Apple manager Paul Shin Devine sued for receiving kickbacks

An Apple manager has been arrested over accepting kickbacks from various contractors on August 13, 2010. Paul Shin Devine, Global Supply manager, Apple, was charged with wire fraud, money laundering and accepting kickbacks from various component manufacturers in Asia.

Mr. Devine received the money from a half a dozen of Asian suppliers of iPhone and iPod accessories. He shared confidential information with contractors that helped them to win Apple’s contracts. The companies include Cresyn Co. Ltd. in South Korea, Kaedar Electronics Co. Ltd. in China and Jin Li Mould Manufacturing Pte. Ltd. in Singapore.

Regarding the incident, Steve Dowling, said, “Apple is committed to the highest ethical standards in the way we do business,……We have zero tolerance for dishonest behavior inside or outside the company.”

Devine shared the kickbacks with Andrew Ang, an employee of Jin Li who brokered deals with his employer. Apple filed case against Devine in U.S. District Court in San Jose. He is scheduled to appear at the court on Monday.

Apple is going through a tough time. In June 2010, at the World Wide Developers’ Conference, Apple released its latest Apple iPhone 4. Though the phone became a runaway success, consumers and tech-critics panned the phone for its “Antennagate” problem. This was followed by resignation of

Mark Papermaster, head of Apple’s Devices hardware engineering left the company.

Apple blocks Jailbreakme.com in Apple store: iPhone 4 supporting Adobe Flash

Jailbreak iPhones have always been a headache for Apple and pranksters are jailbreaking iPhones inside the Apple Stores using its Wi-Fi facility. Going to the stores, pranksters pick up the demo iPhone and then access Jailbreakme.com through Apple’s Safari browser and then jailbreak the phone which takes hours to restore.

After some people uploaded their videos of jailbreaking Apple iPhone inside Apple stores, Apple blocked Jailbreakme.com from in-store Wi-Fi. However, another prankster who goes by the name IT Geek worked around this problem. Named IT Geek, the prankster used the mobile hotspot feature on his Nexus One phone to access an in-store iPad to connect to the Internet.

In late July 2010, U.S. government announced that jailbreaking and unlocking iPhone is legal. The big problem is that jailbreak would allow hackers to take control of devices like iPad, iPhone or iPod and procure sensitive information about users by luring them to visit a particular website. Apple announced that it is working on to fix this problem.

Another sad news for Steve Jobs is that it is now possible to run the much debated Adobe Flash on iPhone 4 but in order to do so, you would have to Jailbreak your phone which means lose your warranty. A hacker, who goes by the name Comex,  developer of the JailbreakMe tool, brings Frash that would allow users to view Adobe Flash content on their phones.  

Apple’s third quarter earnings beat analysts’ expectation

On July 20, 2010, Apple posted its third quarter earnings and it exceeded analysts’ expectations. Apple iPhone 4, which was released in June 2010 at the Apple World Wide Developers’ Conference, was a runaway success. Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, said that Apple iPhone 4 is the most successful product launch in the history of Apple.

In January 2010, Apple unveiled its much talked about tablet PC, Apple iPad. Initially, many were apprehensive whether the device would become a success but now those critics had been silenced. The company shipped a total of 3.27 million Apple iPads. In the first 80 days, Apple sold 3 million Apple iPads.

The third quarter, which ended on June 27, 2010, Apple reported a revenue of $15.7 billion which is higher compared to the $9.7 billion revenue at the same time last year.

Apple revenue also exceeded analysts’ estimate of $14.74 billion polled by Thomson Reuters.

The Cupertino based producer of the most popular smartphone in the world, reported a net income of $3.25 billion in the third quarter compared to its net income of $1.83 billion at the same time in the previous fiscal year. Diluted earnings per share were estimated to be $3.51 which also beat analysts estimates of $3.11.

Shipments of Mac desktops amounted to 3.47 million which is a 33 percent rise on a year-over-year basis.

Apple sold 8.4 million iPhones in the last quarter which is a 61% rise on a year-over-year basis. However, it observed an 8% decline in shipment amounting to 9.41 million.

Apple Finds China a very important Growing Market

Chinese economy has been growing rapidly for more than two decades and the country has now a flourishing middle class who do not mind paying some extra money for quality products. Apple bosses have realized this matter and now are planning big for the country.

In fact, right now, the company has now only one Apple store in capital Beijing and is going to open a second store this weekend in Shanghai. It will be one of the largest in Asia.

This is a good move from Steve Jobs and his team as most consumers in China have little scope to buy products like iMac or iPad from a genuine dealer. They have to depend on the underground sellers and this is not good for either Apple or the consumers.

May be even 5 years ago, Apple products were some expensive for most consumers in China but now with the prospering economy, there are many consumers among 1.2 billion people who can afford to buy an iMac or MacBook. iPhone is also sold in the market and Apple needs to come up with a good campaign plan to attract the Chinese consumers. Before anything, Apple has to open more shops in some of the large cities of the country.

Good thing is that the company is planning to open around 25 stores in the next 24 months. So, it is clear that the Chinese people will see more of Apple products from now.

Apple does not have any significant market share for any of its products in China. So, there was huge room for growth and the potential is enormous too. 

New Apple Mac Mini in India base price Rs.44,900

Apple launched its newly designed Mac Mini in India. The new Mac mini was launched by Apple on June 15, 2010. Mac Mini is not the big star of Apple product line. Still, this odd looking device has a group of devoted followers.

The first thing you would notice about the new Mac mini is its design. Since its inception in 2005, this is the first major redesign. The new Mac mini measures 1.4 inches x 7.7 inches x 7.7 inches and weighs only 3 lbs. Compared to its predecessor it is an inch and a quarter slim and slightly bigger. It has an 1.4” aluminum enclosure which is called unibody.

The new Mac mini is packs Intel Core 2 Duo process with a clockspeed with clockspeed ranging from 2.4GHz to 2.6 GHz, 3MB on-chip L2 cache, and 1066MHz frontside bus.

It has two So-DIMM slots that can support from 2GB to 8GB and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor. There is also the DVD reader and writer. You can chose between 320 GB or 500 GB Serial ATA HDD.

For the first time the Mac mini comes with an HDMI output port. You can connect the device with your HD TV and also use the built-in Front Row software to enhance your display. There is a SD memory card slot for transferring photos from camera, four USB ports, one Firewire socket for attaching camcorder and a network socket.

Other features include 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet (RJ-45) interface.

The entry level Mac mini costs Rs.44,900 and the server edition would cost Rs.64,900.

iOS 4 Release: Time is near

Today is another big day for Apple product users and app developers for the company is going to release its latest OS, the iOS4. The new iOS4 will be released anytime today.

Since introducing the Apple iPhone in 2007, the company has been regularly introducing updates after one year.

First of all, let’s talk about the name, iOS. Apple licensed the name from Cisco. Apple gave a sneak preview of the OS back in April where Apple said that the iOS4 would come up with 7 “tent-pole” features, more than 100 general user features along with 1500 major new API for developers.

The new iOS4 will be available for free download at the official website of Apple. The new OS would run on iPhone 3G S, iPod touch, 3^rd gen iTouch, and iPad. However, users of iPhone 3G and 2G would not get the multi-tasking and wallpapers.

Apple iPhone users would be able to download iOS4 through the iTunes. Just connect your iPhone with the computer and open up iTUnes. A software-update message will pop-up automatically.

Some of the features that have not been updated in iOS 4 are- stocks, weather, voice-memo, and calculator.

Spell checking feature was first introduced in iOS 3.2 for iPad. This feature is a system-wide addition. In the new spell checking system, if the OS thinks that the user misspelled a word then the word will be underlined in red, similar to that of Microsoft Office. Upon tapping on the misspelled word, a pop-up would appear showing the user recommended replacement. Tapping on the popup would replace the replace the misspelled word. This new feature along with iPhone’s “predictive auto-correct” makes typing very easy on iPhone.

Text Replace, VoiceControl, Wi-Fi, Virtual Keyboard, Bluetooth Keyboard Support, Over-the-air Carrier Setting Updates, Home Screen are some of the major new features of the iOS4.

Apple iPhone 4G in India: A lot of Interest about Price

The much expected and long awaited iPhone 4G was introduced yesterday in USA. Today, there was a lot of interest among Internet users in India to know about this device. Many Indian consumers were interested to know about the price of iPhone 4G and in Google trends this matter was reflected: iphone 4g price in india

According to Google Hot Trends India, the people who searched mainly came from:

17% - Mumbai, MH

16% - Bangalore, KA

12% - New Delhi, DL

Thus, people mainly from big cities want to know about it. It is understandable because in cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and New Delhi there are many people with disposable income.

To most Americans, iPhone may be a part of daily necessity but for most Indians, it is still a luxury. Perhaps the price is a very important factor. That is why people want to know that what the device would cost in India.

Apple website India does not have any specific information about this matter. Even it is not clear when iPhone 4G will come to this country.

Some Indian websites have stated that the price will be around Rs 35,000-36,000. However, they came to this conclusion based on the initial price of iPhone 3G in Indian market.

For the Indian consumers, the best thing to do at this moment is to contact Apple India, Bharti Airtel or Vodafone. 

iPhone Still to Become Popular in South Asia

I just finished writing a long entry in another blog about record Apple Earning for third quarter of 2009. The main contributors behind such strong performance from the company during the time of economic recession were iPhones and Mac Computers. Steve Jobs himself has a lot of respect for India and Buddhism. Still, I cannot understand why he is not that much keen on promoting his products in South Asia. Yes, iPhone is in India but is not that popular yet. It is understandable because not too many people can afford to buy iPhones in a poor country like India. The same perhaps goes for Mac Computers too.

However, what I cannot understand is that why his company is not taking iPhone to other South Asian countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan. Both of them have more than 50 million mobile phone connections each and the markets are still growing. I feel that Apple is neglecting this region and it is not a wise strategy. Nokia is still the market leader in mobile phone simply because it has taken the Asian market seriously from first. I hope that Steve Jobs can make some trips to South Asia in the coming months and realize the potential of this region.