Apple has unveiled the “iPad Air,” a slimmer version of its top-selling full-size tablet, and a revamped iPad Mini, bidding to fend off rivals who have eroded its market dominance.
The new products will likely fuel the trend of mobile devices vanquishing old-school PCs, but the launch failed to catch fire with investors, as Apple shares dipped following Tuesday’s highly-awaited event.
Some analysts were upbeat after the US tech giant unveiled upgrades to its tablet devices, notebooks and desktop computers along with free software to sweeten the deal.
Photo: Bloomberg
“It is going to be a really strong holiday for Apple,” Gartner analyst Van Baker said of the California company’s prospects of sales during the US’ important holiday shopping season.
The new iPads will be sold alongside existing versions starting on Nov. 1 in more than 40 markets around the world. For the first time, China will be among the countries getting the latest iPad models on launch day.
The new iPad Air is thinner than the version it replaces, weighs just 450g, and is “screaming fast,” Apple vice president Phil Schiller said at the unveiling in San Francisco.
And the upgraded iPad Mini has a vividly rich retina display along with faster computing power and graphics.
Both new iPads feature the Apple-designed A7 chip with 64-bit “desktop-class architecture,” the company said.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook said he was not troubled by competition in the tablet space, despite the iPad losing share in the sector in recent times.
“Everybody seems to be making a tablet,” he told the audience.
However, he said that notwithstanding sales figures, “iPad is used more than any of the rest, and not just a little more, a lot more.”
The iPad “is used over four times more than all of those other tablets put together, and this is what is important to us. People use it, and what is even more important to us is people love it,” he said.
The iPad Air will start at US$499 and the new Mini version at US$399 for US customers. Apple will trim prices of current iPad models.
Apple announced upgrades for its MacBook line of notebooks and Mac Pro desktop computer, and its new operating system called Mavericks would be available as a free upgrade for those with existing Apple computers.
In a strategic shift, Apple also said that iWork and iLife software suites — for tasks from video editing to mixing music and making business presentations — would be free with all its devices.
“These are really incredibly rich apps, and we have only just scratched the surface of what you can do with them,” Cook said. “We are turning the industry on its ear; because we want our customers to have our latest software and access to the greatest new features.”
Baker said this was a smart move which can drive sales of hardware along with posing a threat to Microsoft’s empire, which is built on selling operating systems, productivity applications and other software.
Like Google does with its online array of Docs applications, Apple will be making available for free the productivity software that Microsoft sells to users of Windows-powered computers.
“That is Apple’s business model to make software and services free and let them drive sales of the hardware,” Baker said. “The iWork suite will be a bit of a Trojan horse, like Google Docs is, against Microsoft.”
The new iPads were unveiled on the same day Microsoft began selling an upgraded version of its Surface tablet, and as Nokia unveiled its own tablet computer.
Industry tracker Gartner on Monday forecast that global tablet shipments will reach 184 million units this year — a 53.4 percent rise from last year.
The iPad remains the largest-selling tablet, according to surveys, but its market share is being weakened by rivals using the Google Android operating system.
Apple is also under pressure to adapt to the popularity of premium tablets with high-quality screens in the seven-inch to eight-inch range where the Mini competes.
Jan Dawson, analyst at the research firm Ovum, said Apple’s latest innovations should “trigger good upgrade sales and get iPad shipments growing again.”
However, Apple is also raising the price for the new Mini, unlike competitors, which Dawson said means Apple’s share in tablets will continue to fall as Android’s share rises over the coming years.
Apple shares fell 1.5 percent to end at US$519.87, but were regaining lost ground in after-market trades.
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained