Even in his last days Steve Jobs was view of the future.

The Apple brilliance stockpiled fours years worth of blueprint for fresh products to ensure his company’s success, according to reports.

Despite his illness, Jobs, the co-founder and CEO of Apple who died last week at the age of 56, had been masterminding updated versions of the iPod, iPad, iPhone and MacBooks, and overseeing the development of the delayed iCloud project, which will allow Apple users to store music, photos and other documents remotely, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

Carl Howe, director of Yankee Group’s Consumer Research group, said he’s not surprised that Jobs was at work on future Apple products, noting that the design registration for the iPad was completed in 2004 but not introduced to the marketplace until last year.

“It’s not like these guys plan only a quarter or two in advance,” he said. “Jobs anticipated new products years ahead.”

Just days after Jobs’ death, AT&T Inc. said it received more than 200,000 preorders for the iPhone 4S, marking the company’s most successful debut yet for an Apple device. Verizon and Sprint Nextel Corp., which also provide service for the phone, have yet to disclose preorder sales.

Demand has been “extraordinary” for the new iPhone, Dallas-based AT&T said in a statement.

The new model will be the first Apple product release since Jobs’ Oct. 5 death. The iPhone represents the company’s biggest source of revenue, accounting for nearly half of its sales. For the first time, the device is available from all three of the nation’s largest carriers.

Howe said the stunning presales confirm a survey that was completed before the introduction of the new iPhone. Consumers were asked if they were interested in the new Apple phone and a whopping 40 percent of those polled said they would buy a new iPhone without knowing what was in it.

“This shows the power of the Apple brand and delivering what consumers want,” he said. “If you built up the brand, consumers get to build trust and they buy your products.”

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Passenger car maker Honda Siel Cars India (HSCI), a joint venture between Honda Motor Co Limited of Japan and Siel Limited, is planning to export its compact car Brio from its Tapukara plant in Rajasthan to the neighbouring countries of Nepal and Bhutan from next year.

The company already exports some components of Brio – the lowest-priced car rolled out from its stable to compete with models like Maruti’s Swift and WagonR, and Hyundai’s i10 and i20 – to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Launching Brio in Hyderabad on Tuesday, HSCI director (marketing), Seki Inaba, said, “We are looking to achieve localisation of Brio from the present level of 80 per cent to 90 per cent by the end of this fiscal. This would bring down the cost of production. However, it doesn’t mean we will reduce the price.”

The 1,200 cc Brio, which meets the Bharat Stage-IV emission standards, comes in four variants and six colours, with a price tag of between Rs 4.04 lakh (ex-showroom, Hyderabad) and Rs 5.19 lakh.

While declining to disclose the sales targets of Brio, Inaba said the company was expecting the compact car’s volumes to be in line with its ‘City’ sedan.

In August 2011, HSCI sold 5,000 units of City. Across models, the company had sold 60,000 units during the last financial year.

“The Rajasthan plant has an installed capacity of 100,000 units. We should be able to fully utilise the capacity by the end of Q1 of 2012,” he said, adding the company was expanding its dealer network to 143 in 91 cities by the end of this year, from the existing 135 in 83 cities.

On whether the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which forced HSCI to reduce production in India due to non-availability of parts from Japan, still had any impact on the company, Inaba said, “It had some impact. Things, however, are expected to ease towards the end of the year.”

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Chief among the competitors listed by the worlds media as capable of taking on the iPhone 4S are Samsung’s rumoured Google Nexus Prime and Galaxy S3 devices.

The most recent report regarding the two fabled devices stemmed from CNET UK. It alleged that an unnamed source had posted information allegedly taken during a visit to Google’s office to 4Chan. Though the post only confirmed that the Samsung Galaxy S3 was currently being developed, it posted several details regarding the Nexus Prime.

The details alleged that the Google Nexus Prime would run using the company’s future Ice Cream Sandwich Android operating system. It later followed up that the device would be “blazingly fast,” packing a 1.5GHz Exynos dual-core processor and come with 1GB of RAM.
The source went on to allege that the device would house a curved 4.65-inch 1,280×720-pixel Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen neatly contained in an 8.8mm metal body.

The spec detailed in the new rumour runs contrary to a previous report from CNET UK that emerged earlier in September. The previous report alleged Samsung had accidentally let the Prime’s existence slip in a leaked user agent profile.

The file reported that the Nexus Prime would be released housing an 480×800-pixel screen and an ARM11 processor.

Since CNET’s initial report a “leaked” image of Nexus Prime emerged from GSMArena. The picture adds to existing speculation that the Nexus Prime would house a massive 4.6 inch Super AMOLED screen capable of an impressive 720p resolution.

At the time this article was written Samsung had not released a statement addressing either alleged “leak.”

A full copy of the original post sent to 4Chan can be read at Android and Me.

The Windows Phone Armada

Alongside reports regarding Google’s Android arsenal other claims have also emerged suggesting Microsoft had accidentally let slip details regarding Nokia and Samsung’s future I phone -killing” Windows Phone smartphones.

According to reports, details regarding Nokia’s Sabre and Searay and Samsung’s Yokon and Wembley devices appeared in a terms and conditions policy handed out to entrants of a Canadian Mango app development challenge.

The devices were reportedly listed as potential prizes the entrants could win. Since the items inclusion in the conditions was first reported, the policy has been amended removing the smartphones names. Despite the change, the retail value listed in the document remained the same, indicating the phones would be worth around $600 — roughly £370.

Outside of the names listed in the policy, no further details regarding the future devices were revealed. Previous reports had emerged earlier in 2011 suggesting the Searay would be similar in kind to the company’s Meego-powered N9 device. Details regarding the Samsung Yukon and Wembley remain nonexistent.

Other Existing Devices

In addition to the slew of currently rumoured devices analysts have speculated as capable of taking on Apple’s next iPhone several other confirmed handsets have also emerged to take on the iPhone 4S.

Most recently HTC’s Titan and next batch of Sensation devices has caused the most significant stir. The company made even bigger waves when it announced it would be holding its own media event just two days after Apple’s.

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Apple Inc., which hasn’t shown off a new iPhone in more than a year, is expected to unveil its latest version of the popular smartphone Tuesday.

The company is holding a media event starting at 10 a.m. Pacific time at its Cupertino headquarters, invitations for which were emailed last week and included the line “let’s talk iPhone.” The company typically rolls out a new iPhone during the summer, but this year Apple was expected to wait until the fall.

Apple began selling the most recent iPhone – iPhone 4 – last June, and introduced the first one in 2007. Its slick looks, touch screen and intuitive software made it immediately popular. The phone has gained millions of fans (Apple sold 39 million between just January and the end of June) and has led to fierce competition from smartphone makers such as those using Google Inc.’s Android software.

A new iPhone is expected to include Apple’s latest iOS mobile software, iOS 5, which will have features such as wireless device setup and content syncing and beefed-up camera, email and Web-browsing apps. It is also expected to include Apple’s upcoming iCloud service, which will store content like music and photos on Apple’s servers so you can access them wirelessly on multiple devices.

On the hardware side, a new iPhone is anticipated to look much like the iPhone 4, though it may be thinner and have a slightly larger screen. It is also expected to have a camera that is better than the current iPhone’s 5-megapixel rear camera and a faster processor.

The iPhone event is expected to be presided over by Tim Cook, Apple’s recently appointed CEO. Cook was named after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs resigned from the post in August, following a medical leave that began in January. Jobs is now Apple’s executive chairman.

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Apple [AAPL] and Adobe [ADBE] continue to spar over Flash support on iOS devices, but recent moves by the latter firm seemingly suggest its coming round to a new approach for its once important multimedia standard, one in which all the work of handling Flash content is handled by the server, not the mobile device.

Clashing keynote capers

What’s strange is that both Apple and Adobe will be making keynote announcements at the same time tomorrow.

We all have numerous ideas what Apple might announce, with iPhones and iCloud way at top of the list, but what on Earth does Adobe have planned?

Adobe is holding its keynote as part of its Adobe Max developer event, which runs until October 5. Given that Apple will suck up global press attention with its keynote, Adobe’s likely not expecting too much traction when it makes its own big announcement.

It could be something from nothing — after all, Apple only announced its keynote last week, while Adobe has had details of its own developer event available for a year, but the proximity of the two keynotes is sparking some debate. After all, there’s lots of interest in a slick and successful implementation of Flash on Apple devices.

Is a Flash in the cloud?

Could Adobe be about to tell us something? We know the company’s CTO, Kevin Lunch, will talk to developers about how Adobe is “transforming the creative process across mobile devices, personal computers, and the cloud.”

Things have been pretty tense between the two firms since 2010, when then Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, wrote his famed “Thoughts on Flash” diatribe. Since then things have improved, slightly, with Adobe welcoming this year’s introduction of Final Cut X for reinvigorating interest in Adobe Premier.

What happens next? We may find out more tomorrow, but I’m not expecting Flash on an iPad — but speculate we may see some further announcement on future support for server-side Flash based media delivery systems for mobile devices.

That’s the kind of support Adobe most recently stepped toward with Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5. “With Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, media publishers now have a single, simple workflow for delivering content using the same stream to Flash-enabled devices or to the Apple iPhone and iPad.”

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Mercedes-Benz PAKISTAN continues momentum well into the second half of the year with a total sale of 745 units in the month of September 2011, recording a growth of 12% over September 2010 (September 2010: 664 units). The company also grew by 35% by clocking 5635 units in the period from January-September 2011 as compared to the same period in 2010 (January-September 2010: 4159 units).

The E-Class sold 333 units in September 2011 recording a 30% growth Y-o-Y (September 2010: 257 units), the newly launched C-Class remains a favorite by selling an impressive 293 units a health growth of 30%, thereby retaining its segment leadership yet again. Another segment leader from Mercedes-Benz portfolio, the S-Class sold 49 units.

In the period from January-September 2011, Mercedes-Benz pakistan grew by a healthy 35% clocking 5635 units as compared to January-September 2010. Mercedes-Benz pakistan’s sedan segment comprising the C-Class, E-Class & the S-Class grew steadily at 30% in the January-September 2011 period by registering sales of 4905 units (Jan-Sep 2010: 3748 units).

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The endless rumors and speculations over the much-hyped iPhone5 and the possibility of twin iPhone releases has left most people in a fix regarding the authenticity of news floating in from everywhere.

n an attempt to know what people think and to get closer to the truth Mashable.com conducted an online poll for all those inquisitive techies who are still pondering about several things related to the iPhone5 and its release.

The recent poll suggests that the first thing that most people want to know is the actual release date of the iPhone5. Approximately 50 percent of the respondents believe in the rumor that Apple will release the iPhone5, along with the iPhone4S, at its much-talked about media event to be held at its Cupertino campus on Tuesday. However, 37 percent believe it will launch only the iPhone5.

With the rumors floating around about the iPhone’s specifications, an overwhelming 95 percent believe it will have an upgraded camera, while 88 percent believe the iPhone5 to have iPad’s A5 dual-core chip.

Moving on, while Apple has made no official announcement about any specifications, 76 percent of vigilant techies polled still expect it to have system-wide voice interaction.

About the design of the iPhone5, images of whose cases were earlier leaked and whose cases are now available for purchase at AT&T retail stores, 47 percent expect it to have a “radical new teardrop-shaped cross-section, inspired by the MacBook Air,” while 38 percent believe it will retain a “similar shape and size to the iPhone4.”

Most people are still busy anticipating elements of the look, its features, the possibility of Near Field Communications (NFC) chip, the display and the USP of the device, while others are busy investigating the possibility of a link between Apple’s event on Tuesday and a press conference, on the same date and time, by Adobe.

Until now Apple has remained completely tight-lipped about any details regarding the iPhone5. Tuesday’s event, however, is surely the right time to clear all these rumors and finally put an end to all the theories and speculation.

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Reviving arguments that have dogged Microsoft in Europe for nearly two decades, an Italian software maker is asking European officials to block Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype, the Internet phone service, unless it is removed from Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows Office platform.

In the past, the European Commission has been sympathetic to complaints about Microsoft’s strategy of “bundling” popular applications with Windows, eventually requiring the software maker to make concessions on its media player and Internet browser.

But legal experts were split over whether the latest complaint, filed Sept. 20 by Messagenet, a company based in Milan that is a rival to Skype Internet’s phone service, would complicate or prevent European approval of the takeover, which would be the largest in Microsoft’s history and the largest takeover in the technology sector this year.

“These types of complaints from competitors are to be expected,” said Denis Waelbroeck, an antitrust lawyer at Ashurts in Brussels. “I would expect that the commission will look at this seriously, but I think that in the end, the officials will reach their own independent decision. This doesn’t mean the complaint will be upheld.”

Joaquin Almunia, the E.U. competition commissioner, plans to make his decision on the acquisition public on Oct. 7. A spokeswoman for Mr. Almunia, Amelia Torres, on Wednesday declined to comment on Messagenet’s complaint. In general, she said the commission considered all submissions from competitors in antitrust cases.

Mr. Almunia, a Spanish economist, had been competition commissioner for less than two months when his office approved Microsoft’s takeover of Yahoo’s search business in February 2010. A Brussels antitrust lawyer, who did not want to be identified for fear of alienating a potential client in Microsoft, said the Italian complaint could scupper the deal.

“I would certainly say this kind of complaint, if it raises new issues that the commission has not previously considered, may derail the deal or, at least delay approval,” the lawyer said. Mr. Almunia could be persuaded to extend his present review into a more exhaustive second phase, which could take months or even years.

Or, the lawyer said, Microsoft could seek to delay an immediate decision and buy time by requesting an extension to prepare an answer to the complaint. Jesse Verstraete, a spokesman for Microsoft in Brussels, said the company declined to comment on the allegations in the complaint from Messagenet.

“The proposed acquisition is still undergoing regulatory review and we are working closely with the agencies,” Mr. Verstraete said. “Until all regulatory approvals are obtained, it is business as usual at Microsoft and at Skype.”

Besides asking Microsoft to “unbundle” Skype from Windows, Messagenet is urging European competition authorities to require Microsoft to effectively open Skype’s Internet phone network, which had 124 million regular users in June, to the services of rivals. Messagenet is asking the commission to do this by requiring Microsoft to disclose the confidential computer coding that would enable rival services to connect calls to Skype users.

Skype’s communication software does not operate with rival services. In May, after Microsoft announced its plans to buy Skype, the managing director of Messagenet, Andrea M. Galli, said he had written to Skype requesting the secret coding that would let the services interconnect, according to a copy of the complaint that Messagenet filed with the commission, and which was seen by the International Herald Tribune.

Mr. Galli said Skype never responded to the request.

Less than three weeks later, Skype ended its partnership with Digium, a company based in Huntsville, Alabama, whose software had enabled users of an open-source Internet phone service, Asterisk, to call and be called by Skype users.

At that time, a Digium product manager, Rod Montgomery, lamented in a company blog that Skype for Asterisk, the Digium software, had been a “strong and steady seller.”

After Skype canceled the partnership, Digium stopped selling Skype for Asterisk on July 26. Mr. Montgomery said Skype had guaranteed to support and maintain the software for existing users for only two years, honoring a provision in its original contract with Digium.

In his complaint, Mr. Galli said the Digium incident showed Microsoft’s intention to keep Skype as a closed, proprietary software application, unavailable to rivals.

“The first effects of the proposed merger will be an even more rigid approach to interoperability of Skype services so to exclude competitors from the market,” Mr. Galli wrote in the company’s complaint.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved Microsoft’s purchase of Skype on June 17, arguing that, with rival Internet phone operators Google Talk and Apple FaceTime, there was sufficient competition to let Microsoft’s purchase proceed.

But that rationale may be less persuasive in Europe, where none of the big global sellers of Internet video communication services are European companies, and where regulators have a track record of challenging Microsoft’s bundling strategy.

In 2009, under pressure from European officials, Microsoft agreed to distribute a ballot screen on Windows allowing users to choose their default browser from a list of 12, including Windows Internet Explorer.

The agreement settled a complaint that had been filed by a small Norwegian browser maker, Opera, which had attracted support from Google and Mozilla, the makers of the Chrome and Firefox browers, respectively.

The ballot screens, which Microsoft began distributing in early 2010, have sped the erosion of its browser share in Europe. Internet Explorer’s market share in Europe slipped to 46.3 percent in April from 55.7 percent a year earlier, according to AT Internet, a research firm based in Merignac, France. During the same period Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari browser and Opera all gained market share.

In 2007, the commission required Microsoft to sell a version of Windows XP in Europe without its own media player, a condition it imposed to resolve a decade-long legal clash that ended with Microsoft’s being convicted of antitrust violations and paying more than $1 billion in fines and penalties. But that remedy largely failed as European consumers rejected the stripped-down Windows version, which Microsoft was allowed to sell for the same price as the full version.

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Google’s attempts to move into and dominate the smartphone market have taken another step forward with the opening of its first retail outlet.

The modest store in London’s Tottenham Court Road may be a small starting point, but it could be a signal of the internet search engine giant’s intent to take on Apple.
Google has created the Android operating system – the most popular smartphone platform in the world – and recently purchased Motorola.

The acquisition of the phone company will give it a “credible hardware arm”, businessinsider.com claimed.

Google’s new Chromezone store is located in PC World and currently only sells Chromebooks and headphones.

‘Specially trained Chromebook experts will be on hand to offer guidance and advice to shoppers,’ the firm said in a statement.

We’ve put a great deal of thought into the design of this Chrome Zone.

‘Chromebooks are the perfect notebook computers for people who live on the web and offer a faster, safer and more secure online experience, without all the time-consuming and confusing maintenance required by typical computers.’

The laptops are already available online through PC World .

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SAN FRANCISCO — A couple of years after it launched its website in 1995, Ama­zon was the subject of an unflattering report entitled Amazon.Toast. The pundit who penned it predicted that the fledgling online bookseller would soon be crushed by Barnes & Noble , a book-retailing behe­moth that had just launched its own site.

Far from being crushed, Amazon is doing the crushing. Borders , a once­ mighty book chain, was flattened this year. B&N looks like a frightened capybara running from a fierce Brazilian she-war­rior. Amazon is now one of the web’s most successful e-tailers. Even Apple is feeling the heat.

On Sept. 28, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s boss, unveiled a tablet computer called the Kindle Fire. It will compete with gadgets such as B&N’s Nook Color tablet and Apple’s iPad. The new Amazon tablet, which has a somewhat smaller screen than the iPad and only offers Wi-Fi con­nectivity, is likely to be just the first salvo in a titanic battle.

Like Apple, Amazon boasts a huge collection of online content, including e-books, films and music. And like Apple, it lets people store their content in a com­puting “cloud” and retrieve it from almost anywhere. But the two firms part com­pany when it comes to pricing. The Kindle Fire, which will be available from mid-November in America, will cost only $199. That is far less than the cheapest iPad, a Wi-Fi-only device that costs $499.

B&N responded to the Kindle Fire by cut­ting the price of its Nook Color to $224.

Last week, Amazon also rolled out a new range of Kindle e-readers, the cheapest of which costs just $79.

“We are building premium products and offering them at non-premium prices,” beamed Bezos.

Amazon’s decision to undercut its rivals is partly a tactic designed to disrupt the tablet market, which is still dominated by the iPad. Gartner , a research firm, be­lieves that Apple’s device will account for almost three-quarters of the 64 million tablets it thinks will be sold worldwide this year. Amazon’s pricing strategy also reflects one of the firm’s core beliefs,

which is that cheap stuff makes customers cheerful. Call it the Walmart of the web.

Low prices are not the only thing under­pinning Amazon’s success. The company is technologically adept, and it has a knack of delighting customers with in­novations such as its $79-a-year “Amazon Prime” shopping service in America, which offers members free, two-day ship­ping and other benefits. Such goodies have been crucial to its growth. But its ability to drive down the prices of every­thing from cameras to cloud computing gives it a colossal competitive advantage.

A recent study by William Blair , an investment bank, underlines the price gap between Amazon and its rivals in the retailing world. The report compared the prices of 100 randomly selected goods at each of 24 American retailers with those items that were also available on Ama­zon. com. It found that almost half of the goods were listed on the online retailer’s site too, and that Amazon’s prices for individual products were on average 11 per cent below those of the stores. The study also noted that Amazon’s discounts were in many cases deeper than those offered by the retailers’ own websites.

Admittedly, as an online outfit, Amazon does not pay sales taxes in American states where it has no physical presence.

Many cash-strapped states are now keen to pass laws that would change this — a move Amazon is loudly and unsurprising­ly opposing. But the William Blair study concludes that even if it has to cough up more taxes, Amazon will still be able to offer prices that are lower than those of many rivals.

The firm’s huge scale and its massively popular website, which it will use to pro­mote the Kindle Fire, give it an edge. And it enjoys another advantage too.

“Amazon does not have to worry about the impact of its pricing on a legacy store system,” explains Kirthi Kalyanam, a professor at Santa Clara University’s Retail Management Institute.

Amazon Web Services, or AWS, which rents computing capacity in its giant data centers to customers, has also won a repu­tation for being cheap. Comparing cloud­computing prices is tricky, but observers of the market report that AWS is typically one of the lowest-cost providers.

“Amazon operates with economies of scale that are practically impossible to match,” says Reuven Cohen of Enomaly ,

which runs SpotCloud, an online market­place where firms sell excess cloud-com­puting capacity.

The cloud is crucial to the success of Amazon’s gadget strategy. Most analysts think that the firm loses money on the hardware that it sells. But it hopes that its cheap tablet will be wildly popular and therefore boost sales of Amazon’s cloud­based content, just as the Kindle e-reader boosted sales of e-books. It’s like free parking outside Walmart — you want potential customers to see what’s in the window.

The good news for Amazon is that tab­let users seem more inclined to splash out on stuff than web shoppers who use PCs, according to Forrester , another research firm. One possible explanation for this is that tablet buyers tend to be richer; anoth­er is that the immersive experience tablets create encourages more impulse buying.

Whatever the reason, Amazon will have to hope that its gambit works, because its business model has at least one worrying downside. Its profit margin is a page-thin 3-4 per cent, partly because it has invested so heavily in the cloud. Now it is going head-to-head with Apple, which made a juicy $7.3 billion net profit on revenues of $28.6 billion in the latest quarter. Apple may not want to provoke a price war in the tablet market, where it sees plenty of growth to come.

But if it does return fire, Amazon could get its fingers toasted.

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