Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » juillet 26, 2012

BetaNews.Com (11 non lus)

Samsung error removes universal search from the Galaxy S III, not Apple's patent war

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 11:59pm CEST par Wayne Williams

Now here’s an interesting thing. A couple of days ago Samsung disabled the Google local search function from the international version of its Galaxy S3 handset, preventing users from being able to search their phone’s apps and contacts. It was believed to have been done as a result of a patent dispute with Apple, and followed the search-on-device disabling update that hit Galaxy Nexuses in the US.

Users were understandably up in arms because they weren’t told that installing the new stability update would remove the universal search feature, and probably a fair few of them felt compelled to join the boycott Apple movement as a result. (Fortunately I didn’t update my S3 so my opinion didn’t change. Not that it would have.)

But today, Samsung admitted that the removal of the search function from the international versions of the smartphone was completely accidental.

"The most recent software upgrade for the Galaxy S3 in the UK included the inadvertent removal of the universal search function", Samsung says in a fairly unapologetic statement. "Samsung will provide the correct software upgrade within the next few days".

Good news for British S3 owners, but really this is a pretty massive cock-up and one that might cause users to have second thoughts about installing any new updates in the future.
Facebook ends quarter in the negative, but made $6.8 billion in cash from IPO

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 11:57pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Popular social network Facebook posted its second quarter financial results on Thursday afternoon, revealing a net loss of income for the site at the end of its first quarter as a publicly traded company, but also revealed the huge amount of cash earned from its initial public offering.

Facebook showed a net loss of $157 million, a significant decline against its total income last year, which was $240 million, but this came after a hugely improved revenue flow.

The company's overall revenue was significantly higher at $1.18 billion against last year's $895 million, representing a 32% gain. Advertising revenue, the critical element in Facebook's profitability, was $992 million, showing an increase of 28% over last year.

Facebook's filing notes that 70% of advertising campaigns resulted in triple returns on ad spend or better, and 49% of campaigns showed a quintuple or better return.

The choice to highlight these ROI figures was certainly made in light of Zynga's recently declining revenue, and the pre-IPO complaints from General Motors that Facebook's ads do not yield strong enough returns to be worthwhile.

Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said Facebook will keep focusing on its mobile products to convince the buying market that it has a viable advertising model, and that Facebook ads work for both big corporations and small businesses.

The declining income was a result of vastly increased expenses, which totaled $1.93 billion. This was actually an increase of 295% from the same quarter last year, which was driven primarily by share-based compensation expense.

"As previously noted in the company's initial public offering prospectus, share-based compensation expense related to pre-2011 restricted stock units (RSUs) was not recognized in advance of the initial public offering, and as a result of the initial public offering during the second quarter, the company recognized $1.3 billion of share-based compensation and related payroll tax expenses," the company's filing said.

All told, the company ended the quarter with $10.2 billion in cash and securities, of which $6.8 billion came from the IPO.
Transform Windows 8 into Mac OS X Mountain Lion

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 11:06pm CEST par Wayne Williams

If you’re running Windows 8, but like the look of Apple’s new Mountain Lion OS, you can use a skin pack to assuage some of your UI envy, without dumping Metro in the process (which may be a good or bad thing, depending on how you feel about the new tiled interface).

The Mountain Lion Skin Pack for Windows 8 Consumer Preview was obviously designed for the earlier trial version of Windows 8 (the clue is in the name), but it works just as well in the release candidate. It won’t actually transform Windows into Mountain Lion, so you won’t get cool features like apps that match their iOS counterparts, cloud-based sync features or AirPlay mirroring, but it will at least give you a reasonable flavor of Mountain Lion’s aesthetics.

Setting it up is very straightforward. Just download the offline installer (there are X64 and X86 builds) and run it. Hit Next, accept the terms of the license agreement, and then uncheck every mention of Babylon, because no one in their right mind would want any of that junk on their system.

If there are any components you don’t want, you can remove them. For the best experience, though, you’ll want to include them all. Hit Install and it will go to work, installing the various components which make up the skin pack. These include Start8, RocketDock, and Winroll.

The setup process will take a little while to complete and when it does you’ll be prompted to reboot your computer. Log in and go to the desktop and the setup process will continue. Finderbar probably won’t load, or will look a bit odd, but you can download and install a fresh version or just remove it. You’ll also be prompted to update XWidget and it’s worth doing this although you’ll need to decline all the Babylon junk again. You’ll probably want to download the latest Mountain Lion wallpapers too.

Removing the skin pack is just a matter of selecting the uninstall option from the Skin Pack Menu that appears when you restart Windows. Alternatively, you can uninstall it through the Control Panel.
Google's Kansas City ultra-fast fiber network set to debut

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 10:23pm CEST par Ed Oswald

Residents of the Kansas City metropolitan area are close to having access to super-fast Internet as Google unveiled its fiber-to-the-home service on Thursday. For as little as $70 per month, Google will provide 1 Gigabit Internet service to customers in both Kansas City, Mo. and Kansas City, Kan.

The service will also include a television component for an additional $50 per month. Deployment depends on the number of consumers that pre-register in a specific area: Google will only complete runs of fiber-optic cable to where the demand is highest.

Pre-registration is now available from the Google Fiber website. Registrations are due September 9, after which Google will make an announcement informing which neighborhoods will qualify for the initial rollout.

The Mountain View, Calif. company has spent an undisclosed amount of money running cables through the two-state metropolitan region. Kansas City "won" the service last year, beating out several other cities after Google announced its intent to build a project fiber optic network. Hundreds of other cities across the U.S. attempted to lure the search giant to build its experimental fiber optic network there.

Google hopes that Fiber will show what's possible with the Internet, and spur innovation. There could be a side benefit to this high-speed fiber optic network too: tech companies may now see the area as an attractive (and low-cost) alternative to Silicon Valley and the emerging tech scene in New York City.

"No more buffering. No more loading. No more waiting. Gigabit speeds will get rid of these pesky, archaic problems and open up new opportunities for the web", Google vice president of access services Milo Medin wrote in a blog post. "Imagine: instantaneous sharing; truly global education; medical appointments with 3D imaging; even new industries that we haven’t even dreamed of, powered by a gig".

In addition to the Gigabit service, Google is also offering a "free" option which will run fiber to the home, but cap speeds at 5Mbps download and 1Mbps upload. Customers will be responsible for a $300 construction fee, and service will be guaranteed at no cost for at least seven years.

With all this speed, will there really be a noticeable difference? That's unlikely. Webpages and videos will instantaneously load, but unless the user's watching the progress bar they're not going to notice a difference. Where they may is the speed of online backups, or sharing files -- where essentially the speed it uploads is going to be limited by how fast your computer can send it.

"Access speeds have simply not kept pace with the phenomenal increases in computing power and storage capacity that’s spurred innovation over the last decade, and that’s a challenge we’re excited to work on", Medin continued.
5 ways to put hackers on the defensive

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 8:29pm CEST par Cameron Camp

Black Hat keynote speaker Shawn Henry, the former executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response and Service Branch, started off the day after opening remarks from Jeff Moss, founder of Blackhat. Moss wondered if now was the time for the cyber-security sector to take a more aggressive/offensive approach. Moss mentioned working for a former employer years back, a firewall manufacturer that had a product that would launch specially crafted code in response to an attacker, sort of an early offensive DoS attack. This was an early attempt by security professionals to cause pain by going on the offensive.

But since DoS attacks aren’t exactly a legal offensive tactic nowadays, what to do? He recommends civil action, a la recent Facebook actions where attackers were sued in civil court. But what happens when attackers are overseas? Mr. Moss is hopeful that responding in a civil manner would “encourage” other countries to implement legal protections to stop current and future attack attempts abroad.

What can we do besides sue? Mr. Henry proposes advancing technologies like deception, network decoys and other trickery, along with heavy network segmentation as a possibility to turn the tide. He also pushes for more legislation that would make tactics more effective at nabbing bad actors. But this sort of legislative pressure is famous for riling up privacy pundits, who are sure to respond with counterpoints to perceived privacy erosion. Still, he argues current laws are archaic and do not allow adequate response to the current threatscape.

Most Attacks Undisclosed

In the meantime, Mr. Henry says today’s headlines reflect only a tiny sliver of what is actually happening, attack-wise. Companies, he said, vastly under-report hacks, and in fact the FBI frequently has the dubious honor of notifying companies that they have been breached after their private data has been found in the public domain during other investigations.

To give an idea of the total size of attacks, Mr. Henry estimates close to 90 percent of the real attack activity is happening in the classified environment, sort of “below the water line” to use an iceberg analogy. This means we are only seeing a tiny slice of an even tinier slice of the real threat, to use his characterization.

He calls the Internet a great attack equalizer, allowing any of the billions of Internet users to plan and possibly launch an attack, and paints this threat theater as one of the top threats faced in the world today, aside from WMD. And Internet threats are far easier to carry out than deploying Weapons of Mass Destruction.

But all attacks aren’t created equal, the motivations vary. If, for example, a company you plan to do business with has conducted network exploits against you, they may already know what kind of financial position you are in, what intellectual property you really have, and would therefore be in a much stronger negotiation position, possibly tilting the tables heavily in their favor. Mr. Henry compares this to taking a test where you already know all the answers, and therefore are heavily favored to win.

What does He Recommend?

First he tries to glean wisdom from more tradition physical attacks and adapt them to the attacker.

These include:

1. Denial and deception. Keeping the attackers out of your core network by sending them on wild goose chases using network tricks.

2. Decoys. Serve up fake information, designed to foil attempts to gain intelligence, sort of poisoning their intel, and helping them along with same wild goose chase.

3. Raise the network defense bar. Cause them considerable pain (and the cost of buying more advanced tools), make them spend months of effort trying to get in.

4. Heavy use of defense-in-depth tactics. Don’t put all the “crown jewels” one level deep from the perimeter, but make attackers have to penetrate multiple levels.

5. Log everything you can. This will help greatly when trying to find a “smoking gun” during an investigation. This means both inbound and outbound traffic, and especially watch for abnormal outbound traffic, a telltale sign something bad is happening.

Will it be Enough?

These steps will certainly raise the bar of difficulty for people attacking companies, and therefore raise the cost to the attacker, which is a major factors when an attacker picks a target. If the costs become too high, they may go elsewhere or give up. They may also pick an easier target to exploit, and your company would be out of harm’s way.

But tactics change, and so does the threatscape. And if the last several years are any indication of what’s yet to come, hang on for a wild ride. Also, the old boxing admonition to “protect yourself at all times” certainly still applies.

Reprinted with permission

Photo Credit: NinaMalyna/Shutterstock

Cameron Camp is a researcher for global security provider ESET and has played a critical role in building the ESET North America Research Lab. Cameron has been building critical technology infrastructures for more than 20 years, beginning as an assembly language programmer in 1987 and eventually becoming an evangelist for Linux and open-source technologies with an emphasis on the security sector. Prior to joining ESET, he founded Logical Web Host in 1998, a data-driven web services company.
Yes, Twitter was down (And Google Talk was too).

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 8:12pm CEST par Ed Oswald

It has not been a good day for messaging services.

Both Twitter and Google Talk experienced service problems Thursday, with Google Talk down for much of the morning and Twitter until early this afternoon. As of press time, neither Twitter nor Google had given specific reasons for the downtime.

Google Talk went down for a majority of users around 6:40am ET, and the company informed users of the disruption. The outage affected chat functionality through Google+, Gmail, and standalone applications. Those affected saw service start to return about four hours later.

The same cannot be said for Twitter, however. The site appeared down for much of the planet on Thursday afternoon, and it was not immediately clear as to why. The company acknowledged the issue and said that its engineers were "working to resolve the issue". They may have: Twitter appeared to have returned for many as of 1pm ET.

While Google Talk's issue is a bit more difficult to figure out, Twitter's may be more easily explainable. The 2012 Olympic Games in London are now ramping up, and so is the amount of traffic flowing through the social network's servers. The company is expecting an unprecedented surge in the amount of tweets, which could bring the service to its knees.

Not too long ago, those surges in demand caused Twitter to crash, and the "Fail Whale" became a large part of the tech lexicon. We could be seeing the return of those days in the not too distant future if Thursday is any indication.
Ahead of quarterly reports, rumors of another Facebook phone rise

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 8:02pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Today marks the day when Facebook lets everyone know of their financial state, with the company announcing their second quarter 2012 results this evening when the market closes. Perhaps not so coincidentally, a rumor of a new Facebook branded phone from HTC has surfaced right before the company's financial announcements.

HTC and Facebook have collaborated before, and the result was the HTC Status. The device is no longer available from AT&T, and let's just say it's not due to high demand. HTC is currently in a weak financial state, and their smartphones make up about 14 percent of the market in the United States. So, from the start there is a limited reach.

In the two months they've been available, Facebook's shares have dropped significantly from their $38 opening bid, down to 27.76 at 12:16PM EDT today. The company is currently valued at $59.25 billion, which is far off the initial $104 billion valuation when the company first went public. Facebook lost more than $44 billion in a little over two months, so they’re looking to bring share prices up. Maybe a branded Facebook phone could help...maybe.

Advertising is the main source of revenue for the social network, and the problem comes from the fact that Facebook users mostly visit the website from their mobile devices. ComScore reports that 80 percent of Facebook traffic comes from apps rather than browsers, which means that only 20 percent of the traffic can be used to deliver advertisements.

The revenue from mobile traffic is zero and that is why a branded phone could help.

General Motors was the first to raise a warning flag after backing off from advertising on Facebook. The company decided that the paid Facebook ads didn’t influence the sales of new car purchases. The U.S. car manufacturer invested $10 million in ads last year, with another $30 million spent in creating content for the website. So according to Facebook's numbers, that money was almost entirely lost on mobile users, who couldn't see the ads because they were using the Facebook app.

The only logical argument would be to deliver ads through their branded phone...but it's a catch 22. Who would buy a Facebook device knowing that it was created just to deliver ads more effectively? Furthermore, how relevant would it be considering that Android and iOS devices already have Facebook apps available?

The only way a Facebook smartphone would succeed would be if it brought more value to the market than competing products offering the Facebook experience. Besides delivering ads and increasing revenues for the social network, it would need useful features for users to justify buying it. Maybe ads could be given a prominent position in the phone in exchange for a subsidized upfront cost, like Amazon did with its Kindle With Offers last year, or maybe it could improve the mobile experience that is often criticized for being awkward, sluggish, and generally poor.

If today's financial announcements show a slump in advertising revenue, a second generation Facebook phone might certainly be a necessary addition.
Apple releases Safari 6 for Lion -- get it NOW!

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 6:44pm CEST par Nick Peers

Hot on the heels of its official launch of OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has also updated its own web browser for Lion users. Safari 6 for Lion includes some of the improvements found in the browser shipped with Mountain Lion, while missing out on others.

Key improvements found in Safari 6 for Lion include a unified search and Address bar, bringing Safari into line with rival browsers. It also sees the introduction of an Offline Reading List, Do Not Track privacy feature and new password pane.

Safari 6 for Lion’s major new feature is the removal of the separate Address bar and Search fields. In their place is a single bar that can be used either to enter web addresses directly or to perform searches using the default search engine – this brings the browser in line with rivals such as Firefox and Chrome.

Safari 6 also adds an Offline Reading List option, which means any web pages stored here are automatically downloaded to the computer for reading while not connected to the internet. The app also implements the Do Not Track privacy feature, which allows users to request websites do not track them online. This feature is another that has already been implemented in Firefox.

A brand new password pane makes it easier for users to manage existing saved logins, while Chinese users get access to the leading Baidu search engine.

Safari 6 for Lion also includes a number of fixes and stability improvements, most notably the ability to use the swipe-to-navigate gesture with PDF files, plus restoration of both the Reading List when Safari s launched, and the user’s previous cookies after Private Browsing.

Finally, the browser update also promises to deliver performance enhancements through use of multi-core processors and a new approach to CSS rendering.

Not all of the features found in the Mountain Lion build of Safari 6 have made their way across to Lion users, however -- notable absentees include the new pinch-based Tab View feature, iCloud tabs for switching between iOS devices and Mac, and built-in sharing options.

Apple Safari 6 for Lion is a free download for Mac OS X users running Lion. Version 6 is included as standard in the new Mountain Lion release.
What’s stopping Apple and Samsung from settling?

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 5:53pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Patent settlement talks between Apple and Samsung have been planned for a while, and despite the major importance they have to both companies, it wasn't until last week that executives met to discuss whether they can agree on ending the quarrel between them. So what happened? They couldn't set their differences aside as the settlement talks have hit a bump in the road, not agreeing on each other’s value when it comes to patents.

After numerous meetings in court it's clear that settlement is the best option, but the companies haven't yet arrived at a compromise, and the two companies' other legal disputes haven’t been put on hold, as Apple is still trying to resolve an issue it has with Samsung in a San Jose federal court on July 30.

Apple makes interesting claims, suggesting that Google may have warned Samsung about copying Apple's products, but both companies have made claims that were shot down in court or were generally unverifiable. As is often the case, this could just be a groundless accusation.

The latest issue comes from Samsung-owned FRAND patents, which, according to Apple, Samsung wants to sell at a higher cost, many times higher than what the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation paid for licenses to other patentees. Samsung, on the other hand, claims that their price is fair and consistent with financial demands from other companies. Judging by statements from the two companies, Apple is used to paying too little for what Samsung believes it deserves.

According to Apple, Samsung is asking for 2.4 percent of the selling price of each Apple product to cover patent licenses. Unfortunately, neither company is willing to come forward and provide comparable pricing rates of competitors.

FRAND stands for "fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory" terms to license a patent, and despite previous outrageous demands regarding FRAND patents, there is too much at stake here. Samsung
owns the patents and they have the upper hand, but if they don’t agree to reasonable terms they gain nothing valuable, which at most will be a temporary injunction until they agree with Apple on pricing.

From my perspective, it looks more like a delay tactic, but it gives Samsung a bargaining chip. According to Apple’s financial results from Q1, Q2 and Q3 2012, the total revenue generated by iPhone sales alone is $63.57 billion and at the 2.4 percent asking rate Samsung would have to receive $1.52 billion from the last three quarters alone. And this applies just to the iPhone.

The iPad hasn’t even been taken into account due to the two variants it sells in, (with and without cellular connectivity). Total iPhone revenue is estimated to be $150 billion and if we’re to do the math on just $104.17 billion it would equate to a little over $2.5 billion, which is what Apple claims in damages for the patents used in the iPhone and the iPad; it was announced before the trial scheduled on July 30, which U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh will oversee.

Both companies are clearly trying to establish that they have the high ground, with both posting a higher net income than the $2.5 billion at stake here. Apple posted $8.8 billion net profit, while Samsung was a little bit behind with roughly $5.9 billion. If Apple wins the trial, Samsung can pay the price and still have money left. If Samsung wins the trial, let’s just say that there’s plenty left out of Apple's $100 billion cash reserve disclosed earlier this year.

Apple is a Samsung client, and Samsung is the second biggest player in the electronics supply chain. Both are relevant enough in today’s market to not ignore each other and the Apple-Samsung relationship is only underlining the inter-dependence between the two.

So what does it mean in the greater scheme of things? Apple and Samsung may be committed to settlement talks, but there are always issues that pop up, and it seems like neither company wants to budge so they can meet in the middle. The real matter at stake is consumer choice which has been negatively affected in past clashes, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablet being the latest victim.

Realistically, Samsung and Apple could take turns at winning different trials and injunctions, but a realistic estimation of their value to each other could settle them before they happen.
Summer doldrums hit Netflix, stocks plummet

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 4:15am CEST par Tim Conneally

Users love Netflix, it's something of a cultural phenomenon in America. But slow subscriber growth in the United States, high content acquisition costs, and the high overall cost of rapid global expansion have kept the company from net profitability in the most recent quarters.

Tuesday evening, the company released its second quarter earnings, which triggered a massive 25 percent drop in stock value based upon the appearance that Netflix wasn't performing up to expectations. At the closing bell Wednesday, Netflix stock hovered at $60.28

The drop was triggered by the announcement that Netflix earnings fell by a shocking 91 percent this year, and that the continued slowdown in its DVD/Blu-ray by mail business has resulted in a net loss of subscribers.

In the course of one year, earnings went from $68.2 million all the way down to just $6.2 million in the most recent quarter. Granted, this is still an improvement over the first quarter, but only marginally. The first quarter ended with earnings of $4.6 million.

Approximately 850,000 DVD subscribers cancelled during the quarter, and Netflix's lower cost streaming-only service added 530,000 users, resulting in a net loss of 320,000 subscribers.

Netflix's strategy is to move into new markets, build back up to profitability, and then move into more new markets. This is, quite literally, what Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a question and answer session following the release of the earnings report.

"Our model, as we've explained, is to get back to profitability, and then open a new market, get back to profitability, open a new market…That's based on the view that there's an extraordinary, once in a lifetime, or once in a generation opportunity to build a franchise in many markets as we've been building. As long as there are good markets to enter, we will be taking our US, or global profits and putting them toward faster international expansion," Hastings said.

The problem right now is that the DVD business in the US is declining so rapidly that the company could conceivably not meet its needs to fuel this ambitious expansion plan.

"We've made the decision to raise our 'content spend' in the UK as we have in Canada, because we've been encouraged by the early results we've seen," Hastings said. "So I think it's the ability for us to demonstrate the growth in those markets quickly and in the engagement in those markets that gives us the confidence to break even and show profitability."

Netflix expects to add between 1 and 1.8 million US streaming subscribers in the upcoming quarter, but reaching its annual goal will require that number to be on the high end.
iPhone sales are slowing, deal with it

Publié: juillet 26, 2012, 1:05am CEST par Joe Wilcox

Apple shares closed down 4.32 percent today, keeping with a trend started during after-hours trading yesterday. The real question: Could matters have been much worse, if not for the big carrot that came with the little stick? Apple missed fiscal Q3 Wall Street analyst consensus for revenue and income, but announced a big dividend and promise of more to follow. Performance was by no means bad, just not as good as forecast and the dividend, $2.65 per share, is something for shareholders to smile about.

But behind the magic, I have to ask: Is Apple distracting shareholders and Wall Street analysts, making them look over there so they miss the trick going on over here? It's a question I can't answer but can only speculate about. Another quarter of results will reveal much. One thing is certain now: iPhone sales are slowing. There's no if about it, but why. Are people waiting for the new model or are Android rivals like Samsung pulling away more buyers?

The Big Miss

Analyst consensus for the quarter was around 29 million iPhones. Apple shipped 26 million, up 28 percent year over year but down 26 percent sequentially. Revenue declined 28 percent quarter-on-quarter. This is by no means the first sequential decline, but it's unusually severe, and the Street already expected as much as 19 percent Q2 to Q3.

During yesterday's earnings conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer gave a simple explanation: "Our weekly iPhone sales continue to be impacted by rumors and speculation regarding new products", adding later: "Regarding iPhone, we’re reading the same rumors and speculation that you are about the new iPhone, and we think this has caused some pause in customers purchasing".

There you have it, iPhone 5 rumors. But if that's true now, why not a year ago? Fiscal third quarter 2011 led into release of iPhone 4S -- and lots of rumors about it -- and there was longer time between new models, meaning more pent-up demand. Yet iPhone shipments grew 183 percent year over year and 9 percent sequentially then.

Distilling Distribution

Something else: As distribution increases so should sales. At the end of the fiscal third quarter, Apple distributed iPhone through 250 carriers in 100 countries, up from 230 carriers in 100 countries the previous quarter and 186 carriers in 90 countries a year earlier (Q2 2011). Looked at differently, in Q3 2011, Apple shipped 20 million iPhones through 228 carriers and 26 million through 250 carriers a year later. But sequentially sales fell from 35 million, even as Apple added 20 carriers quarter on quarter.

iPhone's introduction in China helped lift second-quarter iPhone shipments but fell off dramatically during Q3. Apple generated a stunning $7.9 billion revenue in China during Q2 but only $5.7 billion three months later. "Virtually all of the $2.2 billion sequential revenue decline was due to the iPhone sales in Greater China and about half of that $2.2 billion is attributable to changes in the channel inventory", Apple CEO Tim Cook told financial analysts yesterday.

He then makes what strike me as contradictory statements:

As a reminder in the previous quarter in our fiscal Q2, we launched the iPhone 4S in China, in January, we added China Telecom as the second carrier in March, and as we proceed across the quarter we increased the channel inventory to accommodate sales, and to reach our target inventory of four weeks to six weeks. The remainder of the sequential revenue decline is mainly attributable to the normal seasonality after the very successful iPhone 4S launch.

Shouldn't sales continue to grow with addition of a new carrier and sustain or even increase three months or more later? If you look at other geographies, the pattern is more like this: Sales grow for at least several quarters after opening up new markets or channels of distribution. What's really going on in China? Is the top line of potential buyers who can afford iPhone already tapped out? I don't have an answer today.

Those Damn Americans

Some people will argue that smartphone adoption is slowing, at least in mature markets, as reason for iPhone's sequential declines. Using the United States as sample, that's not the case.

Sequential iPhone activations dropped by 14 percent at AT&T. Verizon reports actual sales -- 2.7 million, down 15.6 percent quarter on quarter. AT&T's number isn't as reliable since activations don't necessarily mean new sales. It's common for people to sell or hand down an existing iPhone when replacing it. Last I checked, these count as activations, too. This in some ways explains the gulf between the carriers -- iPhone accounts for about 73 percent of AT&T smartphone activations and 45 percent of Verizon smartphone sales.

So looking solely at Verizon, iPhone sales surged following release of iPhone 4S last year, but the overall number compared to all smartphones has consistently dropped since: 55 percent in Q1, 50 percent in Q2 and 45 percent in Q3 -- all while overall smartphone sales increased and Verizon added new 4G LTE models running Android.

The broader market is more revealing. Today, comScore released a fresh take on smartphone subscriber data for the three months ending in April. For starters, the smartphone market continues to grow gangbusters in the United States, with more feature phone owners moving up than ever. A year earlier, 38 percent of feature phone buyers bought a smartphone as their next handset; 47.5 percent in April 2012. More telling: Which smartphone platform they choose.

There's popular folklore spread by the Apple Fan Club of bloggers and journalists that Android users largely switch to iPhone. comScore's data disputes this: 54.2 percent of smartphone to smartphone buyers choose Android versus 33.5 percent for iPhone/iOS. The percentage going from feature phone to smartphone is greater: 61.5 percent Android compared to 25.2 percent for iPhone/iOS. The analyst firm doesn't reveal percentage based on starting platform, meaning how many Android smartphone owners go to iPhone or visa versa, just the destination. That's revealing enough.

The smartphone market is fast-changing and volatile. Much can change in three months or six. But, today, iPhone sales are slowing. Year-on-year growth is down compared to previous quarters and years, while sequential growth is way down in Apple's fiscal Q3. Perhaps some people hold out for iPhone 5. Perhaps many others don't see iPhone 3GS, 4 or 4S as compelling, with their 3.5-inch screens and no 4G LTE.

Consider this: The majority of new Androids sold right now run an older version of the operating system, while iPhones the newest iOS -- and still the Googles sell better. That says much about consumer priories, which is probably best for another post.