Wednesday July 25, 2007

- Apple Reports Best June Quarter Revenues - Eric - 23:15:19

Today, Apple posted its financial reports for the last quarter ending in June 30. As mentioned by Steve Jobs, it was the highest June quarter revenue and profit in Apple's history, along with the highest quarterly Mac sales ever. Interestingly for us, sales of hardware remain strong, as Apple shipped 1,764,000 Macintosh® computers, representing 33 percent growth over the year-ago quarter, while iPods keeps selling well with 9,815,000 units shipped during the quarter, representing 21 percent growth over the year-ago quarter.

Concerning the iPhone, Steve Jobs killed the rumor of the millionth iPhone purchase in less than a week: iPhone is off to a great start—we hope to sell our one-millionth iPhone by the end of its first full quarter of sales. By hte end of June quarter more than 250,000 iPhones were sold via Apple Stores and AT&T shops. As also stated by Apple's CEO, the pipeline is strong and the expected revision of the iPod and iMac should arrive very soon, and we could have some announcements for the Apple Expo.

The live webcast is currently available at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq307/

- Elgato: Network-linked TV HD Tuner - Lionel - 13:47:22

Elgato released a Network-connected HD tuner, named HDHomeRun.



Currently only available in USA (due to local HD TV specifications), the new device is a centralized digital TV tuner (air or cable-based TV) that connects to your Ethernet network. In addition thanks to its dual tuners, two users can be watching or recording different programs at the same time on their Mac via elgato's Eye TV application. The HDHomeRun supports both SD and HD TV till 1080i definition.
As the terrestrial digital TV (DVB-T) is based on different specification in Europe, the product will not be compatible in Europe, so no need to buy it during your next journey in USA. If the product is not identical to the Apple TV, it might be a strong competitor as it supports HD TV.

[translation by Linathael]

- Vista, a disappointment for the whole industry - Lionel - 09:06:57

Source : Clubic

In a recent inteview with the German version of the Financial Times, Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci heavily criticized Windows Vista and especially blamed its untimely arrival in an unprepared market. He also pointed at the fact that the expected landslide in PC sales associated to the coming out of Redmond's latest spawn just didn't happen.
This last assertion has indeed been verified by independant studies and the aborted expectations are the reason why RAM is now so cheap.
Gianfranco Lanci is just a tad overpessimistic when he mentions "a disappointment for the whole industry", forgetting that Apple, whose computer sales growth has been much higher that that of any other manufacturer these last months, did indeed benefit from this mild stepback.

Alas, Microsoft's juggernaut is completely critic-proof and, whether PC users want it or not, will be forcefully shoved down their hard disks. It will just take more time than expected, enough for Apple to grab a few precious market share points.

[translation by Greg]

- iPhone-related News strongly Impact AAPL Shares - Lionel - 08:55:22

If the recent announcement of a security flaw in the iPhone did not really impact the value of Apple shares, the information released by AT&T during its financial report for the last quarter immediately reduced Cupertino's capitalization by 6%:

Sales of the Apple iPhone have been robust. The June 29 launch allowed for less than two days of sales and activations before the end of the quarter. In that time, AT&T activated 146,000 iPhone subscribers, more than 40 percent of them new subscribers. Sales of the iPhone continue to be strong in July with store traffic above historical levels.

This number was considered lower than expected taking into account the rumor of 1 million iPhone units being sold in less than a week. Indeed, some analysts were anticipating a strong purchase/activation level two or three fold higher than those reported by AT&T for the first two days following the official release of the product. Later today, Apple will release its financial report for the last quarter, and depending on the numbers released for the iPhone, the value of the share might again evolve strongly in any direction.

[translation by Linathael]

- Western Digital Releases Environment-Friendly HD - Lionel - 08:49:06

Western digital is the last one among prominent HD manufacturers to release a new series of models featuring up to 1 TB storage space. While its competitors were faster to react and invest this new market, WD decided to communicate about the environment-friendly feature of those new HDs. Indeed the maximal power consumption is 7 W, in other words, 40% less than the equivalent model from Hitachi. Based on WD's calculation, this would translate yearly in US$10 energy-cost and 60 kg carbon dioxide saving.

If such a move to further develop low power-consumption HDs should be strengthen, it would also be interesting that all computer component manufacturers follow the same policy, especially for GPU, as ATI et NVidia did not follow Intel and AMD to develop graphic processors with better performance per watt ratio.


[translation by Linathael]