Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

Fashion retailer Missguided looks to iPhone app to boost online sales

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Online fashion retailer Missguided has launched its own iPhone app in a bid to expand its online retail offering.

The business, which specialises in “catwalk looks and celebrity inspired women’s fashion”, hopes to use the application to strengthen ties with customers by providing access to its online catalogue as well as fashion industry news for shoppers on the move.

Missguided’s venture is the latest sign of a growing trend among fashion retailers to connect with potential buyers through mobile and smartphone devices. And after research released last week suggested that in three years time mobile owners may be spending over £250m a year on goods bought through their phones, it’s not hard to see why the fashion sector is taking such an interest.

In an effort to widen the customer experience and make its iPhone app more than simply a sales tool, Missguided has included a host of features on top of its online catalogue. New fashions are sent to users’ phones each day, and social media fashion links to the firm’s blog, Facebook and Twitter pages are provided.

By Richard Morris

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Posted in Advertising and Marketing, Apple, E-commerce, Financial, Technology, Twitter | No Comments »

Opera Mini nets over one million downloads in 24 hours

Friday, April 16th, 2010

An iPhone version of internet browser Opera Mini was downloaded more than one million times in its first day, according to Apple App Store figures.

Statistics show that yesterday the browser was downloaded onto 1,023,380 Apple devices.

Norway-based Opera Software said it has delivered up to six times the speed of other browsers in testing, especially on congested networks, along with significant webpage compression which allows users to keep roaming and pay-per-MB costs at a minimum.

Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software, said: “Today iPhone users have a choice and, as the numbers show, they are eager to explore new and faster ways to surf the web on the iPhone – especially during heavy Web traffic.”

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Posted in Mobile, Online | 2 Comments »

Nexus One to launch in UK in April

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Google's long-awaited stab at bursting the iPhone bubble with its Nexus One smartphone will see the light of day in the UK next month, according to reports.

As already announced, the company’s first own-brand mobile phone will only be available through Google.com/phone. There are no tariff details at the time of writing, but have not been announced, but clearly prices will be in the same bracket as comparable iPhones.

Google is hoping that the Nexus One will firmly cement its Android operating system in the market, as a competitor to the Apple iPhone and Microsoft’s Windows Phone system.

Vodafone, the search giant’s UK partner for the launch, was thought to have been keen for a March launch, but now that timescale seems to have slipped.

 Slow early pre-sales interest has been put down to the fact that, with Google handling sales and marketing of the Nexus One itself, it has not benefited from the same intense marketing effort which helped get the iPhone off to such a storming start.

 Google has already taken a leaf from Apple’s book by announcing that the Nexus One would be updated to include multi-touch web browsing, a very popular feature of the iPhone.

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Posted in Apple, Google, Mobile, News, Telecoms News | No Comments »

iPhone developers angry as Apple purges adult apps

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
iPhone Apps

Apple iPhone

Widespread anger and concern over censorship have followed a decision by Apple to ban some adult-themed applications from its iPhone.
Thousands of apps with adult-themed content were removed from the store in a concerted drive late in February although some, such as one from Playboy, remain.
Apple has said that certain apps were removed following customer complaints. “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,” Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of worldwide product marketing, told the New York Times.
But developer Jon Atherton is angry that previously-approved apps have been pulled, and told the BBC he believed Apple was “experimenting with our livelihoods”.
ChilliFresh is an Australian company that creates apps for the iPhone, including the recently banned Wobble, which allows users to add ‘wobble’ functionality to pictures of women’s breasts.
“I’m now worried the eco-system is run by puritans and is not fair to all players,” Jon Atherton said on the ChilliFresh website.
“And worst of all it is not a secure source of income. It can drop to close to zero if they decide to change the rules,” he added.
The firm was making £320 a day out of its apps, a figure which has dropped to £5 since the ban, he said.
“On Friday evening we got an email out of the blue which basically said, thanks very much but we don’t want you any more. Apple said it was removing all overtly sexual apps,” he said.
He said that if Apple was serious about protecting young customers it should allow parents to set controls for devices.
He called on Apple to publish its new guidelines so that developers knew where they stood, and to clarify why not all sex-related apps were affected by the ban.
“What makes it worse is that a lot of people now think that the store is a safe place for their kids to go to without supervision – it just isn’t because Apple have applied their guidelines unevenly”, he said.
The New York Times believes that Apple has carried out this purge so that it does not scare off potential customers for the iPad tablet computer.
“Apple has a brand to maintain,” Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray who keeps a close eye on the company, told the paper. “And the bottom line is they want that image to be squeaky clean.”

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Publisher launches new apps in bid to broaden mags' appeal

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

A UK-based magazine publisher which specialises in the creative and gaming sectors has launched digital editions of all its titles to capitalise on the growing potential audience of Apple iPhone, iTouch and IPad users.

Imagine Publishing – whose portfolio includes Retro Gamer, X360 and Advanced Photoshop magazines – has now added these to a growing list of online-only products which it already owns.

Reporting the story, Journalism.co.uk says the move is unsurprising “given the publisher’s commitment to creating digital editions, its range of online-only titles and the digital focus of many magazines.”

The newly-created apps will offer content including embedded video clips.

Imagine’s decision to make these magazines available in digital form “was probably also swayed (by the fact that) digital magazine subscriptions created by PixelMag are certified by the Audit Bureau of Circulations electronic, so the apps will potentially count towards Imagine’s circulation figures”, the source added.

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Google's smartphone fails to set world alight, according to figures

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

It has a long way to go… about 80,000 Google Nexus One mobile phones were sold in its first month on the market, according to analytics group Flurry Inc - just one-eighth of the figure achieved by its biggest rival, the Apple iPhone in the month after its launch.

The phone’s sales remained steady in each of week of its first month, Flurry’s data shows, but there are suggestions that selling the phone free from any contract with a mobile operator is proving a weakness, and a gamble which has not paid off.

The most recent comparison in terms of sales immediately post-launch is with Motorola’s Droid phone. Like the Nexus, this is equipped with Google’s Android software, and this achieved first-month sales of 525,000 last November, the nearest challenger so far to the iPhone’s estimated 600,000.

When Google launched the Nexus One in January, it said it would sell the phone direct to customers through a web store, which it hoped would help it achieve cost and efficiency savings compared with selling through the network providers’ high street stores and other bricks-and-mortar outlets.

Observers also lay some of the blame for the Nexus’ lacklustre sales at Google’s decision not to mount a major marketing campaign for the phone, and its high price.

In the US, the phone is available for $179 on a two-year, $40-a-month contract, or for $529 unlocked for use on any network.

Of course, other analysts have also put the Nexus One’s sluggish start down to pure bad timing on Google’s part. Its January 5 launch meant it missed the crucial Christmas/New Year sales period, meaning that “a lot of the people who were in the market for a phone, either for themselves or for a gift, already satisfied that demand,” according to Peter Farago, Flurry’s vice-president of marketing.

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Apple unveils iPad tablet

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Apple has released details of its latest creation, the iPad tablet.

The announcement was made by the firm’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, at a conference in San Francisco on Wednesday morning. The touch screen device has a 9.7 inch multi-touch screen display and will fit into the market between laptops and smartphones, according to a report by the BBC.

Jobs said the iPad allows you to “hold the whole web in your hands”, and will provide the best browsing experience people have ever had.

The iPad has been designed as a portable device that is better suited to browsing the internet and viewing multi-media content than the iPhone.

There has been months of speculation over the device which looks similar to the iPhone but with a larger screen. However in traditional Apple style, the company has remained tight-lipped until today.

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Microsoft rumoured to be bidding to trump Google with search deal on iPhone

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

In what would be a major coup for Microsoft's fledgling search engine Bing, the corporation is reported to have begun negotiations with Apple over replacing Google as the default search engine on the best-selling iPhone. 

According to a report on Bloomberg.com, two sources have told it that several weeks of ongoing talks have been held between Apple and Microsoft, but they are still said to be at an early stage, with expectations that they may have some way to go before any conclusion is in sight. 

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is trying to wrest market share from Google, the leader in Internet search, and analyst James McQuivey of Forrester Research Inc said in this respect, “such a deal would be good for Apple.” 

It has a long way to go, however, if it is to topple Google in the mobile search market: figures compiled in November 2009 showed that, of people who use their phones to search the Web, 86 per cent used Google, compared with 11 per cent for Bing, according to New York-based Nielsen. 

Once seen as allies against Microsoft’s dominance, Google and Apple are now going head-to-head in several arenas, including operating systems and the fast-growing smartphone market. 

Apple is also working on ways to manage ads displayed on its mobile devices, a move that would challenge Google’s advertising business, the Bloomberg story said.

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Apple profits surge on back of Mac and iPhone sales bonanza

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Apple racked up US$1.67billion (£1billion) profit in the last quarter of its 2009 trading year, a rise approaching 50 per cent over the same period in 2008.

Booming iPhone and Mac computer sales are keeping the California-based computer giant’s figures buoyant, although sales of iPods were down eight per cent over the same quarter last year.

Most than half of the company’s sales are still in the USA, although that proportion continues to edge closer to parity.

The cornerstone of the figures is the great profit margin the company is achieving on its sales, especially of computers. Computer sales topped three million for the quarter, while the number of iPhones sold hit 7.4 million, up seven per cent on the same period in 2008.

“We are thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve got a very strong line-up for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010.”

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, added: “For the full year, we grew revenue by 12 percent and net income by 18 percent in extraordinarily challenging times. Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue in the range of about $11.3 billion to $11.6 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $1.70 to $1.78.”

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