Nach neusten Informationen von Bloomberg plant Apple ab 2020 eigene und selbstentwickelte, statt Intel-Prozessoren in den Mac-Computern zu verwenden. Die Initiative Kalamata sei noch ganz am Anfang – und auch nur ein Teil eines größeren Software-Umbruches. Apple will demzufolge alle seine Apple-Geräte, darunter Macs, iPhones und iPads einander annähern. Dem Bericht zufolge wäre das ein herber, aber kaum überraschender Schlag für Intel. Etwa 5 Prozent des Jahresumsatzes machen bei Intel Aufträge für Apple. Demzufolge ist Intels Aktienkurs nach Bekanntwerden der Meldung um 9,2 Prozent eingebrochen.

Sacconaghi berichtet weiter, das anderseits die Apples iOS-Suchanfragen etwa 50 Prozent von Googles Mobile-Search-Umsätzen ausmachen. Für den Suchmaschinen-Giganten also ein doppelter Anreiz, weiterhin viel Geld an Apple zu zahlen. Eine sehr lohnende strategische Partnerschaft für beide Seiten. Apple und Google werden wohl noch lange Partner bleiben. Auch wenn beide Seiten viel dafür zahlen.

Die Online-Plattform futurezone berichtet das der taiwanische Auftragsfertiger Foxconn nahezu seine gesamte Produktion auf Roboter umstellen will. 2020 sollen alle chinesischen Foxconn-Standorte einen Automatisierungsgrad von 30 Prozent aufweisen. Das Unternehmen fertigt an mehreren Standorten in China verschiedenste Geräte für große internationale IT-Marken, wie Dell, Apples iPhones, Galaxy-Reihe von Samsung sowie die Sonys Playstation 4. Foxconn gilt u.a. als enger, langjähriger Partner von Apple.

Monotone und repetitive Prozesse sowie gefährliche Arbeitsschritte sollen künftig von Robotern ausgeführt werden. In drei Phasen sollen die von Foxconn entwickelten “Foxbots” die Belegschaft ersetzen, bis zu 1 Million Arbeiter könnten davon betroffen sein. Die Unternehmensstandorte in Chengdu, Shenzhen und Zhengzhou sollen bereits jetzt in die zweite Phase übergehen. Bereits im Mai erklärte der Elektronikfertiger, in seinen Fabriken in China die Zahl der menschlichen Arbeiter von 110.000 auf 50.000 durch den Einsatz von Robotern reduziert zu haben. Zurzeit setzt das Unternehmen ca 40.000 der “intelligenten” und flexiblen Robotersysteme ein. Jedes Jahr kommen circa 10.000 weitere hinzu.

Das IHS hat ein iPhone SE zerlegt. Es ging dem Marktforschungsunternehmen dabei nicht um die Reparierbarkeit des iPhone, sondern interessanter Weise um die Material und Fertigungskosten. Diese liegen für das 16 GB-Modell bei ca. 160 Dollar, rund 140 Euro. Der Löwenanteil dabei entfällt auf das Material mit ca. 156,20 Dollar. Für die 16GB-Variante zahlt man knapp 400 Dollar und damit mehr als das Doppelte. In dieser Rechnung sind weder die Kosten für Entwicklung noch für den Transport enthalten. IHS-Analyst Andrew Rassweiler meint, dass die 64 GB-Version Apple deutlich mehr Profit bringt: „Apple verkauft das Telefon mit dem größeren Speicher für 100 Dollar mehr, hat selbst aber nur 10 Dollar zusätzliche Kosten.”

Ein Mitarbeiter von Foxconn hat die Daten zum kommenden Apple iPhone 7C veröffentlicht. Bei Foxconn werden Millionen von iPhones produziert. China Mobile beschreibt mit diesen neuen Daten ein recht genaues Bild zum kommenden 4-inch Einsteiger Modell das im April 2016 auf den Markt kommt. Das neue Apple iPhone 7C wird für etwa 420 Euro in die Läden kommen. Offizielle Fotos liegen noch nicht vor. Diese Modelle kommen dem original sehr Nahe.

Optisch wird sich das iPhone 7C wie ein Hybrid des iPhone 5S vorstellen. Es wird mit einem 4-inch Display ausgestattet sein und bekommt einen Appl A9 mit 2GB RAM und 16GB interner Speicher. Die rueckseitige Kamera wird eine Aufloesung von 8MP haben und der Akku ist mit 1642mAh ausgestattet. Touch ID soll integriert sein. Produktionsbeginn ist Januar 2016.

Quelle designbuzz.com

VIA designbuzz.com

In einer Dokumentation für die BBC berichten Reporter mit versteckter Kamera über die verheerende Zustände in den Produktionsstätten von Pegatron in Shanghai, einem der wichtigsten Zulieferer für Apple in Asien. Der Technologiekonzern Apple präsentiert sich gerne als Vorzeige-Unternehmen wenn es um die Zufriedenheit seiner Mitarbeiter geht. Man könnte meinen, Apple sei der beliebteste Arbeitgeber weltweit. Doch die heile Welt hat tiefe Risse. Immer wieder bringen chinesische Zuliefererfirmen das heile Weltimage zum wanken. 16-Stunden-Schichten sind hier keine Seltenheit, bis zur völligen körperlichen Erschöpfung werden die Arbeitet ausgenutzt. In Indonesien fanden BBC-Journalisten 12-jährige Kinder, die für die Produktion von iPhones eingesetzt werden.

Quelle businessinsider

Quelle bbc

Im Kampf um Marktanteile hat Samsung einen neuen coolen Werbespot veröffentlicht. Hierin werden die iPhone-Nutzer als steckdosensuchende “Wall Hugger” bezeichnet. Die Batterielaufzeit ist ein starkes Argument für den Verkauf der Galaxy Modelle gegenüber den aktuellen iPhones. Das iPhones 5c von Apple beeindruckte dennoch zuletzt mit sehr guten Verkaufszahlen und verkaufte sich besser als die Samsung-Konkurrenz.

Nach Meinung von Samsung haben die aktuellen iPhones einen sehr großen Nachteil, und das ist die geringere Akkulaufzeit. Ein direkter Vergleich bei Chip zeigt dass das Galaxy S5 eine gute Stunde weniger ohne Steckdose auskommt als das Konkurrenzmodell und Apple-Flaggschiff 5s. Hierauf wird nachdücklich in dem Spot hingewiesen. Der Ausdruck “Wall Hugger” stammt eigentlich von Blackberry-Chef John Chen, der sich so im März über die schwachen iPhone-Akkus lustig machte.

Quelle maclife

WSJ: There is a perception that Apple’s no longer a growth company. How do you respond to that?

Cook: Last year, we grew (revenue) by $14 billion to $15 billion. Yes, those percentages are smaller compared to a year earlier and two years earlier and so forth. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not a growth company. We were in hyper-growth, or whatever is above growth. We went from $65 billion to over $100 billion to $150 billion to $170 billion. These are historic, unprecedented numbers. I don’t know any companies adding growth at that level. So when you say $14 billion to $15 billion compared to those numbers, it’s clearly smaller and a smaller percentage, but, to put it in some context, that’s like adding three Fortune 500 companies in a year. I think that’s hard to say that’s not a growth company.

[The last quarter] was an interesting quarter in a lot of ways. It was our highest revenue ever. It was our best iPhone sales, best iPad sales and one of our best Mac quarters ever and this is in an environment where the PC industry is shrinking. And we grow by 19%, that’s pretty fantastic.

We always look at the underlying health of our businesses. And what I mean by that is we look at sell-through because that’s what’s most important to us. About 70% of our business is indirect, 30% is direct. In that 70%, we look at great detail of what’s selling through. So when you look at the sell through, the iPhone was actually higher than the sell-in so I care more about that.

WSJ: What’s happening in emerging markets?

Cook: One of the challenges for us for the last few years is to begin to penetrate in emerging markets. If you look at the Mac and iPod, these products did exceptionally well in the developed markets – in the U.S., in Australia, UK, France, Germany and Japan — but the iPod never really took off in emerging markets. The Mac has sold some units in emerging markets but not large units. So it was really iPhone that was Apple’s first product that really introduced a large number of people in China, Russia, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines. And last quarter, those set of countries grew over 30%.

In China, if you look at the last 12 months, we’ve done $29 billion to $30 billion in revenue there in greater China. I don’t know of any other American company that does that kind of business in China or anywhere close. These are things that we’re really proud of and we worked really hard at.

The China Mobile roll-out of LTE (fourth-generation wireless) takes place over a year. And even with adding China Mobile, we still only present our products to two-thirds of the subscribers in the world. In fact, this quarter, we’ll sign on 50 new carriers.

WSJ: Was the weakness in developed countries?

Cook: North America was a challenge. We had no growth basically as you could see from our results and that of course pulls down the top line because the weight is so large.

Japan is a very key market for us. Japan is roughly 9% of our revenue. This is strange for a U.S. company to have that percentage of revenue in Japan. The dollar has gotten so strong that last quarter, our revenue growth in Japan was 11%. At constant currency from year before, it would have been 37%. When you lose 26 points on a currency conversion and it’s 9% (of the total), it takes off a couple of points on the macro-side.

WSJ: You’ve said Apple will be entering new product categories in 2014. Does that include new improvements to existing products?

Cook: It goes to the heart of what is innovation. We’ve had a prolific period of innovation. We’ve had enormous new products over the last several months with the iPad Air, the iPad Mini with Retina display. We’ve had Mavericks (the new Macintosh operating system). We’ve had iOS 7. We’ve had iTunes Radio. Basically we re-did the entire Macintosh line. We came out with two phones at the same time for the first time ever with the iPhone 5C and the iPhone 5S. And the dream of using your fingerprint for authentication has come true. Innovation at Apple is alive and well. But all of that being said, we can do more.

We don’t believe we can do things at the level of quality and link things as we want to between hardware, software and services so seamlessly if we do a lot of stuff. So we’re going to stick with our knitting with only doing a few things and doing them great. There will be new categories and we’re working on some great stuff. We’re not ready to talk about it. We’re really working on some really great stuff. I think no one reasonable would say they’re not a new category.

I think Apple can grow well with great improvements and new products on its existing category of products. We haven’t exactly hit a ceiling with products like the iPhone. There are still a lot of people buying feature phones. There are a lot of people still buying smartphones that they use like a feature phone but it’s labeled as a smartphone.

We said early on that the tablet business would be bigger than the PC business. If anything, that’s happening sooner than we thought. There’s still a lot of PCs being sold and a lot of those users would have a better experience on an iPad than a PC. We still view that as an opportunity.

And we haven’t given up on the Mac. A lot of people are throwing in the towel right now on the PC. We’re still spending an enormous amount on really great talent and people on the Macs of the future. And we have some really cool things coming out there. Because we believe as people walk away from the PC, it becomes clear that the Mac is what you want if you want a PC.

We don’t think about our size and we don’t manage the company like a big company, but we did sell $171 billion worth of stuff last year.

WSJ: Does market share in smartphones matter to you? You often say Apple wants to make the best, not the most?

Cook: I look at the mobile phone market as having three kinds of phones: feature phones, smartphones that function as or are used as feature phones, and real smartphones. I care about the market share of the last one. I don’t care how many feature phones are sold. The more that are sold I look at as good because those are all potential future customers for real smartphones. The same thing goes for the second category. I’d like to convert as many of those as possible to real smartphones.

Once again, I do care about that last category and you want to be relevant. (Among true smartphones), we’re number one in the U.S., we’re number one in Canada, we’re number one in Japan, we’re number two in Western Europe, we’re number two in Eastern Europe. We’re number two in Asia when you take Japan out. So in most geographies, in most major regions of the world, we’re one or two. Would I like to be one in the places where we are two? You better believe it. If there is a way we can do that without changing where our line is on a great product, then we’re going to do it. But what we’re not going to do is we’re not going to make junk. We’re not going to put Apple’s brand on something someone else designed.

I don’t view that as being satisfied with being small or however you want to define it. It’s not saying that market share is irrelevant or not important. I’ve never said that. I just always tried to say that the macro thing for us is to make a great product and we must do that.

WSJ: People want a bigger screen iPhone. Are you against that?

Cook: What we’ve said is that until the technology is ready, we don’t want to cross that line. That doesn’t say we’ll never do it. We want to give our customers what’s right in all respects – not just the size but in the resolution, in the clarity, in the contrast, in the reliability. There are many different parameters to measure a display and we care about all those, because we know that’s the window to the software.

WSJ: Will the smartphone market follow the PC market, where Apple is a niche player?

Cook: I don’t view it that way. There are several reasons. If you look back at the Mac/Windows battle that was going on at the time, you’d find that one of the things that was the catalyst for separating Mac from Windows share was applications. There was a vast, vast difference in the number of applications that was available for the Macintosh than what was available on Windows. Over time, that gap grew and grew and grew. And in fact, the Mac began to lose some key applications. We have over a million apps on iOS. We have over half-million that have been optimized for iPad. That half-million compares to 1,000 for Android tablets. That’s one of the reasons, although not the only reason, why the experience on Android tablets is so crappy because the app is nothing more than a stretched out smartphone app.

The other thing is that Windows pretty much was one thing. Android is like Europe. Europe was a name that somebody came up with for Americans who didn’t understand that Europe was a lot of countries that weren’t like U.S. states. They were very different. Android is many things. How many people who use a Kindle know that they’re using Android? And you see what Samsung is doing by putting more and more software on top. I think it’s night and day. The compare is so off.

So, no, I don’t see it as same. And I’m not saying this just because I am at Apple because I do understand the PC world at that time because I was in it. It was totally different. If you really talk to the people who went through it and understood it at a deep level, I don’t think any of them would tell you it’s the same.

WSJ: What did you think of Google selling MotorolaMSI +1.89% to Lenovo?

Cook: I wasn’t surprised. It seems like a logical transaction. Google gets rid of something that’s losing money, something that they’re not committed to. I think it’s really hard to do hardware, software and services and to link all those things together. That’s what makes Apple so special. It’s really hard, so I’m not surprised that they are not going to do that.

WSJ: Some investors want you to be more aggressive about returning cash. What’s your view?

Cook: We started to return (cash) to shareholders in 2012. It was a combination of dividends and share repurchases. We more than doubled the program in 2013. When we did that, we became one of the largest dividend payers in the world and we had the largest share repurchase program in history. We recognize that we have more money than we need to run our business and invest for the future and invest in new products and acquire new companies and invest in capex, etc. We fully recognized that. We even said after we more than doubled it that we’re going to look at this thing every year. And each time we do this, we go back out to shareholders and listen to them. They’re owners of the company. We’re looking at tax policy. It’s a fairly complex set of things to consider. It’s not a simple thing.

But we also wanted a program that’s flexible. We wanted to take advantage of opportunities that came our way. Those opportunities may be acquisitions. In the last 15 months, we’ve acquired 21 companies. We’re doing it low-key. We’re not making big announcements about these. It shows that we’re looking a lot. I think we’ve made smart purchases.

WSJ: What about Carl Icahn’s proxy proposal to distribute another $50 billion in cash by September, beyond your existing plans?

Cook: We think you want a cash-return program that’s flexible. We may see a huge company tomorrow that we want to acquire or something may happen in the stock market that’s unpredictable. You want to be able to adjust for the long-term interest of the shareholders, not for the short-term shareholder, not for the day trader.

We’re trying to build a company for the long term, so that’s how we look at these decisions. We’re still re-evaluating, getting shareholder input and in March or April, we’ll be out with how we’re going to update the plan that we announced last year. In the meantime, we’re executing to what we announced but in a much more accelerated way because of the opportunity that existed.

WSJ: Apple has never made a billion-dollar acquisition. Google is snapping up everyone including your old friends at Nest. Does this alter how you think about bigger deals?

Cook: We’ve looked at big companies. We don’t have a predisposition not to buy big companies. The money is also not burning a hole in our pocket where we say let’s make a list of 10 and pick the best one. We’re not doing that. We have no problem spending ten figures for the right company that’s the right and that’s in the best interest of Apple in the long-term. None. Zero.

Quelle wsj.com

Noch nie hat der amerikanischen Elektronikkonzern Apple so viele iPhones und iPads verkauft wie in den vergangenen drei Monaten: 51 Millionen iPhones, 26 Millionen iPads, 4,8 Millionen Macs und immerhin noch 6 Millionen iPods. Der Umsatz lag bei 57,6 Milliarden Dollar. Das sind neue Rekordzahlen, beim iPhones und iPads aber auch die Macs konnten im Vergleich zum Vorjahr wieder anziehen, insgesamt wurden 4,8 Millionen verkauft. Dagegen wurden 55 Prozent weniger iPods verkauft,

Die Zahlen lagen laut Tim Cook eher unter den Erwartungen. Analysten hatten die iPhone-Verkäufe auf 55 Millionen geschätzt, knapp um 4 Millionen verschätzt. Apple konnte sein Umsatzwachstum wieder etwas beschleunigen. Der Gewinn blieb aber anders als erwartet in den vorangegangenen Quartalen auf dem Vorjahresniveau. Die Wall Street zeigte sich vom iPhone-Absatz unbeeindruckt. Apple verfehlte die Erwartungen, und der Ausblick auf das nächste Quartal fällt schwächer aus. Der Aktienkurs von Apple sackte zeitweise um 8 Prozent auf 506 Dollar ab und ist von seinem Höchststand im September 2012 weit entfernt.