Apps Store Online

The Charlotte Observer reports that a total of 25 iPhones valued at over $16,000 have been reported stolen from Apple’s Northlake Mall retail store in Charlotte, North Carolina. While smash-and-grab robberies are not terribly unusual at Apple retail stores, this case has an unusual twist in that the suspect appears to have been an employee of the store.

“The iPhones were stolen from the Genius Room located inside of the store,” a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police report says. “The suspect did have access to the Genius Room.”

The stolen phones, which are valued at $16,425, include 22 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S models, one 64-GB 4S model, one eight-GB iPhone 4 model and one 32-GB 4S model.

Charlotte’s WBTV confirms that the suspect was a store employee and that the 25 phones were stolen over a period of time between December 1 and January 11. Police are reportedly searching for the suspect.

Apple’s Northlake Mall retail store is one of two in the Charlotte area, having just opened last August.

German site iFun.de reports [Google translation] that has it has received information from a source “to be taken seriously” claiming that the iPad 3 will debut there on Friday, March 23.

No other details on the claim are offered, although the report does conflict with an Asian report from earlier today claiming that the iPad 3 would begin appearing in Europe in April following a mid-March launch in the United States.

With no other information to go on and uncertain reliability for the report’s source, we hesitate to put too much weight on the claim, but we are noting it for interest and discussion.

AFP reports that Proview Technology has expressed a willingness to work toward a settlement with Apple in the “iPad” trademark dispute in China, even as the company continues to press forward with current lawsuits and plans for new ones seeking as much as $2 billion in damages.

“We are now preparing for negotiations,” Proview’s lawyer, Xie Xianghui, told AFP. “The court cases will continue until we reach an agreement.”

He declined to give further details, but he added Apple had told Proview it had “peaceful intentions”.

Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Analysts expect the companies will reach an out-of-court settlement.

Apple has been ramping up its efforts in the dispute, just yesterday sending a warning letter to Proview outlining numerous false public statements made by the company and threatening to sue Proview for defamation. Apple had previously won a court case in Hong Kong in which a judge ruled that several Proview subsidiaries had colluded in order to breach an agreement to transfer the trademark rights to Apple and then attempt to extort million (and now billions) of dollars from Apple.

As it has in previous years, the NCAA division I men’s basketball tournament — also known as March Madness — will be streamed both online and to iPhones and iPads. Unlike previous years, iPad and iPhone users will need to pay a $3.99 to watch the Big Dance. CBS and Turner are sharing the NCAA broadcast duties across four television stations. Here’s how it breaks down:

Mac users will be able to watch all the CBS-broadcast games for free on CBSSports.com. Games aired on TBS, TNT and TruTV will be available to authenticated watchers of certain pay-tv providers.

For iPad and iPhone viewers, everyone will be required to pay a $3.99 fee to watch the entire tournament. That fee covers all devices, so no mucking about with authentication to watch tournament games on the Mac. Once the fee is paid, all 67 games will be streamable on iOS via Wi-Fi or 3G.

NCAA(r) March Madness(r) Live will offer higher quality live video streams across platforms; video highlights for every game of the Tournament on the iPhone and Android phones; live game alerts for Android phones, as well as iPhones and iPads; an updated design; and live radio broadcast courtesy of Westwood One/Dial Global Radio Network, for all 67 games across the suite of digital products. In addition to the new offerings, NCAA(r) March Madness(r) Live will again provide the same fan-favorite features from last year including: schedules and live game scoring, live tournament brackets, personal channel lineup features, live stats, and live social companion views.

The NCAA March Madness apps for iPhone and iPad will go live on March 7, in time for the tournament to begin on March 13. Sign up on the NCAA’s March Madness website to be notified when the apps go live.

Asymco’s Horace Dediu noticed a startling statistic: Apple sold 156 million iOS devices in 2011. That’s 30 million more than the 122 million Macs that Apple has sold since the first one went on sale in 1984.

To date, Apple has sold 316 million iOS devices total, across the three iOS product lines.

Apple has won what could be a fairly significant victory in its wide array of ongoing patent lawsuits. A German court has ruled that a number of Motorola Mobility products infringe on Apple’s European slide-to-unlock patent, EP1964022. The ruling is a permanent — but appealable — injunction that Apple can enforce today if it is willing to post a large bond against Motorola’s almost certain appeal.

Florian Mueller at FOSS Patents reports on the details of the decision:

The court evaluated three different embodiments. Apple won on the two that Motorola’s smartphones implement. It did not prevail on the third one, which the Xoom tablet uses. That implementation is very similar to what I have on my Samsung Galaxy Note: the user has to make a swiping gesture from the inside of a circle to the outside. It requires a relatively large screen to work somewhat well, but even then it’s not very intuitive. (I’m a very happy Galaxy Note user, but it has its shortcomings and the slide-to-unlock circle is one of them.)

Mueller believes that Motorola is unlikely to win on appeal. If the injunction stands, the user experience for the owners of Motorola products might be just a little bit poorer — exactly what Apple wants.

Realmac Software and Impending have just released Clear to the App Store. Clear is a simplified list making application that was announced at Macworld. The App’s claim to fame is the extremely minimal interface that uses natural touch gestures for all functions. Some of these include:

- Pull down on a list to add an item

- Swipe an item right to complete it

- Swipe an item or list left to delete it

- Pinch apart two items to insert a new one between them

- Pinch vertically together to close the current list and show all the lists

The app is meant to be quick to launch and use. Lists are color coded in priority from top to bottom.

Clear has launched for $0.99 [App Store] and should now be available worldwide.

Electronista reports on a new article [Google translation] from Taiwan’s Commercial Times claiming that Apple is planning for production of 65-70 million iPad 3 displays in 2012, paving the way for a significant boost to Apple’s tablet sales.

Shipments for the new LCD panel, believed designed by Sharp but being manufactured by LG Display and Samsung, were said by the Commercial Times to be already booked to the order of 65 million to 75 [70] million units for the year. Versus production of about 40.5 million in 2011, it would represent 60 to 73 percent higher shipments than last year.

That 65-70 million number includes only iPad 3 displays, and with Apple having nearly one quarter’s worth of iPad 2 sales ahead of the iPad 3 introduction and the company being rumored to continue offering the iPad 2 as a lower-cost option following the iPad 3’s introduction, Apple’s total iPad sales projections for the year appear to b even higher.

ThinkGeek, the creators of the iCade iPad gaming cabinet have upped the ante with a new Bluetooth enabled controller called the iCade 8-Bitty. The controller is roughly the size and layout of a classic NES controller, with an extra pair of A/B buttons on the right side and two shoulder buttons.

The 8-Bitty offers the same compatibility as the larger iCade cabinet, supporting all iCade-compatible titles and the iCade open development platform. It runs on two AAA batteries.

At the moment, this just an announcement of the 8-Bitty. Interested parties can join a mailing list to be notified when the controller goes on sale. The 8-Bitty will retail for $25 when it is released later this year.

Analytics firm Chitika today released a report showing that by its metrics iOS has now surpassed OS X in overall web traffic share in the United States. Chitika’s methodology involves an analysis of browser user agents for hundreds of millions of ad impressions across its expansive network.

To quantify this study, Chitika Insights analyzed several data sets composed of a series of US traffic taken from August 2011 to February 2012 out of the Chitika Ad Network (covering hundreds of millions of ad impressions). The user agents of individual impressions were then aggregated to determine relative overall share of the different operating systems.

Chitika’s results show that iOS and OS X have seen their shares of web traffic quickly converge between September and December of last year, with the two platforms running neck-and-neck since that time.

iOS has been posting regular gains, and has experienced an overall growth of nearly 50%, whereas OS X has seen its market share decline by 25% since a high point in September. February marks the first point where a reversal in position can be seen in the respective operating systems. iOS passes Mac OS with 8.15% of all web traffic, whereas Mac OS only sees 7.96%.

Chitika theorizes that the decline in OS X share may be due to either Apple customers choosing to purchase iOS devices instead of Macs or simply a general increase in mobile usage that is overwhelming growth in traditional platforms such as OS X. Given Apple’s continued record Mac sales over the past several quarters, the latter explanation seems to be the more likely one.

Chitika’s results appear to be supported by worldwide data from Net Applications, which shows that desktop share outweighs mobile and tablet usage by a roughly 10:1 margin. With Apple holding only 6% of the desktop share but over 50% of the mobile and tablet share, iOS and OS X do appear to be fairly close in their shares of the overall market.