In a note to clients, Abramsky raised his global outlook for iPad sales in 2010 from 5 million to 8 million, while his third quarter — end of June — iPad sales forecast is up from 1.5 million to 2.5 million. Apple recently announced it had officially sold its one millionth iPad in just 28 days, while unprecedented demand has been blamed for an international launch delay. For lucky customers who pre-ordered, the iPad will finally be available in the UK next Friday, 28 May, while the Apple online store currently lists “Ships: By June 7th” for all six versions of the iPad.

Abramsky also speculates that Apple could sell 23 million next generation iPhones, dubbed the iPhone HD in recent reports, globally in 2010, or 58 per cent of all iPhone sales for the year. Apple could unveil a new iPhone as early as next month, when the company holds the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2010, which this year runs between 7 and 11 June. Abramsky suggests 20 per cent of all 1,000 respondents surveyed intend to buy the fourth incarnation of the iPhone, more than twice the number who claimed they would buy Apple’s smartphone when it first launched in 2007.

The world’s biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia, has filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming the iPad 3G and iPhone infringe five of its patents.

Nokia claims the infringements involve technology used to enhance speech and data transmission and antenna innovations for compact devices.

This is the latest salvo in a long-running legal battle between the two companies.

Nokia and Apple are embroiled in another dispute concerning the iPhone.

“We’ve taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation,” said Paul Melin, general manager of patent licensing at Nokia.

In a statement, the company said that during the past two decades Nokia has invested about $51bn (£34bn) in research and development and has rounded up 11,000 patents.

Last year Nokia filed a similar lawsuit which claimed that various Apple products infringed Nokia patents. Apple responded with a countersuit against Nokia for infringing Apple patents with its smartphones.

Meanwhile, Apple is also involved in another legal row with Taiwan’s HTC, maker of Google’s Nexus One phone, which it says has infringed patented technology.

Patent disputes are common in the technology industry and often end with some kind of licensing agreement, correspondents say.

The Nokia lawsuit came on the day Apple announced that its iPad tablet computer will go on sale in nine countries outside the US on 28 May.

It was exactly a month ago today that the iPad first found its way into customers’ hands, and already Apple has blithely traipsed past the million sales mark. The auspicious 3G iPad was first sold on Friday, just 28 days after its introduction. The company previously sold 300,000 of the Wi-Fi-only iPads in its first day of availability, including pre-orders.

“One million iPads in 28 days–that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a statement. “Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.”

The original iPhone may be a good barometer for the iPad’s success, though it’s worth noting that subsequent versions such as the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS each hit the same milestone in their first weekend. But the iPad, even more so than the iPhone, is a device in an unproven, entirely novel category, which makes the accomplishment all the more impressive.

Plus, the iPad sales bring with it sales of additional products: iPad users have already downloaded more than 12 million applications and more than 1.5 million e-books from the iBookstore. And the number of iPad-specific apps continues to rise, with Apple’s latest figure topping 5,000.

If nothing else, one million sales would seem to validate the iPad as a product. We’ll have to wait until Apple’s next quarterly results in July to see how it plays out for the company’s bottom line, but until then, have no fear: analysts will no doubt fill that vacuum with endless amounts of speculation.

[source:macworld]

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, said Tuesday in a statement. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

HTC makes a number of mobile phones based on Google’s Android operating system.

Apple said that the lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

More to follow.

[Source:Cnet News]

From the movie Downfall.

Though the iPhone can be considered Apple’s next-generation MessagePad, after much speculation Apple’s long-rumored entrance into tablet computing has finally arrived. In the past few weeks the hype has ramped up all over the Web, with fake images, speculation based on domain name registrations, “leaked” advertisements, patent investigations, and comments from various tech and media CEOs, all of which have built quite a stir around the latest “creation” from Apple. Today Apple has put the rumors to rest with the announcement of the iPad; however, what is the purpose of this device and will it succeed?

Apple’s Tablet, in a nutshell

At first glance, the device does not look like much, and, as rumored, it basically resembles a large iPhone, complete with a home button and glass touch screen. True to the style that has come to define Apple products, the device looks simple and well-built, with a rigid glass display and a inch or so of bezel area around the display. The display is a full capacitive multitouch panel, as was expected, but is also an LED-backlit IPS (In-Plane Switching) display that has a great viewing angle. The back is aluminum, and there are various connectors on the sides for power, sleep, and volume controls.

On the inside, Apple has given us a surprise. The device uses an Apple-designed chip it is calling the “A4,” which runs at 1GHz and is used for managing everything: processing, graphics, and I/O. The system has between 16 and 64GB of memory, contains Bluetooth and EDR wireless connectivity, has a speaker, and microphone, and also contains Apple’s accelerometers, ambient light sensors, and digital compass with assisted GPS technologies. There is a 30-pin connector for attaching the device to computers, but it also uses Bluetooth and Enhanced Data Rate technologies for fast wireless access up to 3Mbps. The device has a powerful battery that gives up to 10 hours of usage, and nearly a month of standby time.

Apple has not omitted the option for 3G connectivity. The system contains 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-fi options, but also can directly tap into UMTS/HSDPA and GSM/EDGE 3G wireless networks, and come unlocked and without any contract so if your wireless carrier uses a GSM micro SIM, it should “just work.” Despite this, the capability to make phone calls does not appear to be available, but then again it is not a phone. The one missing feature in the iPad is an internal camera, but there may be ways to add one as an accessory, though Apple has not mentioned any support for this. In terms of software capability, similar to the iPhone, the device seems to be limited when it comes to multitasking.

As for the price, despite rumors of Apple targeting around $1,000, it has been able to provide all of this in the range of $499 to $699, and we should start seeing them hitting store shelves in about two months.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he promoted it as an all-in-one communications device for music, telecommunications, Web, and computing, and not just a phone that includes these other features. Given that the features of the iPad are similar to the iPhone’s, Apple clearly intends for this device to be used in a variety of areas to offer an all-in-one package for connectivity, computing, gaming, and any other task you might think of.

The popularity of the iPhone has made it a raging success, and it, along with other “smart” devices, has shown Apple and other manufacturers that consumers are ready for a tablet. In order to create its tablet, Apple had to ride a wave of consumer-readiness and incorporated the technologies and approaches to computing that have come to define computing in the modern era.

Apple leading the industry

Over the years the computer industry has taken a variety of turns, with numerous trends and speculation on where technology will go. There have been dives into multiple GPUs, Netbooks, and solid-state storage, all of which have been beneficial, but none that offered anything unique. These advancements have helped the industry; however, they all essentially took the same existing concepts and made them faster. In contrast, Apple’s contributions have been key steps forward in how we use our computers.

1. Bondi-blue iMac: Simplicity goes mainstreamIn large part, I would argue that this computer was the beginning of the modern era of computing. With one product Apple did away with the notion of computers being both complex and difficult to assemble and use, and presented users with the first “Internet” Mac. It got rid of old ports and protocols, and thrust modern USB, Firewire, and Ethernet networking upon everyone (though they still kept modems). It also killed the notion that computers had to be in bland beige boxes, and made computing attractive to the average person. Once the iMac debuted, the race was on to add simplicity, along with style and luster to computing.
2. OS X: A slick and adaptable operating systemThe OS X operating system is by far the enabling factor behind all of Apple’s breakthrough products. The system is built in a way that allows Apple to strip it down and customize it for a variety of applications. While we all know of it as the “Mac” OS, its foundation and supported technologies are also used in the iPhone, iPod Touch, and AppleTV.
3. iPod: Portable computing “in your pocket”Portable audio has been around for ages, and since the Sony Walkman there have been a variety of options. However, with the iPod, Apple not only introduced a simple and stylish media player, but also brought extreme portability to computing. In addition to playing music, it had options for storing notes, contacts, and calendars, and even included games. It also could be used to store personal files, and, through third-party hacks even be used to run Linux. Its popularity skyrocketed, and the race was on to get smaller, lighter, and more “in your pocket”.
4. iPhone: Easy and customizable communicationAnother major advancement was communication. With broadband connectivity being readily available on a variety of network types (both public and private), the iPhone became the pinnacle of style, portability, and connectivity in computing. Finally you could have many of the benefits of Apple’s other products rolled into one.
5. Gestures: A natural approach to inputAlong with the iPhone, Apple introduced the last major advancement in consumer computing: Gestures. Touch-based electronics have been around for ages, but in Apple’s implementation touch has come to mean a lot more than “no buttons.” Apple’s incorporation of “Gestures” has taken advantage of how we naturally use things. Sure Microsoft and other companies have had “Magic Tables” and other large multitouch devices, but Apple was the first to truly implement it into the computers and other devices we use on a daily basis.

Did Apple invent the technologies behind these advancements? Absolutely not. However, it did make optimal use of them and did so in ways that made them both last and propagate throughout the industry. The majority of Apple’s advancements have seen a number of imitations crop up from other manufacturers, but Apple’s solid implementations have keep them ahead of the game.

So where does the iPad fit in?

There have been a number of efforts at creating the next big thing, and while the idea of “smaller and lighter” has been an understood concept, numerous attempts at applying this to computers have been less than exciting. Miniature Netbooks are nothing new, and I would argue that the popularity of them just reflects the desire to go smaller and lighter, but does not reflect any attraction to the ingenuity in the developments so far. Most Netbooks have basically been stripped-down laptops, and while their size and weight is nice, I’d much prefer to carry around a larger laptop than work on what appears to be one but really is not.

The biggest advancements have been in mobile smartphones, and particularly those that incorporate touch. However, until now the touch implementations, even when done well, have been rather limited. This is mainly because of the small areas that have been available upon which to do them. In Apple’s products, the iPhone and MacBook trackpads are quite small for elaborate gestures, and to avoid potential confusion Apple has avoided enabling numerous alternative gestures. The large surface of the tablet takes touch and gestures to a whole new level, and really allows people to interact with the device using their whole hand.

With the iPad, Apple has finally made an attempt to blend all the recent advancements in modern computing into one product. Being a larger platform with support for a variety of gestures, the new iPad brings all the computing benefits of the iPhone with similar portability. Granted it will not exactly fit in your pocket, but it is still small enough to easily travel anywhere with you.

As for what you can do, Apple has added a slew of unique features to the iPad. In addition to running all the applications available for iPhone, it has a whole new “iBooks” store for browsing and building a book library. Apple has apparently worked hard with Amazon to bring this functionality to the iPad.

Apple’s iWork suite has also been brought to the iPad, offering full integration with the iPad’s photo features, and a new set of interfaces to make working with multitouch more intuitive and appealing. It appears the current options for this device are only the beginning, and we will see what the thing is truly capable of when third-party developers start revealing their applications for it.

Jobs may be ready to step away from Apple, but not before completing a tablet as his magnum opus.

On smartphones, Apple was late to the market, but if there is another vendor doing a better job of currently defining what a smartphone is, I don’t know who they are. With smartbooks, a new class of product based on smartphone technology that looks like a netbook computer, the market hasn’t even really launched, and already Apple appears to be moving to define it.

Word is they are rushing to try to have a product into the market in the fourth quarter. Were this anyone else, I’d say they had a snowball’s chance in hell of making it, but this is Apple, which likely has a patent on hell snowballs, so let’s chat about the Apple iPad this week.

iPod Sales Slowing

In what was a stellar quarter last quarter from Apple, the one really troubling mark was that iPod sales were slowing. Now, part of this was Apple drawing down inventories in advance of what will likely be a broad product refresh in August or early September, but I think it reflects on the fact that people are focusing more and more on smartphones, and not as excited about MP3 players as they once were. This suggests that Apple needs to move to the next big thing after the iPod, and while they are partially hedging this decline with the iPhone, it will probably be a long time (if ever) before iPhones will ever replace iPods.

Apple needs something exciting this year, and what better than something new and very different.

Newton + Tablet Done Right?

Steve Jobs both panned the idea of a Newton and a tablet PC, and strangely enough, the iPhone, iPod Touch and now this planned iPad are all combinations of both concepts. The iPad is likely the closest to what the Newton was evolving into given its size and capabilities, and the rumored design is identical to a tablet PC, albeit a small one.

If this were anybody else, I’d figure the chances that this will be successful to be slim or none, but Apple’s iPod Touch and iPhone have a user interface that will at least scale to 10 inches (the rumored screen size of this new device), and should work just fine.

Content is Key: Overcoming The Apple TV Problem

The problem for Apple, much like it was for the iPod, which it got done, and Apple TV, which it didn’t, is getting access to the media folks want to watch and play with on the device. It will be about the size of a Kindle DX, but it will need a decent book library if it is going to be used in that fashion. Luckily, there is a Kindle reader already for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but even Amazon doesn’t have perfect access (for instance, the Harry Potter books aren’t available on a Kindle). And Apple has never wanted anyone else to own the critical services on any of their devices in the first place.

Apple TV

This would be a great portable movie and TV viewer as well, but the lack of great content is what has plagued theAppleTV and kept it from joining the iPod, iPhone, and iMac on stage as a truly innovative product. Without decent video content, this just won’t scale to the kind of audience that the iPod or even the iPhone will enjoy. This is probably the most troubling aspect for Apple, because it didn’t really pull this off for Apple TV, and this may suggest the company can’t actually get it done this time either.

Price: Purchase and Wireless

Price will be important too, and it is hard to believe that many of these things will sell at the rumored $800 price. Smartbooks are actually expected to price out below $300 for the most part, and even if Apple were to go for a massive margin, you would think it could bring one out for under $600, if not $500, and hit a price that more would find compelling while still at the high end of the segment. With folks screaming about a sub-$500 Kindle, an $800 device would be difficult to move.

One final problem to work though is wireless access. The Kindle’s bundled HSDPA access from Sprint is wonderful, but it adds several hundred dollars to the price of the device, and putting the iPad on a data plan from a carrier like AT&T would potentially allow an iPhone-like sub-$300 price point. But it would also add a $50 or higher data plan.

These expensive data plans remain problematic, but Wi-Fi isn’t prevalent enough, WiMax isn’t widespread enough, and LTE hasn’t been rolled out yet, which will make the connectivity solution a real problem to solve.

Wrapping Up

If the iPod was a difficulty level of six, and the iPhone was eight, then the iPad will be something like 10 on a scale of one to 10. This will be one of the most difficult products Apple has ever tried to bring to market. Any other company would probably fail, but Apple isn’t any other company. Even if it fails, Apple will have created a potentially unique and advanced offering which could easily blaze the trail for more successful products to follow. I wouldn’t bet on Apple to fail, though. It does that very seldom, and given this may be Steve Jobs’ swan song product, there likely will be more emphasis on getting it right than on any product that came before it.

Given that we tend to remember either the first thing someone does or the last (it’s called primacy or recency) and we think of Steve Jobs now more as the father of the iPhone than the father of the Mac, there is a good chance he will be remembered for this iPad. For his sake, (and for the sake of his employees, given he doesn’t have a sense of humor on this stuff) this had better be a home run.

We’ll see. One thing is for sure: It will be incredibly exciting and I’ll bet Steve, if he can, will actually present this one. You see, this thing could actually become an eBook, smartphone, and netbook killer, and if it did, what a swan song for Steve it would be.

On Jan. 5, Google (GOOG) did a very Apple-like thing. In a presentation at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., the 11-year-old search behemoth unveiled Nexus One, a stylish touchscreen smartphone that runs on the company’s Android operating system, is sold through a Google-operated retail Web site, and greets the market with an advertising tagline (“Web meets phone”) as simple and optimistic as the one Apple used in 2007 to introduce its iPhone (“The Internet in your pocket”).

On the same day, Apple did a very Google-like thing. Steve Jobs, the king of splashy product launches and in-house development, announced a strategic acquisition. For $275 million, Apple purchased Quattro Wireless, an upstart advertising company that excels at targeting ads to mobile-phone users based on their behavior.

When companies start to imitate one another, it’s usually either an extreme case of flattery—or war. In the case of Google and Apple, it’s both. Separated by a mere 10 miles in Silicon Valley, the two have been on famously good terms for almost a decade. Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, both 54, spent years in separate battles against Microsoft (MSFT) while Schmidt was at Sun Microsystems (JAVA) and Novell (NOVL). Over time, they went from spiritual allies to strategic ones. When Apple had an opening on its board in 2006, Jobs tapped Schmidt. “Eric is obviously doing a terrific job as CEO of Google,” Jobs said at the time. Schmidt, meanwhile, called Apple “one of the companies in the world that I most admire.”

Tensions in Silicon Valley’s special relationship began to emerge in late 2007, when Google announced plans to develop Android for mobile phones. Apple had unveiled its iPhone in January of that year, and it was clear that the two companies would spar in the smartphone business. Still, both were niche players, with more formidable rivals in companies like Nokia (NOK), Samsung, and Research In Motion (RIMM). Only after software developers began creating thousands of mobile apps, and it became clear that phones would become the computers of the future, did the conflicts begin to grow serious. Last summer, Apple refused to approve two Google apps for sale to iPhone users, raising questions about how much of a Google presence Apple would allow on its devices. In August, Schmidt gave up his board seat. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses,” Jobs said at the time, “Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings.”

Now the companies have entered a new, more adversarial phase. With Nexus One, Google, which had been content to power multiple phonemakers’ devices with Android, enters the hardware game, becoming a direct threat to the iPhone. With its Quattro purchase, Apple aims to create completely new kinds of mobile ads, say three sources familiar with Apple’s thinking. The goal isn’t so much to compete with Google in search as to make search on mobile phones obsolete. “Apple and Google both want more,” says Chris Cunningham, founder of the New York mobile advertising firm Appssavvy. “They’re gearing up for the ultimate fight.”

Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton declined to comment on the company’s advertising plans or its relationship with Google. Google spokeswoman Katie Watson said the company would not make executives available for this story. She did provide a statement, attributed to Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice-president of engineering: “Apple is a valued partner of ours and we continue to work closely with them to help move the entire mobile ecosystem forward.”

THE MOVE TO MOBILE

The tech industry has had its share of legendary rivalries: IBM (IBM) vs. Digital Equipment Corp., Microsoft vs. Netscape, America Online vs. Yahoo! (YHOO) Apple vs. Google could dwarf them all. Both companies are revered by consumers with a passion usually reserved for movie stars and pro athletes. They have multibillion-dollar war chests, visionary founders, and ambitions for smartphones, Web browsers, music, and tablet computers that set them on a collision course.

The key battleground in the near term is mobile computing. Analysts who once tingled when talking about the Internet are getting that same old feeling over mobile’s potential. Morgan Stanley’s (MS) Mary Meeker predicts that within five years more users will tap into the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs. Desktop Internet use led to the rise of Google, eBay (EBAY), and Yahoo, but the mobile winners are still emerging. “Now is the time to get going,” says Doug Clinton, an analyst with Piper Jaffray (PJC). “It’s about winning the battle today rather than getting into the fight tomorrow.” Billions of dollars are up for grabs in selling phones, software, and services.

The money in mobile advertising is small—about $2 billion last year, according to researcher Gartner, compared with $60 billion for the overall Web. But figuring out how to make mobile advertising more profitable is a lot more important than merely getting in as the hockey-stick curve begins to move upward. A company that can nail mobile ads and share the wealth with the growing legion of app developers—freelance software writers who create all those sometimes-useful (Business Card Reader), sometimes time-killing (Flick Fishing) mobile programs—could pull in the best of the lot. Create the strongest ecosystem of apps and devices, and, the thinking goes, you leave rivals gasping to keep up. “The mobile platform that creates the most ways to make money wins,” says David Hyman, chief executive of MOG, an Internet music service that’s developing mobile apps.

Apple has a substantial lead in establishing this ecosystem. Developers have created more than 125,000 mobile applications for Apple devices—seven times as many as exist on Android—and the endless diversity of apps has helped the iPhone quickly pick up 14% of smartphone share, compared with 3.5% for all the Android-powered devices put together, according to estimates by the market research firm IDC. But in the past few months, an increasing number of app developers have complained that they couldn’t make money on their work. Free apps have become the norm, and very few sell for more than 99 cents. Some developers have profited by embedding ads in their apps, but the payments tend to be insignificant since the ads are usually smaller, less effective versions of their Web banner forms. According to a source familiar with his thinking, Jobs has recognized that “mobile ads suck” and that improving that situation will make Apple even harder to beat.

Not one to shy away from a challenge, particularly when it offends his aesthetic sensibilities, Jobs and his lieutenants have discussed ways to overhaul mobile advertising in the same way they had revolutionized music players and phones, say two sources close to the company. The sources did not reveal specific plans at Apple but say there are several possible ad approaches. Apple could employ its user data and geo-location technology to make ads more relevant, so that a user cruising the mobile Web at lunchtime could receive an ad for specials at a nearby restaurant. It could also use the iPhone’s capabilities in creative ways—say, having someone shake the device to win a rebate the same way they do to roll dice in games.

To pull any of this off, Apple realized that it needed a network of advertisers and the technology to target ads to customer behavior. In fall 2009, Apple entered the bidding for AdMob, the leader in the nascent mobile advertising industry. It was a target that made perfect sense; more than half of the AdMob ads served up on smartphones ended up on the iPhone or iPod Touch (which also run Apple’s apps). But before Apple could close the deal, Google intervened, announcing on Nov. 8 that it would pay a staggering $750 million for the company.

Outbid on its first choice, Apple quickly turned to Waltham (Mass.)-based Quattro Wireless, AdMob’s closest rival. Tellingly, when Apple announced the deal, Jobs gave Quattro CEO Andrew Miller the title of vice-president of mobile advertising. Vice-president is a rare title at Apple, and Miller is the first one ever assigned to online advertising. Apple has also hired an M&A specialist to better compete for deals (box).

For almost any company, taking on Google in search advertising would be folly. Google dominates traditional search with more than 65% of the market, and its share of search on mobile phones is even more imposing. More than a million businesses bid on keywords to show up alongside search results, and most experts have assumed a migration to mobile devices as more people use them for computing tasks.

Yet mobile search hasn’t taken off. Gartner estimates that $924 million was spent on mobile search ads worldwide last year, less than 2% of overall Internet advertising. The problem is that user behavior isn’t consistent between desktops and mobile devices. Many people shy away from calling up minuscule search bars on their phones and pecking out queries using cramped keyboards. Search ads tend to be less effective, too, since people are reluctant to give over the one browser screen they have on a phone to an ad. In many cases, apps are far more effective; it takes fewer steps to find the best local sushi joint using apps from Urbanspoon or Yelp than to type out “best local sushi” into a search bar and navigate the results. “Eric Schmidt has said that the search problem is 99% solved, but, boy, is that self-serving,” says Jonathan Yarmis, research fellow with the consulting firm Ovum. “The fact that I have to go to a search bar at all is a sign of failure.”

Apple has a vault of valuable data that can help drive an ad business. It knows precisely which apps, podcasts, videos, and songs people download from iTunes; in many cases it has detailed customer information such as credit-card numbers and home addresses. That gives Apple a chance to blend advertising and e-commerce in new ways, particularly after the acquisition of Quattro. The startup already works with advertisers, including Ford (F), Netflix (NFLX), and Procter & Gamble (PG), to help them figure out when and where to place ads on the sites of publishers, such as Sports Illustrated and CBS News. By tying Quattro’s ad-serving technology into its own, Apple would be able to tell advertisers how often and under what circumstances a person clicked on particular ads. “Apple is one of the few brands that could actually go head to head with Google,” says Kevin Lee, chief executive of search marketing firm Didit. The technology could also be used on the tablet computer that Apple is expected to introduce later this month.

SAFETY IN NUMBERS

When Google introduced Android in 2007, the company said it would concentrate on developing the operating system software and let traditional phone manufacturers, such as Motorola (MOT) and HTC, make the devices. The strategy was similar to Microsoft’s in personal computers, aimed at working with dozens of partners to attack every product area, geography, and demographic. “One or two devices don’t matter,” said Andy Rubin, head of Google’s Android business, after the Nexus One event. “Twenty or thirty or a hundred devices, all running the same software—that’s what matters.”

Yet the arrival of Nexus One suggests that Google is concerned Android isn’t gaining market share fast enough. “The volume, quality, and variety of Android phones in the market today has exceeded our most optimistic expectations,” said Google Product Management Vice-President Mario Queiroz at the January announcement. “But we want to do more.” The mobile market is so important that Google can’t afford to depend on other companies for access; the Nexus One offensive, Google hopes, will establish a foothold in smartphones so the company can control its own fate.

Nexus One isn’t without risk. Android hardware makers may balk at having to compete with their supposed partner. “If the Nexus One is any good, why would you buy anything else?” says Edward J. Zander, Motorola’s former CEO, who is surprised Google would go so far as to enter the hardware fray. “At least Microsoft never built PCs.”

Meanwhile, Google is aware of its vulnerability in mobile advertising and is pushing to make improvements. Schmidt believes mobile ads will one day be more important than PC advertising, largely because of personalization and localization. Although Google declined to discuss its plans for this story, Schmidt has floated the idea that eventually some mobile phones could be free for consumers, with advertising paying the bills. “If Google could do that, they’d be untouchable,” says tech consultant John Metcalfe, who has worked with Google on mobile projects. “Apple wouldn’t be able to come up with an answer for that.”

Of course, Apple and Google could both end up thriving as computing goes mobile. But there will be losers. Microsoft is fading fast in smartphones as device makers shift attention away from Windows Mobile, which doesn’t have nearly as many apps or developers as Android and Apple. Nokia, the world’s largest mobile-phone maker, is struggling too; its Ovi online store toils in near-anonymity compared with Apple’s iTunes store. Even Samsung and LG Electronics, Korean phonemakers long hailed for their advanced technology, are losing ground. “The older cell-phone makers never had to deal with software or software developers,” says Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Bros. “It’s just not in their DNA. [But] the world is moving that way.”

BING IN THE WINGS?

Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead. Ovum’s Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. Jobs might cut a deal with—gasp!—Microsoft to make Bing Apple’s engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, Yarmis says. “I fully expect [Apple] to do something in search,” he adds. “If there’s all these advertising dollars to be won, why would it want Google on its iPhones?”

Whatever happens, it’s clear that Apple and Google are headed for more conflict. Android is a threat to an iPhone business that has quickly come to represent more than 30% of Apple’s sales. Meanwhile, nearly all the growth in search is expected to come from mobile devices, which Piper Jaffray predicts will account for 23.5% of all searches in 2016, up from less than 5% today. That sets the stage for a new main event in the tech sector. “This rivalry is going to accelerate innovation,” says Andreas Bechtolsheim, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and an early investor in Google. “Apple goes pretty fast, but having someone chasing you always makes you go faster. This is going to be good for consumers.”

Still, in a battle over the future of computing, friendship will almost surely be a casualty of progress. “You can just feel the tension rising,” says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “Until the Nexus One, the competition was at arm’s length. But the iPhone is Apple’s darling. Now it’s personal.”

[Source:BusinessWeek]

Thanks to some crack reporting, MacRumors.com discovered that Apple purchased the domain for “islate.com” back in 2007.

What we know: islate.com was registered to Apple in 2007, through an intermediary (to disguise its true owner). At the moment, that domain doesn’t seem to lead anywhere–and there are a few possible explanations. First, Apple bought it as a protective measure, to stop anyone else from using that “i” prefix with that particular word. Second, Apple had or has plans for either a product or a project by that name. Third, it’s the tablet. Or fourth, it’s Apple’s take on Slate.com.

Maybe we’ll find out just what that means in January, when the tablet is rumored to be announced.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

More common (at least as reported in a variety of reader forums) are reports of iPhones running hot–but not hot enough to do any damage. The main complaint is that the iPhone becomes sufficiently warm so that actions, such as putting the phone to your cheek to make a phone call, become untenable. PC World’sMelissa Perenson and David Coursey have both described personal experiences with a too-hot iPhone 3GS.

If your new iPhone 3GS has ever had this symptom, you might want to take a deep breath before assuming that either you need a replacement iPhone or that Apple needs to issue a recall.

First of all, this symptom is not new to the iPhone 3GS. It has been an occasional issue with all previous iPhone models. For example, a Cnet article from April describes a heat problem with iPhone 3G models running iPhone OS 2.2.1. According to this report, the heat could reach a point where Wi-Fi connections were lost. Still, many users have never had any such symptom. Even those phones that have heated up appear to run well after cooling down and likely do not require any hardware fix.

According to Apple, if the internal temperature of your iPhone gets to a point where the “operating temperature has become too hot,” a message stating the “iPhone needs to cool down” should appear on your screen. If you have never seen this message, your iPhone is likely fine–even if it sometimes feels warm to the touch. If you have seen this message, your iPhone is probably still okay. Yes, I assume it’s possible that the iPhone could overheat to dangerous levels without generating this message, but this is not common.

Still, there does appear to be a non-trivial issue here. As again reported by David Coursey, and as I can personally attest, Apple Geniuses can use diagnostic software on a Mac to check for serious iPhone overheating. Apparently, if the program shows that an internal heat sensor has been tripped, you may qualify for a new phone.

What seems to be causing the less serious, but still annoying, instances of hot iPhones? While some users attribute it to an “overheating” battery, I believe it is more likely an overworked processor. In my own experience, I have had this symptom on several occasions, even while my iPhone was asleep. When I went to grab it, the phone felt unusually warm. In addition, the battery charge had declined, unexpectedly fast, to the point of needing a recharge. This only happened if I had left some app active when the iPhone went to sleep (not all apps caused this, but certain ones did). Just as the iPod app can continue playing music even after the iPhone has auto-locked, apps can continue to put a drain on the processor during this state.

Similarly, Macworld’s Dan Frakes finds that his iPhone can heat up when doing processor-intensive activities for an extended time, such as playing “high-end” games. The phone gets warmer than usual at these times, but not dangerously hot. Another user found that a problem with Outlook SharePoint alerts led to his iPhone running warm.

If there was a way to check on the real-time status of iPhone processes, such as Activity Monitor can do for a Mac, this would be relatively easy to diagnose. Alas, Apple has not provided us with such a tool. So we have to do the best we can.

My best advice is to always return your iPhone to the Home screen if you expect not to be using it for any extended period of time. This almost guarantees that no runaway process can overheat your phone. If you currently have a too-hot iPhone, returning to the Home screen and letting it sit for awhile should allow the phone to cool off. If not, powering off the phone until it cools down should certainly do the trick. While some users have put their iPhone in a freezer, to accelerate cooling off, I don’t recommend this.

Otherwise, if you have never or almost never had any problem with a too-hot iPhone, know that you are far from alone. Happily, most iPhone users appear to fall into this category.