iPhone, iPad 2013 sales estimates cut by analyst

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Apple faces a few challenges that could take a bite out of iPhone and
iPad sales next year, at least in the opinion of one analyst.


In an investors note out today, UBS analyst Steven Milunovich slashed his iPhone sales estimates for the March, June, and September 2013 quarters by 5 million. Sales estimates for the iPad were cut by 2 million for the same period.


The analyst now expects Apple to sell 41 million iPhones in the March quarter, 36 million in the June quarter, and 33 million in the September quarter. iPad sales are forecast at 21.7 million in the March quarter, 24.5 million in the June quarter, and 20.7 million in the September quarter.


In line with the lower unit sales estimates, Milunovich also trimmed his earnings estimates for Apple for fiscal 2013 and 2014 and lowered the stock's target price to $700 from $780.



Why the dour outlook? Milunovich cited a few reasons.


Supply chain checks show that the manufacturing rate for the iPhone is dropping to 25 million units for the March quarter. The
iPhone 5 is just now starting to sell in China, but UBS's Chinese sources don't think it will sell as well as the iPhone 4s.


The lower-priced
iPad Mini looks to be cannibalizing sales of the larger and more expensive iPad.

And finally, the analyst believes his previous estimates were too aggressive in light of the lackluster economy in Europe and rougher competition from other smartphones.

The analyst did throw Apple a bone, citing some optimism ahead.

"We expect that China Mobile may start to sell iPhones in the Dec quarter, so a summer 5S with TD-SCDMA and fingerprint recognition is possible," Milunovich said. "Apple is driven to make beautiful products. Whether it is an iTV, wearable computers, or another new product category, we have faith that innovation is not dead."

Earlier this week, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek struck a bearish tone when he cut his price target for Apple stock to $800 from $900.

Apple was once the dominant smartphone and tablet player. But lately the company has been challenged on both fronts. Samsung's Galaxy S lineup and other Android smartphones have given the iPhone a run for its money. And the iPad's market share has been sliced by an array of lower-cost Android tablets.

The company has also put itself in a dicey position by releasing so many new products around the same time -- the iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, the 4th-generation iPad. Though the new devices are positioned to take advantage of the holiday buying season, the timing of them puts a temporary strain on Apple's profit margins.

Apple's stock has been battered the past couple of months. From a high above $700 in September, the stock has slipped almost 200 points. In trading early this morning, shares were hovering around $514.

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Pictures: Surveying Rain Forest Arthropods

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'Active Shooter' Reported at CT Elementary School

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A shooting at a Connecticut elementary school this morning prompted the town of Newton to lock down all of its schools and drew SWAT teams to the school, authorities said today.


A gunman has been killed, authorities told ABC News.


The shooting occurred at the Sandy Creek Elementary School in Newtown, about 12 miles east of Danbury.


A photo from the scene shows a line of distressed children being led out of the school.






Shannon Hicks/The Newton Bee







Newton Public School District secretary of superintendent Kathy June said in a statement that the district's school were locked down because of the report of a shooting. "The district is taking preventive measures by putting all schools in lockdown until we ensure the safety of all students and staff."


State police sent SWAT team units to Newtown.


All public and private schools in the town are on lockdown.


State emergency management officials said ambulances and other units were also en route and staging near the school.


A message on the school district website says that all afternoon kindergarten is cancelled today and there will be no mid-day bus runs.



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Laser drills could relight geothermal energy dreams

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FROM fossil fuels to geothermal heat, accessing the planet's energy riches usually involves boring deep into the Earth with giant metal drills. But could lasers do the same job?












Foro Energy, a start-up company in Littleton, Colorado, has developed what it claims is an inexpensive system of high-powered lasers that can rip through rock, potentially revolutionising drilling and hastening the adoption of greener forms of power.












Foro announced last month that a test system had sent a beam from a 20-kilowatt commercial laser through 1.5 kilometres of optical fibre. Development has been funded by the US Department of Energy's research arm, ARPA-E. Borehole drilling trials are planned for next year.












Mechanical drills can easily grind through soft rocks like sandstone to tap petroleum reserves, but they wear out quickly in hard crystalline rocks such as granite and basalt. It is these harder rocks that often hide the best sources of geothermal energy. Foro's intense laser beam heats hard rock surfaces so fast that thermal shock fractures the upper few millimetres, leaving a crumbled layer that a mechanical drill can scrape away quickly and with little wear. This approach could increase drilling rates, a major component in well cost, by up to a factor of 10, says ARPA-E.












But a flashy prototype is far from proof that the rig will hold up in the brutal environment found in the bottom of a borehole, which is filled with rock chips and churning water that lubricates the drill bit. The optics must deliver the beam directly to the rock, says Jared Potter of Potter Drilling in Redwood City, California, who is developing a drilling process that shatters rock with extremely hot water. If the beam hits fluid, it will heat the liquid instead of the rock face. "It's amazing how much energy it takes to boil water," Potter says, and even a powerful laser couldn't hope to zap both water and rock at once. He thinks Foro "has a long way to go to have a tool they can deploy in a geothermal or oil well".












Still, the cost of drilling has been a roadblock to expanding the adoption of geothermal energy. If Foro can prove its technology is ready for the grunt work of punching hundreds of holes through the hard igneous rocks, it would change the mathematics of low-carbon energy. In the meantime, Potter says Foro's lasers could be used instead of explosives to make holes in the steel casings of oil and gas wells, which are needed to drain fluid from the surrounding rock.




















































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Ukrainian MPs brawl in parliament as PM re-appointed

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KIEV: The Ukrainian parliament Thursday voted to reinstate its prime minister after dozens of opposition and pro-government lawmakers brawled for a second day in the chamber notorious for its fisticuffs.

Newly-elected world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko sought to stand above the fray by staying well out of the fighting that came just before parliament voted to re-appoint Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

Deputies in suits and shirtsleeves climbed on tables, shouted and grappled with opponents in an angry protest against lawmakers pressing electronic buttons to vote for absentee colleagues.

While lawmakers are legally obliged to vote in person, many of them run around pressing buttons for absent colleagues.

Opposition politicians rose to their feet and rushed to blockade the speaker's tribune, while being pushed back by pro-government lawmakers.

Amid angry shouts and calls for calm, some clambered on desks from where they dealt blows and jumped down on opponents.

At least one opposition lawmaker had a bruised face after being thrown to the floor and receiving punches and kicks from ruling party lawmakers, the Interfax news agency reported.

The towering boxing champion Klitschko, whose opposition party UDAR, or punch, has won 42 seats in the parliament, refrained from joining the skirmishes and could be seen seated, watching the fight calmly.

"You could call the fists of a world champion a nuclear weapon. I don't think we will use this weapon yet," Klitschko said, quoted by his party press service.

But he added: "We do support the blockading of the tribune."

After a break, the parliament managed to restore calm and hold a vote to reappoint prime minister Azarov that had been postponed from Wednesday.

A total of 252 deputies out of 450 in the single-chamber parliament supported Azarov's return to office, including President Viktor Yanukovych's ruling Regions Party, the Communists and several independents.

Three opposition factions - Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party close to jailed ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the UDAR party of Klitschko and the Svoboda nationalist movement - did not back Azarov.

"The politics of the Regions Party of which Azarov is a representative is anti-Ukrainian, anti-social and anti-democratic," said comments from Svoboda.

It remained unclear why Azarov, 64, took the dramatic step of resigning earlier this month, with the presidency saying at the time that Yanukovych had accepted his request to give up his post and become an MP.

Azarov called on the parliament to leave behind the "confrontation" to "face together outside challenges" including the global economic crisis that is already hurting Ukraine.

The parliament's opening session on Wednesday had earlier seen fighting erupt between opposition lawmakers and deputies whom they accused of defecting to the pro-government camp.

In a typically raucous session, feminist group Femen also staged a topless anti-corruption protest outside the entrance to the parliament wearing only black pants.

The brawls were an ugly start to a new parliament apparently still controlled by Yanukovych's Regions Party, which claims to have won a majority in legislative elections on October 28.

The October polls were widely criticised by the international community, coming as Tymoshenko continues to serve a seven-year prison term for abuse of power that she argues is politically motivated.

The Ukrainian parliament is often the scene of scuffles with lawmakers throwing eggs and letting off smokebombs.

Two years ago several opposition deputies were badly injured in a bloody brawl prompted by the opening of a criminal probe into Tymoshenko that saw punches thrown and chairs hurled.

- AFP/de



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For the Pope on Twitter, many slings and arrows

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Now there's speaking truth to power.



(Credit:
Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)


When you come down from on high and mix with us, les miserables, it can be a touch depressing.


For though you try to take us seriously, we may not feel the same way. And, well, social media allows us to express our feelings without fear of permanent damnation.


Pope Benedict XVI, famously a recent convert to Twitter, is discovering that mixing with us isn't always pretty.


His Holiness -- and his almost equally holy advisers -- surely believes that one has to speak to the faithful through every available channel.


And yet this entails encountering the unfaithful too: the lapsed, the skeptical, the jaundiced, the troubled.


Disclosure: I am all of those.


After stepping gingerly in his Prada shoes into Twitter's morass, the Pope has has now offered a handful of tweets. He is even following seven people. (Well, they're actually all himself in different languages.)


Yet there is a large, perhaps heathen crowd lying in wait for what they see as the Pontiff's pontification.


Yesterday, he tweeted: "How can we celebrate the Year of Faith better in our lives?"


He may not have been expecting the replies he received. There were serious, but critical replies, such as this from klubbkidd: "@Pontifex by preaching more acceptance Your Holiness. the Church has lost it's footing in adapting to the times."


Some were more direct. ElHijoDePutin (I feel sure he isn't) offered in Spanish: "Mmm, by not raping children and by paying property tax."



Oh, yes. This will turn into Apple Vs. Microsoft.



(Credit:
Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)



Others went for a certain sort of sociopolitical humor. Take this, from pinchinn: "Explain to me why it's a bad idea to wear a condom." (Sadly, the Pope has yet to reply to this one.)


There were those who just decided to channel absurdist comedy. For example this from GgRrEegOorYy: "Have you got 10 Euros?"


Some in the flock flaunted their chance to simply be passionately rude to the Pope.



More Technically Incorrect



Several replies enjoyed the rude colloquialism beginning with "b" that you think might be a new form of gateau, but then realize you only see it on porn sites. One lady called Binnie suggested "hookers and blow."


To the latter, one Colby Wilson assailed Binnie: "How could you say that to the Pope?"


The Vatican has publicly declared thus far that it is ready to leave all replies up, confident that good will prevail over evil. I may have slightly paraphrased that last part.


Going through all the Pope's tweets and the replies, though, makes me believe that his Twitter account will very soon turn into something livelier than Apple vs. Microsoft.


The Pope might consider not phrasing tweets as questions, as this does tend to incite.


A recent tweet offered: "How can faith in Jesus be lived in a world without hope?"


A recent reply from one John Freiler reads: "you are a huge bummer, dude."


Is nothing sacred?


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Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy

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The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.

The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.

The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")

Baby Pictures

The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."

These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.

The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)

"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."


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Royal Hoax Nurse Hanged Herself, Left 3 Notes

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Jacintha Saldanha, the London nurse who killed herself after she answered a radio-station prank call about Kate Middleton, was found hanging from the neck, and left three notes, according to the coroner's officer.


The 46-year-old nurse who worked at London's King Edward VII Hospital was discovered Dec. 7 hanging by a scarf from a wardrobe in her bedroom, Coroner's Officer Lynda Martindill told a British inquest.


The wife and mother of two also had injuries to her wrists, according to police detective chief inspector James Harman.


Harman told the coroner's inquest that two notes were found at the scene and a third was discovered among Saldanha's belongings.


He did not release the contents of the notes.








Royal Hospital Hoax: End to Shock-Jock Pranks? Watch Video









Australian DJs Apologize in Wake of Nurse's Suicide Watch Video







There is no suspicion of foul play in Saldanha's death, Harman said. Investigators are still trying to piece together exactly what led to her suicide, and are now interviewing her friends, family and co-workers to find more information, Harman said.


Saldanha was found dead Friday morning after police were called to an address near the hospital to "reports of a woman found unconscious," according to a statement from Scotland Yard.


Saldanha had worked at the hospital for more than four years.


DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian of 2Day FM in Sydney called the hospital Dec. 5 pretending to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, looking to speak to Middleton, who was being treated at the hospital for acute nausea related to her pregnancy. The duo were able to obtain information about the duchess' condition.


When the royal impersonators called the hospital, Saldanha put them through to a second nurse who told the royal impersonators that Kate was "quite stable" and hadn't "had any retching."


The radio station, along with Greig and Christian, has apologized for the prank call, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority has now launched an investigation into the incident.


Coroner Fiona Wilcox has adjourned the inquest into Saldanha's death until March 26.



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Orbiting eye sees NASA rover's impact scars on Mars

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Curiosity really has made an impact on Mars. A sharp-eyed orbiter has spotted craters at the site where castoffs from the NASA rover's landing gear fell to the surface in August. Examining the damage can help reveal what it takes to scar the Red Planet.











Just after entering the Martian atmosphere, Curiosity's descent capsule dropped two laptop-sized blocks of tungsten, each weighing about 75 kilograms, which helped the craft tilt and glide towards its landing site in Gale crater.












The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has now snapped detailed photos of the surrounding area, showing that the blocks made craters 3 metres to 5 metres wide. The scars are about 80 kilometres to the west of Gale crater – too far for the rover to investigate, because it can travel only about 100 metres per day.













But studying the impact zone from orbit can give planetary scientists cleaner data on Mars's surface and atmospheric properties than they could get from the hundreds of natural impact craters that they have already photographed.












"We think we kind of understand crater formation in terms of an object of a certain mass, at a certain velocity, should go ahead and create a crater of a certain size and depth," says Nadine Barlow of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. "But most of what we know is based on theory. This gives us some actual ground truth."











Scattershot asteroids













This isn't the first time we've studied artificial craters, says Jay Melosh of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Discarded landing gear from other craft sent to the moon and Mars have been studied in detail, especially since the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrived in Martian orbit in 2006. But the tungsten blocks, with their simple shapes, are closer to a theoretician's heart, he says.












"They made craters much closer to the kind of craters that natural asteroid impacts make."












The HiRISE camera also caught other impact scars flanking the ballast craters, which probably came from Curiosity's cruise module, the doughnut-shaped section that provided electricity and propulsion on the journey from Earth.












Mars is much closer than Earth to our solar system's main asteroid belt, and its much thinner atmosphere provides less protection from incoming space rocks. Melosh and colleagues have been trying to figure out the numbers and strengths of asteroids that regularly break up in the Martian atmosphere, based on the patterns that their pieces leave on the ground.












Seeing the scars from broken bits of the cruise stage, the durability of which is already known, will help test his theories. "For that reason, the debris from the ring is even more interesting," he says.


















































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PM Lee to nominate new Speaker when Parliament next meets

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SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will nominate a new Speaker of Parliament when Parliament next meets, following the resignation of Mr Michael Palmer.

In the meantime, Deputy Speaker of Parliament Mr Charles Chong will serve as Acting Speaker.

When asked who is likely to be considered for the post of Speaker, some Members of Parliament (MPs) from the ruling People's Action Party told Channel NewsAsia that they are still coming to terms with the news of Mr Palmer's resignation.

Singapore's Parliament has two Deputy Speakers.

Besides Mr Charles Chong, the MP for Marine Parade GRC, Mr Seah Kian Peng, is the other Deputy Speaker.

MP for Moulmein-Kallang GRC, Denise Phua, said Mr Seah could be a possible candidate for the new Speaker of Parliament.

When asked if he would consider the post if he was approached to take it up, Mr Seah said the role of Speaker requires a lot of time and anyone taking the job would want to consider the matter seriously.

GPC chair for Communications and Information, Zaqy Mohamed, said that for now, the two Deputy Speakers would perform the role until such time the candidate for Speaker is proposed to Parliament.

Nominated MP Eugene Tan is of the view that either one of the two Deputy Speakers or former Cabinet Ministers who are now currently MPs, could be considered for the post of Speaker.

Singapore's Parliament will sit on 14 January.

- CNA/ir



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