Here are your daily Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) news items and rumors for Thursday:
Apple TV Better Than iPad..In One Way: Netflix’s (NASDAQ:NFLX) earnings report late Wednesday revealed a surprising detail — the company said that its Instant Streaming service has logged more total viewing hours on the Apple TV set-top box than on the iPad tablet PC. The disparity is surprising considering that in its most recent quarter Apple sold only about a million of the new Apple TVs, while more than 15 million iPads have made it into consumers’ hands. Netflix noted that the iPhone Instant Streaming is “very popular” and the iPad app is “growing.” It appears, however, that living room devices with the service, such as Sony’s (NYSE:SNE) PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Xbox 360, Nintendo’s (PINK:NTDOY) Wii, and even the low-selling Apple TV are a stronger draw than portable devices.
AT&T’s Slow Growth: During its last calendar quarter of iPhone exclusivity, AT&T (NYSE:T) activated more than 4.1 million Apple smartphones. Interest in the device helped AT&T pull in a $1.1 billion profit for the quarter. That didn’t stop AT&T shares to drop 3% in early Thursday trading, however. Despite strong iPhone sales through the carrier over the holiday quarter, few of those sales translated to new subscribers. Just 400,000 new contract customers were brought into AT&T’s fold over the period, missing Wall Street analyst expectations by more than 100,000. Even before the early January announcement that an iPhone would be arriving on Verizon’s (NYSE:VZ) network in 2011, it seems that consumers were ready for greater options.
Sony Takes Aim: Sony unveiled two tiers in its mobile strategy at a conference in Tokyo on Thursday. The first is a new portable gaming device codenamed NGP (Next Generation Portable), a successor to the PlayStation Portable handheld. The 3G handheld will feature touchscreen controls as well as traditional button controls to support both exclusive software and smaller game software like the kind traditionally seen on Apple’s App Store.
More significant, however, was the announcement that Sony will release a PlayStation Store app for Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android phones. Like the store on Sony’s PlayStation 3, Android users will be able to buy Playstation 1 titles and eventually Playstation Portable and original titles. The popularity of the Playstation brand will certainly lend some much-needed exposure to Google’s Android App Market as it works to compete with Apple’s App Store.
Here Comes “Hover” Touch: Apple is exploring ways to limit the wear and tear of its touch screen handhelds. A new Apple patent published Tuesday describes “hover sensitive devices,” indicating future generations of the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad that wouldn’t require users to physically touch the device screens to perform certain actions. The patent describes how a user would make “OK gestures,” ” X to delete gestures,” and “stamp of approval gestures” to operate apps on Apple handhelds
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
