(Image courtesy of AppleInsider)
The news just keeps getting worse for Apple’s competitors in the mobile phone market: A new report shows that Cupertino pushed past Blackberry maker Research in Motion in the third quarter to become the fourth largest mobile phone company in the world.
AppleInsider is reporting that IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report is out for the third quarter of 2010, and it’s got some grim news for Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) -- Apple has now stolen the number four spot in worldwide mobile phone sales from the Canadian firm. This is the first time that Apple has cracked the top five on IDC’s list of global cell phone companies, which is topped by Nokia, Samsung and LG in the first three spots.
"The entrance of Apple to the top 5 vendor ranking underscores the increased importance of smartphones to the overall market.” said IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo. “Moreover, the mobile phone makers that are delivering popular smartphone models are among the fastest growing firms.”
With RIM being pushed to number five with 12.4 million units shipped compared to Apple’s 14.1 million, it was Sony Ericsson who was toppled from the top five -- a first since the inception of the IDC Mobile Phone Tracker report in 2004.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the report is the year-over-year change for most of the companies. Number one Nokia grew a mere 1.8 percent, while number two Samsung fared better at 18.6 percent. LG actually lost ground with -10.1 percent, while Apple was up a whopping 90.5 percent from the previous year, largely due to launching the iPhone 4 in 17 new countries in the third quarter.
The new IDC data would appear to back up Steve Jobs’ claims this month that Apple has passed competitor RIM during the company’s quarterly conference call. “I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future,” Jobs boasted. “It will be a challenge for them to create a mobile software platform and convince developers to support a third platform,” a reference to iOS and Android being the dominant players in the smartphone market now.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
Friday, October 29, 2010
Apple Leapfrogs RIM as Fourth Largest Mobile Phone Vendor Worldwide
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
It is rumored that Apple and Gemalto have created a SIM card, which is typically a chip that carries subscriber identification information for the carriers, that will be integrated into the iPhone itself. Then customers will then be able to choose their carrier at purchase at the Apple web site or retail store, or buy the phone and get their handset up and running through a download at the App Store as opposed to visiting a carrier store or calling the carrier.
The report notes that the new technology would be of most use in Europe, where there are many competitive carriers operating on similar technologies within a relatively compact geographic area.The Gemalto SIM, according to my sources, is embedded in a chip that has an upgradeable flash component and a ROM area. The ROM area contains data provided by Gemalto with everything related to IT and network security, except for the carrier related information. The flash component will receive the carrier related data via a local connection which could be the PC or a dedicated device, so it can be activated on the network. Gemalto will provide the back-end infrastructure that allows service and number provisioning on the carrier network.
Sources for the report have indicated that executives from several French carriers have traveled to Apple's Cupertino headquarters in recent weeks to discuss the development, which could allow Apple to significantly simplify the iPhone sales and distribution process while offering customers the flexibility to easily activate service and switch carriers on their own.Apple's iPhone currently utilizes a removable SIM card, issued by the user's carrier to allow the device to operate on its network.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Apple delays white iPhone until spring 2011
Apple tonight said it was delaying any future white iPhones until spring 2011. The color had already been pushed back to an end of year window and now isn't likely to appear until the fifth-generation iPhone is in stores. Company representative Trudy Muller wouldn't give a reason for the delay but apologized to those who had hoped for an alternative to black....
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
New project enables mobile phone use in areas with no reception
Paul Gardner-Stephen (left) talks with a colleague in the wilderness using his new system. Credit: Village Telco
(PhysOrg.com) -- Australian scientists have invented software that enables mobile (cell) phones to work in remote areas where there is no conventional coverage and in locations where the infrastructure has been destroyed through disaster, or is not economically viable. The technology enables ordinary mobile phones to make and receive calls without the need for phone towers or satellites.
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Leader of the team, Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen of Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, named the project the Serval Project, after an African wildcat renowned for its problem-solving abilities. The aim is to "provide fast, cheap, robust and effective telecommunications systems" for areas where there is currently no telephone infrastructure, or where it has been destroyed by natural disasters or civil unrest.
The project includes two systems that can operate separately or be combined. One is specifically for disaster areas, and consists of a temporary, self-organizing and self-powered mobile phone network that operates via small phone towers dropped into the area by aircraft.
The second system consists of a permanent mesh-based phone network between Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones, with no tower infrastructure required. Eventually, the system will also include the “Batphone,” which will be a specially designed phone able to operate on other unlicensed frequencies.
The systems use open-source software developed by the team and dubbed Distributed Numbering Architecture (DNA). The software allows mobile phones to make calls out and receive calls on their existing numbers. The meshnetwork technology was developed by Village Telco and is integrated with the software to create a mesh network in which each phone acts as an independent router.
Dr Gardner-Stephen said the device essentially “incorporates a compact version of a mobile phone tower into the phone itself.” It uses the Wi-Fi interface in modern Wi-Fi-enabled phones, carrying voice over it in such a way that it does not need to go back to a tower anywhere.
The current range between phones is only a few hundred meters, which limits the usefulness of the system in remote areas, but Gardner-Stephen said adding small transmitters and more devices could expand the range considerably. The real benefit of the current system would be in disaster areas where there are plenty of phones but the towers are destroyed or the infrastructure is no longer functioning. In the recent Haiti disaster area for example, the mobile phone network was knocked out for over two days after the earthquake struck, and did not return to normal operation for a week.
Director of the Research Centre for Disaster Resilience and Health at Flinders University, Professor Paul Arbon said the systems could prove invaluable in disasters, providing an instant network allowing people to call out and receive calls from concerned relatives, and helping volunteers to coordinate the response. The system could also provide the community with updates and warnings.
The systems have been successfully tested in remote areas of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia where there is no mobile phone reception, with the three researchers creating a network over one square kilometer. The next stages in the project are to increase the range and improve sound quality. The team is also working on developing a method of dropping the temporary towers into disaster areas.
Dr Gardner-Stephen said the system could be operational within 18 months provided the project receives adequate funding. He said his dream was for every mobile phone to be equipped with the system so that if there is a disaster all the phones in the region will automatically switch to the mesh network mode of operation as a fallback.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Slurp digital eyedropper sucks up, injects information wirelessly (video)
How does Jamie Zigelbaum, a former student at MIT Media Lab, celebrate freedom from tyranny, drool-worthy accents and 'standing in the queue?' By creating Slurp, of course. In what's easily one of the most jaw-dropping demonstrations of the year, this here digital eyedropper is a fanciful new concept that could certainly grow some legs if implemented properly in the market place. Designed as a 'tangible interface for manipulating abstract digital information as if it were water,' Slurp can 'extract (slurp up) and inject (squirt out) pointers to digital objects,' enabling connected machines and devices to have information transferred from desktop to desktop (or desktop to speakers, etc.) without any wires to bother with. We can't even begin to comprehend the complexity behind the magic, but all you need to become a believer is embedded after the break. It's 41 seconds of pure genius, we assure you.
Continue reading Slurp digital eyedropper sucks up, injects information wirelessly (video)
Slurp digital eyedropper sucks up, injects information wirelessly (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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These Are the Oldest Photons In the Universe
This is the entire view sky as seen from Earth, taken by the Planck observatory during a whole year. In the center, the microwave radiation of our galaxy, the Milky Way. But that's not the important part.
The image, which has been created using data covering the electromagnetic spectrum from 30 to 857 GHz, shows something more important than our home galaxy. See those yellow dots over dark red? These are the oldest photons in the universe, which scientists believe formed 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when things started to cool and atoms started to form.
That noise is called Cosmic Microwave Background, "the primordial radiation emitted during the very early stages of the Universe, and its tiny temperature fluctuations, reflecting the seeds from which cosmic structures would later form and subsequently evolve." [ESA]
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Terminate the Terminators
Robots are now a fact of war, but the prospect of androids that can hunt and kill on their own should give us all pause
When U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003, they fought a traditional war of human on human. Since then, robots have joined the fight. Both there and in Afghanistan, thousands of “unmanned” systems dismantle roadside IEDs, take that first peek around the corner at a sniper’s lair and launch missiles at Taliban hideouts. Robots are pouring onto battlefields as if a new species of mechanotronic alien had just landed on our planet.
It is not the first time that the technology of warfare has advanced more rapidly than the body of international law that seeks to restrain its use. During World War I, cannons shot chemical weapons at and airplanes dropped bombs on unsuspecting cities. Only later did nations reach a verdict on whether it was acceptable to target a munitions factory next to a primary school.
Something similar is happening today with potentially even more profound and disturbing consequences. As Brookings Institution analyst P. W. Singer describes in “War of the Machines,” the rise of robots leads to the frightening prospect of making obsolete the rule book by which nations go to war. Armed conflict between nation states is brutal, but at least it proceeds according to a set of rules grounded both in international law and in the demands of military discipline. It is not true that anything goes in the heat of battle. “Such rules are certainly not always followed, but their very existence is what separates killing in war from murder and what distinguishes soldiers from criminals,” writes Singer in Wired for War, his recent popular book on the military robotic revolution.
Those rules are stretched to their breaking point when robots go to war. The legal and ethical questions abound. Who is accountable when a Predator’s missile hits the wrong target? Missiles from errant drones have already killed as many as 1,000 civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Does responsibility reside with a field commander in the Middle East where spotters identified the “target of interest”? Or should blame be apportioned to the “remote pilot” stationed at a military base near Las Vegas who launched the strike from 7,000 miles away? And what about a software engineer who might have committed a programming error that caused a misfire?
Considering rules of engagement for war-at-a-distance raises a surreal set of questions. Does the remote operator in Nevada remain a legal combatant—in other words, a legitimate enemy target—on the trip after work to Walmart or to a daughter’s soccer match? Would an increasingly sketchy line between warrior and civilian invite attacks on U.S. soil against homes and schools?
Remote-controlled robots are here to stay, and rules can be worked out to regulate their use. But the more serious threat comes from semiautonomous machines over which humans retain nothing more than last-ditch veto power. These systems are only a software upgrade away from fully self-sufficient operation. The prospect of androids that hunt down and kill on their own accord (shades of Terminator) should give us all pause. An automatic pilot that makes its own calls about whom to shoot violates the “human” part of international humanitarian law, the one that recognizes that some weapons are so abhorrent that they just should be eliminated.
Some might call a ban on autonomous robots naive or complain that it would tie the hands of soldiers faced with irregular warfare. But although robots have clear tactical advantages, they carry a heavy strategic price. The laws of war are an act not of charity but of self-interest; the U.S. would be weakened, not strengthened, if chemical and biological weapons were widespread, and the same is true of robots. They are a cheap way to offset conventional military strength, and other nations and groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon are already deploying them. The U.S. may not always be the leader in this technology and would be well advised to negotiate restrictions on their use from a position of strength. We can never put the genie back into the bottle, but putting a hold on further development of this technology could limit the damage.
Supersonic Green Machine sends greetings from the future
posted Jun 29th 2010 3:32AM
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Creationists suffer another legal defeat
Some good news from Texas! Yeehaw!
The Institute for Creation Research — one of the biggest nonsense-paddlers in the 6000 year history of the world — was handed a nice defeat this week. That link to the National Center for Science Education (the good guys) has all the info you need, but to summarize: the ICR moved from California to Texas. In the previous state, for reasons beyond understanding, the were able to grant Master’s degrees in their graduate school. But Texas didn’t recognize their accreditation, so they filed to get it approved.
Not so surprisingly, scientists and educators rose in protest, and in 2008 the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board — the organization that grants accreditation — denied the ICR. The creationists appealed. In the meantime, they also tried to extend their ability to grant degrees temporarily while the lawsuit continued. What happened this week is that the extension as denied.
And I mean denied. Check out what the court said:
It appears that although the Court has twice required Plaintiff [the ICR] to re-plead and set forth a short and plain statement of the relief requested, Plaintiff is entirely unable to file a complaint which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering, and full of irrelevant information.
That’s not surprising, as that’s the only kind of information the ICR is capable of producing. Not to mention wrong. See the Related Posts links below for lots more on the ICR’s recent follies.
As far as I can tell, this defeat means that the ICR is still seeking accreditation, but until and unless it does, it cannot grant degrees in Texas.
So what can be said about this? Oh, let me quote one of the pithiest and to-the-point minds of our day:
New high-power battery may lead to big hybrid vehicles
A new type of high-power battery may help make larger hybrid vehicles a reality, according to a research paper published this week. A group of scientists at MIT have found a way to use carbon nanotubes to create a device that combines the strengths of batteries and capacitors, resulting in a battery than can both store a large amount of energy and put out a high rate of power. The ability to provide a better combination of high power and rapid discharge may help engineers tailor the batteries to a broader range of vehicles.
Batteries and capacitors have long occupied independent niches when it comes to storing electricity. Lithium batteries can store a significant amount of energy using chemical processes, but can only supply a low rate of power; capacitors can deliver a lot of power at once by eliminating the difference between two oppositely charged plates, but have low total energy storage.
Researchers have been trying to mitigate the shortcomings of both devices for some time, by either forcing higher rates of output from batteries or more storage from capacitors. They've achieved some success in increasing the rate of discharge from lithium batteries by shortening the distance that the ions diffuse to a few nanometers, but the output remained too low for many high-power applications. Similar efforts to adapt capacitors have yielded limited successes.
To get the functionality they were looking for, researchers needed a material that could quickly shuffle ions around the battery, but would also bond strongly to them, ensuring a higher release of energy when the ions are released. As is often the case in materials science, they needed to look no further than carbon nanotubes.
To construct an electrode for their new battery, the researchers created alternating layers of carbon nanotube sheets coated with carboxylic acid and amine functional groups—these can undergo charge transfer reactions with lithium ion charge carriers. Their addition also seems to roughen up the surface of the nanotubes, increasing the surface area available for reactions.
The researchers tested a battery that used the layered carbon nanotube electrode on the positive end, and a lithium electrode on the negative end. The power output of the batteries declined as the nanotube electrode's thickness increased, placing a ceiling on its numbers. But an electrode three micrometers thick could still deliver energies of 200 watt-hours per kilogram (a bit better than current-generation lithium batteries), and a power of 100 kilowatts per kilogram. They were able to match the energy of lithium ion batteries at lower power outputs, and at high power had better energy delivery than the nanoscale-diffusion lithium batteries.
While these numbers were impressive, batteries with pure lithium electrodes are not the norm. For a more realistic setup, researchers tried instead using a composite electrode made of lithium titanium oxide along with the carbon nanotube electrode. They found that these batteries had lower energy and power, but at 30 watt-hours per kilogram and 5 kilowatts per kilogram, their performance is several times better than the current generation of capacitors. The battery was also very resilient, showing no drop in performance even after 2,500 cycles.
The new battery doesn't best either capacitors or batteries at their respective strengths— it stores energy only about as well as any lithium ion battery, and supplies rushes of power as well as a capacitor. However, it may find use as a versatile middle-of-the-road device that has high storage and can supply bursts of power if needed.
Researchers hope that this new style of battery will eventually allow for larger hybrid vehicles that are less reliant on their gas engines to sustain a high power draw. Potential benefactors of the technology might include tractor trailers and buses.
The authors indicate that they plan to continue by verifying how the electrodes behave on larger scales, where "larger" means tens and hundred of micrometers. They also hope to develop ways to prevent some of the energy loss during charging and discharging. The new battery may also benefit from a new method of assembling multiwalled carbon nanotubes by spraying them on layer by layer, which may allow fine tuning of the voltage differences needed during charge and discharge.
Nature Nanotechnology, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2010.116 (About DOIs)
Thursday, June 17, 2010
BP Purchases 32 of Kevin Costner's Oil-Water Separation Machines [Oil Disaster]
Laugh you may have when you heard that Kevin Costner was stepping into BP's oil spill disaster with a potential solution, but BP has now snapped up 32 of the centrifuge machines to help separate the oil from the water. More »
Intensive farming 'massively slowed' global warming
Behind Apple's Stunningly Crafted iPhone is a Patent
Basically, most consumers really don't care about how the sexy new iPhone is made; they just want to be able to enjoy buying this stunningly crafted device called the iPhone 4 and get out there and start flashing it in the face of their friends who are sad owners of the thick-brick Android or even the butt ugly Android. They don't really care about the shape of the iPhone's gasket or that the manufacturing process utilizes liquid metal so as to avoid gaps or spaces between the glass and metal members – or that Apple uses alloys with liquid atomic structures. Yet to future engineers and possibly those that will be the next generation of Crazy Ones in Cupertino, it definitely matters. Today's brief report points you to one of many Patents that are behind the coolest iPhone ever – with a few pointers along the way.
Engineering Precision: Engineering Cool
Patent Background
During the manufacture of electronic devices such as a cellular telephone, transparent components are often held within housings. By way of example, many electronic devices have displays that include glass or plastic Windows which are held by a metal housing. Typically, a metal frame or housing is formed, and a glass component or a plastic component is inserted into the formed frame or housing.
In order to properly secure a metal frame and a glass component together, the tolerances associated with the fit between the metal frame and the glass component must he strictly maintained. That is, the tolerance matches between the metal frame and the glass component are maintained such that the glass component may be inserted into the metal frame and held in place. An overall assembly that includes a metal frame and a glass component inserted therein may be held together by a press fit, using adhesive materials, and/or using mechanical structures such as screws. If the tolerance matches between the metal frame and the glass component are not strictly maintained, the integrity of the overall assembly may be compromised. For relatively small assemblies, maintaining critical tolerances between metal frames and glass components such that tolerance mismatches are unlikely to occur may be difficult.
Apple's patent covers some of the intricate methods and processes that are required to ensure that the assemblies of devices that are mating metal with glass, like the iPhone 4 or iMac, are incredibly accurate so as to provide stunning end user products where metal and glass simply appear as if they're naturally blending together without seam. And the only seams that are present on the design, are ingeniously a series of antennas that are brought together to create the primary structure of the new iPhone. Jonathan Ives, Senior Vice President, Industrial Design explains this in Apple's new iPhone 4 video.
Integrally Formed Glass and Metal
Apple's patent FIG. 11 is a diagrammatic perspective of an iPhone that includes a housing that includes and integrally formed glass and metal part. Apple's patent FIG. 8A is a diagrammatic top view representation of a transparent member on which a layer of compliant material has been formed. In FIG. 8B we see a cross-sectional side view of an overall assembly that includes a transparent member and a metal member which are in substantial contact through a layer of compliant material.
Liquid Metal, Synthetic Sapphire & More
According to one aspect of the present invention, a method includes positioning a transparent member in a mold configured for insertion molding, and providing a liquid metal into the mold. The method also includes hardening the liquid metal in the mold. Hardening the liquid metal includes binding the metal to the transparent member to create the integral assembly.
The metal in liquid form may for example correspond to amorphous alloys, which are metals that may behave like plastic, or alloys with liquid atomic structures. Liquid Metal is one suitable example for the metal in liquid form. Substantially any metal or, more generally, material in liquid form which has a thermal expansion rate that is similar to the thermal expansion rate of liquid metal may be used in an insertion molding process.
Additionally, the patent uniquely states that the display could be made of any suitable transparent material such as the exotic synthetic sapphire. So what did Apple end up using in their new iPhone 4? Aluminosilicate glass – the very same glass used in the windshields of helicopters and high-speed trains. Hell - let it be known that this kind of glass is also used in space-vehicle windows.
The channels and cavities of the device, according to the patent, could be formed in a variety of ways. In one example, channels and cavities are formed via machining or cutting operations. Alternatively, they may be formed with a cutting beam such as a laser or water jet stream – as shown in one of the processes in Apple's iPhone video.
Methods of Design go beyond the iPhone
Although only a few embodiments of the present invention were described in Apple's patent, it should be understood, according to their patent, that the present invention could be embodied in many other specific forms without departing from the spirit or the scope of the present invention. By way of example, the steps associated with the methods of the present invention may vary widely. Steps could he added, removed, altered, combined, and reordered without departing from the spirit of the scope of the present invention.
By way of example, and not by way of limitation, the electronic device may correspond to media players, cellular phones, PDAs, remote controls, notebooks, tablet PCs, monitors, all in one computers and the like. Apple's iMac would be a classic metal and glass end user product using these processes.
Apple credits Kyle Yeates as the sole inventor of this patent titled "Methods and Systems for Integrally Trapping a Glass Insert in a Metal Bezel." The patent was originally filed in Q4 2007 and recently published in the European Patent Office database. They credit the source of the application as being South Korea under patent number KR20100036365. This patent could also be found in the World Intellectual Property Organization's database under WO 2009009764.
The Mini Monolith: Now Available at the Apple Store
Since the dawn of time, cavemen and astronaut alike have been in awe of the great black Monolith. They were drawn to it. All had to touch it – and all wondered aloud: What could this be? Wonder no more: The mini monolith is now available in handheld form at the Apple Store: Welcome to iPhone 4.
Notice: Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of patents with associated graphic(s) for journalistic news purposes as each such patent application is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trade Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any patent application should be read in its entirety for further details.
Our Report is also Being Covered By: MacSurfer, Tech Investor News Apple, MacDailyNews, iPhoneItalia Italy, Jim Cramer (Twitter site), Maclalala2 Japan and more.
CBS Testing iPad-Friendly HTML5 Video Delivery Methods
Written by Eric Slivka
mocoNews caught up with Soohoo recently and reports that CBS is currently engaged in testing its HTML5 delivery using episodes of Star Trek Enterprise as the network seeks to reach "parity" with Flash delivery methods.
"What you see right now is a small, little experiment," Soohoo explained, with Star Trek Enterprise as an "ideal" subject, in part because of its fan base and because CBS owns it. "We're currently just testing for the time being." CBSi plans to move towards HTML5 parity with Flash video but first Soohoo and his team need to find the right mix of tools. It's not hard to offer the video in both versions but it's far more complicated than that.
"Our goal is over time at some point having content parity. The tools aren't mature yet - security needs to be there, second thing we need is all the tracking and measurement. If we can't track, we can't monetize." Adobe Flash is still the way most CBSi users get their video; as important, it's how ads are served.
ABC made a splash with its early launch of a dedicated iPad application for its streaming content, and while CBS had initially appeared to be focusing on browser-based delivery, it now seems that the network will be taking a more fluid approach and remains open to multiple possibilities.
Not all networks and content providers are following ABC and CBS in jumping on the iPad/HTML5 bandwagon, however. A number of media companies, includingNBC and Time Warner, have pledged their continued support for Flash streaming, pointing to the format's continued dominance on the Web and shortcomings in HTML5 feature offerings.
Motorola 'Droid X' to Challenge iPhone 4's Retina Display?
Written by Eric Slivka
One of Apple's claimed breakthrough features for iPhone 4 is its "Retina display"running at 960 x 640 pixels at 326 pixels-per-inch, offering improved viewing by making individual pixels undistinguishable at typical viewing distances.
The Droid X's apparent larger pixel count coupled with its larger display size suggests that it could offer a nearly identical pixel size to Apple's iPhone 4, but with the ability to display more content on its larger surface area.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed during iPhone 4's introduction last week that the device's Retina display would set the standard for smartphone displays for the next several years. Motorola appears to be moving quickly to counter Apple's technological leap, however, and while the full specs of the Droid X and its display aren't yet known, it at least attempts to meet or exceed one of iPhone 4's key marketing points.
June 16, 2010 Apple's success in the digital music and mobile phone markets has transformed the company from an underdog with a cult following to a l
June 16, 2010
Apple's success in the digital music and mobile phone markets has transformed the company from an underdog with a cult following to a leader in the mass market. Investors recently made this change in status official, pushing the total value of Apple's shares higher than any other technology company's.
That success is driven in large part by good technology and relentless innovation, but also by the lingering notion that Apple is, well, different from the soulless corporate behemoths it competes with. Yet the bare-knuckled competitiveness that helped Apple get to this point may prove to be a liability now that it's no longer a little tech company making beautiful but underappreciated devices.
The company's sharp elbows were on display again last week when Apple issued new rules for developers making applications for iPhones and iPads. Many developers have given their applications away, seeking profits instead by selling space within the programs to advertisers. The rules essentially bar developers from using advertising networks linked to Google, Microsoft, Nokia or any of Apple's other rivals in the mobile phone market. Instead, developers who want to sell ads in their applications will have to use Apple's iAd network or one of its smaller competitors. The restriction recalls the company's move in April to require applications to be written with its software tools _ a devastating blow to Adobe's efforts to get its popular Flash software onto the iPhone and iPad.
Apple contends that its efforts to control its software platforms are vital to delivering a better experience for consumers. But it's one thing to pre-empt offensive or clunky applications; it's another to require developers to use Apple's software or ad network to gain access to its customers.
Apple has also been embarrassed lately by accusations of worker exploitation after a spate of suicides at factories operated by Foxconn, its main Chinese manufacturer. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs responded, characteristically, by claiming that his company is exceptionally rigorous when it comes to overseeing its suppliers. Yet worker activists say Apple bears some of the blame for Foxconn's subsistence-pay wages and long work shifts because it persuaded Foxconn to build devices for such a low price.
Although federal antitrust officials are reportedly looking into Apple's effort to bar rival advertising networks, it's hard to see how the company's tactics violate the law. Simply put, the iPhone doesn't dominate the smartphone market. The more important question is how consumers will react to the emerging picture of Apple. They may shrug off all these developments because they don't change how Apple's products perform. Or they may decide that the company revered for thinking different has become just another corporate bully.
(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.