MacRumors

China Mobile may be the world's largest carrier with over 650 million customers, but it is not yet an official iPhone carrier, due in part to unique technology used for its 3G network that would so far have forced Apple to build special hardware to be compatible with the carrier.

But that hasn't stopped the carrier from supporting the iPhone for its customers to use on its 2G network, and Tech in Asia now reports on news from Beijing Daily sharing that China Mobile now has 15 million iPhone users. The milestone comes just over four months after the carrier reached 10 million iPhone users.

Despite the iPhone's popularity with China Mobile's customers, the device's potential there is undoubtedly barely being tapped, with advances in chip technology and the carrier's network meaning that future iPhones are likely to run on its fastest 4G LTE networks without requiring unique hardware.

Even iPhone 4S users trying to use the device on China Mobile's 2G network have been experiencing difficulties with SIM card activation, but Beijing Daily reports (via The Next Web) that the issue has now been resolved by Apple despite the fact that China Mobile is not an official carrier for the device.

Apple Inc. may release an IOS update specifically for the Chinese mainland in early March to resolve the signal problems plaguing iPhone 4S owners using China Mobile’s network.

China Mobile said that Apple had updated the system of all iPhone 4S handsets manufactured after Feb. 8, 2012 to fully support its network, and will offer a software update for previously manufactured iPhone 4S handsets in early March.

The issue is reportedly related to the handling of two different frequency bands used by China Mobile's 2G GSM network, with iPhone 4S incompatibility with the E frequency band resulting in users being unable to connect to the network in areas served by that frequency band.

Digitimes has been one of the biggest sources of rumors regarding a potential "iPad mini" carrying a 7.85-inch screen that the publication says Apple is targeting for release later this year. Digitimes now points to a new report [Google translation] from Taiwanese newspaper United Evening News making similar claims and outlining a number of companies making up Apple's supply chain for the device.

According to the report, Apple will be utilizing Pegatron as its assembler for the device, forgoing its main partner Foxconn for this project. Apple and Pegatron do, however, have a long-standing relationship with the assembler already contributing to iPhone production and rumored at several points to be involved in iPad 3 production as well.

On the display side, the report claims that LG Display will be responsible for 70-75% of the workload for the smaller iPad, with AU Optronics handling the remainder. Samsung, which is a key part of Apple's supply chain but with which Apple is currently engaged in a massive patent dispute, has reportedly been shut out of display production for the new device. The report also claims that Radiant Opto-Electronics and Forhouse will be contributing backlight components for the 7.85-inch iPad.

The newspaper had previously named LG and AU Optronics as display suppliers for the device, claiming in October that Apple was planning to launch the smaller iPad early this year. The Wall Street Journal weighed in last month with its own claims that Apple was working with those companies on the project, but noted that there is no guarantee Apple will ever release the device.

Apple today announced the winner of its "25 Billion App Countdown" promotion that saw the company pass milestone late Friday. For the first time in one of Apple's countdown competitions, the winner, Chunli Fu, came from China.

Disney's Where's My Water? Free was the milestone download, and the winner will receive an iTunes Gift Card worth US$10,000.

“We’d like to thank our customers and developers for helping us achieve this historic milestone of 25 billion apps downloaded,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “When we launched the App Store less than four years ago, we never imagined that mobile apps would become the phenomenon they have, or that developers would create such an incredible selection of apps for iOS users.”

Apple notes that the App Store is currently available in 123 countries with over 550,000 applications available for download. Apps span 21 different categories, and the company has paid out over $4 billion to developers for their 70% share of revenue from paid downloads.

Although we've already seen many stories about possible iPad 3 part leaks over the past few weeks, MIC Gadget has been able to get its hands on the rumored parts for the iPad 3 Front Glass, Rear Shell, and 3rd party cases.

The site put them together in this nice overview video:

The video shows the iPad 3 exterior assembled, but no internal parts. They reiterate previous findings, such as a slightly thicker shell, larger camera lens, and slightly more tapered design. MIC Gadget, however, was also able to confirm that existing iPad 2 magnetic Smart Covers will work with the new design. Finally, they found that 3rd party iPad 3 cases which are already available to purchase do match up with the back shell.

The site seems to believe the iPad 3 will incorporate Siri. Apple introduced the Siri voice assistant with the iPhone 4S launch, but hasn't yet extended its support to any other devices.

Apple is expected to announce the iPad 3 at a media event that is taking place on Wednesday, March 7th.

Apple's App Store today reached 25 billion downloads since its inception in 2008, and along with the milestone comes the end of the company's "25 Billion App Countdown" promotion launched just over two weeks ago. The winner of the promotion, who is yet to be announced, will be awarded a $10,000 gift card valid for App Store, Mac App Store, or any other iTunes Store content.

The App Store took a little under two and half years to reach 10 billion downloads, and less than six additional months to reach 15 billion downloads.

With today's milestone, the App Store has seen its last 10 billion downloads come over a period of just eight months, putting Apple's pace at 15 billion downloads per year and undoubtedly continuing to accelerate. As tracked by our sister site AppShopper, Apple has approved a total of nearly three quarters of a million apps for the App Store, with over 550,000 of them currently available in the store.

Despite some questionable rumors of price hikes earlier this week, 9to5Mac reports that reliable tipster Mr. X has revealed that the new iPad 3 will carry the same prices as the iPad 2 and also come in the same storage configurations at 16GB/32GB/64GB.

We’ve gotten word that iPad pricing is going to be the same across the board as the current iPad 2 models which should be no big surprise given Apple’s history – they rarely raise prices. Even better, some countries with currencies doing better than the US dollar should expect to see marginal drops in prices.

The source had previously revealed part numbers that had appeared in Apple's retail inventory. The source now seems to be suggesting that those part numbers carry the same prices and configurations as the current iPad 2.

MC705LL/A – J1 GOOD A-USA
MC706LL/A – J1 BETTER A-USA
MC707LL/A – J1 BEST A-USA

MD328LL/A – J1 GOOD B- USA
MD329LL/A – J1 BETTER B-USA
MD330LL/A – J1 BEST-B-USA

MD366LL/A – J2A GOOD A-USA
MD367LL/A – J2A BETTER A-USA
MD368LL/A – J2A BEST A-USA

MD369LL/A – J2A GOOD B-USA
MD370LL/A – J2A BETTER B-USA
MD371LL/A – J2A BEST B-USA

J1 is believed to be a Wi-Fi version of the iPad 3, while J2 is believed to be one with Cellular connectivity.

Some had been hoping for a boost in storage capacities to account for the long rumored Retina Display that is expected to be found on the iPad 3. Retina-sized graphics and video will take considerably more storage than those designed for the standard iPad.

Apple is holding a media event on March 7th to presumably announce the new iPad.

Read It Later developer Steve Streza has provided MacStories with a few photos showing that exterior work is underway on preparing the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for Apple's iPad 3 media event next Wednesday. The company typically covers the theater's exterior glass wall with panels creating a large banner image, and this event appears to be no exception.

The banners are typically tied into the graphics found on the event invitations, but it is not yet evident what the final image for this event will be once crews have completed their work.

Update: The banner is almost complete, with the large white apple logo in the middle of what appears to be a vibrant splash of paint.

Apple has come under increasing scrutiny for its offshoring of product manufacturing in recent years, with a number of observers believing that Apple should be trying to bring more jobs to the United States. But as noted by AllThingsD, Apple has now taken a more public position on its domestic impact by posting a new page on its site highlighting over 500,000 U.S. jobs it claims to be directly or indirectly responsible for.

Apple breaks the 514,000 jobs down into two categories: 304,000 jobs directly tied to Apple and its business partners and another 210,000 jobs that are part of the "iOS app economy". The first category includes 47,000 Apple employees and another estimated 257,000 employees at companies such as Samsung, Corning, FedEx, and UPS who are part of Apple's supply chain and other businesses. Rather than a direct count of employees at other companies, that latter figure is calculated based on "employment multipliers" published the U.S. government and applied to Apple's domestic expenditures.

Apple further addresses its in-house efforts, noting that 47,000 of its 70,000 employees are located in the United States, with 7,800 U.S. jobs having been added in 2011. Over 27,000 of its U.S. employees are part of the company's network of 246 retail stores, with Apple reporting that the majority of these employees are full-time workers. On the support side, Apple employees 7,700 AppleCare Advisors in the United States, acknowledging that it could save 50% on call center costs by outsourcing to other countries such as India but that it opts to keep the jobs in the United States in order to maintain its highly-regarded customer service standards.

On the App Economy side, Apple notes that it has paid out over $4 billion to developers since the App Store was launched less than four years ago, creating an entirely new industry that has seen 210,000 new jobs added to the U.S. economy. With 248,000 registered iOS developers in the U.S. and over 5,000 iOS developer jobs listed on Indeed.com, Apple clearly believes that the industry will continue to see strong growth.

With iOS 5.1 apparently sitting in a holding pattern awaiting the launch of the iPad 3, it should be no surprise that work is well underway on iOS 6.0, the next major update which should appear to the public later this year if past history is any indication.

In support of the notion that work on iOS 6.0 is progressing, Ars Technica reports that browser user agent strings appearing as iPads running iOS 6.0 are indeed showing up in their server logs. While user agent strings are easily faked, Ars Technica filtered its logs to isolate only those entries coming from IPs assigned to Apple's corporate facilities and found a number of visits from devices reporting themselves as iPads running iOS 6.

[W]e began looking at iPad user agents coming from Apple's corporate IP block in Cupertino and discovered that Apple appears to be surfing the Web using iPads running what looks like iOS 6.0. The whole listing shows iPads running iOS 5, iOS 5.0.1 (the current public release), iOS 5.1 (the upcoming release currently available to developers), and iOS 6. The iPads that appear to be running iOS 6 are also using a slightly newer build of WebKit—the older OSes all show WebKit 534.46, while the ones claiming to be iOS 6 show WebKit build 535.8.

The report also cites a separate observation of a 2048x1536 screen resolution showing up in Google Analytics. The entries are not specifically linked to the iPad, but there are few other reasonable displays on the market that would be likely to yield such a resolution.

The problem with speculation about these resolution entries representing the iPad 3 is that the new device should still report 1024x768 as its resolution. With the higher pixel density intended to increase sharpness rather than screen real estate, web content would appear far too small on the device if it reported itself at its true 2048x1536 resolution. This situation can be seen with Retina-capable iPhone 4/4S and iPod touch models, which report their resolutions as 480x320 instead of their actual 960x640 resolutions.

Business Insider points to a report [Google translation] from French newspaper Le Figaro noting that Virgin will be vacating its landmark retail store on Champs-Élysées in Paris and that Apple is one of the primary candidates rumored to be interested in taking the spot.

The entire Virgin store checks in at roughly 75,000 square feet, with nearly 50,000 square feet of it dedicated to the sales floor. Apple's largest flagship retail stores at Regent Street and Covent Garden in London currently offer roughly 25,000 square feet of space, and while Apple could presumably opt to take only a portion of Virgin's space at the Paris location if it is indeed interested, the space certainly would give Apple an opportunity to build by far its largest retail store in a very prominent location.

It is also interesting to note a report from Hardmac claiming that Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Paris earlier this week for unknown reasons. There is obviously no specific evidence tying his rumored presence to the Virgin store vacancy, but those hoping that Apple might pursue the project are welcome to speculate about whether he may have been in town to personally survey the site amid other company business.

While Apple has received a fair amount of attention for its planned solar farm at its massive data center in Maiden, North Carolina, the company publicly disclosed less than two weeks ago that it will also be installing the largest non-utility fuel cell farm in the United States to help power the facility.

GigaOm has assessed Apple's options for the 5-megawatt facility, determining that Bloom Energy appears to be Apple's partner in the project. Bloom, which is based in Sunnyvale, California near Apple's headquarters, is also said to already have "a few" of its fuel cells in operation on Apple's campus.

Bloom offers boxes capable of supplying 100 kW, which could translate into 50 Bloom Boxes being installed at Apple’s data center. Bloom has been in negotiations for similarly large-sized deals in the past, such as its negotiations in Delaware to build a 30 MW fuel cell farm (300 Bloom Boxes), and it has already installed 12 Bloom Boxes at Adobe’s campus in San Jose, Calif.

Apple is also touting the fact that its fuel cells will be run on biogas, and Bloom has substantial experience selling biogas-based fuel cells. Both Adobe and eBay are running their Bloom fuel cells on biogas. Bloom has also been the go-to fuel cell maker for Internet, telecom and computing giants’ experiments with fuel cells.

The report notes that Apple's options for fuel cell partners are relatively few, with UTC Power's larger fuel cell boxes not cleanly adding up to Apple's stated 5-megawatt capacity for the facility and FuelCell Energy specifically denying that it is working with Apple.

Apple is clearly interested in pursuing alternative energy sources for its facilities, and data centers are popular laboratories for such projects given their energy requirements and their typically rural locations that make it cheaper to dedicate land to energy production. The company already touts that its facilities in Austin, Sacramento, Munich, and Cork are powered by 100% renewable energy sources as part of a broad effort to reduce minimize its environmental impact across its facilities and throughout its products' life cycles.

The New York Post reports that Apple is pressing ahead with plans to launch its own streaming television service by the end of the year, despite continued resistance from content providers.

For months, Apple’s point man, Eddie Cue, has been leading talks with content providers, which have largely balked at the tech giant’s efforts to exert control over all aspects of the video service, including pricing, sources said.

Apple’s negotiating stance can be summed up as “we decide the price, we decide what content,” according to one source familiar with the talks.

“They want everything for nothing,” said another media executive, echoing similar tense negotiations Apple has had in the past with magazine publishers and music companies.

The report claims that Apple is interested in offering entire channels as apps that could be used on a number of the company's devices, including the Apple TV set-top box and presumably a potential Apple-branded television set. The report's sources are, however, unclear on whether Apple is seeking to bundle multiple app channels together to form its own equivalent of cable television packages or if it wants to offer them individually to subscribers.

Sources also indicate that Apple has tried with no success to convince cable companies to adopt Apple hardware for their own set-top boxes, with Apple providing sleek hardware and software to deliver content to existing cable subscribers across the United States.

“They want to create the interface, and they wanted to work with the cable guys to manage bandwidth across the TV and broadband pipeline,” said one source familiar with the talks.

Instead, cable executives pretty much shut the door, preferring to keep Apple at a safe distance from the lucrative $150 billion pay-TV business.

The report indicates that Apple is actually pursing content deals as its primary target in the television market, with the much-rumored Apple television set being a secondary consideration for the time being. Despite resistance from content providers and cable companies, Apple is said to still be pressing forward with a number of entities including Verizon and AT&T in an effort to land at least a foothold in the television content market.

Apple was reportedly negotiating with content providers back in 2009 about developing a "best of television" package that could be distributed through the iTunes Store, but those talks failed to yield any deals and Apple reportedly abandoned its efforts for some time. But with talk of an Apple television set ramping up and the company reportedly having developed its own "new technology" for delivering video content, it seems that Apple is trying once again to find a way to make its own contributions on the content side so as to be able to control as much of the user experience on television as possible.

The Inquirer reports that Intel's Sandy Bridge E server chips, also known as the Xeon E5 series, are set to debut week. According to the report, the chips have been in the distribution channel for several weeks now, meaning that manufacturers utilizing the chips, as Apple would be expected to do in an updated Mac Pro, will be able to hit the ground running.

Boston confirmed to The INQUIRER that Xeon E5 chips have been in the channel for a few weeks now and confirmed to us that it won't be a paper launch. We have also been shown Xeon E5 systems from other large vendors that give credence to the notion that Intel's Xeon E5 will arrive, for real, next week.

Benchmarks are evidently still under embargo until next week, but the Xeon E5 chips will undoubtedly be a vast improvement over the chips found in the current Mac Pro, which hasn't been updated since mid-2010. Other companies such as Dell have already begun announcing new products based on the Xeon E5, meaning that Apple could be ready with Mac Pro updates in the relatively near future.

Apple is likely to take advantage of the E5-2600 series 6-core and 8-core chips for its dual-processor Mac Pro configurations, while focusing on the E5-1600 series quad-core and 6-core chips for its lower-end single-processor models.

Aside from the new processors, other pieces crucial for a blockbuster Mac Pro upgrade are also falling into place, although there have been few specific Mac Pro rumors in recent months. One recent report did claim, however, that Apple is planning to switch to NVIDIA graphics in the updated Mac Pro, moving away from current graphics partner AMD.

An update to the Mac Pro is of course also contingent upon Apple deciding that it is worth keeping the line alive. The company late last year was reportedly "questioning" the future of the Mac Pro line, examining whether it should continue offering the professional-level workstation as sales have declined amid a continued shift toward notebook machines and specs that had gone stale while waiting for Intel to release updated processors.