Apple on Tuesday unveiled an updated iPhone complete with a built-in “personal assistant” in a move that failed to dazzle investors but promised to keep it ahead of the pack.
Apple shares slipped on Wall Street after the gadget maker showed off a slick, improved version of the iPhone, but not the revamped next-generation iPhone 5 smartphone many had hoped for.
Apple’s new chief executive Tim Cook, who replaced ailing founder Steve Jobs in August, presided over the launch of the iPhone 4S at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.
The iPhone 4S features a speedier processor, a “personal assistant” that responds to voice commands and a more powerful camera.
ANTI-CLIMACTIC
Apple’s stock price slid more than 4 percent at one point as it became clear the company was not going to wow the world with its latest product, but recovered ground to end the trading day down 0.56 percent at US$372.50.
“While there were few surprises, we believe the initial sell-off in shares is overdone and in the long term Apple has laid the groundwork to gain significant share,” Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes said in a note to investors.
The iPhone 4S will be available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Britain on Friday next week with pre-orders commencing tomorrow.
The iPhone 4S will be introduced by the end of this month in 22 additional countries, including Austria, Italy, Singapore, Spain and Switzerland.
In the US, iPhone 4S prices will start at US$199 for a 16 gigabyte (GB) model and top out at US$399 for a model with 64GB of memory.
The iPhone 4S predecessor will be available for US$99, while earlier-generation iPhone 3GS models will be free with telecom carrier contracts, an Apple first.
A slick new version of the iOS mobile operating system was also shown off at the press event in a theater at Apple’s Silicon Valley campus.
Apple also announced the launch, for Wednesday, of the long-promised iCloud, which lets people store music, pictures, videos and other digital files online and access the content across Apple computers and mobile devices.
“IPhone 4S plus iOS 5 plus iCloud is a breakthrough combination that makes the iPhone 4S the best iPhone ever,” Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Philip Schiller said.
“While our competitors try to imitate iPhone with a checklist of features, only iPhone can deliver these breakthrough innovations that work seamlessly together,” he said.
The 4S will introduce a “Siri intelligent assistant” designed to understand context so people can speak naturally when asking it questions.
For example, spoken queries of “Will I need an umbrella this weekend?” and “What is the traffic like around here?” will prompt online searches for local weather forecasts or road conditions, according to Apple.
Siri helps make calls, send text messages or e-mail, schedule meetings and reminders, make notes, find local businesses and get directions. Siri will even perform mathematical calculations if asked.
“Apple’s new Siri assistant, unique to the new 4GS, is a powerful harbinger of the future use of mobile devices,” Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin said. “Not just the power of voice but, more importantly, the ability to contextualize a statement or request.”
OTHER GIMMICKS
Apple also added new features and pricing to its iPod Touch and iPod Nano devices in the latest improvements to a line that began with the introduction of the first iPod in the same Apple “Town Hall” in 2001.
The iPod Touch will be available for US$199 and iPod Nano prices will start at US$129.
“IPod has revolutionized the way we listen to music and with over 320 million sold is the world’s most popular music player,” Schiller said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts