Analyst: iPad, iPhone, Apple to feel squeeze in 2013

Prospects aren't as rosy as expected, UBS says, for lots of reasons, from rising competition and a supply chain squeeze to the iPad Mini going cannibal.

Apple faces a few challenges that could take a bite out of iPhone and iPad sales next year, at least in the opinion of one analyst.

In an investors note out today, UBS analyst Steven Milunovich slashed his iPhone sales estimates for the March, June, and September 2013 quarters by 5 million units each quarter. Sales estimates for the iPad were cut by 2 million per quarter for the same three periods.

The analyst now expects Apple to sell 41 million iPhones in the March quarter, 36 million in the June quarter, and 33 million in the September quarter. iPad sales are forecast at 21.7 million in the March quarter, 24.5 million in the June quarter, and 20.7 million in the September quarter.

In line with the lower estimate for unit sales, Milunovich also trimmed his earnings estimates for Apple for fiscal 2013 and 2014 and lowered the stock's target price to $700 from $780.

Supply chain checks show that the manufacturing rate for the iPhone is dropping to 25 million units for the March quarter. TheiPhone 5 is just now starting to sell in China, but UBS's Chinese sources don't think it will sell as well as the iPhone 4S.Why the dour outlook? Milunovich cited a few reasons.

The lower-priced iPad Mini looks to be cannibalizing sales of the larger and more expensive iPad.

And finally, the analyst believes his previous estimates were too aggressive in light of the lackluster economy in Europe and rougher competition from other smartphones.

The analyst did throw Apple a bone, citing some optimism ahead.

"We expect that China Mobile may start to sell iPhones in the Dec quarter, so a summer 5S with TD-SCDMA and fingerprint recognition is possible," Milunovich said. "Apple is driven to make beautiful products. Whether it is an iTV, wearable computers, or another new product category, we have faith that innovation is not dead."

Earlier this week, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek struck a bearish tone when he cut his price target for Apple stock to $800 from $900.

Apple was once the dominant smartphone and tablet player. But lately the company has been challenged on both fronts. Samsung's Galaxy S lineup and other Android smartphones have given the iPhone a run for its money. And the iPad's market share has been sliced by an array of lower-cost Android tablets.

The company has also put itself in a dicey position by releasing so many new products around the same time -- the iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, the 4th-generation iPad. Though the new devices are positioned to take advantage of the holiday buying season, the timing of them puts a temporary strain on Apple's profit margins.

Apple's stock has been battered the past couple of months. From a high above $700 in September, the stock has slipped almost 200 points. In trading early this morning, shares were hovering around $514.

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Colbert visits Google, is clueless about Google Play

Interviewed by Eric Schmidt, Colbert is stunned to discover he can buy his own book through the great hydra that is Google.

No, he's not corpsing.

(Credit: Google screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Google's Eric Schmidt is a very busy man.

But he still found the time to interview fellow political philosopher Stephen Colbert, when the latter appeared at Google this week.

Indeed, Schmidt even found the time to post a chunk of the escapade onto his Google+ account. (The full hour has been posted to YouTube and I have embedded it at the bottom of this post.)

You might imagine that Colbert would be au fait with all of Google's services before presenting himself before an audience of Googlies.

But, no.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlXRWdjhefs&feature=player_embedded

Colbert was there to push his masterwork "America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't." He wanted people to go to their local bookstore or to the "one that's named after the rain forest."

Schmidt, ever the subtle salesman, explained to him that his book was for sale not merely on Amazon, but on Google Play.

"What does that mean?" asked a bemused Colbert.

Patiently, Schmidt explained that the Google hydra had a book-selling arm too.

Colbert still worried that -- Google being Google -- it would only sell e-books. He was stunned to discover that there might even be the possibility to buy a physical book too.

Yet he still had brand recognition problems. Shortly afterward, he appeared to forget the name again altogether.

When he learned his book would be for sale on Google Play at list price, Colbert said: "So go to Google Plus for no deal!"

How extraordinary that despite Google becoming one of the bigger tech spenders in advertising, there is still work to be done.

The whole interview embraced vast numbers of topics. Many will enjoy Colbert telling Schmidt that Google Maps are phenomenal. Schmidt agreed. "Ask an Apple user," he said.

Should you be keen to hear someone say "bulls***" to Eric Schmidt, then I recommend the 19th minute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HpBHWUPa8Q&feature=player_embedded

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The dangers of Googling

Mary Shelley wrote ‘Frankenstein; or, the modern Prometheus’, as an allegory about technology and its ability to damage human society. She wrote in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, which caused the immiseration of large sections of the population of Britain.

Her novel gave birth to what Isaac Asimov called the ‘Frankenstein Complex’ - the scenario in which an artificial being (a robot or an android) turns upon its creator, a theme which was developed by Karel Capek in ‘R.U.R.’ (incidentally coining the term ‘robot’- from the Czech for ‘worker’).

This literary fashion was overthrown by Asimov himself, in his ‘Positronic Robot’ stories (in which he, in turn, coined the term ‘robotics’). Why, he argued, would a washing machine wish to destroy its maker? Indeed, the development of cybernetics has tended to follow Asimov rather than Capek.

Electronic computers

What we call ‘Robots’ nowadays are electronically-controlled machines capable of duplicating the actions of humans, rather than humanoid machines; for example, pick-and-place robots, production-line welding plant, lunar- and mars-rovers and computerised numerically controlled (CNC) mills. One hardly expects a computerised embroidery machine to demand hegemony over the earth.

However, the development of electronic computers after the microprocessor revolution - which led to the ‘personal computer’ and made computing much more accessible - led to second thoughts among some scientists and philosophers; not so much paranoia about artificial intelligences taking over the world, as worries about how these machines affect the way we think and operate.

In 1966 Joseph Weizenbaum, a German-American computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed a simple computer programme called ‘ELIZA’ (named after Eliza Doolittle in GB Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’). It was what is now called a ‘chatterbot’, a programme capable of engaging humans in a pseudo-conversation.

Decision-making

ELIZA used open-ended questions in the manner of a psychoanalyst. Weizenbaum was shocked to find that people were taking ELIZA seriously, and were even trying to have intimate personal discussions with the programme. This led him to start questioning the merits of artificial intelligence.

Ten years later, he published his seminal book ‘Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation’. His central argument was the difference between making choices, an essentially human activity and decision-making, which is a computational activity which can be done by programmed machines.

Wisdom and compassion

Computers, Weizenbaum pointed out, are capable of making highly complex calculations but lack the facility of human judgement, which can take into consideration non-mathematical factors because they lack human qualities such as wisdom and compassion. It is their inability to make choices that ultimately limits how far computers should be allowed to make decisions.

The internet, which was still a fledgling when ‘Computer Power and Human Reason’ came out, subsequently spread all over the world. In 2008 Nicholas G Carr, an American writer on technology and society wrote an article in ‘The Atlantic’ called ‘Is Google making us stupid?’, which explored the detrimental effects that the internet might have on human cognition and our ability to think deeply.

Two years later he expanded his arguments in ‘The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains’, a book which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Human thought, he pointed out, has been formed through the ages by what he calls ‘intellectual technologies’.

These are tools used to find and classify information, to formulate and articulate ideas, to share know-how and knowledge, to take measurements and perform calculations, to expand memory capacity - which included alphabets, maps, printing, clocks, and finally computers. Using neuro-scientific evidence, he shows how our brains change according to these technologies.

Modern commerce

He also argued that each ‘intellectual technology’ promotes of new ways of thinking or extends to the general population established ways of thinking that had been limited to a small, elite group; it is associated with an ‘intellectual ethic’, a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence, about how the human mind works.

Carr posits that, whereas the printed book focuses our attention and encourages deep and creative thought, the internet embodies the ‘intellectual ethic’ of speed, efficiency, optimised production and consumption; it promotes the rapid but shallow sampling of small bits of information from many sources.

Humans, he believes, are becoming adroit at fast but shallow scrutiny, while at the same time losing their ability to concentrate and meditate upon information: our entire methodology of thinking is being changed by the internet.

The flaws of the ‘intellectual ethic’ of the internet indicated by Carr have been worse by the necessities of modern commerce. For example, the ‘chatterbot’ pioneered by Weizenbaum is now being used in internet messaging services and chat rooms for advertising or to obtain personal information about consumers.

Search preferences

Internet search engines such as Google use information gathered about a person’s search preferences to guide that person to more specific information; including, incidentally, the kind of information that Google wishes that person to receive. It also uses this data to more accurately focus advertising in the searcher’s direction.

The ultimate exemplar of the nature of the Frankenstein’s monster we have created through computers and the internet was the Global Financial Crisis, which began in late 2007. Although the underlying reasons were to do with unsound economic policies, as well as with fundamental systemic flaws, the rapidity of the collapse had much to do with programming and the rapid spread of information.

Speculators were almost all equipped with stock market analysis software, automatically fed by price data from share and commodity markets throughout the world as well as other relevant information.

The similarity of the programming meant that the solutions arrived at were similar, so that speculators all reacted in the same manner, creating the rapid stampedes that brought down the financial colossi.

So it might be the ultimate Frankenstein’s Monster may not be a machine which tries to kill its creators, but modern technology which, combined with greed, will at the very least damage us horribly.

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Mobile phone payments set to increase

The use of mobile phones as a payment alternative to cash, checks or credit cards looks set to increase significantly. In order to assess the mobile payments market, KPMG conducted a global online survey of 970 companies between the period of September 2010 and February 2011.

Mobile payments are evolving rapidly and changing the way consumers and businesses operate. As technology and telecommunications companies roll out mobile payment applications and services, mobile strategies are beginning to transform existing business models in a number of sectors such as banking and retail.

The nature of mobile payments' transformative effect depends significantly on a country's state of economic development and the existing payments infrastructure.

In emerging economies, mobile payments will accelerate the pace, scale and reach of commerce by enabling electronic transactions and displacing cash.

In developed economies, mobile payments will transform the chain of commerce beyond payments, but in order to do so, will have to reach a level of convenience and availability on par with today's alternatives.

In every market providers will need to overcome potential security concerns. Mobile payment business opportunities are complex due to an abundance of new and existing players from multiple industries, but the stakes are high: billions of dollars in transactions.

This survey reveals that the payments model is evolving and mobile is enabling a business transformation for services firms, telecom providers, technology vendors and retailers across the globe.

Companies across these industries share a common outlook regarding many aspects of mobile payments. Specifically:

Mobile payments will matter

The majority of companies surveyed 58 percent have a mobile payments strategy in place today, and half of those are already offering a mobile payments service.

Telecom providers are the most likely to have a strategy in place, followed closely by financial service companies.

Mobile payments are preparing to go mainstream Nearly one in five respondents say that mobile payments are very important today. But the majority 54 percent believes that, while mobile payments will be reasonably important in the future, today they are in their infancy.

Most companies we surveyed assess that it will take two to four years for mobile payments to move into the mainstream in their primary region of business. KPMG believes that exploding smartphone growth, new applications, and economic opportunities will grow mobile payments at a much faster rate than our respondents anticipate.

Mobile payments will take multiple forms. We asked respondents to assess five forms of mobile payments m-wallet, m-banking, contactless card systems, online payment systems and carrier billing.

Respondents identified m-banking and online payments systems (such as PayPal, Boku, Obopay) as either mainstream today or likely to gain traction.

While KPMG believes that these forms of mobile payments will all gain some traction, our view is that m-wallets is one of the most exciting and promising payment opportunities. M-wallets provides the momentum to move beyond payments to participate in the entire chain of mobile commerce from brand awareness to consideration, followed by after-sales loyalty and care.

Convenience and availability will drive success. Whether assessing the supply or demand side for mobile payments, respondents agreed that these two factors are the key advantages.

Respondents recognize that convenience and availability are critical requirements in changing consumer behaviour.

Security is the prime impediment. No surprise, certainly, that security is critical where customers' money is at stake.

However, we believe that convenience, availability and ease of use are fundamental to the success of an activity as basic and widely adopted as payment.

Consumers will not adopt new payment solutions each time they encounter a new merchant.

Companies participating in the mobile payments ecosystem may overestimate their ability to make mobile payments as convenient, ubiquitous and easy to use as current solutions. In doing so, they risk failing to deliver on the promise of mobile payments.

The mobile payments ecosystem will be rich and dynamic. Irrespective of which industry the respondent's business is in, they believe that many other industries will play an important role.

Financial services firms and credit card companies will be the most influential, followed closely by telecom operators.

While companies deem technology companies and retailers less influential, new business models driven by these sectors are changing the game at a fast pace.

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Cloud technology innovation grows with TradeCard

Cloud platform provider TradeCard has many options to choose from when recruiting technology talent and software developers.

With headquarters in New York and offices in California and Hong Kong, there’s Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Southeast Asia within its reach.

But instead of turning to these traditional technology hubs, TradeCard positioned itself in Sri Lanka when it mapped out its organizational plan to drive product development, enhance global support, and grow its platform.

TradeCard entered Sri Lanka in 2009 when a small group in Sri Lanka began developing products for TradeCard’s software platform, supporting the technology team in New York.

The efficiency, productivity and quality of work led to a ramp up in staff and a formal presence in Sri Lanka.

In 2009 TradeCard employed a staff of 15. In just two years total staff grew to 70.

The Sri Lanka organization, today known as TradeCard Services, includes customer support and business development staff in addition to software and product developers.

The difference in miles and time zones proved to be a blessing. Being half a world apart, TradeCard leveraged the Sri Lanka office to enhance its global customer support staff which is available to customers 24 hours per day, seven days per week, in 68 countries.

The technology team is essentially now able to work around the clock in different time zones. While conference calls and online meetings help the communication process day to day, TradeCard acknowledges that there’s no replacement for face to face time. As new team members join in Sri Lanka, they often visit the New York office.

TradeCard is unique in its embracement of cloud technology. Not only is TradeCard a provider of cloud-based supply chain software but it is an avid user of cloud. Staff finds itself on the cutting edge of technology. It develops sells and supports cloud technology to retailers, brands and their suppliers, and it uses cloud tools in day to day operations. “TradeCard is a cloud platform on the cutting edge of technology and global trade.

But it’s the people on our team in places like Sri Lanka that enable us to deliver services to 8,000 companies in 68 countries,” TradeCard, Inc. President Guy Rey-Herme said.

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MacBook discontinued. Air and Mini updated.

Apple have discontinued their white MacBook and have instead announced updates to the Air and mini range.

The Air now features a backlit keyboard, Thunderbolt interconnect and has been updated with Intel's latest Core i5 and i7 processors.

The Air has also come down in price and now costs the same as the last generation of MacBook, £849 for the 11inch version.

The 13inch version starts at £1,099.

The new Air and Mini are both available from today.

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Sky Go app for iPad out now

Sky customers can now watch sports, some movies, news and ESPN on their iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone.

Subscribers to Sky can now download Sky Go from the Apple app store for free.

The Sky Go app lets you watch selected channels with the option to pause and rewind live tv.

An electronic programme guide appears in a corner window to show you what else is on while you continue to view your current show.

The app can be downloaded to the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and requires iOS 4.2 or later, simply search for Sky Go in the Apple app store.

Two devices can be registered to receive the portable service.

Further information about Sky Go is available at http://www.sky.com/shop/tv/sky-go/?DCMP=KNC

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