9to5Mac covered this interesting video which was originally covered by marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz who got an inside look at Foxconn, the manufacturing plant where Apple’s iPad and iPhones are made. Schmitz posted a video showing our first-ever look at the assembly process of an iPad as it goes down the assembly line at the Foxconn plant in Shanghai, China.These workers switch positions every few days while making $14 a day when first starting:
The all new iPad’s review is out and everyone who got a chance to check the iPad loves it. Here is the breakdown:
USA Today’s Ed Baig: If you’re a tablet newbie, there’s no better choice on the market than an iPad, provided — and this is a pretty big if — price isn’t an issue and you don’t want a tablet that would fit in your pocket, such as the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire.
The New York Times’ David Pogue: The new iPad doesn’t introduce anything that we haven’t seen before, either in the iPhone or in rival tablets. There’s no Steve Jobs “one more thing” moment here; Apple just took its white-hot iPad and added the latest screen, battery and cellular technologies.
The Washington Post: Let’s be clear: the new iPad is in a class by itself, just as its predecessor was. As the latest product in a lineage of devices that defined this category, the iPad continues to stand head and shoulders above the competition. With the addition of the Retina display, LTE, more memory, and a more powerful CPU, Apple has absolutely held onto the iPad’s market position as the dominant player and product to beat.
Walt Mossberg: Apple’s iPad could be described as a personal display through which you see and manipulate text, graphics, photos and videos often delivered via the Internet. So, how has the company chosen to improve its wildly popular tablet? By making that display dramatically better and making the delivery of content dramatically faster.
TechCrunch: ”Once you see and use the new iPad, there will be no going back…get the new iPad”
This is crazy… ChangeWave Research is point this very interesting survey that shows roughly one out of five companies plan to purchase tablets for their employees in the second quarter of 2012. A whopping 84% of companies that plan to buy tablets said they would purchase iPads, a seven point increase from November 2011.
Another interesting set of statistics sit in the carriers that businesses plan on going with for their future tablet purchases – notice that there’s also a category for “no wireless service” for the wi-fi only models of tablets in the market too. The newest iPad is amongst the tablets now that are available on 4G LTE networks including AT&T and Verizon, this certainly contributing to the fact that both of these providers have the lead in this chart at 30 and 29% of the tablet market. The no wireless service category has nearly the least amount of respondents with just 11% of the market while Sprint, a network with next to no options for connected tablets, sits at the bottom with 4%.
When purchasing a connected tablet, 30% of companies would choose AT&T versus 29% which would rather have Verizon, while Sprint comes in a distant third with 4%. 11% of companies would choose a Wi-Fi-only slate. In anticipation of Apple’s third-generation iPad, corporate interest in the Apple tablet increased in February 2012, while demand for tablets from rival vendors decreased.
Apple has confirmed in an official statement that it has now completely sold out of its pre-order iPad stock in less than 5 days. By comparison, last year’s initial stock of the iPad 2 dried up within hours of going up for presale. Orders for the iPad 2 kicked off at 1 a.m. PT and quickly went from being delivered on launch day to three to five days later, then to two to three weeks later. Availability of the tablet was later further constrained to up to three to four weeks for new buyers. An Apple spokesperson told CNET:
“Customer response to the new iPad has been off the charts and the quantity available for pre-order has been purchased” adding, “Customers can continue to order online and receive an estimated delivery date. Beginning Friday, March 16, the new iPad will be available for purchase at Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers on a first come, first-served basis.”
The new iPad is priced at $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. And $629, $729, and $829 for 4G. It will be available on March 16th in the US and is available for pre-order now. It will be available from March 23 for 32 other countries. The iPad 2 will continue to be sold for $399 in a 16GB flavor and $529 for a WiFi + 3G 16GB model.
The new iPad will launch on Friday, March 16th in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, U.K. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Apple says that it will bring the tablet to 26 other countries by March 23rd, making it the company’s fastest product rollout ever.
With the launch of ‘The New iPad’, iPad 2 has been dropped by as much as $100 in some stores in the US. Apple announced it would drop the price of the 16GB iPad 2 to $399 with the Wi-Fi + 3G model discounted to $529. The new iPad, which would start at $499 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model and $629 for the 16GB Wi-Fi + 4G model.
BestBuy is now advertising not just the 16GB models, but the entire iPad 2 lineup, for $100 off the usual pricing. On the other hand, RadioShack confirmed that you can now preorder the new iPad by purchasing a $50 gift card that can also go towards the final purchase price. Its website is listing all iPad 2?s as on sale in-store. RadioShack’s full press release below also outlines its trade-in program for old iPads.
Proview, a Hong Kong-listed maker of computer displays, owns iPad trademark through its Shenzhen unit and has been unable to reach an agreement with Apple over use of the name, Roger Xie, a lawyer representing Proview said, reports Bloomberg
“We are applying to customs to stop any trademark- infringing products from imports to China and also for exports,” said Xie, who is based in Shenzhen. “Apple wants to postpone and continue infringement of the iPad in China.”
Carolyn Wu, Apple’s Beijing-based spokeswoman, said Apple bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 countries, including China. The iPad is manufactured in China by Foxconn Technology Group. “Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China,” Wu said. “Our case is still pending in mainland China.”
“Our case is still pending in mainland China.” The iPad is manufactured by Foxconn in Brazil and in China, so an export ban on the popular tablet would have significant ramifications for Apple.
Apple’s woes began last October when Proview accused them of trademark infringement over the “iPad” moniker. As Proview’s chairperson threatened to sue Apple for damages in both the United States and China, the iPad maker was busy quietly purchasing the global rights to the trademark. However, when Apple moved to get the rights in China through a lawsuit, Shenzhen-based Intermediate People’s Court rejected the lawsuit and made Proview the rightful owner until Apple appeals the decision or settles with Proview outside of court. Proview took the game to the next level and blocked iPad sales by suing resellers in Southern China, and it threatened to go after other Apple resellers throughout China.
The Wall Street Journalisreporting that Apple is indeed working with suppliers on a smaller version of the iPad. The report claims that Apple is currently showing off designs for a new iPad that packs the same resolution as the iPad 2 into a display that measures around 8-inches diagonally.
Officials at some of Apple’s suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has shown them screen designs for a new device with a screen size of around 8-inches, and said it is qualifying suppliers for it.
“Samsung’s 5.3-inch Galaxy Note and Amazon’s 7-inch Kindle Fire have been selling well. It means consumers want a tablet that is smaller than the existing 9.7-inch iPad,” said Diana Wu, an analyst at Capital Securities in Taipei. “IPad’s features are good enough but pricing would be an important factor in the mass market, especially in big emerging markets like China and India.”
Amazon.com Kindle Fire has a 7-inch screen size and is priced at $199, well below the iPad’s entry-level price of $499.
@asymco has shared some interesting growth chart of iPad, iPhone and iPod. The iPhone seemed to become a hit pretty quick, but even that didn’t grow as fast as the iPad. Still, it’s growth was much faster than the original iPod.
Its no surprise that the iPad has sold like mad, and that its first seven quarters on the market were met with phenomenal sales. iPad will surely continue to outperform with iPad 3 rumored to be launched by March 2012.
You will find many virtualization apps on the App Store that allows you to share a desktop virtual machine with your tablet. There is this company called OnLive that has launched an interesting cloud-based solution stemming from their expertise as a provider of streaming gaming experience through their OnLive cloud gaming platform. 9to5Mac covered this interesting bit of news:
The OnLive Desktop app provides access to a seamless Windows desktop experience sporting Microsoft Office applications and 2GB of free cloud storage. It leverages OnLive’s video compression technology to run the Office suite in the cloud and stream rendered video onto your iPad. This is the same technology used by OnLive’s cloud-gaming platform, meaning your experience may wary depending on your broadband Internet speed, congestion and other factors affecting video streaming.
OnLive Desktor for iPad is a free download from the App Store. Go ahead and create a FREE account with OnLive to use the program. Both free and paid plans are available, offering up 50GB of storage, more apps, and priority access and collaboration features for businesses.
The full press release from OnLive is available below:
Popular iOS hackerSonny Dickinson has uncovered some interesting information. The latest iOS 5.1 Beta 3 update contains evidence that Apple is working on an iPad-compatible version of Siri. Unlike past findings, the Siri evidence isn’t hidden within the firmware’s source code. You can discover it easily by just opening Settings app on your iPad 2 which is running iOS 5.1 beta 3, navigate to General, and select the Keyboard tab. 9to5Mac shared this screenshot:
A new option labeled “About Privacy and Dictation” will be displayed under General tab. Apple is working on bringing the Dictation aspect of Siri to iPads. 9to5Mac says Apple could be making this an iPad 3-exclusive feature in 2012:
Dictation is not actually functional on the iPad 2 running iOS 5.1 beta 3, so perhaps this will be an iOS 5.1 launch feature for the iPad, or it may be an iPad 3-exclusive feature; a similar process to the iPhone 4S exclusively gaining Siri and Siri Dictation support in iOS 5.0. We’re also hearing this link/document is also appearing on retina iPod touches as well.
According to The Loop, Wichita State University’s Software Usability Research Laboratory conducted a survey which concluded that 83.65% of respondents to the survey were satisfied with the iPad. The survey also asked to rate the user-friendliness of the device — The majority of the respondents rated the iPad as “Excellent” (62%). A smaller percentage reported it to be “Good” (21%) and “Best Imaginable” (10%). The remaining reported it to be “Fair” (4%), “Poor” (2%), or “Awful” (2%), according to SURL.
Asked what they liked best about the iPad, respondents noted the variety of apps available, overall ease of use, the larger screen size, and portability. What people liked least was the poor quality of some apps, the inability to play Adobe Flash, and problems typing with the keyboard.
The Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University also found that apps continue to be a big draw for iPad users — 46% of users have between 21 and 60 apps installed on their iPads — and web browsing is still one of the most common uses for the Apple tablet. Almost 90% of respondents said they browse the Internet daily on their iPads while less than 70% said they checked their email each day, the second most popular iPad function according to the survey, and just over 60% said they read the news on their iPads every day.
