iPad 3 release set for Steve Jobs’ birthday on February 24th?

Rumor has it Apple will release the iPad 3 on February 24, 2012 in honor of Steve Jobs’ birthday. Asian manufacturers are apparently working up a sweat trying to prepare the third-generation iPad for that date. If true, we’re just two months away from a shiny new iPad.

February 24th is slightly under one year after the iPad 2 was released, and the iPad 2 was released slightly under one year after the first iPad was released. The iPad 3 could be the most challenging of them all to manufacture since recent reports suggest it will have a high-resolution 2048 x 1536 retina display. Such a large display would require additional processing power (Apple A6 chip?) and would ultimately slow down production speeds, so manufacturers have a pretty demanding task ahead of them.

“Because it is a new gadget, it is taking time for makers in the supply chain to raise their yield rates,” Focus Taiwan reports. “The sources said all OEM and ODM makers have exercised great caution in ensuring the smooth operations of their production lines.”

With a third iPad already just around the corner, Apple is looking to maintain its strong lead in the tablet arena. Plus with a launch on Steve Jobs’ birthday, who was more than likely involved in the iPad 3′s development, expectations are higher than ever.

Smartphones are officially killing cameras

We’ve been seeing some smartphones with amazing cameras lately and I’ve been saying for a while that these can definitely replace point-and-shoot cameras and it looks like the market agrees. A new report from NPD found that people are increasingly using smartphones to take pictures instead of cameras.
The report found that the percentage of photos taken with a smartphone rose to 27 percent this year, while those taken with a camera have fallen to 44 percent. While that doesn’t show that cameras are fully in the grave, the trend is definitely in favor of mobile photography.
This makes a lot of sense because these handsets are getting better lenses all the time and it’s much easier to use the device that’s already in your pocket/purse than carrying around a standalone camera. It’s similar to how mobile gaming is also overtaking the portable gaming market.
“There is no doubt that the smartphone is becoming ‘good enough’ much of the time; but thanks to mobile phones, more pictures are being taken than ever before,” said Liz Cutting, executive director and senior imaging analyst at NPD, in a prepared statement. “Consumers who use their mobile phones to take pictures and video were more likely to do so instead of their camera when capturing spontaneous moments, but for important events, single purpose cameras or camcorders are still largely the device of choice.”
The interesting part of the report is that it also found that there is growth in the high-end of photography, as the detachable lens market grew. I also still think that smartphone cameras can’t get the zooming right because handset makers want to keep a thin form factor.
For the most part, I’m fine with only using a smartphone as my main camera for trips. What about you?

iPhone loses market share in Europe, Android gains traction

The Apple iPhone 4S has already broken a couple of sales records. First day sales were through the roof and on the first weekend of sales alone it broke the 4 million unit barrier. The latest iPhone has fueled Apple’s growth in the States and the UK, but research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech published a report saying that the situation is not like that everywhere. Europe for once has become more price sensitive then ever and the iPhone has lost much of its traction there.

"In Great Britain, the U.S. and Australia, Apple's new iPhone continues to fly off the shelf in the run-up to Christmas. However, this trend is far from universal," global consumer insight director Dominic Sunnebo said.

In the US Apple’s share grew to 36% from only 25%, while in the UK it rose to 31% from 21% in the 12 weeks to end-November.

However in Europe’s biggest markets - Germany and France - the iPhone has lost some ground. In Germany the drop was from 27% to 22% and in France it was even bigger - Apple’s share slipped to 20% from 29%.

This could also be partly due to the eurozone crisis, so people seem to have flocked to more option-rich Android. Google’s platform had a share of between 46% and 61% across the Old Continent.

The Samsung Galaxy S II drove Android’s growth in Europe’s biggest economy Germany. There Android’s market share stood at 61% at the end of the 12-week period the analysts measured.

AT&T LTE found to be faster than Verizon's

It had been assumed that although AT&T has fielded a faster network compared to Verizon for years that LTE would bring parity between the carriers, but a new study has found that AT&T's fledgling LTE network is upwards of 30% faster than Verizon's.

The study was conducted by Metrico Wireless in the 5 markets where AT&T has LTE built up and compared with Verizon's LTE network in those same markets. The devices used were the HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket on AT&T and the HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung DROID Charge and Motorola DROID Bionic on Verizon.

Metrico found that stationary HTTP download and upload speeds were comparable, but that AT&T had a mean download speed 30% higher. This only comes out to a difference of 10.2 Mbps on Verizon compared to 13.8 Mbps on AT&T, which for most activities isn't really that noticeable of a difference. Metrico found that both networks had average speeds over 10 Mbps and peaks above 30 Mbps.

Metrico did make it clear that it should be kept in mind that Verizon has been building its network for about a year and there are far more subscribers on it than on AT&T's network, so that could have affected the results. This is possible, but LTE networks are designed for heavy workloads, and AT&T has always prided itself on being faster than Verizon, so it certainly wouldn't be surprising to see these numbers hold true moving forward.