Adobe had an event “Flash On The Beach” in which they made public that they are now developing a flash player for the iPhone. This comes following various statements by Steven Jobs, stating that the current version of flash for the iPhone is not quite good enough.
This Adobe flash may not be seen right away until it is developed to work correctly with the iPhone and Apple determines what apps make it into the App Store. It may not actually be seen in the near future since Flash has the ability to cause CPU overload on computers and on smartphones.
Meanwhile in related news, the technology firm from Finland which produces the Nokia cell phones has just released their latest the 5800 Xpressmusic phone. All in all, this is the very first touch screen phone the company has released and with it they are setting their sights on competing for a part of the digital music market that the Apple corporation currently dominates.
This particular phone will be made available to customers for free when they sign a service contract, which will place certain pressures on Apple’s iPhone. According to Jo Harlow the head of the phones, they think that they will listed with most of the mobile firms in due time.
Meanwhile in official statements from the Nokia Corporation as part of their free music bundle they have named “Comes with Music”, they claim to have all the major music labels and many of the independent labels with as many as five million tracks.
They also have plans of offering their music service in America next year in competition with the Apple Corporation, which now is in control of more than half of the digital music sales with iTunes.
In reports there may be changes on the way for iPod owners and those who plan to purchase iPods. Apple is in discussions about making the favorite download site iTunes partially free for iPod users. Rather than paying at iTunes, iPod users will be paying more for the model of iPod they choose to purchase.
While this has not been decided for sure, Apple, EMI, Sony BMG and Warner Music would not make comments about this as late as Wednesday.
In statements from David Pakman the CEO of eMusic who is a rival of the online music site iTunes commented that his concern lies with the fact that Apple may take advantage of the monopoly it has in the digital player market.
IPods represent about 85% of the digital music market online today. If this current plan that has been leaked in some competitors thoughts, if bundled with music from iTune downloads that would be considered anti-competitive according to David Pakman.
In other Apple/iPod news the world’s most expensive iPod that has been donated to a charity auction that was held in London, United Kingdom. It is being labeled the iDiamond iPod and it was designed by a Norwegian jeweler named Thomas Heterdahl, the iPod and earplugs have been designed of solid white and pink 18 karat gold, along with the coating of 430 diamonds that includes 118 diamonds on the earplugs. Hererdahl stated that he would not design another of this one of a kind iDiamond iPod and feels that it would be quite a different situation if it were to be produced commerically
iPod Memory Order Cut, Is This an Indication of Slower Sales?
Reports say that as of Wednesday of this week the Apple Corporation cut the amount of NAND flash memory for the 2008 year that iSuppli would have supplied Apple with for iPods and Iphones.
The iSuppli firm who supplies a large enough amount of this type of memory stated that it is felt the effect of this decrease in orders could be a warning that the Apple iPod sales will slow this spring along with the rest of the national ecconomy.
This also could prove to be a decisive factor in the revenue of the iSuppli Company……… Apple spent an approximate $1.2 billion dollars on flash memory in the 2007 year, which is another indication with this cut in orders that the Apple iPod sales are expected to be slower this year.
Prior to this announcement iSuppli had forecasted that the NAND flash memory orders would increase by approximately 32.2% and they had expected this would vastly increase their market growth.
This comes as a surprise after the recent trade shows in which Apple brought their new iPods to the public with larger storage space and the information released about the long awaited movies that would be available on iTunes. This news should be interesting to watch,especially from an economic perspective in general.
On the supply side, capital spending on NAND production in 2008 will grow by over twenty percent, which will cause a drop in prices, iSuppi said. As a result, suppliers are likely to go into the red in the first quarter of this year and are unlikely to recover in the second quarter.
Signs of market troubles were evident in the fourth quarter of last year, as global NAND revenue declined 2.4% from the third quarter to $4.1 billion. Of the top-eight NAND suppliers, six suffered sequential declines in revenues
