<IT WORLD> Apple harvest doubles
By Martin J Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - Apple this week demonstrated once more its remarkable
ability to churn out ever greater profits, this time in without even the
introduction of new gadgets to broaden its customer base.
Second-quarter profit more than doubled from a year earlier to US$7.31 billion
(up 125%) on revenue, driven by record iPhone and iPad sales, up 82% to $28.6
billion. It is the fourth consecutive quarter that revenue has topped the $20
billion mark. Mac computer sales jumped 14% to 3.95 million units. Sales of
iPods continued their decline, dropping 20%.
Demand from consumers in emerging markets such as China, Brazil and the Middle
East helped the stellar performance as global sales of iPhones reached 20.34
million and of iPads hit 9.25 million. Businesses are also adopting iPads to
deploy the tablet throughout their organizations. Apple's revenue from the
Greater China area may have passed those of China's Lenovo Group in the region
for the first time in at least a decade, Bloomberg reported. (See below for
details on Lenovo's efforts to keep up.)
Riding high on the good tidings, Apple launched the updated version of its
operating system OS X Lion this week. Version 10.7 of the Mac operating system
boasts over 250 new features, although however an installation disc is not
among them: the US$30 upgrade is available only as a download and is a whopping
3.5 Gigabytes. Among the new features are multi-touch functions, an improved
task management system, a Launchpad for quick access and a function for
accessing previous versions of files. Apple also released new versions of its
MacBook Air ultra-thin laptop with upgraded hardware including Intel Core i5 or
i7 processors and up to 4Gb or memory.
Chief executive Steve Jobs dismissed rumors of a successor, despite still being
on medical leave and recovering from cancer. The Wall Street Journal reported
that the company's board of directors were in discussion about the possibility.
The Chinese, meanwhile, have taken their counterfeit skills to a new dimension
beyond simply producing counterfeit phones and tablets. Entrepreneurs in
Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, have replicated an entire Apple store,
discovered by a blogger within the country who has posted photographs of the
outlet, complete with all the right logos, compelling looking stock, similar
decor, and appropriately dressed staff. It had disappeared a week later when
the blogger returned, but a couple more were around the corner.
Perhaps Apple's best response would be to open more outlets. The US company's
website lists only four retail stores in the entire mainland - two each in
Beijing and Shanghai.
Security
Google has started warning its search engine users of possible malware
infections on their computers. After noticing an unusually high volume of
traffic being routed through proxy servers the company began to post warnings
on its search pages when it detected that a user was sending requests via a
proxy.
On a company blog post, Google security engineers stated, "Recently, we found
some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our
data centers. After collaborating with security engineers at several companies
that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers
exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious
software."
The statement went on to say "As a result of this discovery, today some people
will see a prominent notification at the top of their Google web search
results".
Accompanying the warning message is a link directing users to search Google for
an anti-virus product or malware scanner to fix their system. The company
doesn't actually offer security software but it now may well be considering a
product that pops up Google advertising while scanning your computer for free!
Hardware
Chinese computer maker Lenovo revealed three new tablets for the global market
this week. The units will run Microsoft's Windows 7 or Google's Android and
will price priced in competition with Apple's iPad, which has become the
industry standard.
The ThinkPad tablet will be aimed at business users and will come armed with a
10.1 inch screen, 1Ghz Tegra CPU, 1Gb of RAM, Wifi, 3G, up to 64 Gb of storage
and all of the standard connection ports. The IdeaPad K1 will have a similar
specification but different design and be aimed at home users. The IdeaPad P1
will run Windows and hence have a higher hardware specification, but it is not
expected to sell as well simply because Windows 7 is not optimized for tablets.
Also this week, Samsung launched its 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab device in South Korea
following earlier launches in the United States and Europe. Asia is now
officially on the tablet map and manufacturers are changing their targets fast
in the wake of Apple's huge successes in the region.
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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