Apple iPods could feature cameras in future versions, according to rumors that suggest Apple has begun ordering iPod cases structured to hold a camera lens. Apple's mobile devices have powered its bottom line and prestige, with its iPhone 3GS smartphone selling over 1 million units in its first three days of release, and over a billion downloads from its App Store.Future versions of the Apple
iPod could include a camera for still photos and video, adding another layer of
functionality to the popular line of devices.
According to TechCrunch, which quoted from sources
in Asia, Apple has placed a huge order for $10 camera
modules. Simultaneously, Macrumors has published images of an iPod
Touch case design that features "a centrally mounted camera hole."
TechCrunchs source suggested that "Everything but the Shuffle may have
a camera in it soon," based on the apparent size of the camera module
order.
If the rumors prove true, a camera-equipped iPod could offer a clear and
present danger to portable digital-video recorders such as the Flip, which have
built a market for relatively cheap and small video-capture devices. In March
2009, Cisco
Systems announced that it was acquiring Pure Digital Technologies, which
makes the Flip Video device, for $590 million in stock on top of $15 million in
retention-based equity incentives.
At the time, Cisco's senior vice present of Corporate Development and
Consumer Groups, Ned Hooper, said in a statement that the acquisition would
allow his company "to expand our momentum in the media-enabled home and to
capture the consumer market transition to visual networking."
The addition of the iPod into the digital-video space has the potential to
complicate the game enormously. The new versions of the iPod, which could
include cameras, are expected by the end of 2009, affording potential
competitors relatively little time to devise a sufficient counter-strategy.
Although Apples mobile devices have been a success in 2009 by any financial
measurethe
company sold 1 million iPhone 3G S smartphones in the devices first three days
of releaseit has lately become a lightning rod for some controversy over
its apps approval process.
Despite a free market spirit that has led the App Store to accept over
50,000 apps ranging from Skype to zombie-blasting games, it
has pulled salacious and tasteless apps such as Baby Shaker, which allowed
users to virtually "shake" an infant quiet, and any applications
judged to contain inappropriate adult content.
Despite periodic and short-lived controversies over those apps, though,
consumers seem to be reacting positively to both the new iPhone and the iPhone
3.0 operating system, which provides a number of updated features, including copy,
cut and paste functionality; a Spotlight search app; the ability to use the
keyboard in landscape mode; and MMS
messaging.
Apples high profile in 2009 can also be linked to the medical travails of CEO
Steve Jobs.
Apple
announced on June 29 that Jobs was back at work after a six-month leave of
absence for a still-undisclosed medical condition. A June 20 report in The Wall
Street Journal, stating that Jobs had undergone a liver transplant at the
Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tenn., had been
confirmed by the hospital.
According to the hospitals statement, Jobs is recovering well and "has
an excellent prognosis." He had previously been treated for a type of
pancreatic cancer in 2004.
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