iPhone 5 Explodes During A Call!

At 3pm yesterday, Suwicha Auesomsaksakul was almost injured when his iPhone5 exploded after he had been holding it to his ear for only 30 seconds.

During a phone call, Suwicha felt instant heat on his ear and saw smoke coming out from his 32GB, black device. He threw it immediately on the floor. He said that the phone then exploded four times like a firecracker, forming a sizable burn mark on its “Home” button. As you can see in the below image.

Suwicha told that he bought the latest Apple phone only two months ago, but that he had decided that he will not use Apple products any more.

[Source: mcot.net]

--Vedang Parmar

Rumour: iPhone 5S Out In June With 12 Megapixel Camera

The Apple iPhone 5s rumours have begun again! and this latest one comes from blog, iLounge which claims that Apple could launch three new versions of the iPhone this year.

The report states that there will be a 4-inch-screened iPhone 5S and a supposedly larger-screened 4.8-inch “iPhone Math” model before the end of June, while a third model with a 12-megapixel camera will arrive before Christmas, the report claims.

Meanwhile Macrumours has images from the French site Nowhereelse.fr which the French site claims are speaker enclosures for both the upcoming iPhone 5S and a future iPhone 6.

The bigger screen iPhone rumours are not new. PreviouslyApple Insider, Apple was testing the new iPhone 5S and another smartphone. The report added that the smartphone could be out by June or July and was based on a note circulated to investors by Jefferies analyst Peter Misek where he states that Apple is testing two iPhone prototypes.

One being the iPhone 5S and the other a low-cost iPhone. The analyst had also stated that the iPhone 5S has a new “super HD camera/screen, a better battery, and NFC,” and “possible updates include an IGZO screen for Retina+” The device could come in six to eight colours like the iPod Touch (fifth generation).

Apple Reportedly Reduces iPhone 5 LCD Panel Orders From Sharp

Japanese newspaper Sankei Biz (link via Google Translate) is reporting that Apple has halved LCD panel orders from Sharp due to lower-than-expected sales of the iPhone 5.

This is the latest indication apparently pointing to the device’s sluggish performance since its launch in September, and comes just three days afterReuters reported that Sharp has slowed production of the 9.7 inch panels used for full-sized iPads.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple cut component orders for the iPhone 5 due to weaker-than-expected demand, with orders for iPhone 5 screens for the January-to-March quarter dropping to about half of what the company had previously planned to order. Orders of other components were also reduced.

It is important to note, however, that there might be other reasons for a reduction in component orders. Many analysts believe that reduced component orders are not due to weak demand, but rather to improved manufacturing yields after earlier production issues. Consumers may be waiting for the launch of the next iPhone, which has been rumored to be slated for a June or July release.

Apple is due to report its Q1 2013 fiscal results on January 23.

Sharp said it does not comment on business transactions with clients. Apple has been emailed for comment.

Apple’s Chinese Web Store Adds Credit Facility As iPhone-Maker Battles With Cheap Androids

Apple has started offering users of its Chinese online store the option to buy devices on credit. The option to pay in interest-free monthly installments is detailed on this page of Apple’s Chinese web store. The credit offer can apply to any purchase of more than 300 yuan ($48) but less than 30,000 yuan ($4,800), according to the site, but only applies to holders of credit cards from China Merchants Bank.

It’s not clear how long Apple plans to offer the credit facility — it’s possible the interest-free component is only a new year offer that expires on January 23. A Google translation of the promotion text on the website reads: “Apple Store online store to purchase any of the products to more than 300 yuan, you can apply for instalment service. From now until January 23, 2013, 3-12 can enjoy interest-free service.

We’ve reached out to Apple to clarify the scope and extent of the offer and will update this story with any response.

Apple is also offering Chinese web customers the ability to buy on credit over longer periods than a year, with periods of up to 24 months detailed on the page. However interest rate fees do apply for credit periods that exceed one year.  Paying in installments over an 18 month period attracts a 6.5 per cent fee, while the fee for 24 months of instalments costs 8.5 per cent.

During a trip to China last week to meet local carriers, Apple CEO Tim Cook said China would soon become Apple’s most important market. Adding a credit facility to its web store is one way for Apple to expand the reach of its mobile devices, and to compete with Android’s low end reach since Apple does not (currently) offer a low-cost smartphone (although it has recently been rumoured to be developing such a device). Bloomberg notes that the iPhone 5′s local pricing of 5,288 yuan is equivalent to “about six weeks’ pay for the average urban worker”.

The news agency quotes Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting, a Beijing-based market research firm, commenting on Apple’s need to increase the accessibility of its products in China. “There is an enormous mid-range consumer market that they are not tapping into,” he says. “They’re trying to figure out how to make products more accessible to that market segment. This is a good step in that direction.”

Chinese Android OEMs such as Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE all offer low end smartphones in the market. In December, analyst IDC reported that Apple had slipped to sixth place in Q3 in China’s smartphone market, outperformed by Korea’s Samsung and the aforementioned Chinese mobile makers.

Apple’s move was reported earlier by the FT. The paper noted that while Apple’s financing service is not unique to China — with similar arrangements in the U.S., Japan, Brazil, South Korea and Singapore — the Chinese version offers a “lower applicable price” and allows for longer repayment schedules than its U.S. equivalent.

Apple Not Focused On Developing Cheaper iPhone, Says Marketing SVP Phil Schiller

Earlier this week, reports that a cheaper iPhone is in the works caused plenty of buzz as observers speculated about how such a device could help Apple target emerging markets, including China. But an interviewApple Marketing SVP Phil Schiller gave to theShanghai Evening News (link via Google Translate) seems to refute the rumors. (TNWconfirmed with Apple that this was an official interview).

Schiller told the newspaper that Apple is not focused on issuing a less expensive version of its smartphone to grab market share: “We are not like other companies, launching multiple products at once, then hoping one will get the attention of consumers,” Schiller said.

He added that Apple only uses top technology and high-quality components when developing new products.

Reports have circulated since early 2011 that Apple is working on a less pricey iPhone. Such a device would cost roughly half as much as current iPhones and be made with less expensive parts, like a shell made of polycarbonate plastic, or recycled components. A more affordable iPhone would help Apple compete with Android handsets in developing economies including China and India.

Schiller’s interview with Shanghai Evening News comes at the same time as Apple CEO Tim Cook’s visit to China, where he has been focused on opening the way for Apple to gain greater market share in that country.

Apple Updates App Store Screenshot Rules To Kill Scam Apps

Have you ever been scammed into buying an app because of a screenshot that falsely represented the app you were buying? If you have, then there’s some good news for you.

Apple today announced on its Developer Portal that screenshots added to app descriptions will be locked in place once an app has been approved.

Before the new policy went into place, app developers would often upload legitimate game screenshots to accompany the app description, then switch them out for screenshots that resembled more popular games once the app was approved. The switch often snagged unsuspecting victims who assumed they were downloading a different app.

For example, in one instance, an unofficial Pokemon Yellow app was uploaded to the App Store. The app snuck by Apple using an unobtrusive set of screenshots, and then switched them out with photos from the Nintendo game, which thousands of people then purchased.

While this presumably means that scamming developers will no longer be able to game the App Store, it also hobbles legitimate developers trying to keep their app descriptions up to date.

Apple working on a cheaper iPhone for emerging markets, may surface in late 2013

Apple has started to feel the heat as it’s biggest rival Samsung continues to enhance it’s dominance in the smartphone space. Samsung, which earlier dominated the sales mainly in the Asian markets has of late seen immense success in the US with it’s flagship devices like the Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy Note 2. Apple is now reportedly working on a cheaper variant of the iPhone and hopes to tap the emerging markets with the new device in order to boost it’s sales and increase it’s market share.

To keep the costs of the rumored iPhone low, Apple would most probably use plastic instead of the aluminum casing and other less expensive internal components. The cheaper iPhone could surface sometime in late 2013  and is expected to cost less than half of the current iPhone 5′s price. 

According to the latest report on Bloomberg, the Cupertino-based giant has been working on a cheaper variant of the iPhone since at least February last year  and is in talks with a top wireless carrier in the US regarding these plans.

Smartphones running on Google’s Android OS accounted for around 75 percent of total smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2012, which is sharp increase from the 58 percent shipments during the same time in 2011 whereas the iPhone was confined to just 15 percent of the total smartphone shipments in Q3 2012.

While Google announced that over 500 million Android devices have been activated since it’s debut four years ago, Apple has managed to sell “only” 271 million iPhones till date.

If the rumors indeed turn out to be true, it would mark the diversification of Apple’s smartphone lineup which until now was just confined to a single model being upgraded at regular intervals. Apple at present tries to lure the budget-conscious smartphone buyer by reducing the prices of it’s older models 

However, not everyone is talking good about the rumored, cheap iPhone. Many experts believe that by introducing a cheaper variant of the iPhone, Apple would somewhat diminish it’s premium image and the new device might also dent the company’s profit margins as people might be drifted towards buying the cheaper variant.

Apple App Store Crosses 40 Billion Downloads, 500 Million Active Accounts

Apple announced on Monday that the App Store has surpassed 40 billion downloads. That’s unique downloads excluding re-downloads and updates. Nearly half of that came in last year alone. The company also says it has over 500 million active users, and surpassed over 2 billion downloads during the month of December.

There are over 775,000 apps available in the store, for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.

Apple launched its app store in 2008. The store hit the 10 billion downloads mark in early 2011. In March 2012, Apple announced that more than 25 billion apps have been downloaded.

The last valuable figure Google gave for its Play Store was 25 billion downloads, encompassing 675,000 apps. Google’s marketplace launched after the App Store, but the search giant does not disclose how much money it has paid to developers.

Samsung To Extend Lead Over Apple’s iPhone In 2013, And Take 33% Of Global Smartphone Market

Samsung will increase its lead over Apple in the smartphone space this year, according to analyst Strategy Analytics. Speaking to Reuters, the analyst said it expects the Korean electronics giant to achieve 35 per cent year-on-year growth in smartphones in 2013, fulled by its broad portfolio of handsets. This is slightly higher than the 33 per cent growth it’s projecting for Apple.

“We expect Samsung to slightly extend its lead over Apple this year because of its larger multitier product portfolio,” Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, told Reuters in an email.

Strategy Analytics expects Samsung to sell 290 million smartphones this year, up from a projected 215 million in 2012, to give Samsung a third (33 per cent) of the 2013 smartphone market, up from last year’s estimated 31 per cent. Meanwhile, Apple’s smartphone sales are projected to total 180 million this year, up a third on last year’s sales — giving Apple just over a fifth (21 per cent) of the market, versus last year’s 20 per cent.

There is one factor that could mitigate Samsung’s lead over Apple, according to the analyst, and that’s if Apple releases a so-called ‘iPhone mini’ to compete with Samsung portfolio lower down the device price range. A cheaper iPhone has been rumoured for years but the fabled iPhone Mini remains fictional for now — although Reuters notes the rumour of Apple making a smaller and cheaper iPhone to target China and India was most recently revived again on Wednesday, by a Topeka Capital Markets researcher.

Strategy Analytics’ Mawston said it believes Apple will need to launch an iPhone Mini in the near future but probably won’t launch one this year. ”We think Apple will have to launch an ‘iPhone Mini’ at some point over the next three years to address the hundreds of millions of prepaid users worldwide that cannot afford the current iPhone,” he told Reuters.

“The iPhone 5 is growing fast and profitably right now, so there is little incentive for Apple to launch an ‘iPhone Mini’ this year. We expect the iPhone Mini to be more likely next year, in 2014 when … Apple will be forced to discover fresh growth streams.”

The analyst is projecting global smartphone market growth will slow in 2013 from its very rapid rate of expansion last year, with shipments projected to rise 27 per cent to 875 million this year, slowing from last year’s 41 per cent growth. Strategy Analytics said this is due to growth easing in “many key markets” such as North America, China, the developed economies of Asia, and Western Europe.

Apple iPhone 6, iOS 7 surface on app logs

The company's testing iPhone 6. According to The Next Web, a device with iPhone 6,1 identifier has surfaced on app logs derived from an IP address from Apple's Cupertino campus. 
iPhone 5 is known by identifiers like iPhone 5,1 and iPhone 5,2, varying in accordance with the LTE model and 4G band of the device. 

The article also said this device is running on iOS 7, seemingly the next version of Apple's mobile operating system. 

The upcoming version of iPhone is believed to be under development and this app log hints that Apple developers are testing whether the device works well with some of the popular apps on its marketplace. There are no hints available on the likely specs of the device. 

In November, Chinese news site Commercial Times said that the next iPhone will go into 'trial production' as early as December 2012 and only 50,000-100,000 units of the device will be manufactured. On the other hand, mass production of the device will commence in the first quarter of next year, it said. 

The report in Commercial Times also speculated that the upcoming smartphone will be launched in the first quarter of 2013, most likely in March. This will mean that Apple launching its next flagship phone just six months after rolling out iPhone 5. 

Apple withdraws patent claim against Samsung's Galaxy S III mini

Apple's patent claim against Samsung's Galaxy S III mini is no more, with Cupertino citing the phone's lacking availability in the US for the amendment to its original November filing. In the ongoing litigation between the two electronics giants, Samsung argued that it's Galaxy S III mini didn't warrant inclusion in the latest volley of Samsung devices Apple wants added to its patent lawsuit; Apple apparently agreed, and is thusly withdrawing its claim against that particular device. The argument also highlights the sad news that the S III mini won't join Samsung's Galaxy lineup in the US.

An agreement filing spotted by Reuters from a San Jose, CA. US District Court revealed today's news, coming just days after Judge Lucy Koh dismissed a request to permanently ban sales on several Samsung devices. It's unclear if the other Samsung devices Apple asked to be added to the ongoing case are approved yet by the court, but we can certainly count the S III mini out for the time being.

[SOURCE: Reuters]

Rumor: Next-gen iPad and the iPad Mini with Retina display coming in March

Soon after the launch of the 4th generation iPad, rumors are now doing rounds that Apple might be gearing up to launch the next-gen iPad aka the iPad 5 in March 2013. The report which first appeared in a Japanese blog Macotakara suggests that the upcoming iPad will be thinner and lighter than the iPad 4 whereas it will also incorporate some of the design elements from the iPad Mini.The new iPad is expected to sport the same retina display as the third and fourth generations iPads.

Along with the next-gen iPad, Apple might also unveil the second iteration of it’s smaller, iPad Mini which now might sport a Retina display. This will surely bring a big grin on some faces, who wanted to buy the iPad Mini, but only held back due to the lower-resolution display.

If the rumors indeed turn out to be true, it would be a quite aggressive move by Apple to release the iPad 5 within just 5 months of releasing the iPad 4. But whatever the case turns out to be, it’s quite obvious that Apple is now feeling the heat from the tablets running Google’s Android OS.  Google’s own Nexus 7 has been a hot selling property and the relatively new Nexus 10 too, has gained immense popularity amongst the masses.

This news from Macotakara could be quite credible as the Japanese tech blog had previously been quite accurate in regard to it’s information surrounding the unreleased iPads. Macotakara has also been spot on previously in it’s information about Apple products production timeframes and other design information.

The same rumors about the next generation of the iPad and the iPad mini had previously appeared in a report by Digitimes, which claimed that the next iPad would be thinner and lighter, while the iPad Mini would get a Retina display in it’s second generation.