Norway halts Apple iPad pre-orders
Signs of "crazy interest" in Steve Jobs' tablet computer in Scandinavia, Europe and Asia
Could enthusiasm for the iPad be even greater overseas than it is in the U.S.?
Exhibit A: Two Apple (AAPL) resellers in Norway have been overwhelmed by eager buyers whose pre-orders quickly exceeded expected supply.
"It's been a crazy interest and demand for Apple's latest creation," iPad, reads the website of Eplehuset (Apple House), a "premier reseller" with stores in Norway and Denmark. "Price and delivery for Europe will be ready in a short time, but in the meantime, we have chosen not to receive more pre-orders for now." (Google translation.)
Eplehuset didn't disclose exactly how many pre-orders it had received, but the Norwegian website iPodi reports that it had reached four figures and that the 64 GB versions was the most popular. A second reseller, Humac, has also stopped taking pre-orders for "iPaden," although the Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi/3G models are still listed on its site.
Apple Store back up. No new Macs.
Apple watchers were hoping for a bigger pre-Macworld announcement
Image: Apple.com
[UPDATE: The Apple Store is back up with a new version of Aperture but no new MacBooks. Apple's press release introducing Aperture 3, the latest version of its high end photo editing and management software, crossed the wires at 8:30 a.m. ET. ]
The yellow "We'll be back soon" sign — the universal signal of an impending product release — appeared Tuesday morning on Apple's (AAPL) online stores around the world.
Speculation, echoed in a thousand tweets, centered on the MacBook Pro, which is overdue for an upgrade. According to MacRumors' Buyers Guide, the product hasn't been refreshed for 246 days. (On average it's been getting an upgrade every 200 days.)
On Monday, Silicon Alley Insider passed along a report in a French blog that Apple was set to announce new MacBook Pros on Tuesday to coincide with opening day of Macworld Expo 2010 in San Francisco.
For more than a decade Apple was the centerpiece of the annual trade show, kicking off the expo with a Steve Jobs keynote and dominating the floor with a huge display of products. In late 2008 the company announced that Macworld 2009 would be its last.
See also:
- Five things to watch for at Macworld
- Behind Steve Jobs' Macworld exit
- Why investors are better off without Macworld
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
Apple grabs 25% of smartphone market
The iPhone is looking pretty good in a pair of market snapshots
Click to enlarge. Source: comScore
In the past week, IDC and comScore have both issued reports of the fast-growing smartphone market that show Apple (AAPL) gaining share.
In the U.S., according to a comScore report published Monday, Apple's share grew to 25.3%, up more a point, in the fourth quarter of 2009, while Research in Motion's (RIMM) fell to 41.6%, down a point.
Microsoft (MSFT) and Palm (PALM) both lost ground while Google's (GOOG) Android gained nearly 3 points to reach 5.2%. See chart at right.
IDC's report, issued last Thursday, looked at the worldwide market, where Nokia (NOK) has long been dominant. Its charts (below the fold) show Apple gaining on Nokia and RIM in both the fourth quarter and the full year. Apple's shipments nearly doubled year over year in Q4 2009 to reach a global smartphone market share of 16%.
Below: IDC's charts.
Could Apple iPad prices fall?
Management plans to stay "nimble" if sales are sluggish, says an analyst
iPad price grid. Photo: Michael Copeland
In a report to clients issued Sunday, Credit Suisse's Bill Shope shares the highlights of a recent meeting with Apple (AAPL) management.
The one getting the most play — first in the Wall Street Journal's Market Beat blog — is Apple's apparent (and surprising) willingness to talk about iPad pricing.
“While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially," Shope wrote, "management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated)."
Given that the iPad's release date is still nearly two months away and that its starting price — $499 — is $500 less than the Journal's pre-introduction estimate, talk of price cuts seems premature.
More credible is Shope' report about how Apple sees the iPad fitting into its product lineup:
"Apple wants the iPad to be the best device for a few key use cases. For instance, the company believes it could eventually be seen as superior to both handheld and notebook devices for browsing the Internet, using the App Store, and consuming mobile media (video, photos, and e-books). Nevertheless, in other areas, notebooks, the iPhone, or an iPod may be more appropriate. This clear segmentation of capabilities suggests that cannibalization may be less of a concern than most currently believe."
Below: more details from Shope's report, courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider's Jay Yarow.
Did Apple iPad hype turn off buyers?
There's more than one way to look at a before-and-after survey
Click to enalrge. Source: Retrevo
"The more people know about the iPad," writes David Coursey in PC World, "the less they want to buy one."
That's how Coursey interprets the results of a survey published Friday by Retrevo, an online electronics marketplace that polls its 4 million users from time to time on a variety of topical issues.
"There was too much hoopla," co-founder Manish Rathi told Computerworld. "When the product came out, more than half said 'I don't need it.'"
There's no arguing about the hoopla, but the pie chart above is open to other interpretations, according to — of all places — the Kindle Review.
5 things to watch for at Macworld
Can Apple's premier trade show survive without Apple? We'll find out next week
Source: IDG
There'll be no Steve Jobs keynote, no gigantic Apple booth, and only about half as many exhibitors — roughly 220 vs. nearly 500 last year, according to Ars Technica.
But IDG World Expo has determined that the show must go on — at least for one more year — and so from Tuesday Feb. 9 to Saturday Feb. 13, San Franciso's Moscone Center will host the software vendors, accessory makers, iPhone developers, fanmag publishers, celebrity bloggers, AAPL investors and Mac faithful that are the Apple community.
What's going to make news at Macworld Expo 2010? There'll be dozens of minor product launches vying for attention, of course. You can read about them here.
And Silicon Alley Insider, citing a French blog, suggests that Apple could front-load the event by refreshing its MacBook Pro line, perhaps as early as Tuesday. (See Apple Store back up. No new Macs.)
But the fun at the show itself, as near as we can tell, will be in the highlights:
Charlie Rose loves the Apple iPad
The PBS talk show devotes 23 minutes to singing the praises of Steve Jobs' latest creation
Rose (right) and Carr. Source: The Charlie Rose Show
In a segment that aired Thursday night, the Charlie Rose Show invited three A-list tech commentators — the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, the New York Times' David Carr and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington — to gush about (and find a few faults with) Apple's (AAPL) iPad.
[UPDATE: A YouTube version of the video has become available through TechCrunch and is pasted below the fold.]
Mossberg was the most viewer-friendly, taking time to define Flash and HTML5 and to explain to the PBS audience how the iPod touch is different from the iPhone.
Arrington was uncharacteristically gracious, complimenting the device — and saying that he couldn't wait to get one — without mentioning his own failed effort to build a competing tablet computer.
But Carr got the best lines:
Enter Steve Jobs, with top hat and iPad
Apple's CEO flies to New York City to work his magic on the media elite
Photo: Apple Inc. Cheesy Photoshop job: Philip Elmer-DeWitt
The tech blogs were abuzz this week with sightings of Steve Jobs in Manhattan — in the newsroom of the New York Times (NYT), on the third floor of the News Corp. (NWS) tower and in an Asian fusion restaurant wearing, according to New York magazine, "a very funny hat — a big top hat kind of thing" and ordering food, Hollywood mogul style, off-menu.
[UPDATE: On Friday morning he showed up at the Time & Life Building to demonstate his new tablet computer to Time Inc. (TWX) CEO Ann Moore and a roomful of magazine editors.]
Jobs is not the first Apple (AAPL) executive to pitch the iPad on Publisher's Row — indeed, leaks from loose-lipped media tycoons helped build buzz for the device in the weeks before its unveiling.
But the fact that Jobs himself flew to New York a week later — and that the top executives of America's leading national newspapers and magazines turned out to meet him — may be taken as a sign of how badly both sides need each other.
Although the 140,000 or so iPhone apps — including 22,000 games — that will run day one on the iPad give it a huge advanage over all the tablet computers that preceded it, Apple needs media partners if its new device is to achieve anything like the iPod's or the iPhone's mass-market appeal.
As for those media partners, each is in a different boat, each sinking slowly in its own special way.
Inside Obama's (MacBook) White House
The President may carry a BlackBerry, but his assistants are glued to their Macs
White House staff and others use Apple (AAPL) MacBook Pros to monitor President Obama's live YouTube interview Feb. 1, 2010. (Official White House Photo of the Day by Samantha Appleton)
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
Dick Brass: Why Microsoft is 'failing'
The former New York Daily News editor who ran Bill Gates' Tablet PC division tells all
In the week since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, there's been a lot of talk about where this leaves Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle.
"But the much more important question," writes Dick Brass in an essay prominently displayed on the OpEd page of Thursday's New York Times,
"is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter."
Part of the answer, Brass writes, is that Microsoft (MSFT) put too much faith in people like him, a former tabloid journalist and serial entrepreneur who wrote speeches for Oracle's (ORCL) Larry Ellison before coming to Redmond to head the division that built the Tablet PC.
But mostly, he says, it's because of internecine warfare among Microsoft's established divisions and a "dysfunctional" corporate culture that squashes innovation.
To support his contention, he offers a couple of telling anecdotes in which he does everything but name names:
