With the opening of its 10th Apple Premium Reseller (APR) store in Sim Lim Square today, I have created a new company byte for Nubox.
Nubox is an arm of Newstead Technologies with Apple Premium Reseller (APR) and Apple Authorised Reseller (AAR) stores in Singapore.
Read a byte-sized profile and background information of Nubox for quick reference here.
You can also read articles related to Nubox on tech4tea.com here.
Nubox today opened its 10th Apple Premium Reseller (APR) store in Sim Lim Square. Prior to this, it had an Apple Authorised Reseller store at the geek’s paradise.
The new Nubox APR store replaces the previous AAR store in Sim Lim Square.
To be awarded APR status, the store met stringent criteria from Apple: ability to offer impeccable service to customers, store location and size and availability of staff with Apple Certified Support Professional certification.
Where is the new store?
The 1,100 square feet store is located at #01-53/54 at Sim Lim Square, 1 Rochor Canal Road.
In addition to the complete range of Apple products, Nubox@Sim Lim Square will offer a quality range of third-party accessories and software as well professional services that include training and service support.
Newstead Technologies now has 11 Nubox stores across Singapore, comprising 10 APRs and one AAR in Funan Digital Life Mall. The Funan AAR will also be replaced with an APR next month.
Evelyn Chua, the Chief marketing Officer of Newstead, tells me that she plans to open a twelfth Nubox APR in Bedok Mall next year.
Store opening promotions for Nubox @ Sim Lim Square from 24-26 August, 2012. Click on thumbnail to zoom in.
For the time being, the plan is to stop at twelve. You can read more about Nubox and its stores here.
As part of the store opening, there will be promotional offers from today till Sunday.
The ninth major release of Apple’s desktop operating system is now available as a download from the Mac App Store. Mountain Lion is available as an upgrade from Lion or Snow Leopard for S$25.98.
Mountain Lion OS X, Apple’s new desktop operating system is available for download today.
Mountain Lion features more than 200 new features, including iCloud integration, the all new Messages app, Notification Center, system-wide Sharing, Facebook integration, Dictation, AirPlay Mirroring and Game Center.
Facebook integration will be available in an upcoming software update to Mountain Lion, while Dictation supports English (US, UK and Australia), French, German and Japanese.
New features for China include significantly improved text input, a new Chinese Dictionary, easy setup with popular email providers, Baidu search in Safari, and built-in sharing to Sina Weibo and popular video websites Youku and Tudou.
Pricing & Availability
OS X Mountain Lion is available from the Mac App Store for S$25.98.
Mountain Lion requires Lion or Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6.8 or later), 2GB of memory and 8GB of available space.
A complete list of system requirements and compatible systems can be found here.
OS X Server requires Mountain Lion and is available from the Mac App Store for S$25.98.
The OS X Mountain Lion Up-to-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge from the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorised Reseller on or after 11 June, 2012.
Below are some of these key new features.
Apple has just announced its financial results for its fiscal 2012 third quarter ended 30 June, 2012. Profits missed analysts’ predictions.
Major news agencies reacted negatively towards Apple’s quarterly results.
Compared to analysts’ predictions for a profit of $10.37 a share on revenue of $37.2 billion, net income was reported as $9.32 a share on sales of $35 billion.
The major news agencies don’t seem to have taken the results in positive light.
The consensus seems to be that customers are holding off on iPhone purchases in anticipation of a new model, which is expected to be introduced later this year.
Shares fell some 6 percent in late trading.
This is the first full quarter of sales for Apple’s latest iPad, which was released in March.
Note the 84% growth in iPad sales over the same quarter last year.
Some 17 million iPads were sold in the quarter alone!
| Sales growth this quarter | ||
| Device | Number of units sold | Compared to year-ago quarter |
| iPhone | 26 m | 28% |
| iPad | 17 m | 84% |
| Mac | 4 m | 2% |
| iPod | 6.8 m | -10% |
It’s interesting to note the 10% decline in iPod sales.
It is an indication that it may be made redundant by the proliferation of smartphones which can fulfil the functions of a mobile personal music player cum entertainment device.
On the other hand, Sony is still launching new models in its rejuvenated Walkman media players cum entertainment devices.
Apple’s Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $2.65 per share of the Company’s common stock.
The dividend is payable on August 16, 2012, to stockholders of record as of the close of business on August 13, 2012.
This continues Tim Cook’s announcement in March to pay dividends – something that Apple had not done in 17 years until then.
The dividends are estimated to cost Apple about $10 billion a year.
Apple has around $100 billion in cash which many investors have called over the years to be returned to investors.
As usual, Apple has revealed a slew of statistics to illustrate how it is leading the field. Here are some of the more interesting numbers from WWDC 2012.
Apple and WWDC 2012 in numbers
There are now 650,000 apps in the App Store, out of which 225,000 are specific to the iPad.
In its four years of existence, 30 billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store, with US$5 billion for all app sales.
There are 400 million iTunes accounts with credit card. 140 million iMessage users send > 1 billion messages a day.
There are 365 million iOS devices out there, with 80% of these on the current latest iOS 5.
Apple contrast this with the Android’s profile, where slightly less than three-quarters of Android devices are still on Android 2.3.
To date, 26 million copies of Lion OS have been sold. Overall, there are 66 million Mac users.
A year ago, Steve Jobs made his last appearance at an Apple WWDC. This year, Tim Cook helms his first WWDC as Apple’s CEO.
Apple's WWDC 2012 is from 11-15 June in San Francisco.
The annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this year is being held from June 11 – 15 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. Tickets were sold out in a mere two hours when it went on sale in April.
Here’s a quick roundup of some of the revelations from the opening keynote presentation on first of the 5-day conference.
Newstead and Nubox will be at the PC Show 2012 at Suntec Singapore at the Level 3 Concourse.
Click on picture to view/download PC Show 2012 brochures from Newstead.
Here are seven brochures for Newstead’s PC Show 2012 promotions from Nubox, and bargains/deals offered by Newstead for computers from major computer makers Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Samsung and Toshiba.
Nubox opened its 11th store in Singapore at JCube (#02-12) today.
Nubox opened its 11th store in Singapore at JCube today.
JCube is located at 2 Jurong East Central 1.
Nubox rewards Facebook fans with Pixie Lott albums and passes to a private showcase and meet and greet session on May 18, 2012.
The private showcase for the 21-year-old British chart-topper will be jointly presented by Nubox at 7.30pm, Zirca, Clarke Quay.
A series of quizzes and contests is being held from now until May 7. To try your luck visit the Facebook page of Nubox.
Nubox is an Apple Premium Reseller and Apple Authorised Reseller company in Singapore.
It is an arm of Newstead Technologies and offers the entire range of Apple products from Macs, to iPods, iPhones and iPads to a wide range of accessories to complete the mobile media and computing experience.
Nubox was started by a small group of “Nuboxers” who are passionate about Macs and all things Apple.
The first Nubox opened in Sim Lim Square in 2008.
Today, Nubox has 11 stores in Sim Lim Square, Funan Digital Life Mall, Junction 8 Shopping Centre, Jurong Point Shopping Centre, Causeway Point, Raffles City Shopping Centre, Tampines Mall, nex Mall, MarinaBay Link Mall, 112Katong and JCube.
Trend Micro has released the results of its study on the four main mobile operating systems in a report titled “Enterprise Readiness of Consumer Mobile Platforms”.
The security firm found the BlackBerry 7 OS the most secure mobile operating system, followed by iOS 5, Windows Phone 7.5, and Android 2.3.
Summary chart from “Enterprise Readiness of Consumer Mobile Platforms” White Paper by Trend Micro.
Android 2.3 was used in the study because it was the dominant installed/supplied version of Google’s mobile OS at the time of the research.
Below is an excerpt from the White Paper summarising the findings about the four mobile platforms.
Get ready to be smoked by a Windows Phone?!
Today and tomorrow, prove to the Microsoft Windows Phone crew that your smartphone (of any make and OS) is faster than the Windows Phone and walk away S$100 richer.
The video above is from a similar “Smoked by Windows Phone” campaign in the US, showing challengers with Android smartphones and Apple’s iPhones.
Paul Foster and his Windows Phone crew will be hitting the roads in Singapore looking for challengers to the cash prize. Catch them at the following locations and timings.
| 9 March (Friday) | ||
| 11.30am – 1.30pm | Boat Quay / Raffles Place / Chevron House | |
| 2.30pm – 5.00pm | IT Show 2012, Level 6, Hall 602, Booth 6441 | |
| 5.30pm – 7.30pm | Raffles City / Marina Square | |
| 10 March (Saturday) | ||
| 11.30am – 1.30pm | Raffles City / Marina Square / Suntec City | |
| 2.30pm – 5.00pm | IT Show 2012, Level 6, Hall 602, Booth 6441 | |
| 5.30pm – 7.30pm | Bugis Junction / National Library / Sim Lim Square | |
