The new TrackingPoint sniper rifle doesn’t fire when you pull the trigger. Rather, it fires when it knows it will hit the target you’re aiming at. And then streams video to the included iPad mini to allow you to share your hunting or sharpshooting experience with Facebook, YouTube, or maybe even Al Jazeera.

Now, the company says, everyone can be an expert marksman.

“With TrackingPoint, even a novice shooter can become an elite long-range marksman in minutes, accurately and effectively engaging targets out to 1,200 yards,” the company said in a press release.

That’s good, if you’re a hunter and you want to “ethically harvest” game by making immediate kills shots. But it’s also incredibly dangerous, since now inexperienced shooters can be as accurate — or more accurate — as trained military snipers from almost a mile away. The potential for terrorism and targeted assassinations is obvious.

The shooter simple tells the rifle what he or she is aiming at by locking a laser on the target. The gun’s built-in laser range finder, compass, environmental sensors to gauge wind speeds, inertial measurement unit, ballistics computer, and networked tracking engine then engage. But the rifle only fires when you’re holding it in exactly the right direction to hit the target, ensuring that even the unsteadiest and untrained hands can deploy death from a distance. And every shot is recorded and streamed to your nearby iPad.

“Think of it like a smart rifle. You have a smart car; you got a smartphone; well, now we have a smart rifle,” company President Jason Schauble told NPR.

Hunters are excited by the possibilities, apparently.

Source: TrackingPoint

XS1 is the largest-caliber Precision Guided Firearm (PGF) available today.

“When I first saw this system, I knew immediately that I had to have one,” said the first owner of a TrackingPoint rifle. “As a sport hunter and professional marksman, I see the TrackingPoint technology as an excellent way to ensure more ethical harvesting of game and to share the thrill of the hunt with anyone. I cannot wait to make amazing shots of my own.”

The Austin-based company that makes the TrackingPoint rifle calls it a “Precision-Guided Firearm (PGF),” carefully avoiding any reference to “snipers” or “sniper rifles.” But the size and weight of this deadly weapon — 27″ long, over 20 pounds loaded — make it a very unusual hunting rifle. I’m no firearms expert, but several sites I’ve checked indicate that average hunting rifles weigh in at 6-12 pounds, and that a rifle of 20 pounds or more is “just too heavy for general purposes.”

Ergo, it’s a sniper rifle.

TrackingPoint has made some efforts around safety. The sophisticated tracking scope that makes the rifle “smart” is password-protected, according to the company’s CEO, so while the gun will still fire without an authorized user, it won’t allow access to all the intelligence that could make a weekend warrior into an instant Marine sniper.

The company made its first deliveries this week, and due to “overwhelming demand,” has set up a web-based application process to get on the waiting list. We can only hope that the application process doesn’t allow any deranged individuals to access this type of deadly weapons.

And, no matter how smart these rifles are, the question is: are they wise?

If you needed further evidence that tablets are more than a mere computing fad, just look at the latest numbers from Strategy Analytics.

The firm found that the tablet industry more than doubled in the first quarter — reaching 40.6 million units, up from 18.7 million last year. This was a significant quarter since we have more than two major companies backing tablet platforms, and consumers have plenty of inexpensive tablets to choose from.

In particular, it’s worth paying attention to Microsoft’s figures. The company is finally on the map in the tablet industry, with 3 million Windows tablets shipped, which includes both Windows 8 and Windows RT (Surface) devices. While that only makes up 7.5 percent of global tablet market share, it’s a notable figure, since Microsoft didn’t even have a tablet strategy last year (we can exclude the handful of Windows 7 tablets nobody bought).

Apple, not surprisingly, is still leading the tablet industry. The company reported 19.5 million iPads shipped for the quarter, up from 11.8 million last year. But Apple should also pay attention to how much Android slates are gaining on the iPad. Strategy Analytics reports that 17.6 million Android tablets were shipped in Q1, up from 6.4 million.

Now Apple and Google are basically neck and neck for the top spot in the tablet world. Android made up 43.4 percent of the global tablet market for the quarter, while Apple held 48.2 percent, falling around 15 percentage points from last year.

For the most part, it was small and cheap tablets like the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire that helped Android gain so much ground so quickly. At $329, the iPad Mini is still significantly more expensive than $200 Android tablets.

Apple’s big problem? Android tablets will continue to get cheaper and there will be more of them to tempt consumers. Apple, on the other hand, will be stuck iterating the iPad and iPad Mini over the next few years (likely at the same prices).

At this point, it looks like Android will end up dominating tablets pretty soon — something I previously thought would take years to do.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

The iPad is still the king of the tablet browsing platforms. But the king is not quite as kingly as it used to be.

Apple earnings are just about to be announced for the second quarter of 2013, and analysts are expecting tough news from the iPad maker. Its tablet market share has been a major strong point, with big sales numbers and even bigger percentage shares of usage: tablets used to browse the web.

In fact, Apple enjoyed 90-plus percentage point market share of tablet usage in North America for much of 2012.

But that’s changing.

Online advertising company Chitika, which measures tablet, smartphone, and other platform usage of online ad networks, and therefore browsing share, says that iPad share in the U.S. and Canada is down based on a study of hundreds of millions of tablet ad impressions the company conducted. Which means, of course, that Android-based tablets such as Kindle and Galaxy are increasing their share.

“While Apple continues to increase overall iPad usage, it is losing share as others enter the market,” eMarketer’s Clark Fredricksen said. “Apple’s share of U.S. tablet users is expected to fall to 60.5 percent in 2013 … from 64.9 percent last year and 83 percent in 2011.”

The major downtick, Chitika says, occurred from December to January, when Android tablet sales were particularly strong over the Christmas gift-giving season. The iPad’s share of U.S. and Canadian web traffic dropped from 92 percent in October to 80.5 percent in February, before rebounding slightly to 81.9 percent in March.

The loss in comparative browser share by itself doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple is losing the tablet battle. After all, the market is still expanding. But it does mean that Android is starting to gain some traction in what has been an extremely difficult market for it to crack.

Even with the introduction of the long-awaited and well-received iPad Mini.

Image credit: John Koetsier

Note, that’s potential bad news.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple’s iPhone 5S, an as-yet-unannounced low-cost iPhone, and the new version of the iPad mini are all going to be delayed, due to production difficulties.

Originally, he targeted a summer launch for all three products; now, based on manufacturing challenges with integrating a potential new fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5S, color coatings for the low-cost iPhone, and difficulties fitting a high-res retina display into the second-generation iPad mini, Kuo says that launch dates could be pushed back as far as October/November:

Currently, market consensus for shipments of iPhone 5S, low-cost iPhone and iPad mini 2 is July, July, and August, respectively. But in light of publicly available information and our knowledge of technological trends, we now think all three products will begin shipments later than our previous expectation and market consensus.

This is not what Apple needs right now.

Apple’s domestic iPhone sales are up 11 percent this past quarter, according to one ComScore report, but the international mobile market, already dominated by Android, has been clamoring for a cheaper iPhone. And with Apple’s current stock price woes, anything that even smells of new product delays is dangerous.

If Kuo is correct reading the supplier market and the delays are real, he projects that Apple will see only single-digit year-over-year growth in iPad and iPhone shipments in the coming third quarter, far below analysts’ projections.

Apple, however, has never released a product roadmap claiming the products will be released at any given time, and a summer release would mean that Apple would be shipping the iPhone 5S much quicker than other follow-on models. For example, the 4S lagged the iPhone 4 by 16 months, and the 3GS followed the 3 after about a year. A summer iPhone 5S launch could make a gap of just eight months between the 5 and 5S ship dates.

We’ll know more about what might actually be happening on April 23 when Apple releases its second quarter numbers and issues guidance for the third quarter.

Image credit: ShutterStock/Delayed

Microsoft’s next round of Surface slates may include a competitor to the iPad Mini and Kindle Fire.

The company is reportedly working on a 7-inch Surface tablet, which is expected to go into mass production this year, the Wall Street Journal reports. It’s unclear if this is the same gaming-focused 7-inch Xbox Surface tablet we heard about last year — but I’d wager they’re two separate products.

From what we’ve heard of the Xbox Surface, it’s going to be jam-packed with cutting edge hardware, which means it likely won’t go cheap. At the same time, Microsoft will also need an inexpensive small tablet to compete with Apple and Amazon.

Small tablets (under 8-inches) accounted for half of all shipments in the fourth quarter, according to IDC. Given just how much cheaper smaller tablets tend to be — ranging from $200 for the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, to $329 for the iPad Mini — they’ll certainly end up taking over much more of the market over the next few years. Microsoft simply can’t afford to wait on developing an inexpensive small tablet.

Additionally, the WSJ notes that Microsoft is still testing a Surface phone, though component suppliers aren’t able to confirm if it will ever be released. We’ve heard a Surface phone could appear this year, especially if Windows Phone 8 fails to catch on with consumers.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Last week, we learned that the U.S. Patent Office was considering blocking the trademark application for Apple’s “iPad mini” brand over several concerns. But a new filing shows the office’s first major concerns are no longer holding Apple back.

The U.S. Patent Office (USPTO) initially had concerns that the “mini” in iPad mini was not a recognizable sign or design and was just a description. Basically, the word “mini” indicates that it is a smaller version of the iPad, a term that is already trademarked. The USPTO also had a concern over the iPad mini’s overview page being used as Apple’s “specimen,” since the specimen is supposed to show an instance of the trademark “as your purchasers encounter it in the marketplace,” according to the USPTO web site.

But now the office has withdrawn its primary objections to grant Apple the trademark for the term “iPad mini.” The USPTO writes in a newly published briefing:

This Office action supersedes any previous Office action issued in connection with this application.

Upon further review of the application, the examining attorney has determined that the following refusals issued in the initial Office action should be withdrawn. The examining attorney apologizes for any inconvenience caused.

REFUSALS WITHDRAWN:

The Trademark Act Section 2(e)(1) descriptiveness refusal and the Sections 1 and 45 specimen refusal are both withdrawn.

This official letter essentially knocks down the original arguments against giving Apple the new trademark, but the USPTO notes that two issues could still cause a refusal of the trademark.

First, the USPTO says it could refuse the application if certain other trademarks with the word “mini” are approved before it. It notes that Apple’s trademark “may be refused registration under Trademark Act Section 2(d) because of a likelihood of confusion between these marks.”

The USPTO also says it could refuse the application if Apple does not add a “disclaimer” for the word “mini.” It writes:

Applicant must disclaim the descriptive wording “MINI” apart from the mark as shown because it merely describes a quality, characteristic or feature of applicant’s goods.

iPad mini photo via Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Revenue will definitely be down from the company’s traditionally big holiday quarter, but the big question will be how Apple’s Q2 2013 will compare to Q2 2012.

With two product lines — iPhone and iPad — making up 72 percent of Apple sales, Apple’s quarter — and its sagging stock price — will hang on those two products.

But the limited amount of data we’ve seen lately on iPhone and iPad sales has not been great. Apple lost some U.S. smartphone market share this past quarter, and with some analysts saying that iPad shipments collapsed in the first month of this year, it’s likely we’ll see minimal growth at best. To make matters worse, it looks like Apple’s best-selling iPad model is the cheaper, lower-margin iPad Mini, meaning that even with good unit sales, revenue and margin could be problems.

Investors at Estimize are projecting revenues of $43.5 billion, up slightly from the year-ago quarter of $39.2 billion, but the Wall Street consensus is only $42.5 billion. In early 2012, when Apple stock was in the middle of its incredible growth phase, its Q2 numbers were down 15 percent from the holiday Q1. This year, if Apple hits the Street consensus, it will be down 22 percent from first-quarter numbers.

Either direction, this quarter will be one that confirms the nay-sayers’ opinion that Apple is slumping, or if the company can pull some magic with a spectacular quarter, one that reaffirms the believers.

Apple stock is down almost $14 dollars today to $428.91. At its height in October 2012, Apple stock hit $702.

Image credit: waferbaby/Flickr

According to the office, the “Mini” in iPad Mini isn’t a recognizable sign or design — it’s a description: The iPad Mini is a smaller version of the iPad, and its name reflects that, the office argues. As a result, it’s denied Apple’s trademark for the branding.

“Only where the combination of descriptive terms creates a unitary mark with a unique, incongruous, or otherwise nondescriptive meaning in relation to the goods and/or services is the combined mark registrable,” the patent office argued in a letter sent to Apple in January.

Basically, because the “iPad Mini” name is just telling consumers what the device is, Apple can’t trademark it. To the USPTO, it’s the same as a light fixture maker trying to trademark something like “ceiling fan” or McDonald’s trying to trademark “double cheeseburger.”

But this isn’t just about the “Mini” branding — this is about Apple’s infamous “i” branding as well. “The term “IPAD” is descriptive when applied to applicant’s goods because the prefix “I” denotes “Internet,” according to the USPTO.

That’s not exactly true. After all, it’s not as if the original iPod could connect to the Internet. In fact, I’m not sure Apple’s ever said exactly what the “i” in iPhone, iPad, iPod, and iMac actually stands for.

But this isn’t the end of the story for Apple, which still has until July to tweak its application with some extra wording (“No claim is made to the exclusive right to use “MINI” apart from the mark as shown,” etc.), which should help the USPTO accept the approve the application.

Via BBC

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

“Apple had planned to sell 40 million iPad minis (7.9 inch) and 60 million iPads (9.7 inch) in 2013,” Hsieh wrote. “However, the reality seems to be the reverse, as the iPad Mini has been more popular than the iPad.”

Source: DisplaySearch

Tablet panel shipments Dec. ’12 to Jan. ’13

With this utter collapse in the overall market for larger tablet panels, it appears that consumers have turned to smaller hold-in-one-hand tablets, and that Apple’s expected product mix will be hit hard. According to DisplaySearch, that means that Apple will likely sell 55 million iPad Minis and 33 million iPads — less than half of what the company initially planned for 2013.

It’s worth noting that these numbers and projections are not figures that Apple has released but conjectures based on what analysts see of component orders and flow. So some skepticism — and a healthy margin of error — is in order.

But if DisplaySearch is correct, Apple’s total sales will be down as well.

Forty million Minis and 60 million iPads is 100 million, but 55 million plus 33 million is only 88 million … still a huge number, but materially down from 100 million. And the change will also affect Apple’s revenue and gross margins. The Mini is obviously cheaper than regular iPads, by a factor of $150 or so, and it has a lower profit margin as well.

DisplaySearch forecasts 254 million tablet sales in 2013: 136 million small to medium-sized, and 118 million large. If that’s correct, and if Apple sells only 88 million total tablets — or even the 100 million originally forecast — Apple will have lost its sale leadership position in tablets.

All of which makes it ever more imperative that Apple get cracking on new products: Retina iPad Minis, iPhone Minis, a full-size iPad 5 that is lighter and thinner and counteracts the sales trend to smaller devices, and perhaps even the long-rumored iWatch.

Or, better yet, something truly innovative.

That’s what Apple has consistently done in the past, as CEO Tim Cook recently said: obsolete its old products with newer, higher-margin products.

If that’s going to happen in 2013, we need to see some of that Cook’s cooking, soon.

“Our goal is to make Cloud Player the most widely compatible cloud playback solution available, giving our customers the capability to buy their music once and enjoy it everywhere,” said Steve Boom, Amazon’s well-named VP for digital music.

Sounds familiar?

It should, because Apple has said similar things on multiple occasions. The difference is that Amazon actually has the capability to make it happen, as it not only has its own devices but also builds software for other company’s devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, and more.

Cloud Player stores all your Amazon music purchases and up to 250 imported songs or free. If your music library is larger — and whose isn’t — you can import up to 250,000 songs into Cloud Player and store them for $25 per year in a feature similar to Apple’s iTunes Match.

You can safely bet that Cloud Player will not be music-only for long, as Amazon continues to invest in digital content of all kinds.

But Amazon isn’t exactly doing the happy dance today. Like all software companies, it has glitches, and one in its ubiquitous Kindle iOS software is causing an annoying issue for iPhone and iPad users: It’s deleting their book libraries. Amazon acknowledges the issue, and it says that it does not currently recommend that users install the update.

Getting all your books deleted is not necessarily catastrophic — users can simple resync with Amazon, presumably when an app update-to-the-update is released, to redownload all their content.

But it is annoying and time-consuming, and it could be seriously dangerous for those users who have sent PDFs and other documents to their Kindles via Amazon’s send-to-Kindle functionality. If you don’t have backups for those files, it’s possible you’d lose them for good.

The issue? Amazon issued a statement to The Verge:

“We have identified an issue with the app update that may cause your app to become deregistered. To register, enter your Amazon account e-mail address and password and all your Amazon content will be available in the cloud. We have submitted an update fix for this issue and are working with Apple to release.”

photo credit: AJC1 via photopin cc

You’re in luck: A group of hackers known as evad3rs has released the first jailbreak for iPhone 5, EvasiOn.

The EvasiOn website says the jailbreak is compatible with all iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and iPad mini models, as long as you’re running iOS 6 or the recently-released 6.1, and has released desktop jailbreak kits for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The group also says the jailbreak is safe … if you back up your phone or tablet prior to attempting the jailbreak, you can always restore your original system and data.

That is, of course, if you trust an anonymous group of hackers with complete root control of your device. What could go wrong?

Jailbreaking your phone allows you to install apps that are not authorized by Apple, and in fact a non-Apple app store: Cydia, which aggregates and installs apps that are not on the official app store. An untethered jailbreak, such as this one, survives multiple device reboots without needing to be reapplied.

As ExtremeTech mentions, this jailbreak means that Apple’s system-on-chip built into the Apple A6 processor has been cracked. No details have been released on how that actually happened, since those would then help Apple seal the leak.

One unfortunate detail, to those who want their devices to be free. According to one iOS hacker, the new software is a “userland jailbreak,” which exploits holes in iOS 6, but not the underlying layers of the system like the Bootrom. That means Apple can block it simply with a system update.

Other challenges, according to the FAQ EvasiOn has put up, include that users are experiences crashes on some standard apps, such as the Weather app. Another user reports that his iPhone was not charging after jailbreaking — which sounds like a hardware issue — and yet another user said his “sound died after jailbreaking.” And, of course, it does void your Apple warranty.

As the saying goes, YMMV.

Image credit: evasiOn.com

Apple sold a record 22.9 million iPads in the first fiscal quarter of 2013, an increase of 67 percent over the same period a year ago, the company said today.

Wall Street analysts had been expected iPad sales of 22 million to 23 million units, so it at least met expectations on that front, unlike its iPhone numbers.

Going back a few quarters, Apple sold 14 million iPads in Q4 2012 and sold 17 million iPads in Q3 2012.

While these iPad sales are good, two Android tablets in particular could have impacted them — the $200 Google Nexus 7 and $200 Amazon Kindle Fire. Both are good machines that do most of what you can with an iPad, and they cost less than the iPad Mini’s base price of $330. Surprisingly enough, the Nexus 7 has overtaken iPad’s market share in Japan, according to a recent Nikkei survey.

There have also been recent reports that the success of the iPad Mini has hurt the demand for the full-size iPad. But since Apple does not break down its sales of iPad Mini versus the full-size iPad, we don’t know exactly how many of which were sold this past quarter.

iPad Mini photo via John Koetsier/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week was rough for Apple stock.

As of Wednesday night the stock was down about 3 percent, after having been down as much as 5 percent. And over the past three months, it’s down 22 percent, equivalent to $130 billion in market cap.

This is a big number.

The  fall was prompted by a story in the financial press Monday morning that Apple was cutting orders to its supply chain “by half.” That lead to a waterfall of bad news and scary headlines. As a stock analyst, I always get suspicious when there is a sudden wave of bad news, especially from vague or unnamed sources. There are very few coincidences in this world. As usual, John Gruber was quick to call all this out, and he linked to several other posts from Forbes and Seeking Alpha, both of which make good points as to why things may not be so bad after all.

And for what it’s worth, I had lunch with a component supplier to Apple on Monday. They get half their revenue from Apple. At least, I think they do. They would never admit to me that Apple was even a customer, much less if they’d just taken a big hit to orders. But they certainly didn’t act like someone who had just seen a quarter of their revenue disappear over the weekend.

Nonetheless, the tech community is once again worried about the long term viability of Apple’s success. I have heard a lot of the old arguments dragged out again: Android is growing faster, markets are saturating, consumers are losing interest. Etc., etc., etc.

I think all of this  is overblown.

First, does anyone really question that Apple probably just had an incredible Christmas season? Up until January, it was hard to find an iPhone 5 or iPad Mini in most Apple stores. So despite what we analysts say, consumers somewhere still love Apple products.

Second, Android may be growing faster, but largely through heavy discounting. It is always easy to gain share by cutting prices. But Apple still has immense brand loyalty, and that has to count for something.

Finally, even if we assume Apple someday makes a misstep, they have $121 billion in cash on the balance sheet. This is not a guarantee of future success, but it is a comfortable insurance policy, and so far they have been disciplined in how they spend it (or not spend it). By contrast, both RIM and Nokia are facing serious financial constraints hobbling their ability to release new phones.

No one has ever managed to stay on top for ever in mobile, and maybe someday the iPhone will just be remembered as this decade’s RAZR. But there is no reason to jump to that conclusion today.

[Note: Do you think the pendulum has swung? Has Apple's vertically integrated approach to mobile played itself out? Is it getting undercut by more open platforms like Google's Android? We'll be discussing these different mobile camps at our upcoming VentureBeat Mobile Summit in April, where we're inviting the top 180 executives for a debate on how the industry can cooperate better to push the mobile economy forward. See more here.]

Jonathan Goldberg is a research analyst who focused on mobile markets.

photo credit: ★ spunkinator via photopin cc

Apple’s iPad Goliath may have finally met its David — the iPad Mini.

Demand for the iPad Mini has forced Sharp to shift display production away from the larger iPad, sources told Reuters. Production of 9.7-inch displays has practically come to a halt in one of Sharp’s Japanese factories, the sources say.

Since the Mini’s launch, Apple pundits have heaped praise on the device, even going as far as to call it the “real iPad”.

While there is doubtless some sales cannibalization between the Apple tablets (as many analysts have long predicted), Sharp’s production cut doesn’t point directly to any one cause. It could, for example, just as easily point to a seasonal shift in demand. It’s tough to know.

Sharp’s official response? “We don’t disclose production levels.”

Further complicating speculation, Reuters also talked to sources at Samsung and LG, none of whom reported any major changes in iPad display production.

The Sharp news comes days after The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple halved its orders on components for the iPhone 5. That report helped push Apple’s stock below $500 for the first time in a year. But what affect, if any, will this have on Apple’s stock price?

Looks like the iPad may not be the tablet titan we all thought it was. The cheaper-but-still-nice Nexus 7 tablet has overtaken the iPad in Japan, according to Nikkei report.

The Nexus 7 started shipping in mid-July and impressed a lot of tech-watchers including us by being one of the best $200 tablets around. Apple may have the most polished tablets on the block with the iPad and iPad Mini, but the Nexus 7 may be the overall best value of any tablet. And consumers around the world seem to be noticing.

Based on a survey of 2,400 Japanese electronics stores, the Nexus 7 appears to have a market share of 44.4 percent while the iPad has 40.1 percent. While the survey from Nekkei noted that Japan had a shortage of iPad Minis, the biggest factor for Japanese consumers was price. The Nexus 7 is about $100 cheaper than the iPad Mini.

The big question is if what’s happening in Japan will happen elsewhere, namely the U.S. A recent report predicted that the iPad will dip below 50 percent tablet market share worldwide in mid-2013.

Nexus 7 photo via Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

We’ve seen the clash of titans in mobile as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have released new phones, tablets, and mobile operating systems. We’ve seen a single network connect over a billion people worldwide. We’ve seen the once-great mobile company of the far European north forced to hawk its headquarters to raise cash. And we’ve seen social media move from cutting-edge to mainstream as the Obama campaign celebrated four more years.

In every year, we see winners and losers: companies, devices, or operating systems. Here’s our look at some of the biggest successes and failures of 2012.

The winners

	Android What more can you say about Android? With 75 percent market share in the third quarter of 2012, the free mobile operating system from Google looks poised to take over the world.
	Samsung  Not many companies sell 55 million smartphones in a quarter. Samsung did, and it will probably do it again.
	Galaxy S III Samsung is hot in large part due to its top smartphone, the Galaxy S III. With over 18 million units shipped in the third quarter, and 30 million shipped in five months, it’s easy to see why.
	iPhone 5 Sure, it was Time’s gadget of the year. But more importantly, iPhone 5 catapulted Apple back into the smartphone leadership position, at least in the U.S.
	iPad Mini We called it immediately: light, portable, awesome, and expensive. And it even looked better up close and person in our review. But we had no clue it would become one of Apple’s best-selling iPads. And now that it’s probably going Retina in April/May, it’s just getting better.
	YouTube YouTube continues to be the online leader, by far, in online video with 800 million visitors and billion-view channels created by individuals and brands. Despite getting the boot from iOS6, YouTube just continues to grow, with 25 times the video streams of its nearest competitor.
	Twitter 2012 is the year that Twitter went mainstream, reaching 500 million users mid-summer and just recently announcing 200 million monthly active users. And despite major new API restrictions that soured its relationship with developers, a very public spat with Instagram, and an evolving shift from social utility to media company, the company continues to grow and solidify its space in fast-breaking news.
	Instagram With a sale initially priced at almost $1.3 billion and an exploding user count, not even a tone-deaf terms-of-service change that spurred a class action lawsuit and a possible exodus of some users can keep Instagram off our winner list.
	Google Android is hot — 75 percent market-share hot. Search is still a massive strength for the iconic company that runs an ad 30 billion times each and every day. And so Google makes over $100 million a day – and hits our list of hot companies in 2012.
	ARM With the vast majority of the chips in smartphones running ARM processors, ARM has people wondering whether the mobile juggernaut will challenge Intel for CPU dominance. That’s still a stretch, but not nearly what it was just a few years ago.
	Reddit With 3.8 billion page views and 46 million unique visitors in October — double the previous year’s numbers — Reddit is continuing its torrid growth. And it doesn’t hurt when the POTUS himself chooses your site to do an informal meet-the-people session — which required 60 dedicated servers.

Next page: The losers

Pages: 1 2 3

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

This year, the mobile industry showed us what lies ahead for computing.

We saw surprising new devices that gave us a glimpse at what personal computers could look like several years from now. We got an operating system that straddles both desktop and mobile. And we watched manufacturers obsessively refine what smartphones and tablets can be.

While 2012 didn’t have any single products that were as exciting as when we saw the iPad or iPhone for the first time, I have a feeling we’ll look back at this year as a turning point. This is the year that significant developments in mobile shaped the tech world for years to come.

The new platform wars begin

The mobile industry has been mostly about iOS and Android for the past few years. Research in Motion has been in a freefall in market share, while Microsoft struggled to find its legs in mobile.

But this year, Microsoft finally started to matter, posing even stronger competition to Google and Apple with both Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. The software giant showed that the next platform wars will be all about uniting the desktop and mobile — something that Google and Apple still need to work on.

The latest version of Windows Phone actually runs a version of Windows 8’s kernel, which in theory should make it easier for developers to create apps for both platforms. Windows 8 is an interesting beast as well. By making a tablet-focused touchscreen interface the centerpiece of its desktop operating system, Microsoft has literally placed a bet on the future. Eventually, most PCs will look like tablets, but for that to happen, there needs to be a tablet OS that’s as productive as a desktop platform.

And while Apple will undoubtedly introduce touchscreen MacBooks soon, it still has to deal with the fundamental divide between iOS and OS X. Microsoft may be off to a messy start with Windows 8, but it will surely have an easier time dealing with the inevitable union between tablets and laptops. (More on that below.)

The biggest loser in the future union between tablets and laptops will likely be Google. Android has always been focused on mobile devices, and it still took Google some time to fully adjust it to tablets. I don’t see much hope for Android when it comes to mimicking desktop productivity on future tablet-like PCs. (And yes, I know I may eventually eat these words. But the glacial pace of Android’s evolution doesn’t really give it much chance as a future Windows-killer.)

The line between mobile and desktop is blurring

You need only look at Microsoft’s Surface tablet to see how the face of mobile and desktop computing is changing. Is it a tablet, or is it a laptop? In truth, it’s both — though that idea has been difficult for even some tech pundits to wrap their heads around. The Surface the physical representation of everything Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8, and while I was disappointed with it in my review, I can’t deny that this is where we’re headed. Tablets need to get more productive, and laptops need to be as convenient as tablets.

Microsoft is gearing up to launch the Surface Pro early next year, which will run both Windows 8 apps and older Windows programs. Sure, it’s twice as expensive as the first Surface, but it shows that Microsoft’s bold hardware concept has plenty of potential.

Windows 8 has also spawned plenty of other notebook/tablet hybrids, like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga (which we found brought out the best and worst of Microsoft’s new OS) and HP’s Envy X2. We’ll likely see manufacturers experiment with different variations on tablet hybrids over the next few years. That’s a good thing for consumers — eventually you’ll be able to get a hybrid computer that suits you perfectly.

iPhone 5 and iPad Mini: The (small) shape of things to come

Both the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini show that, in the world of smartphones and tablets, smaller is often better. Down the line, I expect we’ll see more reasonable screen sizes in both smartphones and standalone tablets (at least those that aren’t trying to be laptops as well).

Almost paradoxically, most smartphone manufacturers have been obsessed with bigger screens over the past few years, to the point where they’re barely even “mobile” anymore. Last year Samsung’s 5.3-inch Galaxy Note was considered ludicrously large, but this year, 4.8-inch and 5-inch smartphones were practically the norm. (The Galaxy Note II, for the record, moved up a 5.5-inch display). Meanwhile, Apple’s “big” screen bump was from a 3.5-inch screen to a wider 4-inch display on the iPhone 5.

The iPhone’s smaller screen hasn’t stopped consumers from lapping it up. And it’s hard not to see the logic for bigger screens from other phone manufacturers — it was a very clear way to show how they offered something more than Apple. (Never mind that they didn’t have the same level of apps or build quality.)

But there’s no way the screen-size race can continue at its current rate. Once you start getting past 5-inch screens, you begin to inch into tablet territory, after all.

With little room to grow, we’ll likely see most smartphones sticking with screens around 4.5-inches in the future. I’ve found phones bigger than that to be too awkward to handle with one hand, and sticking with a more reasonable screen size also helps to conserve precious battery life. The iPhone 5 is still my preferred smartphone experience today, even though I also walk around with a Nexus 4, which has a big 4.7-inch display.

Apple will have to offer a bigger iPhone screen eventually, but I can’t see it going much bigger than 4.5-inches. This is a company that’s so obsessed with one-handed usability that it chose to make the iPhone 5’s screen taller and wider, rather than just grow it proportionally like many other manufacturers.

The iPad Mini, meanwhile, shows precisely why smaller tablets are ideal. It’s my favorite tablet so far, right behind the 7-inch Nexus 7, because it’s so light and portable. Smaller tablets also have a big price advantage: The iPad Mini starts at $329, while the Nexus 7 starts at $199. Starting with the first iPad, Apple has been trying to the idea that tablets around 10-inches were ideal, but I’ve always found those to be too clunky for prolonged use, and too expensive for many consumers.

Eventually, there won’t be any room in the market for big standalone tablets. Smaller tablets will beat them on price and convenience, and hybrid notebooks will be able to offer big tablet-like experiences with the productivity of a full-fledged PC.

Wrapping up

In the end, 2012 was more about the gradual evolution of the mobile industry, rather than any singular groundbreaking announcements. But it was still an important year for anyone interested in the overall direction of computing. It was also a clear indicator that we’ll soon have little reason to isolate “mobile” from the rest of computing.

So, you’ve got a new tablet — now what? Most app stores make it easy for you to find popular apps, but plenty of impressive tablet apps still fly under the radar.

In my experience, the best apps take full advantage of what makes tablets unique: their gorgeous touch-enabled screens. A new computing design demands an entirely new way of thinking about user interfaces.

(Still need help choosing a tablet? Check out our tablet gift guide.)

If you’re new to tablets, you’ll likely find yourself adapting to touchscreen interfaces quickly (and wishing every screen was touch-enabled). But even if you’ve been following the tablet market closely from the beginning, new apps are always appearing that push the boundaries of design, functionality, and usability.

Comics by Comixology

Tablets are a comic reader’s dream come true, and from what I’ve seen, Comixology is the best app for building and reading a digital comic collection. It includes titles from Marvel, DC, Image, and plenty of independent labels, and since it’s cloud-based, you can access your collection on your smartphone as well. Comic fans will find a lot to like (I particularly enjoy zooming into intricate artwork). But it’s also the perfect way for newcomers to check out comics and graphics novels without being judged by your local comic book guy. 

Various prices for iPad or Android

Infinity Blade II

More than a year after it first appeared, Infinity Blade II remains one of the most graphically advanced games on the iPad. Infinity Blade II builds upon its dungeon-crawling predecessor with more enemies, weapons, and console-quality graphics. (And yes, it’s optimized for the Retina Display.) 

$7 for iPad

Flipboard

Flipboard has been a mainstay recommendation for tablet news junkies since it launched. Two years later, it remains one of the best news-reading apps thanks to its slick digital magazine-like interface and its constantly improving story engine. You may find yourself actually reading more news because Flipboard makes it all look so good. 

Free for iPad or Android

Google Chrome

Yes, Google Chrome. The best desktop web browser is also the best browser on smartphones and tablets. It’s ideal for heavy browser users because it offers the best interface for juggling multiple tabs on tablets, and it can sync with other devices (so bookmarks from your desktop version of Chrome show up on your tablet, and vice versa). Android users get the most out of this app since they’ll actually get to take advantage of its fast browsing engine. On the iPad, you’ll be able to use Chrome’s interface, but you’re stuck with Apple’s slower browsing engine. 

Free for iPad or Android 4.0 and above

Google Earth

Google Earth is a kick on desktops, but on your tablet it’s like a digital globe from the future. It’s a fun and educational app for kids, but even adults will enjoy zooming into nearby and far-off places. This app literally puts the world at your fingertips.

Free for iPad or Android

Panna

A gorgeous cooking magazine for the iPad, Panna offers recipes from master chefs with simple instructions. Thanks to high-quality preparation videos, it’s like diving into your favorite Food Network show. While Panna is helpful for preparation, it’s also a fun app to browse as you’re looking for inspiration for your next party or just for something different to make for dinner. 

$5 per issue or $15 per year for iPad

Showyou

Chances are good that you’ll end up spending more time staring at your tablet than your TV, so you’ll want a simple way to explore the endless world of online video. Showyou collects the videos shared by your friends on social networks, and it also highlights other videos that may interest you. With its most recent update, ShowYou lets you easily sit back and watch online video as easily as you do TV.

Free for iPad or Kindle Fire (not other Android tablets)

StumbleUpon

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that StumbleUpon adapts itself well to tablets. It has risen to popularity as a fun and simple way to find new content online on the desktop. By simply clicking a button, you’re instantly rewarded with a new, interesting thing to look at or read. On a tablet, where you’re entirely focused on a single app at a time, StumbleUpon’s ingenious mechanic is downright addictive.

Free for iPad or Kindle Fire (not other Android tablets)

Xbox Smartglass

If you have an Xbox 360, this app is a must-have. It works as a “second screen” experience for Microsoft’s console, allowing you to easily search for content as well as interact with media playing on the Xbox 360. And, of course, you’ll also be able to tap into Xbox Live and see what your friends are up to. It’s surprising how much a simple app can make a seven-year-old console seem fresh and new.

Free for iPad, Android (not optimized for Android tablets), Windows 8 and RT

The Walking Dead: The Game

What starts out as a traditional adventure game quickly turns into the most memorable game experience of the year. I’d recommend Telltale’s The Walking Dead on any platform, but if you have an iPad, it’s an even more intimate experience. Structured like a five-episode TV series, the game offers a bit of action, but really, it’s all about the tension and forcing you to make some of the most difficult moral decisions of your gaming life. And as you face off against the hordes of the undead, just remember, it’s all for Clementine.

$5 per episode or $20 for the whole season for iPad

Apple could be working on a fifth generation of its full-sized iPad that’s sexier than the version released last month.

The news comes from Japanese news blog Macotakara, which indicates that the fifth-gen iPad will have a thinner, lightweight design — deducting 4mm from the height, 17mm from the width, and 2mm from the depth — and will get a March 2013 release date. The alleged new full-sized iPad will also borrow some design cues from the iPad mini, which means you’ll be able to choose between two different colors (white/silver or black/slate).

The March release date would be in line with the regular product life cycle that Apple had for the first three versions of its iPad. The fourth generation device featured a few hardware upgrades and swapped out the old 30-pin dock connector for the new smaller lightening connector, much to the dismay of early Apple device adopters. Apple has shown that the one-year product refresh isn’t a main concern for them, so it’s very possible that the report could prove true.

Macotakara also indicates that Apple could be working on a second generation iPad mini, with the big upgrade being a brand new retina display that would feature the 2,048 x 1,536 resolution of the current full-sized iPad.

Via 9to5Mac

Over the course of a year, I test dozens of consumer electronics products. A lot of them are junk. This year, I tested a router from Cisco that required a reset every few days.

But there are five products I’ve used this year that not only work as advertised but are genuinely a pleasure to use.

Sonos music system

Sonos sells a range of wireless speakers and accessories that let you easily create a whole-house music system without fishing cables through your walls. You can play your iTunes collection, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Cloud Player, and many other services throughout your home. And you can synchronize music across multiple rooms, controlling it all from any room with a PC, Mac, or iOS or Anrdoid device. I’ve even taken to leaving outdated smartphones throughout my apartment to serve as Sonos controllers. The speakers are beautiful and sound great. The controls on each speaker are Apple-like minimalist: volume up/down and mute.

The biggest knock I have against Sonos is that it doesn’t natively support Apple’s AirPlay music streaming. (It’s possible to add a kludgy version of AirPlay to Sonos by connecting an AirPort Express to the Sonos line in jack. But that defeats the elegance of both AirPlay and Sonos.) The smaller Sonos speaker, Play : 3, costs $299; the larger Play : 5 is $399. A subwoofer is available for $699 (I haven’t tested that).

Harmony 900 and Harmony Touch remotes

If you have a lot of devices in your home entertainment system, chances are you also have a bowl of remotes. The nicer your system, the harder it is to use. Unless you have a Harmony remote. Logitech’s Harmony remotes let you control all of your infrared devices from one remote. Harmony remotes are based on an activity metaphor. Instead of selecting a specific device like a Blu-ray player or stereo system, you select an activity, such as listening to music or watching TV. (This metaphor is beginning to breakdown as multiple devices can accomplish the same task. My Apple TV, Roku, TiVo, and Blu-ray player can all play movies.) In my home, selecting ‘watch TV’ turns on the TV and the amplifier. It also makes sure that the TiVo input is selected on my amplifier and the TV is set to HDMI 1. My ultimate test is whether people who visit me can figure out how to watch TV; they can.

My favorite feature on the Harmony Touch is the ability to set your favorite TV channels. In the thousand channel cableverse, getting to the few channels you like can be hard. With the Harmony Touch, select your favorite channels during the setup process and you get 1-click buttons on the touch screen for them. (It’s also possible to have this functionality on the Harmony 900 but is much more difficult to set up.)

Unlike cheap universal remote controls, Harmony remotes are extremely customizable to your specific system. Typical universal remotes require you to look through a tiny print list of manufacturer codes and then stare at blinking lights. (Was that a long blink or a short blink?) With the Harmony remotes, you use a Web-based tool to enter the model numbers of the devices you want to control; the software picks the right codes. Configuration is as easy as it can be for a complicated task like this.

The Harmony Touch is the newer of the two remotes. It’s smaller and has a gesture control system. It also does away with the numeric keypad. But the Harmony 900 supports RF control, which allows you to control devices hidden away in a cabinet. The Harmony Touch retails for $250, the 900 for $350.

TiVo

Earlier this year, I named the TiVo the most disruptive product in television. I debated whether to include TiVo in this guide because there are so many ways I can think of to improve the user experience. But that doesn’t change the fact that TiVo is the best way to watch TV today. (And infinitely better than the torture that Comcast inflicts on its customers through its DVRs.)

TiVo does what it always has: It lets you timeshift television and watch it on your own terms. And it does it really well. But it also does so much more. You can watch Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu Plus. Recent changes also make it possible for you to watch Comcast’s on-demand videos and pay-per-view. (TiVo also lets you access music and photo services such as Pandora and Picasa, but those features are poorly implemented.)  My favorite TiVo feature is the universal search, which allows you to search across your video sources. You can enter the name of a show and quickly see where it’s available across Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Xfinity video-on-demand, and live TV. Combine universal search with TiVo’s brilliant iPad app, and you can pull up a grid of every episode of that show. Click on a show and a provider, and TiVo takes you to the right place in the service’s menus to start watching.

The biggest knock against TiVo is unfortunately one that it has little control over: For it work with your cable service, you need a CableCARD. It took a month of dealing with Comcast incompetence to get my CableCARD set up correctly. The cheapest TiVo Premiere DVR is $150, and service is $15/month, but the company frequently runs specials.

iPad mini

The iPad mini is the best tablet out there — even better than the newest iPad. (Disclosure: I own Apple stock — and Google stock.) No, it doesn’t have the Retina display, but it’s small size and lightness more than makes up for it. It beats low-end Android tablets like the Kindles and Google Nexus 7 based on the breadth of tablet-optimized applications and its elegant build.

There’s not much more to say about the iPad mini. If you’re looking for a great tablet, buy this one — if you can find one in stock. If not, an IOU for an iPad mini is a much better gift than an inferior tablet. The iPad mini ranges from $329 to $659, depending on the configuration. I recommend at least the 32GB model.

Panasonic DMP-BDT 220 Blu-ray player

Despite all of the talk of video streaming on demand, the state of copyright law and video licensing means much of the most compelling content is only available on plastic discs. This means you probably need a Blu-ray player in your entertainment system.

This player will play your plastic discs but also connect you with online streaming services like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and YouTube with its built-in Wi-Fi networking. It can also play content from SD cards and media servers on your home network. Setup was surprisingly painless. You can control the Blu-ray player through iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. The apps even include a virtual shuttle control that movie fans will appreciate.

The Blu-ray player is the cheapest of the bunch at $99.

These products are pricier than many of their competitors. But they should pay for themselves if you detest frustration as much as I do.

As for assembling that bike you bought your daughter for Christmas? I suggest searching for YouTube videos.

Rocky Agrawal is an analyst focused on the intersection of local, social and mobile. He is a principal analyst at reDesign mobile. Previously, he launched local and mobile products for Microsoft and AOL. He blogs at http://blog.agrawals.org; and tweets at @rakeshlobster.

It looks like at least one of those issues could be resolved soon.

According to Taiwan-based Digitimes — which has a bit of a spotty record with rumors — Apple is sourcing new screens for the newest, lightest, and smallest member of Apple’s iPad lineup. Those new screens are most likely retina displays with 2,058 by 1,536 pixels, for a 326 pixel-per-inch density.

That compares to the current model’s 1,024 x 768 pixels and 163 pixel-per-inch density, and it would address the popular device’s most common complaint. Apparently, iPad Mini is outselling the iPad 4 and may account for half of all of Apple’s iPad sales in 2012 — up to 50 million units.

On the one hand, the retina rumor is a gimme: Obviously, Apple is going to put a better screen on the iPad Mini at some point. The question is when.

iPad refresh schedules were generally about a year in length — until the unexpected October release of an updated iPad 3. So will the mini be updated in six months, which puts a new version in the April/May time frame, or in 12 months, at another October-ish event?

My guess is six months, as the tablet market is moving fast, and more competitors are nipping at Apple’s heels. This rumor adds fuel to that fire.

Image credit: John Koetsier

The single hottest tech gift category this holiday season will undoubtedly be tablets. While Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire kicked off the budget tablet trend last year, this year we’re seeing many more options available, and they’re also much improved over the original Kindle Fire.

It’s not difficult to find a fast and well-designed tablet this year that won’t break the bank. In fact, you’d probably have to try hard to get stuck with a truly bad tablet.

I was never a big fan of big tablets. Even as Apple’s large iPad slimmed down its weight and added much more powerful hardware over the years, it has always seemed like a device that’s not as convenient for content consumption as smaller tablets, and not as useful as a laptop for actually producing content.

But this year we saw tablets that truly showed the potential of the entire category.

Best overall tablet: iPad Mini

When it came to deciding on the best tablet of the year, the choice was simple. I love the iPad Mini. It’s everything that the large iPad isn’t: light, convenient, and preciously tiny. It packs in the power of the iPad 2 in the weight of your average paperback book, and it still manages to be the cheapest iPad offering yet at $329 (compared to the big iPad’s standard $499 price).

Sure, it doesn’t have a sharp Retina Display, and its hardware is admittedly dated, but it’s one of those devices that you need to touch and feel to truly appreciate. Once you use the iPad Mini for a day, it’s almost impossible to go back to anything bigger.

The Android-powered Nexus 7 is a much better deal for $199 (more on that below), as is Amazon’s 7-inch Kindle Fire. But both of those tablets lack the iPad Mini’s superior assortment of apps. Apple clearly isn’t trying to compete with other smaller tablets when it comes to price.

If your budget’s tight, it may be tough to justify the iPad Mini compared to its pint-sized competitors. But if you don’t mind spending a bit more, the iPad Mini will undoubtedly be your best tablet choice (until the iPad Mini 2 comes out).

Best Android tablet (and best budget tablet): Nexus 7

Prior to the iPad Mini’s debut, Google’s 7-inch Nexus 7 was my favorite tablet. It’s fast, portable, surprisingly stylish (for something built by Asus), and best of all, it’s freaking cheap at $199. With the Nexus 7, Google blows away Amazon’s original Kindle Fire and proves that it’s possible to build a cheap tablet that doesn’t stink.

I raved about the Nexus 7 in my review, and it’s only gotten better with Android’s recent updates. It’s the perfect tablet for newcomers because it can accomplish most basic tasks — like web browsing, email, and media consumption — without killing your wallet (which also makes it the perfect gift). If you’re already a heavy user of other Google services, like Gmail and Google Calendar, it’ll sync up with those painlessly too.

In general, I’m not too hot on Android tablets. Google has been slow to make Android truly tablet-friendly, and there’s still a surprising lack of decent tablet apps. But the Nexus 7 is cheap and functional enough to even make me recommend it. (If you really need a large Android tablet, the Nexus 10 is also nice — but you don’t really need a big Android tablet.)

Amazon’s revamped Kindle Fire is another decent budget tablet option, but since it can only run a limited selection of Android apps, I think the Nexus 7 remains a better choice.

Best big tablet: iPad 4th gen

Okay, so you don’t agree with me that small tablets are truly the best. Or you just have to have the most horsepower available. Or perhaps you work in digital photography and need an incredibly high-resolution tablet screen. Then Apple’s latest iPad ($499), which adds a blazing fast quad-core graphics on top of last generation’s gorgeous Retina Display, is the best choice for you.

In general, if you absolutely need a big tablet, then go for the latest generation iPad. Big Android tablets have historically been too expensive and lacked the features and apps that have made the iPad so popular. Microsoft made a noble attempt at taking on the iPad this year with the Surface, which better bridges the gap between tablet and laptop. But as I explained in my review, the Surface simply has too many compromises for me to recommend to anyone aside from hardware geeks.

Best kids’ tablet: LeapFrog LeapPad2

LeapFrog’s first LeapPad proved that it could create a tough, inexpensive, and educational tablet for kids. With the $99 LeapPad 2, it raised the bar even higher. The new tablet for children features more memory, front and rear cameras, and a recharger (because relying entirely on AA batteries can get expensive).

It still plays the same cartridges and downloadable apps as the original LeapFrog, which includes games, videos, and e-books featuring popular characters.

I haven’t had much time to play with the LeapPad2, but in my exploration of kid-friendly tablets it’s clearly the best option.

Wrapping up: Finally, there’s a tablet for everyone

The one major takeaway for tablets this year is that there are finally enough options to satisfy everyone — including a tablet critic like me. Small tablets entered the market in full force and showed that their portability and lower prices make them hard to ignore.

I suspect we’ll see less hype around big tablets over the next few years (just look at how Apple unceremoniously unveiled the fourth-generation iPad at the iPad Mini event). Instead, we’ll likely see more devices like Microsoft’s Surface trying to make tablets more useful, and laptops more like tablets.

For more information on the tablets above, as well as other tablets on the market, check out our tablet comparison chart, with data supplied by FindTheBest, below.

Analyst Sameer Singh is predicting sales of between 24 and 26 million iPads, including 19-19 million third and fourth generation iPads, and 6-7 million iPad minis.

26 million iPads would be dramatically up from 17 million in Apple’s fiscal third quarter this past summer, the 14 million sold last quarter, and even the 15.43 million iPads sold in Apple’s record-breaking Q1 2012.

Singh’s numbers are based on Apple’s iPad growth patterns, which are traditionally strong in fourth calendar quarter (Apple’s Q1 2013), the fact that some tablet buyers seem to have waited until this quarter before buying — believing that Apple was about to release the mini — and of course, the traditional Christmas buying spree.

In addition, record sales this quarter would make sense based on Apple’s almost-complete revamping of its iPad line-up at its October 23 live event announcing the new mini.

Apple’s fourth-quarter growth spurts are slowing, however.

According to Singh, Apple had 133 percent quarter-over-quarter growth in Q4 2010, 66 percent in 2011, and will have 33 percent in 2012. The percentage growth is shrinking, of course, as the total sales numbers are growing, and as the tablet market matures.

photo credit: @NickyColman via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Chinese consumers will officially be able to get their hands on Apple’s latest toys next month.

Apple announced today that the iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad will hit China on December 7th, while the iPhone 5 will be available a week later on December 14th.

Reservation requests for each device will begin the day before they launch from Apple retail stores, and they’ll also be available for purchase from Apple’s online store and official resellers. Of course, nothing stopped Chinese consumers from nabbing one of Apple’s new devices on the black market, aside from a high markup.

As you’ve likely gathered from my glowing reviews, I consider both the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini as the best devices for their respective categories. Apple’s partners have had trouble manufacturing enough iPhone 5 units to meet worldwide demand, so hopefully the company has ramped up production to satisfy China’s buyers.

According to a new poll by Nielsen, kids just want iDevices … and a Wii U. Half want an iPad, and roughly a third of all kids also want an iPod Touch, iPad Mini, or an iPhone under the tree. Almost 40 percent also want a new Nintendo Wii U, and 31 percent want a Kinect for the Xbox 360 they got last year.

Source: Nielsen

Toys kids 6-12 want most

Of course, some kids still absolutely need an Xbox 360 or a Sony PlayStation 3: almost a quarter of all kids want one of the major console games this winter. And another 29 percent want a non-Apple tablet to waste Christmas break on.

Older kids, however, have somewhat different tastes. Or they’ve learned to control their burning desire for new techie toys to a degree.

Electronics still top the list, but for kids aged 13 and older, only 21 percent want an iPad, with a computer coming in at second place with 19 percent of the vote. A non-Apple tablet is proportionately much more in demand with teens: 18 percent want an Android or other type of tablet – just three percent fewer those who want an iPad.

Microsoft Surface, alas, languishes in the hearts and minds of  just 3 percent of teens — although six percent of kids age 6-12 want Microsoft’s new tablet.

Source: Nielsen

What teens want most …

The question now is whether what kids want will translate into the products parents buy.

Somehow — speaking as a parent — it usually does.

photo credit: ze_bear via photopin cc

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The iPad Mini is proof positive why technical specs don’t matter anymore. It’s slower than both the third and fourth-generation iPads, and it features a significantly lower resolution screen that doesn’t even meet HD video standards.

And yet, its miniscule size and overall convenience makes it the best iPad I’ve ever used and the best tablet on the market.

The original 9.7-inch iPad basically created the modern tablet market, and Apple’s iPad line still accounts for more than 50 percent of new tablets sold (according to IDC). But I’ve never felt truly comfortable using any iPad for prolonged periods of time — and the same goes for every other tablet I’ve used that’s around 10 inches. They’re tough to hold with one hand, and even with two hands, it’s not exactly effortless to hold large tablets for hours on end.

Smaller tablets don’t have any of those issues. You can throw a small tablet in a bag and forget it’s even there, and they’re generally light enough to hold with little effort, like a paperback book. Given their size and flexibility, they’re naturally more focused on content consumption.

With its 7.9-inch screen, the iPad Mini is slightly larger than its 7-inch Android counterparts. But it still has all the makings of a small tablet, and that extra screen real estate actually makes it far better for reading.

Apple has struck a balance between size and performance with the iPad Mini — and it’s one that will resonate in the tablet market for years to come.

The good: Smaller really is better

I can go on and on about the iPad Mini’s thinness and lightness — but really, you have to hold this thing to understand why it’s so special. At just .68 pounds and 7.2 millimeters thick, it weighs about the same as a typical paperback book, and it’s thinner than the already ridiculously thin iPhone 5.

Holding the iPad Mini makes it clear that the sheer size of standard iPads are an issue, even though that didn’t stop more than 85 million consumers from making that tablet a huge success for Apple.

For a device that we’re holding in our hands most of the time, it makes sense that being more comfortable trounces having the better hardware. Together with the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, the iPad Mini shows that smaller tablets are the ideal tablets.

The obvious benefit of going small is cost: The iPad Mini starts at $329, making it the cheapest iPad option yet. It’s still significantly above its $200 Android competitors, but the higher price is well worth the bigger and better iPad app ecosystem. Apple’s decision to go with a 7.9-inch screen also makes the iPad Mini more versatile than 7-inch tablets — you can see more content from web pages, and games feel as if they have more room to breathe.

It’s almost as if the bigger iPads are just a beta test. It was likely too difficult for Apple to successfully build something like the iPad Mini back in 2009 — for one thing, hardware components probably weren’t small enough (just look at how thick the first iPad was). And while the bigger iPad isn’t going anywhere any time soon, the unceremonious way Apple revealed the fourth-gen iPad alongside the iPad Mini is telling.

Over the next few years, expect far more innovation from the iPad Mini than the standard iPad.

For me, great technology should be both uncompromising (which Microsoft’s Surface, sadly, wasn’t) and effortless. The iPad Mini hasn’t cracked the uncompromising nut just yet (more on that below), but it’s by far the most effortless tablet I’ve ever used.

Even though it has a bigger screen, the iPad Mini is 32 grams lighter (for the Wi-Fi model) and noticeably thinner than the Nexus 7, which has been my favorite small tablet so far. Ultimately, this means that everything — reading, watching a movie, or playing a game — simply feels better on the iPad Mini because it’s not a chore to hold. It also helps that the tablet feels so solid — you can feel all of Apple’s experience with building the iPad and iPhone in the iPad Mini’s strong body.

Movies and games don’t look as sharp as they do on Retina Display-equipped iPads, but it’s a more than worthy tradeoff. It takes a discerning eye to notice the benefits of Apple’s Retina Display, but anyone can immediately recognize how much more convenient the iPad mini is. (And naturally, that’s a problem that will be fixed in future models when Apple brings Retina Display quality to the iPad Mini.)

With the iPad Mini, you’ll never think twice about taking it along when you leave the house or grabbing it to peruse Twitter while watching TV. And the device itself becomes practically invisible as you use it.

In the end, isn’t that exactly what a tablet should be?

The bad: Yes, we’re evolving backward (for now)

The iPad Mini is basically running the same hardware that powers the iPad 2. It has the same dual-core A5 processer and 512MB of RAM. And for the screen, instead of the lush Retina Display resolutions of 2048 by 1536, we get the same 1024 by 768 resolution we were so happy to run away from two years ago. (Since the iPad Mini’s screen is smaller, its resolution still looks sharper than on previous iPads.)

It’s difficult to recommend the iPad Mini to someone who’s already shelled out for a third-gen iPad. But in my experience, I still end up reaching for the Mini more than the sharper-screened iPad.

For most of the apps I’ve used — including Twitter, news readers apps like Pulse, and Instagram — the iPad Mini performed admirably. Games suffered the most with the older hardware, but most consumers won’t notice the slightly lower-res and less-detailed graphics, even with graphics-heavy titles like Infinity Blade 2.

It’s a shame that Apple couldn’t at least deliver a Retina resolution, but this makes sense. It would have required a more powerful processor and graphics capabilities, which probably would have made the price of the iPad Mini even higher. For now, it’s a tablet that’s ideal for most consumers — but those looking for Retina sharpness should wait for the inevitable upgrade in next year’s model.

The verdict: The best iPad experience yet

The iPad Mini is all about tradeoffs. Instead of a sharp Retina screen and powerful hardware, you’re getting a slimmer device that’s far more convenient. For me, the tradeoffs are worth it.

Big tablets certainly have their place, but I think we’ll see those becoming increasingly specialized. Most consumers would be better off with the size and price of the iPad Mini than splurging for the iPad fourth-gen. And as for big Android tablets, the Nexus 10 is really the only one worth considering.

I’ve been recommending the iPad Mini without hesitation over the past week. If you’ve been holding out on getting a tablet, it’s almost a no-brainer. You can save a bit by going for the $200 Nexus 7, but you’ll be giving up a far better tablet app ecosystem.

If you can’t swallow the compromise with the iPad Mini, then hold off until next year’s update. And if you already own one of the Retina Display iPads, then you’re probably better off waiting as well (or just starting pricing your iPad on a gadget reseller service like Gazelle).

If anything, I feel vindicated by the iPad Mini. Here’s a device that proves, once and for all, that smaller slates are far better at fulfilling the promise of tablets.

iSuppli estimates that Microsoft’s 32 GB Surface RT tablet costs $284 to build. At a retail price of $599, that’s a markup of 111 percent, with a gross margin of 52 percent … and a profit of $312. Apple’s iPad, on the other hand, typically has profit margins in the 40-50 percent range.

The 16GB iPad mini, for example, sells for $329 and costs about $188 to build, yielding a markup of 75 percent, a gross margin of 43 percent, and a profit of $141.

So, theoretically, Surface tablets could be more profitable for Microsoft than iPads for Apple. The key word here is theoretically.

The hardware costs alone of a device are only a fraction of the actual costs, which include research and development, software development, marketing, and much more. Apple, having sold 100 million iPads to date and well over 200 million iPhones, can amortize its costs over far more devices than Microsoft, which is hoping to sell three million in its first year.

It is interesting to see iSuppli’s list of the most expensive parts in the Surface RT:

The touchscreen display is the biggest cost driver at over $100. That’s a shocking price, as it’s not even a high-def screen — the iPad3′s larger retina display cost $127 almost seven months ago. After that, is the Flash and DRAM memory, and the processor itself, an Nvidia Tegra3.

But is the Surface really more profitable than the iPad? In a word, no.

Even if it does make a good headline.

photo credit: squirrel83 via photopin cc

Is the iPad mini mightier than the sword? If this destruction video is any indication, not one bit.

I’ve seen Apple products destroyed by a lot of things — power drills, axes, explosives – but this one might just be the most historically inaccurate. Basically, it involves an armored knight, a broadsword, and an ending that should break the hearts of anyone whose tried by failed to get their hands on an iPad mini.

In short, if King Arthur ever got frustrated with his iPad, the resulting execution would look a lot like this.

As with a lot of device destruction clips, this one is all about marketing. The video was created by ClearPlex, a company that creates durable film for protecting windshields and smartphone screens. While that probably wouldn’t save any sort of device from the full force of a sword, I think I get what they’re going for. (Not new to technological sadism, ClearPlex also blew some holes in an iPhone 5 with a handgun, those monsters).

Destruction videos make for good marketing fodder because they’re polarizing, visually magnetizing, and appeal to that same part of our brains that loves to watch cars crash and models tumble down runways. They’re all about taking something beautiful and dragging it through the mud. Whether they’re useful is debatable, but you can’t deny that they’re effective.

Oh, and speaking of destruction videos, SquareTrade also recently caused the iPad mini some pain via a drop test.  You can find that video below as well.

Apple sold three million of its newest iPads this past weekend, but it did not break out how many iPad minis it sold.

While Apple said that it doubled the first weekend total of 1.5 million Wi-Fi-only models sold for the third-gen iPad in March, most analysts expected to find out today specifically how many iPad minis the company sold. Disappointingly, though, Apple is only releasing iPad sales figures that includes the new full-size fourth-gen iPad.

“Customers around the world love the new iPad mini and fourth generation iPad,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a canned statement. “We set a new launch weekend record and practically sold out of iPad minis. We’re working hard to build more quickly to meet the incredible demand.”

In comparison, Apple sold three million third-gen iPads, including Wi-Fi and cellular models, in the first weekend of availability in March.

Apple’s quarterly earnings reports have never broken down sales of iPads or iPhones by model, but prior iPad launches have specifically announced sales for the latest model. So that makes the iPad mini the first iPad launch where we don’t know how many went out the gate on the first weekend.

Were the iPad mini numbers disappointing? Or perhaps the sales of the fourth-gen iPad were so shabby that Apple combined them with the iPad mini’s relatively good sales?

We’ve asked Apple to break down the numbers in more detail, but we don’t expect to hear back.

iPad mini photo: John Koetsier/VentureBeat

A day after Apple’s new iPad mini tablets hit retail shelves, people are already starting to do creative things with it.

For example, the guys over at Soundman (who also do the Amplified web show on Revision3) have already installed the smaller tablet into the dashboard of a 2010 Volkswagen CC.

The iPad mini connects using Bluetooth wireless, and is held in place within the dashboard by using magnets. Yes, that means you don’t have to leave your new $330 toy within your vehicle for eager thieves to steal. That’s pretty useful unless you just enjoy paying for new side windows and cleaning up shards of glass.

The smaller size of the iPad mini make it a far more practical option than the regular 10-inch iPad, and certainly easier to use while driving than an iPhone/iPod Touch.

The down side to having this installed into your car is that you risk some really boring drives if you ever lose your iPad mini. Still, it is pretty cool. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.