Apple Talk: Top 10 predictions for Apple in 2012
Prediction 1. $100bn in the bank?
Apple forecast monster revenues of $37bn for Q1 2012 at its last quarterly results call. Expect that lofty figure to be surpassed. The company has an $81bn cash stockpile, but could it pass $100bn in 2012?
Apple's coffers will be boosted by sales buoyed by huge pent-up demand for a new iPhone and strong sales of iOS devices over Christmas. Over 1.2 billion apps were downloaded in a single week in the last days of December, according to analytics firm Flurry, as millions of users tried out new iOS and Android devices.
Equally predictable is that despite the record-breaking revenues, Apple will forecast its traditionally conservative figures for the second quarter and the stock price will drop. Don't hold your breath for a special dividend for investors either.
Prediction 2. iPhone 5
Is a pattern emerging? iPhone 3G in 2008, iPhone 3GS in 2009, iPhone 4 in 2010 and iPhone 4S in 2011. It's possible to make a reasonably safe guess that the handset nomenclature goes through a major iteration every two years and a minor iteration every year in between.
Standard US mobile contracts are now two years long, which means 2012 will probably be the year of the iPhone 5. Will Apple revert to the summer release date it used for everything except the iPhone 4S or will it revert to an autumn release in September or October? Read more...
Symantec promises encryption viewer for iPhone and iPad users
More employees are using their iOS devices in the workplace. That's good from an employee morale standpoint, but not so good when it comes to the possibility of security breaches. Symantec says it will tackle the problem later this year by extending its encryption offerings to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
This week, the company announced Symantec PGP Viewer for iOS, a mobile offering that will make it possible for users to encrypt messages through the standard built-in Mail application on their devices. Symantec PGP Viewer users will also be able to view encrypted emails and attachments within Mail. Read more...
Got video format troubles? Try Media Converter
With so many video codecs to choose from, there will invariably come a time when you want to play back media files on a particular device, or use it in a certain way, only to find that an incompatible format has been used. Ordinarily, converting videos between formats can be something of an arduous process, but the free Mac app Media Converter aims to keep things as simple and speedy as possible. Read more...