Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Apple unveils slimmer iPad, new Macs for year’s end
Apple Inc. unveiled new iPads and Macintosh computers Thursday in the second wave of Tim Cook’s biggest product push as chief executive officer, just ahead of the Christmas shopping season.
The company introduced the slimmer iPad Air 2 as well as an iPad mini 3. The iPads have features including fingerprint security known as touch ID, with the iPad Air also sporting dual microphones for better audio.
Apple also showed a new 27-inch iMac with a retina display for better imagery. The company also showed a new Mac mini.
“This is the strongest lineup of products that Ap-
ple has ever had,” Cook said.
Apple showed off the new products at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., after last month introducing the largerscreened iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, along with a smartwatch and a mobile-payments system. Cook’s strategy is to beef up Apple’s best sellers, the iPhone and iPad, while investing in new areas that further immerse users in the company’s digital market.
Cook needs to ignite new interest in iPads after sales of the device declined for two consecutive quarters. The iPad’s global market share slipped 6.1 percentage points during the second quarter as Samsung Electronics Co. and other smaller players chipped at Apple’s lead, according to the International Data Corporation.
“When you create a market like Apple did, all you can do is lose share over time,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard, an analyst at the data firm. “The low end of the market is just exploding.”
An updated iPad on store shelves is also crucial in advance of the Christmas shopping season, typically Apple’s most lucrative quarter. Consumer spending on electronics is projected to increase 2.5 percent to $33.8 billion, the highest level since the Consumer Electronics Association began tracking it in 1994. The top items on tech wish lists, according to the association’s annual Holiday Purchase Pattern Study, are tablets. The last iPad was revealed last October.
In the fiscal third quarter, iPad sales declined 9 percent to 13.3 million units from a year earlier, with revenue falling 8 percent to $5.89 billion. Fourth-quarter results, which cover July through September, will be released Monday.
Apple’s new iPhones, meanwhile, sold more than 10 million units during their debut weekend. The phones are reaching an additional 36 countries this month, including China, India and South Korea, and are on track to be in more than 115 countries by year’s end, Apple said in a statement.
Cook said at the event Thursday that the past few weeks have been the company’s “biggest iPhone launch ever.” He added that orders for the smartphone in China have set a record, without disclosing numbers.
Apple had a few blunders after the debut of the new iPhones, including complaints about how some of the handsets were bending and a new version of its iOS 8 mobile operating software that caused people to lose cellular service. Apple Senior Vice President Craig Federighi said almost half of the company’s customers are now using the latest version of the software.
Cook said Apple will roll out Apple Pay, the new mobile-payments system, on Monday. He said an additional 500 banks have signed up to support the service.