Apple iPhone 6 (image: Ewan Spence) Taking a look back at another week of news from Cupertino, this week's Apple Loop covers Apple's success in the smartphone sales table, replacing AT&T in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Android Wear on iOS, a potential MacBook Air announcement, doubling the memory in the next iPhone, iPad Pro delays, Microsoft Office's preview app, and the $ 75,000 Apple Watch.
Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days (and you can read our weekly digest of Android news here on Forbes).
Samsung In Second As Apple Scores Smartphone Sales Win
Gartner's latest numbers for Q4 give Apple a small edge in the smartphone sales stakes compared to Samsung, but it's enough to take the top spot from the South Korean company. Amit Chowdhry:
Apple sold 74.8 million iPhones compared to Samsung's sales of 73 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of last year. This is a dramatic change from one year earlier when Samsung sold 83.3 million smartphones against Apple's 50.2 million iPhone sales. Apple's win over Samsung in Q4 2014 is the first time that the Cupertino giant sold the most number of smartphones globally since 2011.
Samsung's phone division sells more than smartphones, with total handset sales in the hundreds of millions, but smartphone sales bestow a greater halo effect on a company. Apple might not have started a thermonuclear war over Samsung, but the effect has been the same.
AAPL And T To Swap Places
One interesting move confirming Apple's place in the financial space is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Apple will be replacing AT&T in the index, to provide a better weighting to the technology side of the index. Maggie McGrath reports:
The change comes as a result of a number of stock splits, S&P Dow Jones explained Friday morning. It was prompted by Visa's 4-for-1 stock split (which the payments company announced in late January) and made possible by Apple's 7-for-1 stock split, which was announced last April and took effect in June. The post-split adjusted price of Visa — which is expected to begin on March 19, the same day that the Apple-AT&T switch will occur — will reduce the weighting of the Dow's information technology sector, so adding Apple will help offset that reduction.
The Apple Watch (image: Apple.com)
Android Wear Coming To iOS?
Monday March 9th will see an Apple event where it is widely expected that details on the Apple Watch will be released, including the available accessories, a multitude of apps, and the pricing. Naturally we'll have full details here on Forbes as the event happens, with a live-blog and analysis from the team.
In the meantime, the Apple Watch may be getting more competition. While the Pebble smartwatch already has an iOS client to go with its Android code, Google's Android Wear devices have been Android only… for now. John Fingas on Engadget:
Sources for French outlet 01net claim that Google is "preparing to launch" an iOS version of its Android Wear app. There aren't any other details, although it's safe to say that third-party app support would require additional effort — it wouldn't be an Android-to-Android connection any more, after all. This is very much a rumor and may not pan out, so don't assume that you'll be strapping on a Huawei Watch any time soon.
Will The Air Join The Watch?
As well as the Apple Watch announcement, Tim Cook may take advantage of the Monday meeting to introduce some new products ahead of them reaching mass production. This way Apple can release the information in its own way, and reduce the possibility of leaks derailing its own storytelling process.
That means the new MacBook Air may be up on stage. Rumored to feature a 12-inch screen and a single USB-C port for power and connectivity, it's possible that the Air will be shown on Monday, with a roll-out to the Apple Store at the end of Q2 during WWDC. 9to5mac's Ben Lovejoy:
WWDC traditionally has been the end of Q2, so unless Apple plans another event specifically for the new model (not impossible but I'd think not), the most likely time to announce it would be during Monday's Spring Forward event, expected to major on the Apple Watch. Since this is a new product, not an upgrade of a current product, Apple could use some ramping time between the announcement and the actual launch.
We'd caution however that supply chain sources, which is apparently the kind the WSJ is using, often guess early when it comes to shipping times.
Next page: Double memory, fewer screens, the most expensive Apple Watch, and Microsoft Paperclip will return…
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