An Apple patent (number 20100048241) has appeared at the Patent & Trademark Office that shows Apple is looking at new ways to use the camera on an iPhone — and perhaps other devices — in new user input ways.
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An Apple patent (number 20010045627) at the US Patent & Trademark Office shows that Apple is at least considering touch screen displays on some Macs. The patent is for a shape detecting input device.
Read MoreAdMob, a mobile advertising network, has announced the results of a survey of consumer usage and attitudes across the iPhone, Android and webOS application platforms in its January 2010 “AdMob Mobile Metrics Report.”
Read MoreI’ll be very surprised if we don’t see USB 3.0 on Macs by the second half of the year. And when that happens, it will be interesting to see what happens with FireWire.
According to the In-Stat research group more than three billion USB-enabled devices are currently being shipped. USB 3.0 is specified to transfer at five gigabits per second, or 10 times faster than USB 2.0. Plus, USB 3.0 products are backward-compatible with USB 2.0 devices and will interoperate with them, as well, so there’s no reason for Apple not to include USB 3.0 on upcoming Macs.
Read MoreBernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi told clients in a note that he thinks that iPhone revenues will grow from about 30% of Apple revenue in 2009 to 45%-50% in fiscal year (FY) 2011.
As reported by “Barron’s” (http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2010/02/24/apple-bernstein-ups-ests-sees-gross-margin-expanding/), he estimates that iPhone gross margins were 58% in ‘09, well above the company average of 40.9%. If you assume flat iPhone gross margins and ASPs, corporate gross margins would lift by 400-500 basis points, Sacconaghi says.
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