Here are your Apple rumors and news items for Monday:
iPhone “Nano”: Much as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) did in the past with its iPod media player line, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the company will release a smaller, cheaper version of the iPhone. The new iPhone Nano (not an official name, but one in line with the branding of its smaller iPod sevices) will debut alongside the iPhone 5 at the beginning of the second quarter. Both small and cheaper than previous iPhone models, the “Nano” will include “voice navigation” and be “about half the price” of the iPhone 4, according Bloomberg. Although the iPhone has made Apple the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenue, the company still doesn’t have the market penetration that competitors like Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) enjoy with their operating systems. A smaller, cheaper iPhone could significantly broaden the market for Apple’s phones.
Apple iPad Doing Business: Even though Apple hasn’t specifically targeted business clients, it’s already beating out competitors in the tablet market thanks to the widespread popularity of the iPad. Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes has predicted that Apple will sell 33.7 million iPads in 2011 and that, since an increasing number of corporate iPad users “are buying devices and bringing them to work,” Apple will stay ahead of Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) with business clients. Reitzes saysApple will still control a 70% majority of the tablet market by the end of the year. RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook was designed specifically to help that company recapture some of the business market that has been ceded to both Apple and Google via the rising popularity of their smartphones. Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) announced just last week that it was releasing a tablet running Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows 7 operating system specifically because business clients prefer a Windows product.
Verizon iPhone Jumps the Gun: Orders for the new iPhone 4 placed with Verizon (NYSE:VZ) on the day the smartphone was released were not supposed to begin shipping until the end of February, but Apple has reportedly moved ahead. According to Apple Insider, customers that were told their iPhone 4 would not ship until “on or about Feb. 18” have already started receiving shipping notifications from Apple. This development backs up estimations that Apple had manufactured 2 million iPhone 4s in anticipation of the device’s release this month on Verizon. Given how well massive preorders and first-day sales have been accommodated, the Verizon’s iPhone 4 seems to be the first model whose supply at release has been able to equal demand.
At the time of publication, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
