<IT
WORLD> Apple blips, Samsung
surges By Martin J
Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - Quarterly
earnings at gadget maker Apple fell short of
analysts' estimates largely due to European
economic woes and a slowdown in iPhone sales in
anticipation of a new model.
The company
sold 26 million iPhones in the fiscal third
quarter, down from the predicted 28.4 million. Net
income for the period stood at US$8.82 billion
with sales at $35 billion, a little short of Wall
Street's anticipated $37.2 billion. As a
consequence stock in the world's largest company
by market value tumbled up to 6% in extended
trading on the day of the announcement.
Apple handsets are still selling well but
the pace of that sales growth has slowed back to
2009 levels. The company has usually been
resistant to economic influences and product
cycles so this latest miss shows that the brand
maybe starting to feel some of
the pressure that has
plagued its rivals. On the other hand it could
also show that Wall Street will still punish Apple
if it shows anything less than an excess of
success.
Competitor Samsung continued to
show robust numbers, with profit increasing 48% in
the second quarter. The Samsung Galaxy continues
to sell well with a faster new product cycle, in
excess of 50 million units were shifted in the
last quarter, almost double the iPhone sales
figure. A record profit of $4.5 billion was
announced this week by the Korean electronics
giant for the period.
The latest model,
Galaxy S III, has sold over 10 million handsets
since its global launch on May 29 and the company
has now eclipsed Nokia for the top spot in the
mobile phone market with just over 30% share.
These figures are impressive considering Samsung
seems to be permanently embroiled in court room
battles following Apple lawsuits, often resulting
in product bans, over a market monopoly that both
companies are vying for.
China tells a
slightly different story for Apple with healthy
sales figures despite the late launch of the
latest iPad. A revenue of $5.7 billion was
announced for Greater China, which includes Hong
Kong and Taiwan, up 48% on the same quarter last
year however this figure was down 28% from the
second fiscal quarter this year. Apple has stated
that China has become its second largest market
after the US.
Apple's woes continued this
week as a digital ruckus was created by
disgruntled Mac users who did not receive their
promised free upgrade to the latest operating
system launched this week. Mountain Lion, or OS X
10.8, was due to be offered as a free upgrade for
those who bought a Mac after June 11. Impatient
aficionados wasted no time in flooding Twitter
with their complaints when it failed to
materialize due to technical glitches with the
issuing of authorisation codes.
Security A conference called
Black Hat 2012 kicked off in Las Vegas this week
where an estimated 10,000 security experts,
researchers and would-be hackers from across the
globe converged to share knowledge in order to
discover vulnerabilities in today's operating
systems, browsers and portable devices.
Competitions are held for hackers to infiltrate
current browsers such as Internet Explorer,
Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Their findings are
then passed on to the relevant software companies
which work on patching them.
Microsoft has
long recognized the importance of Black Hat and
has been sending staff since the 1990s.
Notoriously absent from such events over the years
has been Apple, which this year for the first time
accepted that its software is also vulnerable to
current security threats, therefore the need to
attend has arisen.
Since its inception in
1997, Black Hat has grown from a single annual
conference to a global conference series with
annual events in Abu Dhabi, Barcelona, Las Vegas
and Washington DC.
An
email was sent this week to the head of Finnish
security firm F-Secure from someone within the
Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran claiming that
computers at two of the country's nuclear plants
had been hit with more malware that set hells bells ringing. This was no
ordinary malware though as rock and roll was noise
pollution for scientists at the plant who were
forced to listen to AC/DCs Thunderstruck at
full volume which shook them all night long.
The scientist who sent the
message stated: "There was also some music playing
randomly on several of the workstations during the
middle of the night with the volume maxed out. I
believe it was playing Thunderstruck by
AC/DC."
The high voltage malware was
allegedly similar in construct to Stuxnet and
Flame although in this case it was programmed to
manipulate workstations to crank out rock and roll
damnation during the night. The worm forced system
administrators to "shut down the automation
network" with a flick of the switch at Natanz and
another facility at Fordo near Qom. The rock and
roll train was likely a distraction for further
digital incursions on a highway to hell.
Given the sophistication of the code it
was unlikely that dirty deeds were done dirt
cheap, those at the plant considered it a touch too much. The purveyors gained access to the
facility's VPN by using the hacker tool Metasploit
to inject the venom. Although the Australian rock
band's song, Thunderstruck was specifically
mentioned in the communique, the Finnish firm is
still trying to figure out whether it was a
serious threat from guns for hire or just a whole
lotta rosie.
Martin J Young is
an Asia Times Online correspondent based in
Thailand.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times
Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
Security
