MacRumors

ZDNet reports on comments made by AT&T Business Solutions CEO Ron Spears revealing that 40% of the company's iPhone sales are to business customers, dispelling the notion that businesses are not willing to adopt the popular smartphone over security fears and an unwillingness to make changes to their existing IT infrastructure and policies to accommodate the device. According to Spears:

Four out of 10 sales of the iPhone are made to enterprise users. When the iPhone came out, what most people heard in the first year from '07 to '08 was oh my God, it's not BlackBerry secure. This is not going to work on the enterprise space.

At the end of the day, it's just software. That's all it is.

Spears notes that Apple had solved about 80% of the iPhone's enterprise security issues with the iPhone 3G, and by the time the iPhone 3GS was released last year it was seen as offering adequate security for corporate settings.

According to Spears, many businesses are seeing the iPhone as a computing devices, allowing them to forgo some laptop purchases and move to the more portable iPhone as an all-in-one device. The iPad is likely to see similar traction as it begins to make inroads into the enterprise community.

While Apple may be struggling to sign up major publishers for international eBook distribution through its iBookstore, the company appears to be making things easier for independent authors without a publisher to have their work included in the store.

Mac|Life reports that Apple has rolled out a new portal for iTunes Connect that allows authors to self-publish their work in the iBookstore if it meets certain identification and format standards.

Book Content Requirements:
- ISBNs for all titles you intend to distribute
- You must be able to deliver your book content in EPUB format, passing EpubCheck 1.0.5.

A similar interface has been present in iTunes Connect for several months, but previously required submitters to have invitation codes from an iBookstore representative. Apple also continues to support authors working with approved third-party iBookstore aggregators who can help streamline the process for authors.

Apple notes that all authors signing up to work with Apple must have a U.S. tax ID and valid iTunes Store account with credit card on file. Apple also requires authors to meet certain minimum sales in individual markets before making payments to authors and recommends that authors weigh that factor before deciding whether to work directly with Apple or through a third-party aggregator.

In a tweet from Microsoft's official Twitter account, the company has denied a claim that CEO Steve Ballmer would be speaking at the keynote for Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) on June 7th.

Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.

Ballmer had been rumored by Wall Street analyst Trip Chowdhry to be making an appearance at WWDC to announce support for iPhone OS and Mac OS X development in Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010.

Chowdhry's claim, however, centers around the Visual Studio 2010 announcement, with the appearance by Ballmer to deliver the news as an apparently less-certain rumor. While Microsoft's denial regarding Ballmer leaves open the possibility that another Microsoft executive could make such an announcement during the seven-minute block reportedly set aside, the development would still certainly come as a significant surprise.

Update: Barron's reports that Chowdhry has retracted both of yesterday's claims, indicating that there will be no Microsoft announcements at WWDC. Chowdhry notes with any remaining credibility he might have, however, that his contacts "insist that both MSFT and AAPL are working on development tools - probably our timing is off".

While the iPad's first batch of international launches in nine new countries is not scheduled until tomorrow, a significant number of customers are reporting that their pre-orders are arriving today. The United Kingdom in particular has seen a lot of activity, with customers' delivery progress being tracked in this extensive thread. Both UPS and TNT are handling iPad deliveries in the UK today.

Today's shipments represent those orders placed very soon after Apple began taking pre-orders, as shipping estimates quickly slipped from the May 28th launch to dates in early June. Customers looking to order an iPad online in the new international launch countries are currently faced with a vague shipping estimate of "June". Consequently, those not wishing to wait for online orders to ship at this point should probably try to snag one from the undoubtedly scarce supplies headed for Apple retail stores and other third-party retailers tomorrow.

Last week, we noted that Apple's iBookstore had begun to live ahead of the iPad's launch in nine new countries scheduled for tomorrow. At the time, the stores contained only free content from Project Gutenberg, a limitation that remains in place today just hours before the iPad officially launches in the new markets.

A new report from The Bookseller indicates that the free Project Gutenberg content that initially populated the store may in fact be all international customers have to choose from at launch, with "not one" publisher having confirmed that a deal with Apple to distribute its content is in place.

Apple's iPad is unlikely to have more than a limited selection of e-books for its launch tomorrow (28th May), with not one publisher confirming it had a deal in place just hours before the device hits the shelves.

Although it has been widely rumoured Hachette UK and Penguin were close to finalising deals, no one from either company has confirmed or denied whether that is the case.

According to the report, publishers have been blaming a shortage of Apple staff for at least part of the holdup, with one source indicating that Apple has dedicated only two representatives to negotiating deals throughout Europe. In addition, concerns over Apple's "agency model" are for book pricing also contributing to publishers' reluctance to sign on to the iBookstore.

Update: One user in the UK has reported that a handful of paid titles from publisher HarperCollins have now gone live in that country's iBookstore.

The New York Post reports that a number of media companies, including NBC and Time Warner, have informed Apple that they plan to continue offering their content in Flash formats, opting not to follow the lead of other companies like CBS that are rolling out iPad-friendly HTML5 versions of their Web content.

Sources said several large media companies, including Time Warner and NBC Universal, told Apple they won't retool their extensive video libraries to accommodate the iPad, arguing that such a reformatting would be expensive and not worth it because Flash dominates the Web.

Media companies embracing the iPad have typically taken one of two routes to ensure compatibility: Serve HTML5 browser-based video as CBS is doing or release dedicated applications as ABC has done. The Post's report seems to suggest that NBC and Time Warner are not open to either option at the present time, although their decisions could obviously be revisited in the future.

Barnes & Noble today announced the release of its free BN eReader for iPad application, joining Apple's iBooks and Amazon's Kindle as prominent eReader platforms for Apple's tablet device.

BN eReader for iPad is designed to offer an easy, yet sophisticated, customizable reading experience. Users can choose from multiple ways to view their library, including professionally designed themes with elegant and complementary text and page colors, as well as fonts; and instantly switch between portrait and landscape views based on personal preference. BN eReader for iPad users can further personalize their reading experience with unparalleled options: literally millions of colors for text, pages, highlights and links; eight typefaces and five text sizes; and a variety of margins and customizable spacing options.

Full details and an overview are available on Barnes & Noble's site.

BN eReader for iPad also supports the company's "LendMe" technology, which allows users to share certain eBook content with others. The feature integrates with the iPad's address book, making it easy for users to invite others to share their material. Content "lent" to another person is available for 14 days, and incoming LendMe invitations are visible directly within the the iPad application.

Like Amazon's Kindle application, users looking to purchase content through Barnes & Noble's eBookstore are redirected to the company's browser-based store rather than being able to purchase within the app, a generally minor inconvenience created by Apple's policies on in-app transactions.

Barnes & Noble officially acknowledged in mid-March that it was working on an iPad application, and the company has offered a version of its eReader application for the iPhone and iPod touch since last July.

Barrons reports that one analyst is predicting that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will be part of Steve Jobs' WWDC Keynote presentation.

According to Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with tiny Global Equities Research, 7 minutes of Steve Jobs' keynote is allotted for Microsoft. Microsoft will reportedly be talking about their development tool Visual Studio 2010. The new version of Visual Studio will reportedly allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS.

The move would be a big surprise given Apple and Microsoft's competitive history. In addition, the announcement of PC-based development suite for iPhone and Mac OS would be major announcement. At present, developers may only create iPhone and Mac OS applications from within Apple's own Xcode development suite which only runs on Macs.

The iPad has been available in the U.S. for nearly two months now and is officially rolling out to nine more countries this Friday. At its U.S. debut, about 2,000 iPad-specific apps were available in the App Store and this number has since swelled to over 7,000 with more arriving every day. Here are a few notable ones that have been released over the past couple of weeks.

Air Display

Avatron Software, the makers of the Air Sharing HD document sharing app, recently released a new app, Air Display, that turns an iPad into an extra external display. In order to work, the app requires a desktop companion application - which is available for Macs running OS 10.6 only for now though a Windows version is coming and for the Mac and the iPad to be on the same Wi-Fi network.

Set-up is pretty easy and we found that the app works as advertised, though video lags a little behind the accompanying audio and it's probably best suited for more static items such as Inspector windows, iChat buddy lists and the like. Youre also not restricted to using your computers mouse to navigate the display on the iPad you can use its multi-touch display to click links and buttons. To enter text, youll need to use your computers keyboard since the iPads virtual keyboard wont pop up when you get to a text field.

For $9.99, turning your iPad into a extra display is pretty cheap compared to buying a dedicated display and this app could be invaluable for laptop users who need a little more screen real estate while on the go.

CoPilot Live HD

ALK Technologies, the developer of GPS applications for a wide variety of mobile devices, was the first to put out a turn-by-turn navigation app specifically for the iPad. CoPilot Live HD North America debuted in the App Store earlier this month and it's priced aggressively relative to other GPS apps at $29.99. We've been trying it out and it is a joy to have navigation guidance on such a large screen, though we wish there was a setting to let the map take over the majority of the screen and force the next turn guidance section to be smaller.

CoPilot Live HD will work only on iPads with 3G connectivity since these models possess a GPS receiver while the Wi-Fi only models do not. Additionally, this version of the app works only on the iPad and not the iPhone, though ALK Technologies does offer CoPilot Live North America specifically for the iPhone, priced at $19.99.

BeejiveIM

BeejiveIM has been one of our favorite IM apps for the iPhone and the company put out an iPad-speciic version of the app just a few days ago. BeejiveIM for iPad lets you set up multiple IM accounts under the most popular instant messaging protocols used today and offers push notifications to let you know about incoming messages even when the app is closed. It also lets you send images and voice notes as attachments to your instant messages.

BeejiveIM for iPad is available at an introductory sale price of $5.99 right now for a limited time only.

Market research firm NPD today released data showing Apple continuing to hold a commanding lead in both overall and digital download music sales in the U.S. for the first quarter of 2010. According to NPD's data, Apple continues to dominate digital download distribution in the U.S. with 70% of the market, up from 69% in the year-ago quarter and well ahead of second-place Amazon's 12% share.

In the overall U.S. music market (physical CDs and digital distribution), Apple gained four percentage points over the year-ago quarter to snatch 28% of the market. Amazon surged by three percentage points to tie Wal-Mart for second place at 12% of the total market.

Overall, digital downloads now represent 40% of U.S. music sales, up from 35% in the first quarter of 2009.

The data comes as Apple faces a new antitrust inquiry from the U.S. Department of Justice over its tactics in the digital music download market. Just last week, Billboard published data from all of 2009 showing Apple firmly in command of the overall U.S. music market. Still, it remains to be seen whether the Department of Justice will consider Apple's competitive sphere to primarily be digital downloads, where the company holds an overwhelming proportion of sales, or in the overall market, where it also the top spot but with under 30% of the market.

DigiTimes offers an interesting Q&A with one of its research analysts reporting several previously undisclosed details about the development of the fourth-generation iPhone expected to be introduced early next month at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. One of the most interesting tidbits included in the report is a claim that Apple had a second next-generation iPhone under development that more closely resembles the iPhone 3GS, a phone which Apple has been keeping in reserve in case unforeseen difficulties with the more significantly redesigned versions seen floating around in prototypes forced Apple to fall back to manufacturing processes with which it is already familiar.

The leaked iPhone 4G had a tag that said "N90," which is the internal development codename for the iPhone 4G, and very few people outside the company knew about it prior to the leak.

On a side note, Apple initiated the iPhone 4G project at the end of 2008. According to our sources, Apple actually has another product codenamed N91 for the project, which offers less change from previous iPhones compared with the N90. It's a parallel product to back up the N90 in case there are major delays due to significant modifications in casing, display resolution, digital camera support and so forth.

In fact, it seems possible that there may even have been a third version of the next-generation iPhone floating around Apple's labs, as details found in the iPhone SDK 3.2 back in February revealed a device, presumed to be an iPhone, carrying an "N89" internal model number. The iPhone 3GS carries internal model number "N88".

The report also claims that a Verizon-compatible iPhone scheduled to be produced by Pegatron instead of Apple's existing iPhone manufacturing partner Foxconn will not enter mass production until at least the second half of this year, if not 2011.

Pegatron will indeed assemble an iPhone, but the manufacturing cooperation is still at the EVT (engineer verification test) stage. There are two more stages - DVT (design verification test) and PVT (process verification test) - before mass production. Though there were reports that shipments for this particular device will begin in the second half, we believe 2011 is more likely.

Finally, the report notes that Apple did investigate the possible use of OLED screens in the next-generation iPhone, but ultimately decided against adopting the technology due to insufficient production capacity, cost, and performance issues.

According to our sources, Apple had spoken with Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) about the possibility for AMOLED panels since the development of the iPhone 3GS, but production capacity remains a big issue. SMD only has the capability to fulfill 50-60% of iPhone orders at the moment even it dedicated all AMOLED capacity to Apple.

DigiTimes has had a spotty record in the past with a number of inaccurate product claims over the years, but does seem to have a better handle on the pulse of Apple's Asian suppliers and manufacturing partners than most other sources.

Boy Genius Report briefly claims that AT&T has confirmed to its employees that the next-generation iPhone will launch in June, with hints that availability could even come well before the end of that month.

Title says it all, but you didn't really need a confirmation, did you? The phone will be available for purchase in June, not July, and from what we've heard, it won't even be late June.

Boy Genius Report previously noted that AT&T had instituted a block on employee vacations for the month of June, a move indicating a likely iPhone launch during that time as evidenced by similar blocks in previous years.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to formally introduce the next-generation iPhone on June 7th during his keynote address at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. Earlier rumors had suggested that Apple is looking to push the next iPhone's actual launch as close as possible to that date, perhaps even making it available before the conference concludes.

In the less-than-three months since Apple first passed Wal-Mart to hold the third highest market capitalization among U.S. companies, Apple's stock price has continued to increase while second-place Microsoft has seen its shares drift downward. The combination of events has quickly closed the gap between the two companies, and today Apple finally surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization for the first time in 20 years, although second-by-second fluctuations currently see the two companies frequently swapping positions.

Market capitalization is a popular metric for assessing the size of a company as a representation of the investing public's notion of the company's worth. The figure is derived by simply multiplying the number of outstanding shares of the company's stock by the share price.

In the case of Apple, slightly over 900 million shares outstanding times over $250 per share yields a market capitalization of about $228 billion. Microsoft, meanwhile, has a share price of only slightly over $26.00 but over 8.75 billion shares outstanding, giving it a nearly equal market capitalization to Apple.

With Apple and Microsoft now neck-and-neck, only Exxon Mobil's $282 billion market capitalization remains significantly ahead of Apple's among U.S. companies. Exxon Mobil's shares have dropped significantly over the past month, bringing its market capitalization down from a high of over $325 billion.

As noted by Kotaku, Valve Software is set to launch the Mac OS X version of Half-Life 2 today, with follow-up sequels Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two also seeing their public release for the platform.

Valve announced in early March that it would be bringing its Steam game distribution platform and library of games to Mac OS X, with the public release going live earlier this month. Among the 60 launch titles for Mac OS X was Valve's Portal, which was available for free until earlier this week.

Valve will continue to roll out new titles for the Mac on a regular basis, with the Half-Life 2 package representing the next step in that process. To celebrate the launch of Half-Life 2, Valve has remade a portion of Apple's iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial in a Half-Life 2-inspired theme, with series protagonist Alyx Vance serving as the main character in the promo. Several frames of the remake were used in one of six leaked teaser images sent to MacRumors and other sites ahead of Valve's official Mac announcement.

Update: The three Half-Life 2 titles have now been updated, with support for Mac OS X obviously being the most significant item of interest for Mac users. The titles are temporarily on sale at 30% off, with Half-Life 2 priced at $6.99 (down from $9.99) and Episode One and Two available for $5.59 each (down from $7.99).

Wired has launched their first iPad app version of their digital magazine. Wired has been one of the publications that has long been exploring the possibility of a digital distribution on Apple's iPad -- even before the iPad was ever officially acknowledged. They had worked extensively with Adobe at the time who had been promoting their digital publishing system.

The final product may have seen some delays, however. Due to Apple's strong stance against 3rd party cross compilers, Conde Nast and Adobe reportedly had to go back to the drawing board to rewrite the original Flash-based app into Objective C.

Wired seems happy with the app and explained how they are taking advantage of the medium:

The tablet is our opportunity to make the Wired we always dreamed of. It has all the visual impact of paper, enhanced by interactive elements like video and animated infographics. We can offer you a history of Mars landings that lets you explore the red planet yourself. We can take you inside Trent Reznors recording studio and let you listen to snippets of his work in progress. And we can show you exactly how Pixar crafted each frame of its new movie, Toy Story 3.

Wired's video of the app (video does not appear to support iPad/iPhone):

The Wired Magazine app is presently available in the App Store for $4.99.

Bloomberg reports that Apple has made its first public statement since a series of suicides at manufacturing partner Foxconn's sprawling manufacturing facility in China began gaining public notice, expressing sadness at the events and promising that it is "independently evaluating" Foxconn's response while also continuing its facility inspections summarized in its annual supplier responsibility progress report.

"We're in direct contact with Foxconn senior management and we believe they are taking this matter very seriously," said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. "A team from Apple is independently evaluating the steps they are taking to address these tragic events and we will continue our ongoing inspections of the facilities where our products are made."

Apple is "saddened and upset by the recent suicides at Foxconn," he said.

Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai, has been a key manufacturing partner for Apple for many years and notably produces the company's iPhone and iPad models for worldwide distribution.

According to today's report, there have been nine suicides and two attempted suicides at Foxconn's Chinese facility so far this year. The events come after Foxconn received considerable publicity last year when an employee who reportedly lost a next-generation prototype iPhone also committed suicide.

Foxconn's manufacturing complex in Longhua, China reportedly employs approximately 400,000 people, leading some observers to suggest that the number of suicides experienced at the facility this year is not out of the ordinary considering suicide rates in the general population in that country. Still, general concern over quality of life issues for employees who live and work at Foxconn's facility, as well as for other companies in other locations in China, has led to an outcry over whether companies are treating their employees in an ethical manner.

For its part, Foxconn denies that its facilities should be classified as sweatshops and notes that it has hired dozens of counselors and established other resources to assist its employees. The company has also moved to open its factory to the media in an attempt to provide a glimpse into working conditions on its assembly lines.