be “usable” or user-friendly. Before his death, Jobs in fact stated that nobody would want to buy a big phone, which proved incredibly wrong as the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S have been competing with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy, HTC One and Sony Xperia phones, all of which now come in 5 inch or larger screen sizes.

It comes as little surprise that Apple today announced that it would be releasing the iPhone 6 at a screen size of 4.7 inches as well as the iPhone 6 plus at a whopping 5.5 inches, something Jobs probably would’ve fired someone over. However, after Jobs’ passing, Apple started to see challengers and face challenges from competitors that Jobs somewhat foresaw (in Samsung (KRX:005930)) but also didn’t foresee (LG (KRX:066570). The reality is that many users started to leave Apple for Android devices for one reason or another. At first, it was LTE because the iPhone didn’t have it and Android phones did, then it became screen size because Android phones had bigger higher resolution screens and now Apple does too. But until today, Apple clearly feared the implications of not having a competitive “big” phone, some may argue that can be considered a phablet (at 5.5 inches).

In fact, some people are already discussing selling their iPad retinas and just getting an iPhone 6 Plus to simplify their usage needs. Truthfully, there is no denying that Apple has the most diverse set of smartphones for consumers to buy, ranging from the iPhone 5C all the way up to the iPhone Plus. However, Apple may have made a grave mistake by not offering a size smaller than 4.7 inches because there are a lot of people out there have stuck with iPhones because of their size. The new Apple is focusing on what is driving market demand and where the market appears to be going, which has been bigger and bigger phones for the last two years running.

The new iPhone 6 does bring some new things to the table for Apple, which includes NFC technology, something that Apple’s devices have lacked for quite some time. The iPhone 6 also sports an entirely new camera, which promises to once again deliver incredibly competitive images against the rest of the competition. But really, the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are fairly dull and merely represent Apple’s pivoting to market demands and very little by ways of innovation.

Sure, the new phones use Apple’s new A8 SoC, which happens to be the world’s first 20nm SoC, but the truth is that it mostly appears to be an incremental improvement over the iPhone 5S’ A7 chip. It does pack a whopping 2 billion transistors into an absolutely tiny area, allowing Apple to continue to use minuscule battery sizes and still get fairly good battery life. Apple’s 64-bit lead will also be extended with the A8 processor, as none of the Android vendors have really shipped anything with a 64-bit on Android until recently. So, Apple’s lead here continues to be strong.

In fact, Apple really seems to be focusing very heavily on hiring very talented individuals and there appears to be a search for top talent, one that the company has never seen before. It appears that Apple is compensating for their lack of vision (sans Jobs) with a focus on having the best tech and the best execution of that tech that could possibly exist. This can be seen across the board throughout the company’s various divisions and there’s a very good chance we’ll see a result of this new culture in the iPhone 6’s launch and whether or not users experience any issues like previous Apple early adopters.

The Apple Watch

Now, the Apple Watch is technically the company’s very first new product line since Steve Jobs and Apple launched the iPad back in 2010. However, this new product won’t actually be available until 2015, meaning that Apple will have had five years between new product lines and most of those years were without Jobs at the helm. It comes at little surprise that the new Apple Watch comes off as incredibly ugly to some (if not many) and very likely would have never passed Jobs’ muster. Some may even argue that Apple’s new watch is uglier than Motorola’s already announced Moto 360 and that today marks the day that Motorola out-designed Apple.

Apple’s clear focus on health was noticed by us back in July when it was announced that the new Apple Watch would have a very heavy health focus. Back then, it was reported that it may have been a mistake to release such a device as an overly health focused device, and if one would look at it now, it has a very strong health focus and may lose some of a smart watch’s utility by not emulating more of what Android wear does. But if one were dig deeply, it can be seen that Apple clearly wants to do more with the smartwatch but doesn’t quite know any killer apps other than health tracking/fitness right now. And at the $350 price and iOS exclusivity they are going to have a hard time selling these to people that aren’t already fitbit or some other type of health tracker.

The fact is that Apple is not ready yet with its first new product in five years, but it is clearly afraid of losing the war of perception and decided to announce it at today’s event even though they really won’t be ready with it until next year. This is another thing that Jobs never did, if he had a product to announce, he was ready to ship it. This is just another sign of how things have changed inside of Apple and what we can expect to see for years to come. A more nimble, fearful, and competitive company that will very likely continue to react to market demands in ways that the old Apple probably never would have.

Many people talk about how Jobs’ departure effectively marked the beginning of the end for the company. But the reality is that if Jobs still were in charge today, there’s a very good chance that the company would not be anywhere near as competitive as it is today. There’s a very good chance that Jobs’ own beliefs may have prevented him from really doing what the market demanded. Sure, Jobs was the kind of person that told the market what they wanted (iPhone, iPad, Macbook, etc) but that doesn’t last forever either. Tim Cook has done a great job of keeping Apple going and they appear to be hiring all the right kinds of people to keep the company innovating, even if in small steps.

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We caught wind of a pretty sweet backup battery deal on woot.com, a daily deal website now owned by Amazon. This is for the Gorilla Gadgets CHR-150 Uhuru! 16,800 mAh External Portable Battery Pack Charger with LED Screen. Why is this a great deal? Because Amazon is selling it right now for $70, but Woot.com is selling it for $40 and the suggested retail price is $140. But what makes this thing awesome? Well, other than the fact that it comes with three different charging connectors (microUSB, lightning and Apple 30-pin), it can also fully charge an iPad and an iPhone and probably still have some charge left (depending on whether the devices are on).

While Gorilla Gadgets may not necessarily have a very well recognized name, the online reviews appear to indicate that they make a pretty solid product. And while we haven’t reviewed one of these yet, we’ve reviewed similar products before from a multitude of other companies. These guys appear to make a pretty solid product and at $40 its really hard to beat that big of a battery. Unfortunately, even though it does have two USB ports, only one port is a 2A fast-charger port while the other is a 1A trickle-charger port. It would be nice if they had a 2.5A charger like some of the ones we’ve seen from Patriot, but at $40 its really hard to complain. With a 16,800 mAh battery you could theoretically charge something like 10 iPhones before you run out of juice.

So, with that in mind, we recommend you head on over to Woot.com and check out this charger because its a pretty good one and you’re not going to find a battery pack anywhere near that big for that price. And if you do, you probably should worry about whether or not its going to explode in your hand because that’s ridiculously cheap. Don’t forget, once Woot is out, they’re out and you probably won’t see this price ever again so make sure you buy one if you really need one.

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Apple has been pushing heath and fitness heavily with their most recent campaign for the iPhone. This can be most noticeable in their recent ad campaign featuring Apple’s iPhone and a series of fitness applications and accessories, which include a multitude of wearables. Their campaign states, “You’re more powerful than you think.”

So, what is Apple getting at here, exactly? That the iPhone, and Apple, can be at the very core of your physical and health success. Surely, there are plenty of people that are already using many of these devices on both their Android and iOS devices, so that doesn’t necessarily set Apple apart from the rest. What will set Apple apart from the rest is how they will very likely incorporate a lot of these different wearables’ functionality into a single device.

According to some of our sources, Apple is looking to make the iWatch a very health-centric device rather than one that is about accomplishing tasks and being an extended digital assistant (See: Google Now + Android Wear). However, there are concerns that Apple’s focus on health with the iWatch may actually hurt them and could have sent the company back to the drawing board in order to increase the overall daily ‘usefullness’ of the device outside of health applications. But even so, Apple is rumored to be purchasing certain types of sensors that will be able to measure your heart rate and sweat in addition to movement data. They’re also becoming ever more serious about how they test these sensors and the functionality of their platform as they’ve been rumored to be spending millions on medical equipment from various manufacturers. The idea that Apple is buying medical equipment should be a pretty ridiculous one, but once you think about how serious Apple is about launching their first new product line in over 4 years, you’ll realize that they don’t want to make any mistakes.

So, there’s no doubt that Apple’s iWatch is going to have a health focus. The real question will be whether or not the iWatch will be almost entirely health focused, or if they will try to build in Siri integration and make the iWatch both functional and health conscious. Because, right now, Google and Microsoft don’t really have much by ways of health applications of their own, let alone hardware. So if Apple can build an iWatch that is health focused, they may already have a significant leg up on Google and Microsoft. Now, if you add heavy Siri integration and other helpful features there’s a good chance that Apple could once again set the standard for a new type of technology, but this time in wearables.

As of right now, I don’t think anyone has any concrete idea of when Apple will launch the iWatch, but from what it looks like it is still majorly in development and we probably won’t see it until next year. Obviously, if they launch sooner, it will put a greater burden on their competitors, but as of right now most of the smart watches from their competitors either haven’t launched yet or lack a native health functionality. Samsung and Qualcomm certainly have the lead in terms of health focus with their smartwatches, but it remains to be seen how far they’ll go and how they’ll compete against an Apple iWatch.

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Yesterday, Apple and IBM announced that they would be entering into a partnership where IBM would help Apple develop enterprise software for iOS devices and Apple would supply OS and hardware to enable those enterprise applications. This announcement marked the first partnership or relationship between the two companies since Apple stopped using IBM’s Power PC CPUs in their systems in 2006 with the last product announced in 2005. It’s been a long time since the two companies have worked together on anything and now that IBM is mostly a software company (They still have the Power Architecture and Power Chips for HPC) it makes sense that the two companies would work together again.

IBM’s enterprise software and cloud offerings are some of the most developed on the market and squarely focused on the needs of large enterprises, which already have millions of iOS devices in deployment. Apple will be supplying the devices for IBM’s planned iOS-based enterprise software platforms which will boost Apple’s enterprise sales even better than they already have them. It will also give Apple a very strong foothold inside the enterprise that none of their competitors are anywhere near having. It should also provide Apple enough enterprise sales to become even more of a fixture in enterprise applications than they already are. Apple is not struggling in enterprise, they don’t NEED IBM, however IBM does need some sort of a hardware partner. And if you’re going to look for a hardware partner, you might as well go for the biggest one and the one with the most enterprise deployments already.

As a result, IBM gets some sort of hardware platform to build their enterprise applications platform and Apple gets to sell more iPhones and increase iOS’ penetration in the overall market. This marks Apple’s first serious movement into enterprise, even though they already have a pretty strong presence in most enterprises because of their consumer product success. While I don’t suspect that Apple will do anything different to iPhones deployed with IBM software, there is a good chance that we could see ‘pro’ or ‘enterprise’ hardware in the future that might command an even greater price premium than Apple’s current line of consumer products. Enterprise customers want to feel special and feel like they’re getting what they pay for, which is why IBM has committed upwards of 100,000 employees to be available to the Apple project.

Overall, this is a very good move for both companies and I would suspect that this is only the beginning of such relationships between software and hardware companies. After all, Apple has seriously been struggling recently to deploy software that is popular with consumers and enterprise outside of their operating systems on their own hardware. With IBM’s enterprise software, Apple partially solves part of that equation and IBM is able to provide quality and reliable hardware to their enterprise customers that they’re already familiar with.

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As we had reported, Adobe had said they would be making a plethora of updates to Creative Cloud for 2014 today. Most of the improvements to Creative Cloud that have been noted by Adobe have come to their most popular product, Adobe Photoshop CC. The major new features are, Blur Gallery which allows you to create motion blur effects in images, Perspective Wrap, which fluidly adjusts the perspective of a specific part of an image without affecting the surrounding area. They’ve also included Focus Mask which makes portraits with shallow depth of field stand out even more. We’ve got a video below from Adobe that explains how it works.

There is also improved and added Content-Aware capabilities making one of the most popular features even better (I personally use content-aware autofill quite often and it only seems to get better). There will also be additions made to Lightroom 5.5 for Creative Cloud, with additional camera support, which isn’t really much of an improvement. It would be nice to see more synergy between Lightroom and Photoshop, but we’ll still have to deal with what we’ve got for now.

Adobe Illustrator CC also has a ton of improvements which include Live Shapes which allows for the fast and non-destructive manipulation of rectangles into complex forms with a quick and easy way to return the original shape in just a few clicks. There are also major improvements to Adobe InDesign CC  as well as Adobe Muse CC as a native 64-bit application and it now includes HiDPI display support for sharper-looking images, objects, and text. This is something that Adobe needs to consider for Photoshop CC as well because currently using Adobe applications on high resolution displays is a bit more than painful with tiny menu buttons, especially on HiDPI touch screens.

Adobe also introduced new Adobe Creative Cloud mobile apps with Adobe Sketch, Adobe Line, Adobe Photoshop Mix and Adobe Lightroom for mobile for iPhone. Adobe Sketch is Adobe’s ‘social’ sketching iPad app for free-form drawing, creating a new and better drawing experience for iPad users, even though drawing on an iPad isn’t as good as on other tablets. Adobe Line is, according to Adobe, the world’s first iPad app for precision drawing and drafting, even though it is questionable how accurate the iPad is for ‘precision drawing and drafting’. Adobe also introduced Adobe Photoshop Mix which is designed to bring creative imaging tools from the desktop version of Photoshop to the iPad. Because of this, Adobe has added the most popular Adobe Photoshop features to Adobe Photoshop Mix with precise compositing and masking as well as Upright, Content Aware Fill and Camera Shake Reduction. All of those features also integrate back into Photoshop CC on the desktop, making final edits on a computer much easier. Adobe has also introduced Adobe Lightroom for iPhone which is supposed to help with iPhone and iPad integration with Lightroom images on the desktop and vice versa, but realistically it will mostly be for viewing DSLR images on an iPad. The truth is that Adobe Lightroom’s primary use is for RAW images, which the iPhone currently does not support (yet) but may support with the iPhone 6 which could be the explanation of this feature launching now,  ahead of the iPhone 6’s launch. They also call it Lightroom Mobile which means we’ll likely see an Android update come out eventually, even though iOS support appears to be the first and foremost release.

Adobe Creative Cloud Ink and Slide

Also, as Adobe promised, they did introduce new hardware, even though it may be a bit underwhelming in terms of what one would expect Adobe to release. Adobe introduced their Adobe Ink and Slide hardware which are targeted towards the iPad and to bring precision drawing and drafting to the iPad combined with cloud features that the platform simply didn’t have available to it in the past. The Adobe Ink and Slide combination of hardware will cost you $199 and is really designed only for mobile use, which makes it slightly less attractive to most since it only works on an iPad. I don’t know how many serious artists use their iPads for creative work, but it may be that Apple and Adobe are trying to change that with the Ink and Slide, formerly known as Project Mighty and Project Napoleon. Either way, it will allow for more precise work to be done on iPads, even though I’m not entirely sure there is a huge market for that.

Adobe also extended their Creative Cloud Photography plan which includes Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom for $9.99 a month, making it the most affordable Adobe Creative Cloud option and the best value as well. If Adobe could convert all of their customers to their $9.99 Photography plan, I think they could probably keep it at $9.99 and not worry about piracy because $9.99 is just so incredibly reasonable. Even though, you simply will have no choice but to pay for CC in the future as CS6 becomes more and more outdated.

Overall, Adobe’s Creative Cloud update for 2014 isn’t necessarily a bad one, it improves the company’s software stack across the board and strengthens their mobile presence, even if its almost entirely on iOS. It will be interesting to see if any of their new mobile features will become more relevant with the new iPhone 6 and iOS 8.

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We don’t normally post iPhone rumors unless they’re incredibly well substantiated and this one appears to be pretty legitimate. While the source of the rumor may be one that seems a bit off-kilter, this person who we are referring to has actually proven themselves in the past to be able to get legitimate iPhone hardware ahead of the launch.

Some images from MacFixit.AU that show the new iPhone 6

There have been countless rumors and leaks and all of the Mac and Apple fan sites will flood you with basically anything they can in order to ensure you click on it. Most of what we’ve seen online as of late has all culminated in Apple launching a larger iPhone. This addresses one of the biggest problems that people have had with the iPhone stating that it is simply too small for most people, causing many to go in search of Android devices with bigger screens. And most of the Android manufacturers have satisfied these needs by launching 5″, 5.5″ and 6″ phones (if you can call them phones past 5″). However, there are still a lot of people that like the small size of the iPhone and how comfortably it fits in their hands (especially if they have smaller hands). So, there is a very strong belief that the iPhone 6 will come in two sizes, one to satisfy the people wanting a bigger screen and another to keep the small phone people happy. There haven’t actually been any rumors that fully substantiate this possibility yet, but it would be a sound business decision on Apple’s part. Almost all of the leaked photos and videos about the new iPhone 6 basically show the newer larger design, which frankly bears a striking resemblance to the HTC One and HTC One M8 both of which we reviewed. Now, there have been a lot of leaks, like we stated earlier but not many of them had a confirming or solid source to verify the look or design, until now. A Taiwanese actor, famous for having shown himself with an iPhone 5C well in advance of the phone’s launch has once again posed with a new Apple iPhone, but this time it’s the iPhone 6 and he’s got it in hand next to an iPhone 5S. Thanks to the website SteveNotes.hk, we’ve got images of Jimmy Lin with the new iPhone 6 along with the iPhone 5S next to it for size.

As you can see from the Weibo image above, the new iPhone 6 (or whatever it’ll be called) is a larger phone than the iPhone 5S and has much more rounded edges which should make it feel much more comfortable in the hand than the somewhat sharp iPhone 5/S. There are also multiple sources claiming that this phone will have a 2K (2560 x 1440 ish) display, even though I’m not sure that this phone is large enough or there is a display small enough to fit in an iPhone and deliver that resolution. Keep in mind that the current iPhone 5S is 1136 x 640 resolution on a 4″ display and a 2K resolution would be more than quadrupling that in terms of pixels if they were to go 2K. The likelihood for that happening is VERY VERY low, so more realistically, we’ll finally see Apple move towards a more standard resolution like 1920 x 1080 or pretty close to it since Apple decided to stay away from 720P with their 1136 x 640 resolution on the iPhone 5.

The expected timeframe for this phone is still fall of this year, likely with a September announcement and an October or late September launch (like last year).

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Apple has finally admitted that they are to blame for the constant issues that iMessage (iOS) users are having with communicating with anyone outside of iMessage with some SMS messages simply never getting delivered. This has been a fairly well-known issue and many people suspected that it was actually happening and then it was finally confirmed that Apple has acknowledged the issue and is working on a fix. iMessage has been around for a solid 3 years now and ever since it was launched with iOS 5 users have been experiencing issues with undelivered messages, this includes text and multimedia messages being sent to a non-iOS device.

The problem occurs whenever someone tries to switch from an iPhone to any other device but keeps the same number, Apple’s servers effectively continue to try to deliver the messages to that person’s iMessage account instead of sending it as an SMS outward. As a result, many users have thought and blamed Android phones for this problem, and I have actually seen it first hand and a few people even ended up switching back to Apple’s iPhone because of how awful the problem was. It also doesn’t help to have other iOS devices on iMessage even though you’ve switched your primary phone to something else. I don’t know if this is a bit of poor programming on Apple’s part or an intentional goal to make switching incredibly frustrating. I have a feeling that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Apple doesn’t really benefit from fixing this problem, in fact they benefit from not fixing it since they increase their already firm grip on users that wish to switch. The experience of switching from iOS to Android is incredibly frustrating and Apple’s closed systems result in making the switch incredibly painful and anything but frictionless. As a result many users never try to make the switch or try and then come back because of the friction they experience. But the good thing is that Apple is supposedly working on making a fix now and should resolve this issue that has caused so many users major headaches.

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Apple has finally admitted that they are to blame for the constant issues that iMessage (iOS) users are having with communicating with anyone outside of iMessage with some SMS messages simply never getting delivered. This has been a fairly well-known issue and many people suspected that it was actually happening and then it was finally confirmed that Apple has acknowledged the issue and is working on a fix. iMessage has been around for a solid 3 years now and ever since it was launched with iOS 5 users have been experiencing issues with undelivered messages, this includes text and multimedia messages being sent to a non-iOS device.

The problem occurs whenever someone tries to switch from an iPhone to any other device but keeps the same number, Apple’s servers effectively continue to try to deliver the messages to that person’s iMessage account instead of sending it as an SMS outward. As a result, many users have thought and blamed Android phones for this problem, and I have actually seen it first hand and a few people even ended up switching back to Apple’s iPhone because of how awful the problem was. It also doesn’t help to have other iOS devices on iMessage even though you’ve switched your primary phone to something else. I don’t know if this is a bit of poor programming on Apple’s part or an intentional goal to make switching incredibly frustrating. I have a feeling that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Apple doesn’t really benefit from fixing this problem, in fact they benefit from not fixing it since they increase their already firm grip on users that wish to switch. The experience of switching from iOS to Android is incredibly frustrating and Apple’s closed systems result in making the switch incredibly painful and anything but frictionless. As a result many users never try to make the switch or try and then come back because of the friction they experience. But the good thing is that Apple is supposedly working on making a fix now and should resolve this issue that has caused so many users major headaches.

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Nintendo says they’re working on new hardware, and that they are actually already working on new hardware in most cases immediately after they’ve released the most current version. There appears to be no let up in Nintendo’s aspirations to release new hardware, which seems a bit surprising considering how disastrous their Wii U sales have been. Back in January, Nintendo was forced to cut their full year projections for the Nintendo Wii U by over 70%, which made a lot of investors lose faith in Nintendo’s business plan. However, Nintendo continues to move forward even though they posted a loss of $225 million for the full fiscal year of 2013 (ended March 2014).

The problem with this is that it overlooks Nintendo’s fundamental weakness that some of their competitors have overcome. They refuse to allow their vast library of characters and properties to be licensed out to platforms outside of Nintendo’s own hardware platforms. After all, if Nintendo is so convinced that the game experience is superior on their hardware they should have no issue allowing their games to move to other platforms. But that simply isn’t the case, as indicated by Nintendo’s recent request to pull a Nintendo Gameboy emulator from Apple’s appstore. If you look at one of Nintendo’s historic competitors, Sega, they had posted a profit of $300 million and they don’t even have any hardware business to sell to consumers.

Nintendo can and should update their console to be competitive (or better than) the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and they should find ways to keep their portable consoles relevant in the era of smartphones and tablets. But at the same time, they need to embrace iPhone and Android users that are going to want to play their games on their phones and tablets. Nintendo quite literally has a potential market of almost billions of people if they actually open their eyes to the possibilities. Nintendo did really well with the Wii, but they fell flat on their faces with the Wii U and anyone watching from afar could have (and probably did) call it. Nintendo is not a bad company, and they’re not poorly run, but they really need to remember what their core business is, and it isn’t selling hardware. I’m a huge hardware geek, and I actually hate to see companies go software only but the truth is that Nintendo doesn’t need to get rid of their own hardware, they just have to support other platforms.

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