As if we needed any more proof that we are mere weeks from seeing a new iPhone, Apple appears to be making room for the new device by taking the old one off consumers' hands.
Depending on the iPhone's condition, Apple will pay up to $345 for the year-old device. Owners can use Apple's Recycling Program to determine how much their device is worth by inputting its model, color, and condition. The big-money goes to the 64GB iPhone 4S in excellent condition, black or white, apparently.
Apple’s recent victory over Samsung in its patent dispute has been fascinating for a number of reasons - not least for those who enjoy guessing just how much victory could be worth to a company that’s already more valuable than Google, Microsoft and Intel combined.
But one other idea it’s brought to the fore is a notion that seems delightfully fuzzy for such a high-stakes legal arena: “obviousness”. As attorney Leonid Kravets points out on TechCrunch, this is one of the most important ideas in enforcing technology patents: just how obvious was the idea embodied in a particular patent at the time that an invention was created?
Back in the prehistoric era of 2007, for example, Apple’s decision not to place a physical keyboard on a smartphone was seen by many as a radical - even a ridiculous - move. Today, the five-year-old designs of almost any device from that era seem clunky to the point of ludicrousness. Apart, of course, from the design that was poised to shift the paradigm for everybody else: Apple’s.
What this highlights is not so much the genius of one company as the staggeringly accelerated rate at which successful digital innovations become “obvious” - before slipping inexorably into the realms of quaint, retro and obsolescence.
Late last week, a San Jose jury awarded Apple Inc. $1.05 billion in damages for patent infringement, a huge win for Apple in its worldwide patent fight with smartphone manufacturers that, like Samsung, sell devices equipped with Google's Android operating system.
The award, the third largest in the history of U.S. patent litigation, will likely cruise into first place next month when U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh decides what additional amount Apple should receive from Samsung based on the jury's finding that much of the infringement was "willful."
But even without that enhancement, which could add another $2 billion to Samsung's tab, the jury's $1 billion-plus verdict breaks down to just under $48 for each of the roughly 22 million infringing phones sold by Samsung. To the jury, 50 bucks per phone must have sounded like a reasonable figure, and it may well to you too.
But it's not — it's way too high — and here's why: The average smartphone may arguably infringe as many as 250,000 patents, not to mention myriad copyrights and other design-related intellectual property. (Companies don't sift through every patent coming out of Washington before engineering and releasing a product; they create devices and battle claims as necessary.)
NEW YORK: Facebook shares on Thursday sank to a new low after the world's leading social network reported a loss of $157 million in its first earnings after its public offering.
The financial results were largely in line with expectations and were dragged down by reserves set aside for stock grants but investors were evidently spooked by signs that the social network's blistering growth rate is cooling.
Facebook shares plunged more than 11 percent to $23.80 in after-hours trade after the news, which came a day after key Facebook partner Zynga reported disappointing earnings, dampening enthusiasm about social media.
Facebook, which made a market splash in May, said that excluding special items, its results for the second quarter showed a profit of 12 cents a share, in line with most forecasts, as revenue rose to $1.18 billion, a bit above market estimates.
The loss stemmed from accounting rules requiring Facebook to set aside reserves from restricted stock units before 2011, a fact disclosed when the company went public.
According to the rules, Facebook should take a charge against earnings of some $1.3 billion for stock awarded and related expenses.
The results showed growth for Facebook in overall revenue, operating profits and the number of users -- which grew to 955 million by the end of the quarter.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Shares of Facebook Inc. slumped more than 6% Thursday morning ahead of the social network’s first earnings report as a public company, mostly on worries stemming from disappointing results at Zynga Inc.
Analysts were mixed on the read-through from Zynga’s report, issued late Wednesday. The maker of social games such as “FarmVille” and “CityVille” reported lower-than-expected bookings for the second quarter and slashed its forecast for the full year, citing recent changes made by Facebook as one of the reasons for the miss.
Facebook (US:FB) shares were trading down nearly 6% to $27.61 by mid-morning. The stock has been on a mostly downward slope since its controversial IPO in May, though the stock had picked up about 11% from its low-point in early June prior to Thursday.
Zynga (US:ZNGA) shares crashed nearly 40% to near the $3 mark. At least eight brokers downgraded the stock following the disappointing results. Read Ratings Game on Zynga downgrades.
NEWS ANALYSIS: Verizon Wireless and AT&T posted surprisingly strong second-quarter earnings, given that rumors of an upcoming iPhone 5 likely delayed some iPhone sales. While those missed sales hurt Apple, they seem to have benefited the carriers.
Smartphone and tablet usage is up, Americans are burning through more data than ever and the wireless carriers, which have invested billions of dollars to get to this point, are beginning to enjoy the results.
They’re also enjoying what the Apple iPhone has helped to create, even in absentia.
AT&T this quarter announced its “best-ever wireless margins,” a $1 billion wireless data revenue increase from a year ago, and sales of 5.1 million smartphones. Wireless service revenues increased 4.3 percent, to $14.8 billion, and its postpaid ARPU—or, average revenue per user—grew to $64.93.
Verizon Wireless’ wireless service revenues increased 7.3 percent year-over-year, to $15.8 billion. It sold 5.9 million smartphones during the quarter, 3.2 million LTE devices, and raised its ARPU to a three-year high of $56.13.
LAS VEGAS (CNNMoney) -- The iPhone's baked-in security has improved dramatically over the past few years, which is great for Apple fans.
In a weird way, it's good for hackers too.
With the "bring your own device" phenomenon in full-swing, Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) has been successful at getting its iPhones and iPads into the hands of Fortune 500 companies and even many government agencies, including the White House and the U.S. military. To make those sales, Apple had to update its iOS mobile operating system with some of the industry's most robust security features.
That had a nasty unintended consequence: Many app developers no longer put their own safeguards in place, relying instead almost exclusively on Apple to ensure the security of their applications.
With thousands of apps in the iTunes App store all featuring the same exact security features, one single vulnerability could have a domino effect.
The iPhone 4 and iPad we know today are gadgetry in the extreme—digital pieces of paper, if you will. Nothing garish, nothing in excess. And that's mostly true in their prototypes! But some of these leaked early iPhone and iPad prototypes? They're bonkers.
One early iPhone 4 prototype shows edges and angles galore, with diagonal corners, and one of the iPad prototypes even has a kickstand. Yes. A kickstand. You've got to see these.
The pictures of these iPhone and iPad prototypes were found in court documents by BuzzFeed and the Verge. Not all the prototypes were strange though. Some prototypes actually look like they'd be real products.
Above, there's an iPod Nano-inspired iPhone 4 prototype made with brushed aluminum and complete with rounded corners. Another iPhone prototype labeled n90 actually looks amazing—impossibly thin (though thicker in the middle) and skinny, it looks very much like a delightful candybar. Other prototypes look like knockoffs of Apple products you'd see other companies make—inelegant designs that feel forced to be quasi-futuristic.
Apple's third quarter earnings, released this afternoon, were below analysts' predictions.
While the quarter is usually one of the slower ones for the tech giant, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer admitted that speculation surrounding the next iPhone -- what many are calling theiPhone 5 -- has affected sales of current iPhones.
Apple said it sold 26 million iPhones, down from 35.1 million in the previous quarter. Presumably, people put off purchases of phones, waiting for a newer model.
"We're reading the same speculation about a new iPhone as you are, and we think this has caused some delay in purchasing," Oppenheimer said.
Of course he was referring to the flood of rumors about the next iPhone, including the ones that say the next version will have a larger and thinner display, a new dock connector, and a faster processor and graphics.
The topic of the rumors came up numerous times on the earnings call with analysts. But no matter how hard analysts pushed, Cook and Oppenheimer would not talk about their product plans for the remainder of the year.
Can Apple's shift in schedule for iPhone releases hand an advantage to Samsung in the battle for smartphone domination?
Some analysts think it might. The iPhone continues to be the world's single most popular smartphone, but Apple's South Korean rival has snagged the top spot in global handset sales of its array of devices.
The Waiting Game
One advantage Apple has enjoyed since 2007 is anticipation: Fans expect an updated iPhone every summer and a complete refresh every other year. But that cycle was thrown off last year when the hardware giant released first a CDMA version of the 2010 iPhone 4, followed by the upgraded iPhone 4S in the fall.
This year, we're still waiting for a new iPhone and recent comments by a Verizon Wireless exec suggest it may not arrive until the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, Samsung has shipped more than 10 million of its flagship Galaxy S III smartphone into the sales channel in less than three months. That's far less than Apple's 35.1 million iPhones in its fiscal second quarter, but it shows a growing fan base for Samsung devices since the previous Galaxy S devices took longer to get to 10 million.
And Samsung's overall device sales in the quarter just concluded were estimated by Juniper Research at 52.1 million, more than Apple's 26 million for the same quarter.
