Apple sales top $20 billion - a new record!!!

Apple's wildly popular gadget lineup propelled the company to a new all-time sales record of $20 billion, Apple said Monday as it announced its fourth-quarter results.

Calling himself "blown away" by the results, Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised more magic to come: "We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year." 

The company sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter, which represents a 91% increase from this time last year and easily topped even the most bullish estimates from Wall Street analysts.

Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told analysts on a conference call that the company would have sold even more had it been able to keep up with demand. Online, iPhone 4s have been on backorder since the device debuted in July. When pressed by an analyst about Apple's supply chain snags, Cook responded that the manufacturing issues have been mostly solved.

Apple sold 3.9 million Macintosh computers, which was up 27% over the previous quarter and also topped most estimates. The company also sold 250,000 Apple TV devices.

But Apple disappointed investors by selling just 4.2 million iPads in the quarter, up from 3.3 million tablets in the previous quarter. Apple said more than $2.7 billion of its sales, or 13% of its quarterly revenue, came from iPad sales -- a revenue stream that didn't exist just six months ago. But the sales came up short of the roughly 5 million that most analysts had anticipated.

Investors focused on the iPad sales and sent shares of Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) down 5% after hours.

Overall, Apple easily surpassed Wall Street forecasts and turned a profit $4.3 billion, or $4.64 per share -- up 70% from a year earlier.

In a rare move, Jobs joined the conference call, spending most of his time talking about the competition.

Jobs noted that Apple outsold Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry devices in the quarter, saying, "We don't see them passing us in the near future." He argued that RIM needs to improve its software to keep up and will be challenged to compete on that front with Apple.

He also said Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) mobile business model is too fragmented to really compete, with scores of Android devices of different shapes and sizes making it difficult for software developers to write apps for the platform.

"We make products that just work," Jobs said. "[Google's] approach is different than that. We're going to pursue ours, and we think that's the winning approach in the end."

Apple's so-called "walled garden" strategy has so far won it the best applications in the smartphone space, but it has also angered many developers who have been unable to get their apps into Apple's App Store. With increasing competition from Android, Apple recently eased its restrictions on apps for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices.

The CEO saved most of his scathing comments for tablet competitors, which he said weren't even "competitors" but more like "qualified entrants."

He said Android isn't tablet-ready, and noted that most of the competition is releasing tablets with seven-inch screens, compared to the 10-inch screen on the iPad. Since the screen size is measured on the diagonal, Jobs noted that seven inches is actually just 45% as large as 10 inches.

Jobs was also pressed by investors about Apple's giant cash stash, which is closing in on $40 billion. One analyst inquired whether Apple would ever do share buybacks or pay a dividend, but Jobs said the company is happy to hang onto its cash in case it makes a mistake or a strategic opportunity comes along.

The company has a press event scheduled for Wednesday to preview the next version of its Mac operating system.

Google acquires BlindType

Google has acquired a start-up called BlindType that aims to dramatically improve typing on Android and iOS mobile devices.
"We're excited to join Google, and look forward to the great opportunities for mobile innovation that lie ahead," BlindType announced on its blog Friday. The company hasn't released the software, though one review in July was favorable.
Mobile-device typing has changed significantly with the iPhone's functional touch-screen keyboard, Android's reasonably advanced word-prediction system, and Swype's technology for sliding fingers over letters. But as any touch typist or hunt-and-peck tapper knows, mobile typing is still often a frustrating, typo-prone experience.

BlindType believes it's got a better method for matching the letters people actually typed with the ones they meant to type. "BlindType is a revolutionary system that...allows for super sloppy typing largely without looking at the screen...[It] constantly adjusts to the user's 'perceived' keyboard and typing style."
The company's YouTube demos can be impressive, though unlike Android's predictive system, it appears BlindType can only match the word once it's fully typed--changing "vskjieyh" into "ballpark" and "vqsyrudik" into "beautiful," for example, but only after all the letters were typed.
According to BlindType's FAQ, the technology works with any language. The technology could make for a good combination with Google's extensive and international data for automatic spelling corrections culled from its search engine.

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iPod touch to iPhone converter, is it available???

Sometimes hailed as the poor man’s iPhone, the iPod Touch has been a popular device for Apple geeks craving the iOS experience sans the hefty monthly fees. However, a new accessory promises to give the Touch the whole she-bang without the contract.

The Peel, a protective case packed with a SIM card, dock connector and battery, is designed to expand the iPod Touch into a device capable of placing phone calls and sending text messages. Chinese company Yoison Technology developed the gadget, and U.S. company GoSolar announced this month is has signed an agreement to bring the Peel to the states.

“As soon as they arrive, we’ll begin distributing demonstration models to retail buyers across the country,” said GoSolarUSA CEO Tyson Rohde, in a statement. “The amount of interest in this product that we’ve received from distributors has been staggering.”

GoSolar did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but its website suggests that the iPod Touch must be hacked (i.e. jailbroken) in order for it to operate as a phone. And any iOS user is familiar with the fact that Apple regularly wipes out jailbreak hacks with every new iOS update. So in short, as cool as this solution sounds, it sounds less practical than simply using the iPod Touch as a VOIP web phone with third-party apps available through the App Store.

GoSolar did not list a price for the Peel. However, Yoison was selling the gadget for $388 RMB in China, or around $57.

iPhone Tops in customer satisfaction!!!

Traditional wireless cell-phone owners are keeping their devices longer than ever before, and Apple's iPhone is the number-one smartphone in customer satisfaction. Those are some of the conclusions of new studies released Thursday by J.D. Power and Associates measuring customer satisfaction for both traditional mobile phones and smartphones.

Customers are keeping their mobile devices an average of 20.5 months, the longest period since the study began in 1999. The length depends on the brand, with the longest average period at 27.8 months, and the shortest at 17.5 months.

Service Costs Up

Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power, said one possible reason customers are postponing upgrading a device is simply due to the economic downturn. He added that the additional expense could include a new, more expensive service plan, and customers are thinking more carefully about whether the additional expense is worth the benefit.

The average monthly wireless service plan is now $78, including taxes and fees, compared to $69 three years ago. The increases are due to data services and additional usages, such as texting. But while service costs are increasing, device costs are dropping. The survey found the average price of a traditional wireless phone is now $76, down from an average of $81 at the beginning of last year. Nearly half of all respondents said they received a free mobile phone from their carrier as a result of subscribing to the service.

When measuring satisfaction, the survey found that the key factors for smartphones are ease of operation for 26 percent of customers, operating system for 24 percent, physical design for 23 percent, features for 19 percent, and battery function for eight percent.

On a 1,000-point scale for satisfaction, Apple's devices rank 800 and took first place for the fourth straight survey. Second place was taken by Motorola at 791, with HTC third at 781. BlackBerry, Samsung, Palm and Nokia were next, in that order.

LG Tops Among Traditionals

Among traditional handsets, LG is highest for the fourth straight survey with a score of 731. Sanyo ranks second at 712, and Samsung third at 709. Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Kyocera took fourth through seventh places.

Smartphones have become platforms for applications, and the Power study indicates that more than two-thirds of users have downloaded games by third-party developers. Fifty-four percent have downloaded travel software, and 36 percent have done so for business applications.

But a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, released earlier this month, found that only about 24 percent of adults actually use apps. "Having apps and using apps are not synonymous," the Pew report noted.

The Power studies, based on more than 11,000 traditional mobile-phone users and more than 6,800 smartphone users, found that the three best-received mobile operating systems were Apple's iOS, Google's open-source Android, and Palm's webOS.

Has Apple introduced it's iPad as an alternate to the laptops, or AirPrint???

 This week, the Mac maker introduced AirPrint for wirelessly printing from any iOS device. The kicker: There’s “no set up, no configuration, no printer drivers, and no software to download,” Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said in a statement.

AirPrint will be a feature of the forthcoming 4.2 version of iOS. It’s built to automatically detect wireless networks in range of an iOS device, and then automatically negotiate printing privileges. Hewlett-Packard’s  printers will be first to support AirPrint, Apple said in announcing the new software.

The feature comes at an interesting time. According to the latest data from researcher ComScore, Android has stolen Windows Mobile’s market share and put pressure on the BlackBerry and iOS in the process. That’s good news for Google and Android handset sellers Motorola and HTC; bad news for Apple, Microsoft , and Research In Motion. AirPrint may not provide much relief, but I’m not sure it needs to. What’s important is that Apple is focused on making iOS a functional system for mobile business. Adding printing means the more extreme among us could use an iPad as a laptop replacement.

Whether any of us does isn’t really the point. Adding low-maintenance business features such as AirPrint should help Apple appeal to corporate technology managers tasked with holding together an infrastructure built to support hundreds of PCs and smartphones.

That’s my take. Now it’s your turn to weigh in. Will AirPrint become a competitive advantage for iOS and Apple? Please down to leave a comment to explain your thinking.