Apple has announced its latest financial results for its first quarter, which ended on 31st December 2011, posting record highs in terms of product sales, revenue and earnings. Quarterly revenue reached an all-time high of $46.33 billion, a staggering increase on last year’s figure of $26.74 billion. It seems that despite the gloomy economic climate, Apple is one company that’s still booming.

Net quarterly profit also more than doubled on last year’s figure of $6 billion to $13.06 billion in the latest quarter; that’s a rise from $6.43 to $13.87 per diluted share. Gross margins rose 6.2 per cent to 44.7 per cent on last year’s figures for the same period, with 58 per cent of this quarter’s revenue coming from international sales.

And sales are booming across the Apple device range, with all-time high iPhone, iPad and Mac sales reported. The iPhone range saw 128 per cent unit growth, with Apple shifting 37.04 million iPhones over the latest quarter. This despite launching the most expensive iPhone to date in October last year, the phenomenally successful iPhone 4S. iPhone sales may have been boosted by the increase in number of affordable SIM cards via specialists like giffgaff.com. By offering cheaper alternative SIM cards plans than established networks, firms like giffgaff.com have managed to significantly reduce the costs to iPhone users, even if the price of the devices themselves has risen.

While the biggest rise in sales is attributed to the iPhone range, iPads also saw a significant rise in units shifted over the Christmas period. Sales are up 111 per cent on last year, to 15.43 million over the last quarter. Macs saw a rise in sales of 26 per cent to 5.2 million, however iPod sales dropped by 21 per cent to 15.4 million.

The company was understandably thrilled with their record-breaking sales and revenue figures, and forecasts continued growth for the year ahead, with new products due for release later this year, including the much-anticipated iPhone 5. Having already generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow over the latest quarter, they predict revenue to hit around $32.5 billion over the next fiscal quarter, with diluted earnings per share of around $8.50. Although this is down on the December quarter, this is to be expected as sales tend to peak over the December quarter, which covers the major Christmas sales period.

The figures were streamed live via Apple’s QI 2012 financial results conference webcast on 24th January 2012, and the conference is still available to view online for a limited time.

After dinner with some of technology’s brightest minds Thursday night, President Barack Obama toured an Intel microprocessor factory on Friday and spoke to local students at Intel’s Hillsboro, Ore., site. His theme was innovation in America and the critical role of education in maintaining U.S. competitiveness.

“It is a great honor to host President Obama. Our country and that company have been built on innovation, and manufacturing has been at the heart of America’s economy for by a century,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. “We share the president’s belief that with a culture of innovation we can and will retain a vibrant economy based on industries of the future.”

Intel’s Mega Investment

During his visit, Obama toured Intel’s Fab D1D at Ronler Acres campus, a wafer-fabrication facility. The U.S. semiconductor industry is the country’s leading exporter when averaged by the past five years.

In comments before Obama spoke, [...]

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A new device that absorbs a laser beam — an anti-laser — could advance the development of optical computers. The anti-laser has been built by researchers at Yale University, and is outlined in the current issue of Science magazine.

Other uses could include radiology, but scientists expect more applications will emerge. After all, when a working version of the now-ubiquitous laser was first developed 50 years ago, it wasn’t clear at the date what uses it might have.

‘Coherent Perfect Absorber’

The anti-laser, additionally known as a “coherent perfect absorber,” directs two lasers of approximately the same wavelength toward each other. The laser beams are separated by a cavity composed of a thin sheet of silicon.

The silicon traps the laser beams until their energy is absorbed, the beams cancel each other out, and heat is produced. The researchers said they can produce a version that generates electricity [...]

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Google has unleashed a new Chrome 10 beta browser with several new features, including a substantially faster JavaScript engine. Chrome 10 beta additionally integrates accelerated video for PCs with graphics processing units (GPU).

Browsers are the gateway to the Net, so it’s great to see fierce competition, noted Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC. But browser makers won’t be able to continue packing substantial performance gains into new releases forever, he said.

“There is going to be a continual leapfrogging war in terms of speed, performance and features,” Hilwa said. “Exploitation of more hardware for that additional ounce of new performance will continue, but at some point we will reach diminishing returns.”

More Chrome 10 Improvements

Google’s development team says Chrome 10 beta’s new V8 JavaScript engine represents a 66 percent improvement by the previous release. Moreover, the GPU acceleration promises to reduce CPU usage in [...]

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Now that the dust has settled on the Jeopardy showdown, IBM and Nuance Communications have announced a research agreement to develop the Watson supercomputer for the healthcare industry. The deal combines Big Blue’s deep question answering (QA), natural language processing, and machine learning capabilities with Nuance’s speech recognition and clinical language understanding (CLU) solutions to diagnose and even treat patients.

Dr. John E. Kelly III, senior vice president and director of IBM Research, is confident that the collaboration sets the stage to “transform the way healthcare professionals achieve everyday tasks.”

Meet Dr. Watson

IBM offered a scenario in which a doctor who is considering a patient diagnosis could use Watson’s analytics technology and Nuance’s voice and clinical language understanding solutions to consider all the related texts, reference materials, prior cases, and latest knowledge in journals and medical literature. Armed with that data, Watson could help medical professionals determine the [...]

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Apple is selling more portable computers than any other manufacturer.

Including the iPad, Apple Inc. sold 17.2 percent of mobile computers worldwide in the October-December quarter, according to a report published Wednesday by research group DisplaySearch. That’s even more than Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s top PC maker.

Apple has sold nearly 15 million iPads in its first nine months on sale, including 7.3 million in the most recent quarter alone. Without the iPad, Apple is the world’s eighth-ranking PC manufacturer.

HP ranks second when it comes to mobile computers, a category that includes laptops, tablet computers and netbooks. Acer Inc., Dell Inc. and Toshiba Corp round out the top five.

Apple’s lead doesn’t mean folks are buying iPads instead of larger laptops and desktops, said DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim. Rather, it’s selling best in countries where most public already own computers. He said that even though the iPad is relatively inexpensive, with [...]

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