The Apple of My Eye? Not Quite

Apple have announced a 90% increase in profits this week, this is quite phenomenal really, the genuine meteoric surge in profits is the clearest indication yet of the stranglehold Apple now has on the consumer market.

Ever since the emergence of the Ipod, Apple have got the tightest of grips on the Mp3 market, when someone mentions a Mp3 player 90% of people automatically think of an Ipod. This recognition has to surely be applauded, even though the actual devices are usually considerably dearer than the counterparts. The suave look and feel, the feeling of control with the excellent interface all brings a sense of wow to the consumer.

Since then the Itouch has been released which once again upped the wow factor for the consumer, the touch screen and use of applications was brilliant. The ability to use Wi-Fi to browse the internet and use it as a personal GPS was breathtaking. Since then the major player to the market was unleashed, the Iphone. This is the key player in the Apple locker, the plethora of applications and potential use of these phones are incredible. The popularity of these phones are easy to understand.

The Iphone had extraordinary sales figures from the three months of this year up to March with 8.75m phones sold, this was a 131% increase on last years figures.

All this is well and good, but Apple will never be the true leader in the Electronic Market until they finally topple Microsoft and conquer the PC and Laptop market. Until then Apple are the undisputed kings in the mobile market.

RIP Bebo

It saddens me to say that recently that one of my favourite websites from a few years ago is on the verge of shutting down. Bebo was an excellent website in it's time, it was the first Social Networking website I truly got into, there was Facebook and MySpace back then aswell, I had accounts in these but never had my interest piqued. Bebo's popularity rose rapidly and was once a topic of discussion across the country in schoolyards, everyone had a Bebo account, you were considered weird otherwise pretty much.

However all good things must come to an end, AOL has announced the shutting down of the Bebo website, lack of visitors and the crippling cost in attempting to compete with the uber popular Facebook has struck a fatal blow to the Bebo phenomena. Bebo's downfall is epitomised by this statistic, it's global unique visitor level actually plummeted 45% down to 12.8 million, in comparison to Facebooks 462 million you can see why AOL has decided to cut their losses on that well publicised massive offer of $850 million which they invested into the website back in 2008.

Bebo you may soon be gone but will never be forgotten!

The 3D Era?

Look at the above picture, the sense of awe and wonder, you can just imagine the amazement these people are in. The arrival of 3d technology to television has arrived in full today. After the monumental worldwide success of Avatar and the subsequent following of last minute 3d rehashing of upcoming cinema releases the television market was always going to continue.

Today marked the first true entry into this 3d market when the football match between Manchester United and Chelsea was shown in 3d in one thousand pubs across the UK. The pubs involved seen the potential cash cow this match could bring with the right advertising and spent thousands on the equipment needed for this match. The match was in 3D right here in Derry in the Bound 4 Boston bar unfortunately I could not make it, and with my lack of Sky, I had to endure the big match on a dodgy stream in Chinese commentary courtesy of Shanghai TV!

This is the first step into this era, Sky have promised to ship out at least one match per week starting next season to their 2m or so current Sky HD subscribers, they will also start the showing of drama, documentaries in 3d soon after. However is the 3D technology really needed yet? Haven't a lot of people only just invested in a brand new HD TV, they will need to fork out for the right technology to compliment this 3D phenomena. 3D technology makes sense from a producers point of view, it will battle the rate of piracy of their project with people in droves going to the cinema to see the latest masterpiece in full 3D. This will definitely re-cooperate a significant more margin of profits to pay for these mammoth budgets of today.

However after todays result, do I really want to see my team lose in another added dimension, not yet!