Pre-orders have swamped Apple and forced it to push back its shipping date for some customers, leading analysts to expect high iPad sales throughout the year.
Apple has run out of its first week’s supply of iPads and the shipping date for US customers who pre-order wi-fi only iPads has been pushed back to April 12th, which analysts are taking as a sign that the device will sell better than originally expected.
Apple Australia states on there website it wont be released till 'late April'....
While nobody knows how many devices Apple set aside for initial pre-orders, it is estimated that Apple pre-orders were at 250,000 in two weeks.
Apple was previously offering customers an in-store pickup option, which has been discontinued due to the high demand.
The iPad pre-order rate is thought to outpace original iPhone sales and will likely also be the most successful tablet or e-reader launch ever. While Amazon continues to stay mum on sales figures, Kindle sales for all of 2008 were pegged at 500,000 units and the Barnes and Noble e-reader, the Nook, reached the 500,000 mark five months after it was introduced in the US.
Fortune reported that estimates for 2010 iPad sales have skyrocketed and analysts expect that 8-10 million iPads will be shipped in 2010, up from previous estimates of 5 million.
Suppliers expect to ship 2.5 million units in the first three months alone, which is nearly triple the previous estimate of 750,000 that analysts originally thought would ship by the end of June
The internet is about to get a whole lot more interesting March 2010
It's rare that an arcane piece of technology, particularly one well and truly still under development, should receive the sort of attention that HTML5 has in recent weeks. But just what is HTML5, and who, if anyone, should actually care?
HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, is one of the fundamental technologies of the web - it's how just about every page you visit with your web browser is coded (or, more technically speaking, "marked up").
The current version of HTML - HTML 4 - has been around since 1999 and was developed at a time when the web was essentially a static medium of pages. At that time, the mobile web was little more than a pipedream. But over the past decade the web has become increasingly dynamic - not simply through the (often annoying) addition of more and more video, audio and other multimedia but through an explosion of web applications; everything from online banking to casual games, office suites and email clients. And in the past year or two, the mobile web has truly arrived.
HTML 4, well-suited to the web of static documents, is very poorly suited to this world of web apps and the mobile web.
HTML5 (there's officially no space in the name, unlike with HTML 4) is under development by the World Wide Web Consortium, an organisation founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web. It's designed to make it easier for developers to create web applications while ensuring compatibility with older versions of HTML.
HTML5 also features a range of other, even geekier, features, such as the ability for a web page or application to do more than one thing at a time, enabling browsers to communicate more effectively with web servers; and new language elements to create richer page content.
Keeping up to date with the latest version of your web browser is a must, though, to experience these new features.
Most current versions of the major web browsers feature some HTML5 support, while the latest versions of Safari, Firefox and Opera are all rich in HTML5 support.
If you're a web designer or developer, you should care about HTML5 as it is already revolutionising how the web is developed. Even if the extent of your work with the web is marking up HTML, new elements in the language will give better structure and greater meaning to your mark-up, which search engines may well end up using to provide more detailed results to users. For IT managers, chief technology or chief information officers, HTML5 is important as it promises to make both web and intranet sites and applications easier to create and maintain. It provides functionality to build much more engaging web experiences in the browser and on mobile devices.
While HTML5 is still under development, a good deal of the language's features are already implemented in browsers, particularly on mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android and Palm's Pre. As the browser in the iPad is essentially identical to that in the iPhone, it will have excellent HTML5 support. Indeed, many "native" iPhone applications already use web technologies and there's little doubt that this will be an increasing trend.
It's been a decade since the last major version of HTML was released, which is more than half the life of the web. HTML5 is likely to be the foundation of website and application development for years to come. As with every revolutionary technology change, it's those who capitalise early on the opportunities presented that are best placed to reap the rewards.
Author and developer John Allsopp has been working with, on and against the web since the early 1990s. His most recent book is Developing with Web Standards (New Riders Press). He's also the developer of Style Master, the only cross-platform CSS development tool; and the co-founder of Australian Web Week, held in October, and of the Web Directions conferences, held around the world.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/html-5-ushers-in-newlook-web-20100322-qrau.html
Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7
Microsoft has regathered some stamina form the sideline in the smartphone wars, unveiling a completely redesigned operating system that they are hoping will become a serious challenger to Apple's iPhone.
Microsfot showed off the the Windows Phone 7 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year.The phone has been designed from the ground up to seamlessly pull together content from social networking sites and other web services on a scale unseen on competing platforms.
Previous Windows Mobile versions were scrapped to make way for a completely new design that integrates Microsoft's Zune music player and the Xbox Live gaming service, however as Microsoft have failed to make an impact in the mobile and market and have been idle for the last two years, Xbox has been nothing short of a success and its networking capabilities has seen large numbers of gamers around the world competing with each other online.
Samsung, HTC, HP, Sony Ericsson, Dell, LG and Toshiba have signed up as early partners and the phone is expected to be released later on in the year.
Analysts have said this could be Microsoft's last chance to claw back market share lost to rival competitors such as Apple and Google in there two year hiatus. The iPhone has dominated Windows Mobile in the consumer market, while business users continue to turn to BlackBerry.
"They're in amongst the also-rans and getting less and so if they don't do something really drastic they're history in the mobile market," said Gartner analyst Robin Simpson.
It will be intersting to see how consumers from all sectors take on the mobile when it is released, Microsoft are never in the quiet seats when it comes to marketing but with so much ground relentlessly covered by Apple with its Iphone and already established mobile players such as Nokia, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, Microsoft are really going to have to produce something special to capture any market share.
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