Friday Apple Rumors: Updated Apple TV Box Might Arrive on Oct. 23

by Christopher Freeburn | October 18, 2013 10:58 am

[1]Here are your Apple rumors[2] and AAPL news items for today:

Clues?: Fans of Apple‘s (AAPL[3]) media streaming device may have something to celebrate by the end of the month[4], AppleInsider notes. The French and German websites for Amazon (AMZN[5]) posted notes for Apple TV devices on Thursday, indicating that current units were no longer in stock and that new units would be “available from Oct. 23.” Most analysts expect Apple to introduce a refreshed version of the Apple TV box this fall, with speculation rising that a new version of the device could be shown off at next week’s special media event, which is anticipated to also see the debut of new iPads. While the French and German Amazon sites have current Apple TV units out of stock, they are still available on other Amazon sites in Europe, Japan and the U.S. The postings could also simply indicate that the German and French sites had exhausted their current stock of Apple TV units.

Denial: Apple has bluntly rejected claims from some computer researchers that it can read encrypted communications sent by users of its instant messaging service[6], AllThingsD notes. “iMessage is not architected to allow Apple to read messages,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. Researchers at QuarksLab said earlier this week that Apple could crack the encryption on iMessage communication by launching a “man-in-the-middle” attack, using its servers to create illicit encryption keys between mobile devices sending messages on the service. In its statement, Apple noted that the researchers were suggesting “theoretical vulnerabilities that would require Apple to re-engineer the iMessage system to exploit it, and Apple has no plans or intentions to do so.” Apple has promoted the security of iMessage for years. Earlier this year, reports surfaced that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was unable to decrypt messages sent via iMessage.

Constrained: A Morgan Stanley (MS[7]) analyst says that limited supplies of its new iPhone 5s will dent the number of iPhone Apple sold during the September quarter[8], Fortune notes. Katy Huberty has reiterated her estimate that Apple sold 34.5 million iPhones in the quarter that ended on Sept. 29. However, she says consumer demand for iPhones was closer to 37 million units. The difference between the number of iPhones she thinks Apple sold and the number it could have sold during the quarter is explained by very low inventories of its flagship iPhone 5s during its launch. An executive at the nation’s largest wireless carrier Verizon Wireless — soon to be fully owned by Verizon (VZ[9]) — recently hinted that its iPhone activations last quarter were dampened by Apple’s inability to provide enough iPhone 5s units to meet customer demand. Despite the supply issue, Huberty described the last quarter as “important inflection point” for Apple, noting that the company “is becoming a clean story again with upside to our estimates, signs of meaningful innovation in iOS 7 and 5s, strong positioning for the next computing cycle, and rebuilding of the management bench — all signs of a positive trajectory” during fiscal 2014.

For more about the company, check out our previous Apple Rumors[10] stories.

Source URL: https://investorplace.com/2013/10/friday-apple-rumors-updated-apple-tv-box-might-arrive-oct-23/

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