Here are your daily Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) news items and rumors for Wednesday: more Verizon (NYSE:VZ) iPhone talk, here comes the iPad’s new competition, and an update to iPhoto rampus up the rivalry with Google (NASDAQ:GOOG).
iPhone “Essential” for Verizon’s Future: Google’s Android smartphone software platform might not be the force Wall Street analysts and investors expected it would be. Despite impressive growth across 2010, Verizon-supported smartphones running the Android operating system, like Motorola’s (NYSE:MOT) Droid, aren’t selling as quickly as they were earlier this year according to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, an analyst with the Kaufman Bro. In a note to investors on Tuesday, Wu said iApple’s smartphone is “essential to future success” for Verizon and that the telecom is “still excited” about bringing the iPhone to its network.
Verizon’s enthusiasm for the device comes “despite it already carrying a full roster of competing operating systems,” including Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows, Nokia’s (NYSE:NOK) Symbian, Hewlett-Packard’s (NASDAQ: HPQ) WebOS, and Research in Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry OS in addition to Google’s Android. The iPhone will help, as Wu puts it, “combat slowing Android momentum in the U.S.”
Microsoft, H-P Take On the iPad: With the Consumer Electronics Show just a couple of weeks away, tech manufacturers are revving their PR engines to build hype around new products debuting at the event. One of the emerging stories is the arrival of the tablet market, with Apple’s iPad finally getting a stable of promising competitors. Fox News reported on Tuesday that, in addition to Research in Motion’s BlackPad and Motorola’s unnamed Google Android Tablet, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft will both be unveiling tablet products at CES to compete with the iPad. H-P will debut its new tablet, the PalmPad, that uses the Palm WebOS operating system in addition to the brand from the company H-P acquired last fall.
This will be H-P’s second tablet to hit the market in 12 months, the first being the Windows 7-powered Slate PC, a product that was more of a market test than a full product line (HP only produced about 9,000 units, and only expected to sell 5,000.)
Even though H-P is abandoning its software platform, Microsoft is also bringing its wares to the tablet arms race at CES with a new operating system built specifically for tablet use. The Wall Street Journal said Wednesday that though Microsoft’s tablet OS will make an appearance at CES 2011, “it isn’t expected to be available for two years.”
iPhoto Update: Apple released an update to its widely used iPhoto software on Tuesday, increasing the application’s stability as well as introducing a handful of new features. The most significant change to iPhoto in the 9.1.1 update is the support for third-party email programs like Microsoft’s Outlook as well as the ability to conveniently resize photos for inclusion in emails. iPhoto has lost significant marketshare to Google’s Picasa software in part because it lacked these features.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
