Apple shares fall 12% on growth fears

 

Apple Inc.

Apple shares have tumbled 12% as investors fret over whether the company could lose its dominance in the smartphone market.

About $50bn (£32bn) was wiped off Apple's value after the biggest daily drop in the firm's stock in four years.

Flat profits and record quarterly revenue of $55bn were not enough to overcome disappointment over sales of the company's new iPhone 5.

Analysts said the firm was in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.

Earlier, shares in some of Apple's key Asian suppliers also fell.

LG, which provides displays for Apple products, fell 3.1%, and Hon Hai, which assembles iPhones and iPads, dropped 3.2%.

at the same time Nokia are in profit and Samsung at now the  biggest phone manufacture in the world.

www.easyappsbisiness.com

Apple's Ridiculous Patent

 

Apple's Ridiculous Patent

As if you needed more evidence that the US patent system is broken Apple has just been awarded one of the most ridiculous patents ever. The title? “Method for providing human input to a computer”

Here’s the Abstract from the filing:

The invention provides a method for providing human input to a computer which allows a user to interact with a display connected to the computer. The method includes the steps of placing a first target on a first portion of the user’s body, using an electro-optical sensing means, sensing data related to the location of the first target and data related to the location of a second portion of the user’s body, the first and second portions of the user’s body being movable relative to each other, providing an output of the electro-optical sensing means to the input of the computer, determining the location of the first target and the location of the second portion of the user’s body, and varying the output of the computer to the display based upon the determined locations for contemporaneous viewing by the user.

It gets better; the patent claims …

1. The invention can provide a 3, 4, and 5 dimensional touch screen or graphics tablet. In other words, the x,y location of the touch, the force or depth of the touch, and the vector direction of the touch (2 angles).

Of course, there’s no actual demonstration of this “5D” system and like so many modern patents this one amounts to a hand-waving (literally) exercise more along the lines of “what if” than anything concrete. Those issues aside, where’s the novelty?

I wonder how this patent will stand up to challenges and, should Apple try to exert what has become its intellectual property, how well might they fare in court?

it’s a mad mad mad mad world and getting madder

Apple iPhone 5: 4-inch display rumours gather pace

 

Anyone familiar with the Apple rumour industry – and it is very much an entire industry – will be all too familiar with the claims and supposed leaks that are starting to emerge as we inch closer to the announcement of another new iPhone.

And year after year, one of the most popular rumours is that Apple is going to increase the iPhone’s screen size to counter the ever-growing ranks of large-screened Android rivals around.

So it’ll be little surprise to see whispers of an iPhone screen size jump building yet again ahead of the iPhone 5’s expected arrival in the autumn.

The Wall Street Journal claims that a number of independent (but unnamed) sources are swearing blind that Apple has committed to “at least” a 4-inch display, with Reuters having since come out and said its own sources are saying the same thing. Which could of course mean they’re the same sources, but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

The WSJ reckons Apple has already placed panel orders with a range of suppliers, including LG Display, Sharp and Japan Display, in anticipation of the massive tide of orders likely to accompany the launch of its latest handset in a few months’ time.

However, convincing as the latest claims may be, barely six weeks have passed since similarly believable rumours were doing the rounds that Apple was planning to stick with the 3.5-inch display size that has served it so well until now, while other rumours from around the same time spoke of a 4.6-inch display.

They can’t all be right, obviously, and given the sometimes highly creative nature of Apple rumours, they could all in fact be wrong. We suspect the argument is only going to be settled once and for all when the iPhone 5 actually launches. As for exactly when that’s going to happen, well that’s a whole new discussion.

www.tell-me-first.com