Apple : iTunes Match goes live in the US |
- iTunes Match goes live in the US
- Samsung and Macs big winners in UK PC market
- PC shipments plummet in Western Europe
| iTunes Match goes live in the US Posted:  Apple has finally launched its iTunes Match subscription service in the United States, two weeks after missing the end of October deadline it had set. iTunes Match, which looks no closer to a UK launch in the near future, will scan your entire music library and replace all tracks with high-quality tracks from iTunes, which can be streamed from the cloud. The service works for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Apple TV, Mac and PC devices, which means you can either stream or download your tunes wherever you are without having to manually sync to iTunes. Legitimising your collectionApple is charging $24.99 (about £15) a year for the privilege of putting your entire collection on tap and with 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free offerings, it negates the need to tolerate low-quality MP3s ever again. It also legitimises your entire music collection, meaning those tracks you may or may not have possibly downloaded through dubious means are currently on the right side of the law. If iTunes cannot find the track in its library (and with 20m songs available on iTunes that's probably unlikely) it'll simply upload the track itself. Apple's unique subscription offering is way cheaper than Spotify's Premium offering, but means you actually have to own the music. Google Music, on the other hand, remains free while in Beta, but users of that service have been massively frustrated by the decades it takes to upload your music collection. iTunes Match by-passes that problem. The much-anticipated UK launch of iTunes Match remains on hold as Apple seeks to thrash out deals with the major labels and publishers. |
| Samsung and Macs big winners in UK PC market Posted:  Apple and Samsung have put on major growth spurts in the UK's computer market, with both companies recording significant gains in shipment figures. According to estimates by Gartner, Samsung's laptops are performing admirably alongside Macs from Apple. Samsung's Q3 figures suggest an increase of 39 per cent compared to the third quarter of 2010 – giving it a 7.3 per cent share of the market. Mac upApple's Macs are also growing in popularity with a 21.8 per cent year-on-year growth pushing its market share to 7.8 per cent. It was Acer that was the biggest loser in the latest figures, dropping from the biggest seller of laptops in the UK to third and dropping from a 21.6 per cent market share to 11.6 per cent in the last quarter's figures. Old warhorses HP and Dell gained market share, but shipped less products, recording 9.4 and 6.4 per cent losses year on year. "The market seems to be moving at three speeds," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. "The top two vendors, HP and Dell, continued to struggle to find new opportunities and experienced single-digit declines; Acer, in the process of inventory re-adjustment, declined more than 50 percent; Apple and Samsung gained strength in the market. "More importantly, quarter-on-quarter, all vendors saw growth apart from Acer, suggesting the fluctuations in the market may be bottoming out." |
| PC shipments plummet in Western Europe Posted:  PC shipments have fallen significantly in Western Europe, with an 11.4 per cent drop year on year. Although Steve Jobs' assertion that we are in a post PC era may have been premature, the figures from Gartner certainly do not make comfortable reading for computer manufacturers. "The inventory build-up that slowed growth in the last four quarters was mostly cleared during the third quarter of 2011; however, the PC industry continued to perform below normal seasonality," said Meike Escherich, principal analyst at Gartner. Unpleasant reading"The results in the third quarter of 2011 make unpleasant reading for the PC industry, as the third quarter is traditionally a strong consumer quarter, driven by back-to-school sales," she added. Laptop shipments were down 12.6 per cent, with netbooks dropping more than 40 per cent compared to 2010. Hewlett Packard has recently changed its mind on getting out of the PC manufacturing market, but it retains the top spot in Western European sales, although a one per cent rise on market share to 22.7 per cent does not disguise 7.5 per cent fall in shipments. Acer is in second spot with 15.2 per cent, but that represents what will be an alarming 9 per cent drop on the same quarter of 2010 for the Taiwanese giant. Apple has put on a strong growth with its Mac, and it now has a 7.6 per cent market share, compared to last year's 5.7 per cent in the same quarter. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from TechRadar: All latest Apple news feeds To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment