The first Apple Store bioenergetics in Japan

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Comes might be considered the first Apple Store bioenergetics, which will be opened in Japan, particularly in Tokyo, in the district of Omotesando. 

Although much of the store is covered, as they are still working on it, can be seen as one of the side outer walls is completely covered with vegetation. Creepers, vines and many other types of plants that do not seek to be a mere aesthetic complement.

If you look at the picture accompanying these lines, the wall is covered is not the main facade, but rather that is a side wall facing an alley, then we can understand that aesthetics is not what they want with this wall. Summers in Tokyo are hot and very humid, this wall is to regulate the temperature inside the store in a natural way.

Apple is greatly concerned when building their installations to be as friendly as possible with nature, and this type of construction could become a trend, although much will depend on the country where it is built.

Apple leads smartphone sales in Japan

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Being a leader in a market so advanced and technology as Japan is not easy. However, Apple has managed to position itself as the best-selling phone brand in Japan, beating competitors like Sony or Samsung. According to recent reports in the country right now, one of every three smartphones sold are iPhone, a fact said soon but it is a breakthrough for the brand. 

The "guilty" of this tremendous growth is the agreement with DoCoMo. Japan is a country where phones are purchased through contracts with carriers and DoCoMo, the largest company, refused to offer the iPhone on its plans until last October when he relented and began offering the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C in exchange for a royalty of 25%. 

The numbers are quite impressive: in its debut month of the iPhone took 61% of sales terminals DoCoMo, Apple getting this increase and subsequent sales presence in the market by 11.1%, from having some more than 25% to 36% of current market share. And talk about Apple profits could have won in Japan since the agreement with DoCoMo about $ 4 billion.

Apple regains market share in Japan, Australia and Spain thanks to sales of the iPhone 5S

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Market share: that fact that all manufacturers look. No matter how many devices you sell if the amount you sell to your competitor. In his keynote Apple always provides data to and share in the first quarter of 2014 has one more fact to teach as it has increased its market share in mobile devices.

This increase in sales was due to areas such as Japan, Australia and Europe where market share went up to 57.6%, 33.1% and 19.2% respectively, and these data rose by 8.6% in Japan, 2% in Australia and 0.1% in Europe, Spain is the European country with the largest increase (4.5%). The culprit for this increase has been mainly the iPhone 5S, which has had a great return as far as sales are concerned. 

But not all would be good news for Apple in the first quarter of 2014 and in the United States during the months of January and March share dropped to 35.9% (7.9% less than the same time last year past), showing that Americans buy more at the end of the year than at the beginning.

Is this good news for Apple? Yes and no. On the one hand the increase in market share is always positive, but if we see the overall study data Kantar Wordpanel we realize that Android is still the most used operating system in all countries except Japan, a fact that Apple should attack later or later if you do not want to stay in line.

Apple should pay a fine for infringing a design patent with the iPod

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The idea of the "Click Wheel" was already patented in Japan

A Japanese court ordered Apple to pay compensation of 330 million yen (3.2 million dollars) for infringing a patent on the design of the radio button included in his famous iPod music player. 


In a ruling made ​​public today, the high court of intellectual property in Japan states that the U.S. company infringed copyright registered in the country to use the device in a design that had been patented by a Japanese company.

The reason for the new judgment against Apple for this Japanese court is the "Click Wheel", the circular device that combines a sensor with multiple buttons and allows the user to perform various operations, such as playing a song or advance to the next track, a single finger.


Apple used the technology on their iPods sold in Japan since 2004, but a Japanese company had applied to patent a similar design in 1998.

Japanese courts have ruled in favor of the owner of the company, Norihiko Saito, who sued Apple for infringing its patent and requested compensation of 10,000 million yen (about 100 million). 

During the trial, Apple claimed that Pat Saito was not new as it had authorized several similar patents before 1998, as recorded by the Kyodo news agency. 


Apple imposed on compensation has been calculated taking into account its sales volume during the period affecting the litigation.

Darth Vader: Apple is finished!

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Yesterday was the day of presentation of results from Apple and as always, half the world stopped to see if its harmful results were confirmed: 

• Apple has stopped growing and goes irretrievably destruction. 

• Manufacturers mostly competing against Apple with commodity products, which are so used luegono like yours. 

• Manufacturers, except in the category of Samsung smartphones, not money making products or flagships whose sales do not exceed harmful and expensive iPhone 5c. 

But... that reality does not spoil a nice story against Apple!

Judge a company so severely for his "disappointing" quarterly results is extremely shortsighted. Guided by the expectations of Wall Street or a perpetual and constant growth, and expect a new category every two or three years at the level of iPhone is a mistake. First, because it is impossible, because it ignores second how innovation works. But still and all, sales of the iPad have had a drop of 16%, a drop of 19.48 to 16,350,000. Enough to tell that story: Apple is finished!

The key to the Apple's strategy is in the long run

"If your bearings in the long run, the interests of customers and shareholders are aligned" - Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. 

The real question we should ask is whether Apple is oriented in the long term or otherwise endeavors to squeeze the company to satisfy Wall Street. And if we step back and strive to look at the forest instead of the tree, we see that Apple's strategy is called ecosystem: 

• An ecosystem creates loyalty to the company that controls it, because your customers are captive. 

• It's harder to get a customer who is really into it, change device. The more you invest in the ecosystem, the harder it is to change totally platform. 

• The user benefits translate into comfort and integration of different devices. 

Apple is placing their pieces on the chessboard with utmost patience and undistracted

And how can we know that Apple is building a robust ecosystem? At the conference of shareholders yesterday, Tim Cook shared many details: 

• Even I was surprised by the growth of iTunes accounts to 800 million. If we consider that at WWDC Apple said last year he had accumulated 575 million, we have a growth of 225 million. Here it seems that Apple itself may increase the growth rate.

• We are interested in the number of credit card accounts, the chances of Touch ID and Cook's statements about the possibility of including a system of mobile payments.

• ITunes sales for the quarter were 5,200 million, growing 24% and a cumulative 70,000 million downloads of apps. It is estimated that the App Store has generated 85% more revenue than Google Play in the March quarter. 

• The iPad generates traffic to 4 times the sum of all Android tablets, although its market share.

• The Apple Stores are present in 15 countries and have recently opened stores in Brazil and Istanbul. They have reported plans to double its stores in the next 3 years. 

• Apple bought 24 companies in the last 18 months. Some are more important than others such as Authentec, which was the technology that allowed the iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor.

All these data confirm us that the Californian company has always done: enhancing ecosystem services and to place the chess pieces in the right place. Quarter after quarter, device to device and year to year. Think long term, 5, 6 or even 7 plays later from what we see now, like the great masters of chess.

But iPad sales have fallen!

Yes, iPad sales have fallen and are not good news. Is it important? Yes. Apple would want a perpetual growth? Of course. But we must not read too much into one quarter. You can afford a drop in a quarter that is relatively bland in terms of sales (the next so often) when compared with Christmas because it has an ecosystem that protects it from these falls and allows it to counter the blows.

Those who say that Apple is finished, ignore the rest of positive data were confirmed in yesterday's conference:

• Sold 43.7 million iPhones when were planned 38 million. 

• Mac 4.1 million, slightly above estimates of about 4.03 million. 

• 66% of new activations iPads come from new customers. 

• Taiwan, Indonesia and Brazil have a double-digit growth. 

• Mac 4.1 million, slightly above estimates of about 4.03 million. 

• 66% of new activations iPads come from new customers. 

• Taiwan, Indonesia and Brazil have a double-digit growth. 

• India and Vietnam have doubled their sales. 

• 85% of buyers 4s in China are new to Apple. 

• There is also a 69% 5c buyers in China who are new. 

• A large percentage of these users come from China Android. But we had not been in a third of the buyers of the new iPhone Galaxy S5 come?

These data are particularly interesting given the saturation of developed markets. Apple is growing with more affordable terminals (but still scored in the high range) in China and India and part of Southeast Asia is a good sign. It shows that there is a market premium interested in their high-end products. 

It will be very interesting to see how Samsung and Apple face the growth of regional brands in the Chinese and Indian market, as the renamed Mi or Micromax. But we'll see in the future.

A "low" Apple. Financial results for the Q2 2014.Growth 39,3%

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Apple has made official the financial results for its second fiscal quarter of 2014. Apple has 45,600 millions of dollars in revenue. 3,000 million more than analysts predicted. Representing a growth of 39.3% over last year. The net profit was 10,200 million. 

Sales figures fluctuate forecasts 43.7 million iPhones sold (38 million less than expected), 16.35 million iPads (here expected more, 19.7 million), 4.1 million Macs (expected 4.03 million) and 2.76 million iPods sold (2.99 million expected).

If we observe the annual variation aside, we can see that Apple has even grown slightly Having spent a quarter where there has been almost no news:

Let us now look at the Apple data division. Stresses that now the income of the iPod and represent only 1% of total revenue, while the iPhone is eating more and more proportion with 57% of revenues:

And where do all these revenues? America, Europe and China most are performed: