Apple launches Special Edition iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus

Apple has launched special editions of its flagship Smartphone duo – iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Called 'PRODUCT RED Special Edition', the new variants of both Smartphones have Red-colored rear panels. They come in 128GB and 256GB internal storage capacities and will be available on the company's website and Apple Stores, at a starting price of $749.

Both special edition Smartphones will go on sale in US, as well as 40 other countries and regions, from March 24.

The iPhone 7 features a 4.7-inch Retina HD display, while the bigger iPhone 7 Plus comes with a 5.5-inch screen. Apart from that, other additions include a 12MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture, 6-element lens, quad-LED flash, flicker sensor and more. The Smartphones' cameras use an Image signal processor to apply machine learning, for distinguishing between humans and other object in the image, adjusting the brightness and noise levels accordingly.

It's worth noting that while iPhone 7 features a single 12MP rear camera, iPhone 7 Plus comes with a 12MP dual rear camera setup having 2x optical zoom capability. Both sport a 7MP FaceTime-enabled front camera for selfies and video chats.

The two Smartphones are powered by Apple's new quad-core A10 Fusion chipset, with two high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores. It's also claimed to be 50% faster than the A9 chipset, which powers the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus Smartphones.

Apple to setup iPhone Manufacturing Unit in Bengaluru

Apple plans to make iPhones for the Indian market in Bengaluru. Wistron, a Taiwanese OEM maker for Apple, is setting up a facility in Peenya, the city's industrial hub, to manufacture the iPhones. The facility will start production from next April.

Foxconn, Apple's largest Taiwan-based OEM, earlier committed to setting up a manufacturing plant in Maharashtra. The assumption was the plant would make only Apple products. But Foxconn has tied up with other players like Xiaomi and OnePlus for local manufacture and not necessarily to only make Apple products there.

This will be Apple's second big announcement for Bengaluru. In May, Apple announced a design and development accelerator in the city to grow the iOS developer community and also to guide Indian developers to leverage Apple's programming language Swift and build apps for Apple TV and Apple The facility will open early next year.

The Bengaluru manufacturing facility underscores India's importance for the Cupertino-based company.

Apple CEO Tim Cook's multi-city India tour earlier this year signaled the growing importance of India powered by the demand for Apple products by a burgeoning middle class.

Apple to launch new iPhones on September 9

Apple Inc has invited journalists to a September 9 event, where it is expected to unveil new iPhone(s) and potentially a new version of its Apple TV set-top box.

The email invitation includes a colorful Apple logo with the sentence "Hey Siri, give us a hint," referring to Apple's popular digital voice assistant.

The company traditionally announces its new iPhones in September.

Apple is widely expected to unveil the iPhone 6S and the iPhone 6 Plus S. In general, the company launches upgraded versions to existing phones under the "S" range.

Media reports have indicated that Apple is preparing for the largest initial production run for its next iPhones by the end of the year.

The new iPhones are also said to feature Force Touch technology, which can distinguish between a light tap and deep press.

The event will be held at 10:00 am PT in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, which can hold about 7,000 people.

iPhone gets banned in Syria

Syrian authorities have targeted the iPhone in their latest efforts to block protestor’s ability to communicate. The Apple smartphone has officially been singled out for a countrywide ban.

Pro-democracy activists are being served with notices by the Syrian Finance Ministry’s Customs Department which state: “The authorities warn anyone against using the iPhone in Syria,” according to a Lebanese news service named Al Nashara. Owning as well as importing iPhones is banned and the penalty is confiscation and prosecution.

An activist said, “It is enough for any tourist or guest visiting Syria to own an iPhone to be a spy suspected.”

The Syrian government hopes to prevent activists from recording government violence against protesters. Foreign media have already been banned from covering events in the country since March. It’s not clear whether the ban extends to other smartphones with cameras, but Macgasm proposes that the iPhone was targeted due to a new application named Souri Wa Bas that helped connect and boost morale among regime fighters.

The protests in Syria began early this year, escalating into a full blown uprising in March. The people are asking for a regime change, democracy and wider freedoms including speech and assembly. According to the United Nations, since March more than 4,000 have died in relation to the protests. Syrian authorities have since used a variety of tactics to suppress the discontent electronically, including a counter Facebook propaganda movement and going so far as to enact a countrywide internet black out.

“Steve Jobs must be turning in his grave on learning that his iconic device is banned in his home country,” an activist pointed out, though the Apple co-founder was born in California. However, Jobs’ biological father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, happens to be Syrian born. Jandali has uploaded a video to YouTube in support of the Syrian people.

Wealth managers prefer Apple over RIM

Wealth managers prefer using Apple products for business rather than Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices, a survey by Aite Group showed.

Of 402 financial advisers polled, 45 percent said they would choose an Apple iPhone or iPad, while 14 percent would pick a BlackBerry.

The research firm, which focuses on financial services, conducted the survey in March, well before the recent RIM outage which left large pockets of BlackBerry users around the world without access to email and other functions.

The study found that using mobile devices was increasingly important to advisers, many of whom service clients with hand-held devices who have access to online brokerage services.

Nearly half the advisers surveyed said having access to business applications was an "important" or "very important" part of their technology strategy for 2011.

Apple's iPhone looks set to ditch rival phones

Apple Inc's latest iPhone looks set to become its bestselling device ever, and one reason appears to be disenchantment with rival smartphones.

Nearly one in four people who thronged Apple stores from Tokyo to San Francisco said they were ditching BlackBerries, discarding Nokias or even giving up Google Android-based phones, hoping for something better.

The majority of the 127 iPhone 4S buyers polled informally by Reuters in the United States, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Britain were Apple diehards upgrading their devices.

But 28 claimed they were making a switch, with some saying they were disillusioned by Research in Motion after this week's global BlackBerry outage that enraged millions.

Apple had already pre-sold over a million during the first day it went live on the Internet - a week before it hit stores selves in seven countries on Friday.

RIM's BlackBerry and smartphones by manufacturers such as Nokia - which abandoned Symbian and will this year unveil devices based on Microsoft software - have been losing ground to the iPhone, which is facing a serious threat only from Android phones.

The new phone looks similar to the previous iPhone 4 but has a faster processor, better camera and a voice-activated software dubbed "Siri", which lets users ask the phone questions and helps in logging calendar items.

Away from the notoriously fickle consumer-gadget marketplace, Apple also appears to be making strides.

Apple appears to be a winner when workers get to pick their own phones, in a trend known as the consumerization of IT. Companies can save money when they let employees buy their own phones and pay their own monthly bills.

An Aite Group poll of 402 wealth managers conducted before the outage found that 45 percent would choose an iPhone or iPad, compared with 14 percent for a BlackBerry.

Sprint gets its 1st iPhone

Apple stores got the longest lines as the new iPhone model launched Friday, but there were lines at Sprint stores too, as the carrier got a chance to sell the phone more than four years after the first model was launched.

Product chief Fared Adib said, the iPhone had broken Sprint's record for first-day sales of any phone. Sales were above the company's expectations.

Sprint Nextel Corp. joined bigger carriers AT&T and Verizon Wireless as a seller of the phone. Spot checks in Philadelphia and San Francisco showed that the lines outside Sprint stores were longer than at its rivals.

Meanwhile, a representative for AT&T said, it had activated a record number of iPhones and was on track to double its previous single-day record for activations.

Sprint is struggling to compete with the bigger carriers and expects the iPhone to help it keep subscribers.

Kaufman Bros. analyst Ben Abramovitz said talks with about 50 people in line for the phone at a Sprint store revealed that most of them are current Sprint customers looking to upgrade, particularly BlackBerry users looking for a more Internet-friendly phone. He also found some AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA customers looking to switch.

Sprint will be paying a lot of money to put iPhones in customer hands: It's subsidizing each iPhone 4S by about $400 to get it down to the $200 price for the 16 gigabyte version. It's also selling the cheaper iPhone 4.

Credit ratings agency Moody's Investor Service downgraded Sprint's debt, sending it further into speculative-grade, or "junk" territory. Part of the reason is the cash drain that iPhone sales will cause before they start paying off through higher monthly service fees.

The chief reason behind the downgrade, however, is Sprint's decision to upgrade its wireless network for faster data speeds. Sprint revealed that decision a week ago, to the dismay of investors.

Apple iPhone 5 available on pre-order from Deutsche Telekom

While Apple hasn't officially announced any details about the iPhone 5, German customers can now reserve theirs through Deutsche Telekom AG. This is yet another confirmation of the impending release of Apple's new iPhone.

While Deutsche Telekom isn't making big moves to advertise the pre-order capability, Apple fans are sufficiently excited to spread the news by word of mouth. The pre-order is available to customers who specifically request the iPhone 5, but Deutsche Telekom isn't sharing the exact release date of the phone even to those customers.

Apple has made no official announcement about the iPhone 5 yet, but plenty of rumors have surfaced already. Shipping pre-loaded with iOS 5, the iPhone 5 will provide wireless syncing between the iPhone and its partner computer. The iPhone 5 could see an upgraded 8-megapixel camera to coincide with iOS 5's new photography features. The A5 processor, which already powers the iPad 2, is the new powerhouse for iPhone processing.

We also expect to hear about the rumored iPhone nano at the same time as the iPhone 5 release. Apple remains quiet about the much-anticipated release details.

iPhone 5 to have a 4-Inch Screen

As we get closer to the rumored release date of the iPhone 5 in October, yet another clue about its true nature has surfaced.

Here's a new set of extrapolations, taken to a speculative conclusion at MacRumors. When they snagged a couple of publicly available third-party cases that purport to fit the iPhone 5, they noticed that the case is so much wider that it strongly suggests a 4-inch screen on the new iPhone, larger than the iPhone 4's 3.5" display.

MacRumors did more precise measurements with this particular case, noting that while the iPhone 4 is 2.31 inches wide, with its 3.5" screen measuring 1.95 inches wide, an iPhone fitting into this case would have a display measuring a significantly wider 2.24 inches. So if this indeed is the final case design, the iPhone will have a 4-inch screen.

However, given the secretive nature of Apple and the possibility of fake case specifications passed around to various manufacturers accused of leaks in the past, we can't be sure of the dimensions of the iPhone 5 just yet. This is just one piece of info, but add this to all the other iPhone 5 clues, and most are pointing to the same thing: As the evidence mounts, it points to a wider, thinner iPhone 5 with a larger screen and tapered bottom.

We'll have to wait till later this month for the alleged introduction of the iPhone 5, with the rumored release in October.

Sprint to sell iPhone in October

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Sprint Nextel Corp., the country's third-largest cellphone company, will start selling the iPhone in mid-October.

The newspaper said the wireless company will get to sell both the new iPhone 5 and the current model, the iPhone 4. The iPhone 5 will launch at the same time that AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless get it.

Apple Inc. normally launches a new iPhone model in June or July, but this year's launch has been delayed for unknown reasons. Apple watchers had expected the new phone to arrive in September, but speculation has recently shifted toward October.

Sprint, headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., has been turning around its ailing operations through improvements in customer care, but its inability to sell the iPhone has hampered its recovery. In the three months ending in June, it lost 101,000 subscribers from contract-based plans, while Verizon and AT&T, already larger, added subscribers. Contract-based plans are the most lucrative for wireless carriers.

AT&T was the exclusive U.S. carrier for the phone for three and half years, until Apple allowed Verizon to start selling one in February.

China Telecom in talks with Apple on iPhone

China Telecom Corp Ltd, the smallest of the country's three telecommunications carriers, is still in talks with Apple Inc to carry its iPhone, targeting growth in high-end users.

China Telecom, which competes with China Mobile Ltd and China Unicom, would only increase handset subsidies if it started selling iPhones to draw more users to use its network, Chairman Wang Xiaochu said.

China Unicom is the only carrier selling the popular iPhone in China, the world's largest mobile phone market, although the two other operators have been aggressively negotiating with Apple to be next.

China Telecom, which has increased capital expenditure to 50 billion yuan this year from 43 billion yuan last year, sees its overall ARPU (average rate per user) trending lower in the second half of this year.

"For voice, we will track our competitors on pricing, but we'll try to maintain our pricing for data. That's because our 3G development is better, so larger data traffic will help raise our ARPU," Wang said.

Its views are largely in line with China Mobile, which said last week that its ARPU would continue to fall for the rest of the year.

China Telecom executives said during the news conference that 3G ARPU for 3G services was slightly above 80 yuan in the first half after introducing the service in the second half of last year.

WP7 Mango coming on Sept 1, to compete with iPhone and Android phones

With all of the iPhone rumors swarming around lately, the reports suggest that the Mango update to WP7 will come out on September 1. Just a couple of weeks ago we heard from Microsoft that the OS was ready for phones, and it was only a matter of time before we would see it in the wild.

There is still no word on exactly if new hardware will be coming out on September 1 along with the updated software. When WP7 was first launched it was launched on several phones and carriers all at once. This time it is unknown if that will happen this year too. The current generation of WP7 devices will start getting over the air updates on September 1, but everything else is still up in the air.

The Mango update to WP7 is supposed to address most of the main areas of concern with the current product, and add some features on top of those improvements.

Google is bumping up the Ice Cream Sandwich launch to October to compete with Apple’s still unannounced iPhone; now with Microsoft launching Mango around the same time it will create a perfect storm of cell phone choices. The key features of both iOS 5 and Mango have already been highlighted so the only real wild card operating system wise will be Ice Cream Sandwich. On the hardware side of things it is pretty much anyone’s guess to how most of the new phones will look or function.

BlackBerry Smartphones trying to keep up with Apple iPhone and Google Android

BlackBerry, whose handheld smartphones revolutionized the way business people stay in touch with the world, has unveiled a new line of phones - just days after it announced 2,000 job cuts, revamped top management, and saw its stock hit a five-year low.

The new models, with touch screens, slide-out keyboards and a faster, more versatile operating system, were designed to appeal to BlackBerry's core audience of business users, while keeping up with increasingly some stiff competition: Apple's iPhone and phones that run on Google's Android operating system.

Research In Motion, the Canadian company that sells BlackBerrys, is profitable and its sales are rising - but it still has a tremendous problem. Apple and Android are eating its lunch. Smart phone consumers who expect the Web at their fingertips have turned away from Blackberry toward its more Internet-friendly counterparts.

Now some analysts see RIM as a has-been, a company that gave the world constant access to email on the go, but couldn't turn it into mass-market dominance.

"They were very late to make a major transition. They made great phones that focus around email, but not around the Internet. And that's where Apple and Android are way ahead of them," said Alkesh Shah, an analyst at Evercore Partners in New York.

The new RIM lineup includes three versions of the BlackBerry Torch (models 9810, 9850 and 9860), a multimedia handheld whose large touch screen makes it look much like an iPhone with extra buttons. Updated versions of the BlackBerry Bold - models 9900 and 9930 - take a more down-the-middle approach, combining a new touch screen with the kind of keyboard that had millions of users trying to type messages as they raced through airports or walked down the street.

The company is hardly about to go under. Most companies and government agencies still issue BlackBerrys, not iPhones, to their employees for business use. And BlackBerrys are still wildly popular in other parts of the world - much more popular than Apple in the Middle East and parts of Asia and Europe.

The company promises a new operating system next year, called QNX, designed to compete directly with Apple, Google, and other companies such as Motorola and Samsung. That'll be crunch time for BlackBerry.

Apple delays iPhone 5 to October release

Apple is delaying the release of the iPhone 5 to October, according to people familiar with the matter, as the next-generation device suffers another in a series of setbacks.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company, which had scheduled a September launch, is pushing it back a month.
Reports initially alleged AT&T had blacked out employee vacations - typical during high-volume releases - during the last two weeks of September. But new sources say the information is inaccurate.
"I don't know why AT&T's calling for all hands on deck those weeks, but it's not for an iPhone launch," said a source, indicating October would be more appropriate.
Previous supply-chain sources suggested the new iPhone will feature a faster A5 chip, similar to the iPad 2, run on both GSM/CDMA networks, and offer a higher-resolution 8-megapixel camera.

China Telecom planning iPhone launch later this year

China Telecom Corp Ltd plans to offer its 106 million subscribers the Apple Inc iPhone by the end of 2011, which would make it the second operator to do so in the world's largest mobile phone market.

The move would help China Telecom, the smallest of the country's three telecommunications operators, cement more high-end 3G users in a competitive market in which handset subsidies offered by carriers are squeezing margins. China Telecom operates the country's largest fixed-line network and is a relative newcomer to the mobile market.

"The reason telecom operators are fighting for the iPhone business is because everybody is trying to grab as many 3G users as possible," said Jane Wang, an analyst at UK-based research firm Ovum. "The only way to keep costs down is to build up such a user base."

China Telecom's shares, which have risen by about a fifth this year, extended earlier gains after Reuters exclusively reported the plan, rising as much as 5.5 percent to an intraday high of HK$4.95 and outperforming the Hang Seng Index's 1 percent gain.

Separately, China Telecom said in a statement that its president and chief operating officer, Shang Bing, had resigned to become deputy minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

China has 896 million mobile phone users - bigger than the entire population of Europe. Its three telecommunications operators are China Mobile Ltd, China Unicom and China Telecom.

So far, China Unicom is the only operator to offer the iPhone after signing a three-year agreement with Apple in 2009. Its deal with Apple is not based on a revenue-sharing scheme, unlike some operators in other countries. For example, in the United States, Apple has a revenue-sharing agreement with AT&T Inc on iPhone sales.

"Unicom is selling iPhones, but there was no particular boost to their earnings from that," said Patrick Yiu, director at CASH Asset Management. "Even if China Telecom gets the iPhone deal, it will still depend on whether their system can support it and on the details of the contract."

In May, China Telecom's chairman, Wang Xiaochu, told a news conference that the carrier had contacted Apple to launch the iPhone based on CDMA (code division multiple access) technology.
"It's expected to happen this year. China Telecom already has the required technology and it all hinges on the content of the agreement. As we all know, it's not easy to negotiate with Apple," said a source close.

China Telecom is expected to introduce the iPhone in November, said another source.
In June, a media report said bigger rival China Mobile could offer iPhones from September, although analysts said it was unlikely that Apple would support the carrier's TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access) technology.

A more likely scenario was for Apple to support China Mobile's 4G LTE (long-term evolution) technology, which would only be available either in late 2012 or 2013, they said. If that is the case, China Telecom would be next in line to offer iPhones.

Next iPhone to have Over-the-Air Updates

The day is getting closer when you don't need to plug your iPhone, iPad or iPod into your computer to update its operating system. There's a report that iOS 5 will be capable of over-the-air updates. According to 9to5 Mac's multiple sources, Apple has been negotiating with Verizon Wireless to provide the over-the-air updates.

For iOS updates to be delivered over-the-air, Apple will need to make fundamental changes in the way its updates work. For one thing, Apple will need to stop requiring a download of the entire operating system for a simple update.

Perhaps Apple will let these updates take place only over Wi-Fi connections, as it does for some large app downloads. Even if that's the case, just for the sake of efficiency it would be a good idea to send incremental updates, similar to the way Microsoft has been updating its operating systems for years, in small pieces as they become available.

This would be a long-awaited and welcome capability - a feature that's commonplace in the Android operating system. So how longer must we wait? According to a general consensus, iOS 5 will launch when the iPhone 5 ships, and now the latest iPhone rumor is that it won't be happening in June or July. The next iPhone is expected to ship in September.

Apple suppliers making white iPhones

Suppliers to Apple Inc have begun production of white iPhones after a delay of almost 10 months, pointing to a launch date of within a month.
Industry sources reveal that Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, flagship of Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group, would assemble the iPhone.
Apple Senior Vice-President of Marketing Phil Schiller first said in a Twitter post in March that the white iPhone would be available for sale by Spring, which ends in May in the northern hemisphere.
The white iPhone would be available from AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc by the end of April, Bloomberg News reported on its website, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs first unveiled the white version of the smartphone when the iPhone 4 was launched in June last year, but it has been delayed because of a manufacturing issue that the company has not elaborated on.
Many telecommunications operators have been eager to sell the iPhone, hoping that the feature-jammed device will help boost data network use and increase revenue. For example, China Mobile Ltd, the world's biggest mobile operator, has been in talks with Apple for more than a year on distribution rights for the handset.
More than 16 million iPhones were sold in the last quarter of 2010, accounting for more than a third of Apple's sales in those three months.

Apple to make iPhones for CDMA networks

According to a new report, Apple Inc. is getting ready to manufacture an iPhone that works on the cellular network operated by Verizon Wireless, though it doesn't necessarily mean it's coming to that carrier any time soon.

It has long been rumored that Verizon Wireless will eventually start selling the iPhone. But Lowell McAdam, the head of Verizon Wireless, has downplayed the possibility of an iPhone on Verizon's current 3G network. Verizon expects one to come later for Verizon's newer, faster 4G network.

The Wall Street Journal has briefed that the company will start mass-producing the iPhones that work on CDMA cellular networks by year's end.

But that wouldn't necessarily be for Verizon Wireless. Sprint Nextel Corp uses the same technology, as do some Chinese and Korean carriers.

Current iPhones only work on GSM networks, including that of the iPhone's exclusive U.S. carrier, AT&T Inc.

The Journal also said Apple is developing a fifth-generation iPhone. New iPhone designs, including ones with smaller and larger screens than the existing models, have also long been rumored to be in the works.

China Unicom sells 100,000 iPhone 4s in 4 days

China Unicom has sold close to 100,000 iPhone 4s in the first four days of launching he device in China.

China Unicom, which is the mobile carrier for the iPhone 4 in China, has basically sold out of its first shipment of the device, company vice president Li Gang said. Earlier in the week, the mobile carrier reported that 200,000 users had pre-ordered the product. China Unicom has already stopped online reservations for iPhone 4, and is instead asking users to come directly to retail stores to sign up for the device.

The massive demand for the product outpaces last year's official launch of the iPhone 3G and 3GS in China. During that period, it had taken over a month before China Unicom had announced it sold 100,000 iPhone units.

The iPhone 4 was officially launched in China last Saturday, with the popularity of the device causing retail outlets in the country to sell out of the product.

Apple has said more iPhone 4s will be made available in China soon and that customers should check back with their local store for updates. China Unicom expects the second shipment of the iPhone 4 to arrive in China Oct 1.

The high sales figures for the iPhone 4 come as China Unicom reports it now has 10 million 3G users.

China Unicom to launch Apple iPhone 4

China Unicom has planned to launch Apple's latest iPhone 4 very soon. According to the state run media, the proposed launch may take place next month in the world's largest mobile market.

Apple also has agreed to let China Unicom, the country's second-largest mobile operator, distribute the iPad Tablet Computer in China.

Although, no fixed timetable has been set for the iPad launch.

China Unicom has said previously it is in talks with Apple to sell the iPhone 4 and the iPad, which have launched around the world to much fanfare and are already available in China's flourishing grey market for Apple products.

The company started offering the iPhone 3GS model with wireless Internet capability earlier this month, with Apple's Beijing store selling out of the phone on the first day.