Apple has decided to block Apple News due to the censorship laws in China.
Apple Inc. has discontinued the use of its News App in the Chinese market as reported by New York Times who cited a source that is closely associated with this venture.
The Apple News application that caters to stories and other digital content produced by multiple sources is so far only accessible to the company’s clientele within the United States. Moreover, testing is also being done in other regions like Australia and Britain. Those users who already have the application installed on Apple products can use it whilst traveling. However, the only constraint is that the app cannot be used in China claims New York Times.
As per the report, when any user launches the News app in China, the top banner that usually shows the current news, depicts a message that claims, "Can't refresh right now. News isn't supported in your current region."
This scenario has created a rough situation for Apple since it always portrays itself like a progressive firm whose primary focus is to advocate innovation and human rights. This creates havoc since China is the largest Internet market across the globe that has very strict rules in terms of censorship.
All Internet based companies are liable to comply with strict censorship rules as per their law. Along with that, they also have to come up with the firewall mechanism that tends to lower or, in most cases, block international web based services. Previously, Google also stopped its search engine related services in China once a dispute happened with the local government over censorship.
China is said to be the second largest market for Apple where during the third quarter a record was touched with sales worth $13 billion reports the New York Times. Mr. Xi Jinping who is the President of China, visited the United States last month where the chief executive officer of the iPhone making company, Mr. Tim Cook met the authority.
The reason why Apple might have banned the app in China can be the time that it will have to spend to filter out content. This, instead it chose to completely disable the app within the region. However, some users are not content with the move, who believe that the company is not just restricting Internet access but also stopping users from previewing the articles that are saved already on the devices.
The move is blunt but the censorship laws in China are relatively absurd to comply too.
As reported by Morgan Stanley, Apple iPhone sales likely to hit 53 million units in Q3.
Apple Inc., the tech behemoth is all set to schedule a time where they will reveal their earnings for the third trimestral when July FY15 ends. The company has been extremely successful with the rampant popularity of Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. This has resulted in the tech giant to grow considerably in each trimestral. However, analyst at The Street believe that the popularity of iPhones is likely to experience a downfall since the refresh cycle issue is becoming an issue for users.
An AlphaWise survey was conducted by Morgan Staley that will help them to track the demand for iPhone for the three month tenure ending in June. According to the survey, Apple is back in the game where it might sell around 53 million iPhone units during the current trimestral. This forecast, however, remains unchanged to what they predicted in May.
Katy Huberty, an analyst at Morgan Stanley believes that the growing markets have immense potential where China is likely to drive growth for them. The Chinese market has demands that are relatively late in the production cycle. Huberty highlights that the results of AlphaWise survey seem to be on par with the supply chain checks that took place recently for Apple.
According to Jasmine Lu, the tech analyst for Morgan Stanley believes that the company will be able to sell almost 54 million units of its flagship smartphone.
Huberty further believes that if all other aspects are monitored and remain constant, the three million devices according to the survey along with the 50 million other units estimations made for the iPhone would result in an increase in revenues by $.8 billion for the company. This would actually result in an 11 percent increase considering “Morgan Stanley’s EPS estimate of $1.82.”
Apart from that, the tracker by the Morgan Stanley for Apple Watch clearky highlights that the need for Apple iPhones has now stabilized at a 20 percent higher if considering that the first iPhone took almost six weeks to its launch. According to Huberty, “"Watch interest in the week of launch was about half that for the first iPhone, but the Watch has seen a much smaller deceleration since the initial spike.”
Hence, in a nutshell, Morgan Stanley has made an estimate which will not be so difficult for Apple to achieve considering the immense popularity of their products and services with the masses. The company has established itself as a reputable brand and this will help to sale swiftly in the long run.
Apple Music has to deal with rivalry, criticism and competition before its launch.
Apple Inc.’s annual World Wide Developers Conference for the year 2015 took place earlier this month. The highlight of the show were the launch of its much awaited online music streaming service Apple Music along with the launch of their upcoming operating system for Apple products.The WWDC broadcasted Apple Music to a great extent. The idea behind this service is to bring users and music streaming under one consolidated umbrella. It is said that this service will be a direct competitor to Tidal and Spotify where the former holds almost 49 percent of the total market share. The Swedish platform has a strong position and it will be relatively difficult for Apple Music to overthrow them so easily. Spotify is not really a major threat. The service has 60 million active users among which only one-fourth of them actually pay for the service.Apple’s entry into the online music industry is not something astonishing. The company previously acquired Beats Electronics the previous year for $3.2 billion which is said to be a record-breaking deal. Apart from that, the company has immense success with its music downloading platform iTunes.Apple faced its first setback in FY13 since its launch which occurred 10 years back since the online music subscription trend rose by 50 percent in that tenure. So now when Apple is actually coming up with its own online music streaming service, then the impact will be observed on iTunes as the trend of digital downloads will further decline. This is quite similar to how initially Apple iPhones took over the iPods because of their mass storage capacity.Apple Music is the first initiative by the company to enter the music streaming market so at this point users will not be comfortable in shelving out $10 monthly if they don’t know what the service actually holds for them. So the company has announced a three-month free trial to its customers so that they get the heck of it.Recently, the company dealt with criticism when one of the renowned pop icons, Taylor Swift decided to remove her popular alum from Apple Music since the company decided not to pay artists during the free three month trial period. So Apple had to deal with criticism and eventually decided to pay artists during the free three month trial period.Thus Apple Music does have its pros and cons but the response can only be governed once it is officially launched by the company.
Apple Watch likely to roll out the coming fall, 2016.
As reported by Macrumors.com, Apple Inc. got an extremely positive response for their first wearable device the Apple Watch. As reports claim the company has started to work on the next version of Apple Watch in the fiscal year of 2016 which will be named as the Apple Watch 2.The reports suggest that the upcoming watch will comprise of various new features that includes a secondary camera to be used with FaceTime video calling feature, Wi-Fi enabled features along with new material built models. The Apple watch 2 will b e revealed once the tech behemoth launches its watchOS 2 along with other native watch application in 2016. However, all these are mere speculations since the company has not revealed anything officially to date.The World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) that took place in 2015 catered to several revelations where Apple announced that it wishes to device a new feature for the audio FaceTime calls that will use the Wi-Fi through the watchOS 2 in the times to come. They further mentioned that this feature will allow users to receive or decline calls through an iPhone that is paired with the device. Rumors also suggest that the new camera will be placed on the top bezel of the smart wearable technology, Apple Watch so that the calls are decent without any inconvenience.Apple at this point has made it clear that they will not work on the battery life of Apple Watch. The company conducted various surveys and most of the users who own an Apple Watch were satisfied with its battery life. So the company will not spend time on that but will focus on other spheres that require their attention. Many analysts believe that this means, Apple users can now expect several exciting and engaging changes that will overall breathe a new dimension in the upcoming Apple Watch.Apart from this, the Apple Watch 2 is also said to have a Wi-Fi chip embedded in it that will be another add-on. Furthermore, the company is also working on “Find my Watch” feature which will comprise of “Wi-Fi router triangulation technology” allowing users to track their device in case it gets lost or stolen.Apple has not commented on this matter so far but reports also suggest that the upcoming Apple Watch will be available in various materials that include tungsten, platinum, titanium and palladium.Apple Watch has become an instant favorite and many Apple lovers are looking forward to this upgrade.
