Apple earnings beat with $35.6 billion in sales, 31.2M iPhones sold… Listen here for more!

Company's third quarter results come in slightly stronger than expected, fueled by the iPhone, but iPad sales were far below what Wall St. expected.

Apple narrowly beat expectations on Tuesday, with better than expected earnings.

Apple reported earnings of $6.9 billion, or $7.47 per share on $35.6 billion in sales. Wall Street was expecting Apple to post earnings of $7.32 per share on sales of $35 billion.

Apple said it sold 31.2 million iPhones, 14.6 million iPads, and 3.8 million Macs during the quarter.

"We are especially proud of our record June quarter iPhone sales of over 31 million and the strong growth in revenue from iTunes, Software and Services," Apple CEO Tim Cook, said in a statement. "We are really excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and we are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014."

Looking ahead, the company said it expects to sales between $34 billion to $37 billion, with a margin between 36 and 37 percent. That's below the sales of $37.55 billion and in line with the 36.8 percent gross margin Wall St. analysts polled by Thomson First Call expected.

Apple is hosting a call with financial analysts at 2 p.m. PT (listen here), which typically provides a number of insights into company, including stats that aren't initially reported. We'll add any important details from that call to this post. cnet.

Blackberry may be launching a new BB A10 soon!

An upcoming BlackBerry smartphone named the A10 has been leaked online complete with specifications.

A post on the CrackBerry forum has possibly shown the Canadian smartphone maker's next handset, the A10. Since renaming the company from RIM to just BlackBerry, it has launched the Z10, Q10 and Q5 which all run on the BlackBerry 10 OS.

Now it seems the A10 will be the first of a new A-series of devices. The 10 part signifying that it will be at the high-end of the range.

The most notable specification is that the A10 will come with BlackBerry OS 10.2, a new version which will presumably bring additional features or at least some improvements.

Like a lot of current smartphones, the A10 will sport a large 5in OLED screen but only with a 720p resolution meaning a pixel density of 295ppi. It will run on a dual-core Qualcomm processor with a quad-core GPU and 2GB of RAM alongside.

An 8Mp rear camera with a flash will be coupled with a 2Mp front-facing counterpart. The BlackBerry A10 will offer a typical 16GB of internal storage supported by a microSD slot for up to 64GB cards with something called 'hot-swap'. This must mean something along the lines of being able to switch memory cards without rebooting the phone.

BlackBerry's A10 smartphone will support 4G LTE networks with other connectivity consisting of Wi-Fi, DLNA, Micro HDMI and NFC. There's no mention of Bluetooth on the spec sheet but we assume it will be present. It will have a 2800mAh integrated battery.

Nokia sold up to 7.4 million Lumia in Q2 but posted $150 million loss!

 After BlackBerry's disastrous earnings a couple of weeks back, Nokia and Microsoft have clear bragging rights over third place in the ecosystem war -- but does a bronze medal earn you any cash? The Finnish manufacturer has reported declining Q2 2013 revenues of €5.69 billion ($7.4 billion) compared to the $9.2 billion earned in the same quarter last year. The good news is that the huge financial losses of 2012 seem to be gone, with today's reported loss standing at just €115 million ($150 million), all of which can be laid at the feet of Nokia's devices and services division.

Meanwhile, the company's smartphone sales seem to be growing thanks to fresh Lumia models like the 520, 620 and 720 -- with a total of 7.4 million Windows Phone 8 devices sold in the quarter. While that's a big improvement on the 5.6 million in Lumia sales from Q1 and the 4.4 million sold in Q4 2012, the Asha division saw sales slip down from 5 million last quarter to 4.3 million now. Oh, and if anyone's still in the market for a Symbian handset, better be quick -- the company is reporting that sales of the phones are now "approximately zero."

In other parts of the business, "Here," Nokia's renamed mapping division, lost €89 million ($116 million) while Nokia Siemens Networks made a slender €8 million ($10.4 million) profit. Looking forward, the company has said that it's lowering its future estimates by two per cent, saying that dwindling demand, higher operating expenses and "the macroeconomic environment" will all help to erode the company's cash reserves. But hey, at least Microsoft's still is kicking in that $250 million in alimony platform support payments.

Are you ready for the iPhone 6?

Apple has lost a lot of ground in the smartphone market as of late, with many believing that the iPhone now plays second fiddle to the high-end Android devices released earlier this year. Needless to say there is a lot of attention focused on Apple to see what the Californian tech giant comes up with for its new iPhone, whether it's the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6. Here's where we take a look at the rumoured new iPhone 5S/6's release date

Will it be the new iPhone 5S or the iPhone 6?

This is a bit of an impossible question to answer as Apple will neither confirm nor deny even the existence of another iPhone being in the pipeline. However, we're pretty experienced in tracking Apple's new smartphone leaks and developments and the fact that there has been very little noise coming out of the Apple barracks suggests that the next iPhone's specs won't be a million miles away from the current iPhone 5's. So if you were to force us to guess whether it will be a semi-updated iPhone 5S or a completely new iPhone 6, we'd have to put out money on the former. 

History sides with us too, as ever since 2008; Apple has released a new generation of smartphone followed by a "S" launch of the phone roughly a year later. Take a look at the previous iPhone release dates below to see the obvious pattern.

Previous iPhone release dates

• iPhone 1st gen: June 29, 2007
• iPhone 3G: July 11, 2008
• iPhone 3GS: June 19, 2009
• iPhone 4: June 24, 2010
• iPhone 4S: October 14, 2011
• iPhone 5: September 21, 2012

iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 release date in UK

Now, before we start, you need to know that Apple threw everyone a curve ball when it released the iPad 4 less than eight months after releasing the iPad 3 (which it subsequently dropped like a bad habit, yet kept selling the iPad 2). 

So, while Apple's previous formbook shows that Apple releases a new iPhone roughly every 12.5 months – suggesting that the new iPhone 5s or iPhone 6 will have a September/October 2013 release date - you can't rule out Apple announcing one sooner (although Apple almost certainly won't). 

 In terms of solid new iPhone 5S/6 release date rumours, it's pretty thin on the ground out there. PC Advisor's Chris Martin says this about the possibility of a new iPhone 5S/6 launch at Apple's worldwide developer conference (WWDC). "Apple holds its worldwide developer conference (WWDC) annually in June and it's here that it could reveal the iPhone 6. This is the least likely as the event is focused on software. However, Apple has announced hardware at the event (last year was the MacBook Pro with Retina display) so it could use this to launch an iPhone." 

 We think the most likely time for an new iPhone 5S or iPhone 6 launch is September/October time, with the announcement being made at an dedicated event. We're basing this solely on Apple's previous tendency to launch iPhone at the time and in this sort of fashion.

It's also worth mentioning that there is talk that Apple might launch a budget version of the iPhone this year too. However, we need to stress that there has been very little to suggest this other than mere internet rumours so far...that said, the iPad mini was just an internet rumour so far. PCadvisor.

This e-mail will self-destruct in five seconds!

This e-mail will self-destruct in five seconds

“Like a "Mission Impossible" tape, e-mails could disintegrate before unauthorized eyes get a chance to view them, according to an AT&T patent application”.

Ever lose sleep over e-mails you've sent? Messages of an embarrassing nature that make you wish you hadn't clicked on "send"?

AT&T is thinking of you. It applied for a patent for self-deleting e-mail. Once sent, these missives won't hang around in some inbox waiting for someone to do what he pleases with them. They'll disintegrate, so to speak.

"Method, System, and Apparatus for Providing Self-Destructing Electronic Mail Messages" is U.S. patent application number 20130159436 and was recently made public.

The application outlines an e-mail client system and server application that can send and receive messages that self-delete.

The filing notes that e-mails, once sent, are outside the control of the sender. They can be copied, saved, printed, or forwarded.

"The inability to control the number and type of operations that may be subsequently performed on a sent e-mail message makes conventional e-mail systems unsuitable for sending confidential information for which absolute control of distribution is a necessity," the application states.

It goes on to say that some e-mail systems that allow users to set up their client so that messages are deleted after a certain period of time. Still, the power to destroy the message remains in the hands of the recipient.

The application describes how the client and application will destroy the message at a set time, with the option to do so regardless of whether it's been read or not. They will also limit what can be done with the message.

"The e-mail message will be destroyed by the e-mail client application whether or not the message has been read. Alternatively, if the e-mail message specifies that it should be deleted after it has been read, the e-mail client application will destroy the e-mail message once it has been opened and closed by the recipient. All instances of the e-mail message are deleted from the recipient's computer."

Now what would the NSA think about that? cnet.

Intel looks past Windows... to focus on Android Chips more!

Intel is now looking to the Android operating system as it breaks away from years of optimizing its top line of Core PC processors, including the recently launched Haswell processors, chiefly for Windows.

Intel is looking to hire a program manager whose job will be to manage Android development for the company's upcoming Core chips code-named Broadwell, Haswell's successor due next year. The job listing hints that Android development will continue beyond Broadwell and into future Core chips.

The listing for an "Android System Software Program Manager" includes responsibilities for "planning and delivery for full system -- across architecture, development, integration and validation."

Intel already backs Android for its low-power Atom tablet and smartphone processors, but the company has not yet talked publicly about Android for Core processors. Core processors have more advanced instruction sets and graphics capabilities than Atom processors, and those would need to be optimized for Android. Rival x86 chip maker Advanced Micro Devices earlier this month moved away from an exclusive focus on Windows and said it will optimize chips for Android and Chrome OS based on customer demand.

Intel is seeing innovation among PC makers and the company will support multiple OS choices, said a company spokesman in an email.

Designs of PCs are changing with tablet-like hybrids and convertibles, and Android could be used in some of those devices, according to Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates.

"It's very smart of them to make sure Android runs on all of Intel's architectures," Gold said. "But Microsoft won't go away anytime soon."

Slow Windows 8 PC and tablet sales have hurt Intel and AMD, but neither will abandon Microsoft's OS anytime soon. Intel's aggressive multi-OS strategy will also help the chip maker compete with ARM, which dominates on Android devices. Android and Windows tablets priced from US$199 to $500 and with Intel's upcoming Atom tablet chips code-named Bay Trail will reach shelves this holiday season.

Intel has already started development of the next-generation Core processor called Broadwell. The chips will be made using the 14-nanometer process, and will initially be released for PCs. PCadvisor

Done Deal! Yahoo completes $1.1billion Tumblr's acquisition.

Exactly one month after announcing plans to acquire microblogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Yahoo has closed the deal.
The Internet giant announced Thursday that it officially owns Tumblr. The company announced the acquisition last month, saying that the $1.1 billion purchase price

would be "substantially all...in cash." The company also promised at that time "not to screw [Tumblr] up."
Tumblr is highly popular site with over 300 million monthly unique visitors. The company was founded in 2007. Under the terms of the deal, Tumblr will remain its own entity under the Yahoo umbrella. Tumblr CEO David Karp said he believes that with Yahoo's help, his company can become more appealing to users.
"We are beyond excited to partner with Marissa and the wonderful team at Yahoo that we've already come to know well," Karp said in a statement Thursday of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. "Their support and belief in our vision gives us an opportunity now to be the most ambitious we've ever been."
See below for the full press release.

“SUNNYVALE, Calif. & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today announced it has completed its acquisition of Tumblr.
Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world. Its tremendous popularity and engagement among creators, curators and audiences of all ages brings a significant new community of users to the Yahoo! network. The combination of Tumblr and Yahoo! is expected to grow Yahoo!'s audience to more than one billion monthly visitors.
The deal offers unique opportunities for both companies. Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!'s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they'll love. With more than 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day), Tumblr can bring complementary content to Yahoo!'s media network and search experiences. Yahoo! will support Tumblr's efforts to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance the user experience.
Tumblr will be independently operated, and the product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately by the Tumblr team. David Karp will remain CEO.
"Tumblr is an incredible company. I'm thrilled to officially welcome David and his team to Yahoo!," said Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer.
On the deal completion, Tumblr CEO David Karp said, "We are beyond excited to partner with Marissa and the wonderful team at Yahoo! that we've already come to know well. Their support and belief in our vision gives us an opportunity now to be the most ambitious we've ever been." Cnet.

Download Microsoft Office 365 here for your iPhone!

It’s finally happened and we predicted it awhile ago. You can download there!
 

 
After so many years of speculation, an official app featuring all of Microsoft’s popular Office applications is available for the iPhone.
It’s called ‘Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers’, which is hardly the most attractive name, but a little besides the point at this stage. For iOS users with an active Office 365 subscription, it means they can access, view and edit any file previously saved in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.
The launch will undoubtedly be welcomed by all Office 365 users, as it significantly increases the perceived value of the service. Documents are said to “look like the originals” and support rich media content such as charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes. It also means that when the user makes an edit or writes a new comment for a document, all of the formatting and content will remain unchanged.

The app pulls all of the users’ files from the cloud, meaning that Office documents can be stored and downloaded from SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint. There’s also device syncing, so recent documents that have been edited or accessed on one device – say a desktop PC or Microsoft’s Surface tablet-laptop hybrid – will be shown in the iOS app through the recent documents panel. Similarly, when the user opens a document from SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro, it will open up at the exact place where they last stopped reading, regardless of which device they previously accessed it from.
With the app installed, iOS users can also instantly see and edit any Office documents that have been attached to an email message. So there’s no need to open documents in a third-party app and then export it again as an Office-compatible file format.
Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint all look slightly different on the iPhone – they’ve been optimized for the smaller display size, after all – and there is also a number of original presentation views, such as ‘Slide Navigator’ for browsing projects made in PowerPoint
Office 365 is a cloud-based service, but that doesn’t mean that the user needs an Internet connection to get to work. The app saves recently viewed and edited documents automatically, so that they’re always available – regardless of where the user is at the time. Documents can then be viewed and edited offline, with changes being submitted to the cloud when the user connects to a new network.

The app has a few catches though. For starters, every users needs an Office 365 subscription, which isn’t exactly cheap. Microsoft Office 2013, installed on a PC, is also a necessity for some of the app’s most pivotal features, such as resumed reading and accessing recent documents.
Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers is available now in the App Store, but only for users based in the United States right now. It’s compatible with the iPhone 4 and up running iOS 6.1 or later, as well as the fifth generation iPod Touch. No support for the iPad though, which is a huge omission.
So there you have it. Office on iOS. You asked for it. Microsoft delivered. Eventually.TNW

Facebook adds #tags.

Facebook has added support for hashtags, fixing a broken link that prevented its 1.11 billion members from associating themselves with celeb gossip, breaking news, and popular memes.

"Starting today, hashtags will be clickable on Facebook. Similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest, hashtags on Facebook allow you to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a larger discussion," the company wrote in a blog post Wednesday announcing the update. "When you click on a hashtag in Facebook, you'll see a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic."

Popularized by Twitter, hashtags, or content tags denoted by the "#" symbol, allow for nuanced articulation and let social networkers insert themselves into real-time conversations happening around events, television shows, and breaking news. On Facebook, members will now find that hashed words and expressions are clickable, whereas before they were dead text.

The company said that people can also search for hashtags from the search bar, click on hashtags that originate from other services such as Instagram, and compose status updates right from the hashtag feed.

The addition comes at a crucial time for Facebook, which is quickly losing relevance with tweens and teens who are getting more enjoyment out of other services such as Twitter and Instagram. The belated addition won't immediately repair the service's reputation with this hashtag-loving crowd, but it could instantly boost overall engagement on the site and encourage some to choose Facebook over Twitter when chatting about their favorite television shows.

For the time being, it looks as if Facebook's hashtags work on the Web only. The company said it plans to release new features as well as its own version of trending of topics in the weeks ahead.cnet.

Check out the all new Apple iOS7...

Apple's iOS 7 comes out swinging with an overhauled design that re-skins practically every element with a gleaming new interface. While some new behaviors go along with the updated apps, iOS 7's changes are more cosmetic and iterative than they are groundbreaking. That's completely understandable; not every update can spark a revolution.

However, apart from a few notable innovations, iOS 7 doesn't seem like it's enough to overturn criticism that its growth has stalled, that it's less innovative than archrival Android, and that it borrows heavily from other competitors (in truth, they all steal ideas from each other). At least not at this point in the game.

Design
Gone are the skeuomorphic interface elements that make icons and apps look like leather or paper or felt. Gone, too, are the slightly bubbly icon effects. Flat graphics and a dappled, pastel color scheme bring an elegant look. When you move the phone or tablet, Apple promises a 3D effect that makes your wallpaper appear some distance behind the icons.  The important thing to note here is that even though it looks completely different, it's still easy to pick up and use right away because the core functionality is largely the same. In other words, browsing in Safari is as easy as ever, but there are now extra tools on hand for sharing via AirDrop, and a smooth tab-browsing interface.

Control Center and Notifications
One of the few actually new features to come to iOS is the Control Center, which finally (finally!) puts your most-used settings front and center, and is available from any screen. In iOS 7, you can swipe up from the bottom of the display to bring up quick-access tools, like a Wi-Fi meter, brightness, Airplane mode, music controls, and more.

Control Center also integrates a small flashlight tool, signaling the death of so many third-party flashlight apps.

In the Notifications pull-down menu, three tabs show you all your alerts, the calls and messages you've missed, and a new "today" pane that tracks your goings-on. It's a small but useful expansion of the current notifications pull-down.

AirDrop
Mac users will cheer the addition of AirDrop in iOS 7, a peer-to-peer file-sharing service that will soon support the iPhone 5, fourth-generation iPad, and iPad Mini. AirDrop works by creating local ad-hoc networks among nearby users. So if you want to share a photo, you'll hit the share button, and automatically see others around you who are also on iOS 7. From there, you just tap a friend's picture and iOS 7 uses Wi-fi and Bluetooth to send your photo (and the recipient can accept or decline). It also offers the option to make you invisible to nearby iOS 7 users from the Control Center.

Siri
Apple's favorite digital voice assistant gains some more personality in this latest revamp. In fact, "she" has a brand-new voice; two, if you count the male version you can ask to talk to you instead. Though we have played with the new iOS, the male voice was not included in the beta release, so we'll have to reserve judgment.

A new sound wave animation appears at the bottom of the screen when you speak, and Siri's results come up in full screen, not just a tiny card. We did notice that Siri still takes some time to respond search queries, so Google Search still holds the speed record for voice searches. We also like what we heard in the keynote that Apple will be adding "high-quality" for non-English languages over time, including French and German.

By far the most substantial addition, and one that's truly useful, is that iOS 7's Siri can trigger actions on your phone's system settings, like play a past voice mail, turn on Bluetooth, and increase the brightness settings. Many voice assistants can't do this, so it's nice that Apple has increased Siri's capabilities this way -- though it isn't clear how deep into the controls your voice can go. You can also ask Siri to search Wikipedia and Twitter.

Now we just need to see Siri's listening accuracy and response time kick into higher gear.

FaceTime audio
The days of abandoning FaceTime every time you want to make a straight audio (rather than video) call from your iOS device are coming to a close. Apple announced that high-quality calls over Wi-Fi will complement video calls for those who would rather talk while on the move.

Automatic updates
A tiny, but enormously time-saving addition, the App Store gets automatic app updates in the new OS. This new feature was bittersweet because while we don't like constantly looking at the updates notification, there are some apps that we want to see the new features before we update. Apple assured us in our meeting that auto updates can be turned off in the settings.

Multitasking
Apple may sneer at Microsoft, but it certainly likes its rival's aesthetics when it comes to multitasking. Now, double-tapping the home screen brings up not just tiny thumbnail icons of your open apps, but also a tall preview (like a mini screenshot) of what you're looking at. Borrowing from Android's recent app list, swiping away a preview closes the app.

Below, you'll find a list of the iOS 7 features that Apple focused on today, and next to that, a brief description of how that trait exists on Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry rivals (or at least one manufacturer's take on said platform). Read on below for more detail about how iOS 7 stacks up.

iOS 7	Android 4.2	Win Pho 8	BlackBerry 10
Control Center	Yes, varies by phone-maker	No, settings menu	System access settings
Notification center	Detailed notifications	Live tile badges	BlackBerry Hub, badges
Multitasking preview	Recents list	Multitasking preview	Active Frames grid
Surfaced camera modes	Varies by Android skin	Third-party lenses	Video, Time Shift modes
Photos grouped by years, location	Albums, other filters	Albums, date	Albums, recent
Shared photo stream	Samsung Galaxy S4	Share one by one	Share one by one
Peer-to-peer sharing (AirDrop)	Android Beam (NFC)	Tap + Share (NFC)	NFC sharing
Unified browser bar	Yes	Yes	Yes
Personalized radio/discovery	Google Play Music All Access	Nokia Music	Third-party app
Voice access to system settings	Samsung's S Voice	No systems access	No systems access
Automatic app updates	Optional, by app	'Update all' option	Individual
Password-protected reset	No	No	No
In-dash integration (iOS for cars)	Driving mode/S Drive	Nokia Drive	Third-party apps

deja vu?
Apple does push the industry forward with some capabilities that are all its own -- like iOS 7 for cars and using Siri to toggle system settings. (Samsung's S Voice does the latter, but not Android Voice Actions.) Even with driving modes for individual handsets, such deep car integration will be tough for the others to beat and even match without strong automotive partnerships.cnet