HP has had some tough times in the past year – after their then-CEO Leo Apotheker announced that HP would be stepping out of the PC game, their sales figures took a small dive, but luckily he got ousted before such rash moves. HP is now once again back in the number one spot when it comes to overall PC sales worldwide.

Canalis’s research now starts to include tablet devices under PC sales, and Apple’s iPad sales has contributed significantly to Apple’s sales numbers, but even so, HP’s sales was slightly higher overall. So Apple was in second place, Lenovo in third (with big increases in sales) and Acer and Dell taking the fourth and fifth spots.

What is clear however, is that tablet devices has started to eat away at the previously very popular netbook market:

“The total client PC market grew by 21% to 107 million units. Importantly, while the pad category exhibited the highest growth – more than 200% year on year – notebook and desktop PC shipments were up too, rising 11% and 8% respectively. Netbook shipments, however, were down 34% on the year-ago quarter – the sixth such fall in succession.”

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Pricing for the new iPad 3 (or just “the new iPad”) has just been announced by the Core group, and the pricing is similiar to what iPad 2 pricing was before it was discounted to clear stock for the iPad 3rd Generation. With pricing starting at R5000 for the base 16GB model with Wifi, we reckon it is still very good value for money. The new iPad launches on 27 April, and here is the full pricing rundown:

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Good news to all the Apple fans who have been holding out to get the new Retina display sporting iPad 3rd generation. In a few short weeks it will officially be available in SA.

On Friday, April 27, the new iPad will also become available in Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa, and Thailand.

However, be aware, that even though “the new iPad” will have 4G capable radios, it will only reach 3G speeds on South African networks. We recently posted our review of the “resolutionary” tablet, and we are still confident in recommending it as the best tablet on the market. The major upgrade is of course the incredible new high resolution display, which even in its 10 inch size, has a million more pixels than your large screen Full HD display TV! Magazines look especially good.

Apple is also marketing the older iPad 2 in a cheaper $399 model, but we do not know whether Core will be bringing in this more affordable model.

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Not everyone needs the brilliant new Retina display on the “new” iPad, and the iPad 2 is more than enough for many. Then it is good news that Core (and one of their resellers Digicape) has decided to drop the price of the iPad 2 in SA, across all models. Even though Apple is going to keep the low end 16GB iPad 2 concurrently on sale for the time being, these price cuts mean that you can still get hold of 32GB and 64GB models.

Here is some of the new pricing for the iPad 2:

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The rumours were off the charts once again, but as always, we can only be sure once the official launch happens. So what did Apple actually announce? Were we off target in our predictions?

• iOS 5.1 should roll out today. It should be easy enough to update – simply go to Settings – General – Software Update. Be warned though – its a 260MB download, and you need 1GB free on your device.
• iCloud now supporst Movies in the Cloud. US Only of course.

• New Apple TV announced by Eddy Cue. Finally 1080p support. Much more “app-like” interface. New Apple TV has better iCloud integration. No talk on whether these features will come to the previous AppleTV. Same price as before, $99.
• iPad – 15.4 mil sold in Q4 2011. Tim Cook shows how app experience on other tablets are sub-par compared to iPad.

Before the iPhone there was not much talk of “apps” (rather applications), but now it is a very common term for small applications which many of us install on our phones. Apple’s App store concept was so successful that other manufacturers quickly copied it for their own platforms, some more successful than others.

This past weekend the Apple App store just crossed the 25 billion mark for apps downloaded. Apple gave a $10,000 App store gift certificate to the person who downloaded that magic number, and we really wonder how you can spend $10,000 in the App store. Hopefully it is the entire Apple ecosystem.

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WeatherSA.co.za, the online hub of the South African Weather Service, has unveiled a brand new weather application for all iOS devices, including the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The app is designed with South African users in mind, and supported by the South African Weather Service.

Several of the app features are a first for South Africa, such as storm warnings and push notifications, which are sent directly to the user’s device daily. Other highlights of the application include breaking news alerts, seven day tables of weather across the country, an outlook for various outdoor and sports activities, sunrise, sunset and moonrise times as well as hourly and weekly graphs covering rain, wind, temperature, pressure and humidity.

The WeatherSA app will be available as a free download and allows users to customise the weather notices sent to their device(s), from daily to weekly forecasts and local news to national warnings and provincial forecasts. The app can also predict the best time of day for outdoor activities such as cycling, swimming and going for a jog, making it the perfect lifestyle accessory.

One of the most novel features of the WeatherSA app is the ability for users to share alerts with their contacts via email, Twitter or Facebook, which links in perfectly with WeatherSA’s broad spectrum social media campaign. Their Facebook and Twitter pages will provide followers with daily updates, news and interesting information surrounding both the weather and lifestyle features.

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On Thursday Apple will hold a small event to show off its latest efforts in the education market. Most sources seem to agree that the event will focus on ways in which textbooks can be brought into the digital age of tablets – but Apple might have a few other tricks up its sleeve. The event might also focus on the announcement of new tools that can be used to create these digital textbooks.

The case for digital textbook has been around for a while. Textbooks are expensive to buy, expensive to print and also heavy to carry around. Imagine a student a few years from now just carrying around a tablet, which has his/her textbooks stored. But the aim is not purely to replace existing textbooks – the value will lie in what type of interactivity can be built into a digital textbook. Instead of static images you find in normal textbooks, textbook publishers can now build in interactive features that enable the reader to better understand a particular issue – think videos, 3D models, sound clips etc.

Traditional textbook publishers will probably show off what textbook experiences they are planning for the iPad, while Apple might show some new content creation tools that will make it easier than ever to publish for the iPad. Right now the digital publishing market is also ripe for revolution with publishers being forced to code apps from scratch, or to use tools like Adobe’s Folio Builder. If Apple can build an easy to use, but powerful tool to build interactive textbooks, it will create another market in which Apple can dominate. The iPad is already doing very well, but if Apple can convince publishers to publish exclusively to the iPad, we can expect to see many students to switch to iPads.

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