Could your boss buy you an iPhone?
According to Forrester Research’s annual Global Technology Market Outlook review, business spending on Apple devices will increase by 50% this year, as part of global iPhone sales of £75 million (and iPad sales of £35 million). More and more businesses who might previously have bought their employees a BlackBerry are trialling, or already buying, iPhones instead. Likewise, lots of firms are picking up iPads where they might earlier have bought laptops. Time to start talking to your boss about how much more productive and inspired you could be if you had an iPhone 4S.
China gets the iPhone 4S
The iPhone 4S finally launches in China, with the expectation of massive sales. Chinese telecoms companies are falling over themselves to offer the best deals on a 4S, with China Unicom giving away a free 32GB 4S for just £29 a month… so long as you’re happy to sign up for a three-year contract.
Apple smartphones are now available in over 90 countries, and the brand continues to enjoy enormous social cachet around the world, with customers repeatedly showing that they prefer iPhones over similarly specced devices that are cheaper or faster. This hasn’t stopped Chinese phone maker Meizu trying to cash in with an iPhone knock-off, the MX. The MX got its Chinese launch two weeks before the iPhone 4S, on January 1st, but only time will tell if the vast Chinese market embraces the fake or is willing to wait for the more expensive real thing. Meizu has copied Apple’s advertising and even the décor of their stores, down to the kind of tiny details that a US or UK court would pounce on, but Apple is unlikely to try to sue Meizu in the latter’s native China, where intellectual property laws are relatively weak.
Quad-core iPhone 5 or iPhone 6?
References to four cores, buried deep within the code for the beta release of iOS5, might mean that Apple’s planned A6 chip, already in trial production, may be quad-core. This year, if this happens at all, it’s likely to only ship in the iPad 3, but given that the iPhone 4S borrowed the iPad 2′s A5 chip, it seems only a matter of time before we see a quad-core iPhone too.
Owners of the iPhone 4S download more
Research by network management firm Arieso has shown that iPhone 4S users download an average of twice as much data as iPhone 4 owners, and three times as much as those still stuck with older models. This could lead to major network problems down the line, as phone operators struggle to cope with spiralling data use by customers who are increasingly using their smartphones as the main way they connect to the internet.
The main cause of this increase appears to be Siri, which requires constant communication with Apple servers to carry out the most basic of voice recognition features. Even asking Siri to set your alarm requires the use of data, as the request is sent to Apple to be processed. This could cause problems for people who have signed up for an iPhone 4S contract with a relatively low amount of data available.
Apple Legal Update
The Supreme Court in California just gave Apple $920,000 (around £600,000) back from the taxman, upholding an earlier ruling that the company had overpaid. The company is also fighting to try to pay far less tax than usual on its overseas earnings, which are massive (and likely to become more so, with the Chinese iPhone 4S launch). This has drawn anger and protests from US Uncut, the sister group to the British anti-tax-dodging campaigners UK Uncut.