iTunes Store debuts in 56 new countries including India

Apple’s popular virtual store, iTunes Store has now reached 56 new countries. The new countries include India and Indonesia that were left out during the expansion of iTunes Store in Asia in June of 2011.

Apple says that, iTunes Store is now launched in 119 countries including Russia, South Africa, and Turkey. With this expansion, the people can buy contents in iTunes Store in their local currency. This expansion comes a week after Apple released the new version of iTunes.

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SMS celebrates 20th birthday

On December 3, 1992 an UK engineer, Neil Papworth, sent the first short message service (SMS) with the message "Merry Christmas." Now it has been 20 years of text messaging. Although it was Papworth who sent the first message, text messaging was an idea proposed by a Nokia engineer Matti Makkonen in1984.

The first message was sent from a computer. At that time, messages could only be received on phones but can’t be sent from phone or replied. It took quite some time for SMS to actually been adopted by larger mass. In 2007 28.9 billion text messages were sent in a month in the US. The amount in June this year is 184.3 billion according to CTIA mobile trade group.

Before mobile phones were smart enough to send emails and instant messages, SMS was the only means of text communication. But, with the increase in the popularity of smartphones less people are using SMS for communication. Popularity of Facebook chat, Twitter, iMessage, BBM, Google Talk, Skype and similar services. Twitter says that it was inspired by SMS and like SMSs 160 character limit, Twitter limits it’s posts to be a maximum of 140-character long. And, it’s truly mobile as some 60 percent of Twitter users access the service through mobile phone.

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Long live ‘The Daily’ – shutting down on Dec 15

The digital-only magazine that started as the only iPad-only newspaper, ‘The Daily’ is seeing it’s last on December 15, 2012. Born in a high-profile launch in February of 2011, the newspaper’s 21-months life wasn’t successful in winning enough subscribers to make it sustainable.

At a price of $0.99 a week or $39.99 a year the newspaper needed about 500,000 subscribers to break even. But, all it could gain was 100,000 subscribers. Even Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, the most influential offline media person, couldn’t gain enough subscribers to made the new digital publishing sustainable.

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Apple assembling iMacs in the US ?

In the teardown of the latest iMac, iFixit website found an interesting writing on the back of the latest iMac. It says that the computer is assembled in USA.

It’s a well known fact that Apple has been outsourcing assembling of all of it’s devices  to Foxconn, a Chinese company. Given high labor cost in the USA, it doesn’t make an economic sense to assemble a computer in the USA. We hope, it isn’t just a typo.

For example, like all other Apple devices, back of an iPad reads "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China".

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PC sales didn’t pick up after Windows 8 launch

When Windows 8 was launched on October 26, 2012 many expected a surge in the sales of PC. But, according to the new data from research firm NPD, PC sales has decreased by 21 percent since the launch of Windows 8. Desktop computer sales has decreased by 9 percent while laptop sales decreased by 24 percent.

Although Windows 8 is not a killer operating system and it has received mixed reviews, the decline in sales of PC might not be solely due to Windows 8. There are a lot of other reasons people might not want to spend in another computer.

Popularity of tablet computer – Popularity of iPad and other tablet computers have hurt PC sales in the last few years. Although a tablet isn’t considered suitable for productivity activities, everybody knows that this shortcoming will be short-lived.

Apple is eating the PC’s lunch – Popularity of iPod, iPad and iPhone has increased the mass who want an Apple computer to go with them. In a latest report Apple announced that it’s MacBook line is the bestselling notebook computer in US market. Because of less variety and consistency in quality, and best customer service of Apple more and more PC users are changing camp these days.

Windows 8 reviews are painful – Reviews of Windows 8 talked about the transition from Windows 7 to 8 is not an easy choice. Those who wanted to try something new, fact about the long learning curve made them hesitant. Although every PC sold today features Windows 8 the consumer doesn’t seem to care much.

Desktops are near the grave – Demise of desktop was predicted much earlier and it is showing sign now. These days, laptops are much cheaper than desktops and most of the people don’t need the horsepower they offer.

Too many computing options – The holiday shopping lists of people this year are full of all other gadgets on the top except a PC. There are tablets, smartphones, book readers, game consoles and so on. There is no PC in the list because they don’t need a PC to chat or watch videos or surf internet these days. They don’t need PCs to send emails and take notes or consume any digital contents. Video editing, photo editing and all sorts of other tasks can be done by phones or tablets. So, PCs relevancy has shrunk a lot in the current time.

Too much costly – Windows is really costly for a software. After a few days of Microsoft makinga ‘surprisingly low’ $40 upgrade of Windows 8, Indian government mocked it by releasing a full tablet, half it’s price. The $20 tablet, Aakash basically does what most of the consumers want their PCs to do. 

Google Maps and Earth updated with new high resolution imagery

224 cities and 108 countries in Google Maps and Google Earth are updated with new and high resolution imagery. Many of the US cities got new high resolution 45° imagery, others with new high resolution aerial updates and new high resolution satellite updates.

An example of high resolution 45° imagery of Baltimore, MD, US is shown below. Click on the image to to the Google Map to explore the area.

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$20 tablet, Aakash 2 launched in India

To accelerate the growth of tablets in Indian market, the Indian Government has subsidized a 7" tablet running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS to cost only Rs 1,130 (equivalent to US$ 20). On the occasion of National Education Day of India, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee and the HRD minister, MM Pallam Raju launched the Aakash 2 tablet.

Technical Details of the tablet include:

• OS – Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).
• Processor – ARM Cortex A8 1 GHz with 512 MB of DDR3 RAM.
• Storage – 4 GB internal storage, 32 GB microSD support.
• Screen – 7″, 4-point capacitive multi-touch display with pixel dimensions of 800×480.
• camera – 0.3 megapixel front camera.
• network – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• Mini-USB port with OTG, 3.5 mm audio jack, G-sensor.
• battery – 3200 mA Li-ion battery with up to 3 hours of backup.
• Included in package – Wall charger, USB adapter, USB cable, 4-port USB hub.

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HTC and Apple settle out-of-court

HTC to pay Apple $6 to $8 patent licensing fee

Apple and rival smartphone maker have settled out-of-course and signed-in a 10-year agreement of licensing fee. All the lawsuits between Apple and HTC were withdrawn following the agreement. HTC will reportedly pay Apple a fee ranging from $6 to $8 per phone.

After the agreement, Apple will benefit from 30-35 million projected sales of HTC Android phones to be shipped in 2013. The patent licensing deal between the two smartphone makers extends to next 10 years, but further details of the agreement is kept secret.

HTC is told to be paying licensing fee of $5 per phone to Microsoft too. This licensing deal is expected to help Apple in bringing other smartphone makers like Samsung and Motorola in the negotiation table. It can also serve as the blueprint for Apple in the ongoing patent litigations.

Windows Live Messenger being replaced by Skype

In a latest report, Microsoft planning to retire its messaging service, Windows Live Messenger client, and focus in Skype. Skype has announced that the Windows Live Messenger is now integrated with Skype so that the users of the popular service can use Skype as their native client.

In the announcement, Messanger has only a few more month to live before it will be retired in the first quarter of 2013.

We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 (with the exception of mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available).

Apple replacing Intel chips in Macs?

In a latest report, Apple might be preparing to replace Intel chips with it’s own processors in future versions of Apple computers.

Traditionally Apple used to run on chips manufactured by Motorola and IBM, before it switched to Intel for their higher speed performance. Although Intel’s processors are powerful, they are power hungry. That is the reason most of the mobile devices including Apple’s own device, run on ARM based chips.

Apple designs it’s own processors used in its flagship products like iPhone, iPad, and iPods. But, Mac computers Intel’s x86 architecture that are quite different from the portable devices that run on ARM based processors.

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