Apple's flat profits and lower-than-expected iPhone sales dominated coverage of its Q1 2013 quarterly financial earnings call on Wednesday and sent it stock sliding, but the company cited several reasons why it sees a lot of opportunity ahead. 

Its revenues, after all, were reported at a record $54.5 billion — an 18% increase over the same quarter last year — with profits of $13.1 billion.

And despite news that Mac sales are down 21% year-over-year (with general PC shipments down 6% globally) CEO Tim Cook was quick to say the downturn was due in part to the success of the iPad — a "huge opportunity" for the company, he said.Continue reading...

Is it a tablet? Is it a phone? Perhaps both, maybe neither. And whatever it is, it comes equipped with a stylus.

When Samsung unveiled the latest member of its Galaxy family, the Note, at the IFA trade show in Berlin this week, the brand heralded a "new category of product, developed through Samsung's deep consumer understanding and insight." 

For the brand’s sake, hopefully Samsung’s understanding and insight includes the knowledge that a similar bigger-than-a-smartphone-smaller-than-a-tablet Android device with a 5-inch touchscreen, the Dell Streak 5, ended its yearlong streak of confusing and annoying consumers when it was discontinued a couple of weeks ago.

“But don’t compare the Note to that piece of impractical hardware,” Samsung might be saying. “Our device, which we’re calling neither a phone nor a tablet – and don’t call it a phablet – has…wait for it…a stylus.”

Samsung might be going out on a limb to promote the Note as part of a new category, but that brand message was part of the initial appeal of the iPad: a mashup of disparate devices you already owned to create the latest all-in-one device you suddenly can’t live without.Continue reading...

Apple, it seems has a new app: the iJerk.

First, over the weekend, Apple opened a store in the Conestoga Mall in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada -- right on the home turf of RIM. But hey, it's just business. It's not Apple's fault the BlackBerry-maker's PlayBook is flailing in the marketplace. But then, there's the Samsung lawsuit, and your baby.

In a lawsuit filed in German court against the Samsung Galaxy Tab, alleging intellectual property theft, Apple claims the Tab "copies all distinctive elements of equipment of the iPad 2." Apple submitted photo evidence of the Tab and iPad side by side. But, as German site Webwerld (English here) discovered, it seems Apple doctored photo evidence in which the 1.46 aspect ratio of the Tab has been altered to appear to be only 1.36, much closer to the iPad's own ratio of 1.30. Continue reading...

When Research in Motion put out its first Smartphone with a touch screen, the Storm, in 2008, it was met with some thunder. A few critics found the usability lacking.

So now the company has tried again. This time, it is releasing two new phones with touch screens as well as three without. There must be safety in numbers.Continue reading...

The e-reader may have failed to save the Borders bookstore chain, but that's not stopping Google from investing in one. The iriver Story HD, the first e-reader to integrated with the Google eBooks platform, launched Sunday at Target stores and Target.com for $139.99.

Google describes the device as "slim and lightweight with a high-resolution E Ink screen and a QWERTY keyboard for easy searching. It includes over-the-air access to hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks for sale and more than 3 million for free. With the Story HD you can now browse, buy and read Google eBooks with your e-reader through Wi-Fi, rather than downloading and transferring them from computer to e-reader with a cord as you can already do with more than 80 compatible devices."Continue reading...

The new Samsung Galaxy Tab video features a not-so-veiled swipe at Apple, which doesn't support Adobe Flash.

There seemed to be a fair amount of excitement surrounding the PlayBook when it was unveiled last September. It was BlackBerry maker RIM's big entry into the tablet category — believed to be, potentially, a grown-up, professional grade version of Apple's iPad.

Now reality sinks in. The PlayBook, which starts at $500, hit the market last week, and the reaction was, well... ho hum. Even before the release date, trade publications like PC World ran articles with such headlines as "BlackBerry PlayBook Gets Panned by Reviewers."Continue reading...

Motorola is teasing its plans for CES next month with a video, above, that aims to build buzz for its tablets with the original buzz-maker: a bumblebee. It's a none-too-subtle allusion to Motorola's integration of the new Android OS, Honeycomb — and a little jab at Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab.