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Apple unveils two new iPhones -- the 5S and 5C

Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the company's iPhone press event before several hundred reporters and guests Tuesday at the Apple campus in Cupertino, California.

Cupertino, California (CNN) -- For the first time ever, Apple unveiled two new iPhones on Tuesday, a traditional upgrade of its iPhone 5 as well as a simpler, cheaper version.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C are a reaction to a changing smartphone market.

"Business has become so large that this year we are going to replace the iPhone 5 and we're going to replace it with not one, but two new designs," Cook said. "This allows us to serve even more customers."

The iPhone 5C was the first phone demoed at Tuesday's event at Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters.

"It has an incredible all new design, one that's more fun, more colorful than any iPhone we've made yet," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for marketing. In a video, Apple design guru Jonny Ive described the 5C as "beautifully, unapologetically plastic."

The phone will sell for as little as $99, for a 16GB version, and $199 for one with 32GB of storage (each with a two-year mobile contract). In a departure, Apple will also be making its own cases for the 5C, selling them in a variety of colors for $29.

Then there's the iPhone 5S, which is the more traditional update to the iPhone 5.

"It is the gold standard in smartphones," Schiller said.

Read: Is Apple's new iPhone iOS 7 good for travelers?

The 5S features a handful of performance upgrades, including what Apple calls a dramatic increase in processing speed.

It will have the first 64-bit chip in a smartphone -- Apple's A7 -- which Schiller said has tested at up to twice as fast as the iPhone 5's processor. It also will have a new feature, a motion co-processor, that will let the phone be used as a fitness tracker along the lines of a FitBit.

Schiller said battery life will be "the same or better" than the iPhone 5 and its camera will have 15% more active sensor space, improved white balance and auto-focus, and a new flash.

Also, its camera will, for the first time on iPhone, allow video in slow motion.

Arguably the most dramatic new feature on the phone, though, is Touch ID, a fingerprint scanner for added security. Users will be able to log into their phone via the home button and make purchases from iTunes using their fingerprint as a password of sorts.

The iPhone 5S will sell for $199 for a 16GB version, $299 for a 32GB model and $399 for the top-end 64GB phone.

Pre-orders for the iPhone 5C starts on September 13. Both versions are on sale starting September 20. Cook also announced the newest version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 7, will be released to the public on September 18.

Read: Apple launches iPhone trade-in program

It will have over 200 new features, according to Apple, including the ability to switch voice-activated digital assistant Siri to a male voice.

The iPhone has remained the world's top-selling smartphone, save for a few quarters when it was dethroned by phones in Samsung's Galaxy S line. But after making up nearly 24% of all smartphones sold in late 2011, Apple's device is now down to about 14%, while Android phones account for a whopping 79%.

With the iPhone 5C, Apple is clearly looking to emerging markets like China and India, where a less expensive phone would, presumably, sell well to a massive potential customer base.

Historically, rollouts of new Apple products have been near-mystical affairs for fans. But as the smartphone market has matured, some analysts say the real excitement may need to come from other products.

"Apple needs a new 'hero product,' but I do not think it necessarily has to be a phone," Gartner technology analyst Carolina Milanesi told CNN. "With technology innovation slowing down, maybe they are better off turning iPhone into a market-share grabber and showing innovation in another product."

A likely candidate could be the company's anticipated "iWatch." Apple is all but certain to join the emerging smartwatch market that Samsung entered last week with its Galaxy Gear device.

Also, Apple has also long been rumored to be working on a TV set.

Vodafone and O2 begin limited roll-out of 4G networks

 

 

4G networks are designed to feed smartphone users' increasing hunger for data

Mobile networks Vodafone and O2 are rolling out their first 4G data services in three UK cities.

The networks will compete against EE, which has been the only company to offer "super-fast" mobile data in the UK since October 2012.
Vodafone's 4G will initially be limited to parts of London, while O2 will launch in London, Leeds and Bradford.
One analyst said this indicated the networks were "soft-pedalling" 4G and the UK could lag behind other nations.
Fourth-generation networks can provide data to smartphone users up to 10 times faster than standard 3G connections.

The US, Japan, Australia and South Korea have all widely adopted 4G, but mobile phone users in many parts of the UK may have to wait until the end of 2015 for comprehensive coverage.

Testing speeds EE was the first UK network to offer a 4G service, and now covers 105 towns and cities.
The company's early 4G launch prompted protests by rival providers, which claimed it gave the firm an unfair advantage.
But Steven Hartley, principal analyst at telecoms consultancy Ovum, accused Vodafone and O2 of taking a "very conservative approach" to 4G, at the expense of consumers.
"The UK's mobile networks are hedging their bets with 4G," he told the BBC. "They are trying the same strategy they used when they rolled out 3G, which is to offer 4G as a premium service to consumers, in an effort to move them onto expensive phone tariffs."
Mr Hartley added that even EE "could have been more aggressive commercially" in their deployment of 4G.
A report earlier this month by industry regulator Ofcom found that UK consumers have a limited appetite for 4G, with almost a quarter of smartphone users saying they did not see the benefit of moving to the superfast network.

 

 

Vodafone's 4G service will initially only be available in some areas of London

Ofcom sale Three, the last major network to provide 4G, will launch its service in London, Birmingham and Manchester in December.
The company said it would offer 4G to its existing customers at no extra cost, and would offer unlimited data packages, although full details of the roll-out beyond the three cities are still to be announced.
The race to provide 4G services has been ongoing since October 2012, when Ofcom, the industry regulator, allowed EE to re-license some of its existing bandwidth to provide 4G.
After an auction in February, Ofcom sold spectrum space to O2, Vodafone, Three and BT.
Spectrum gambles The key difference between the 4G providers is the spectrum bands they bought for their services.
Bands on the lower end of the spectrum offer further-reaching signals, but can support fewer individual data users, whereas higher spectrum bands can deliver data to more people data but have a shorter reach.

What is 4G?

• 4G is the latest technology for connecting to the Internet without a wi-fi connection
• It follows on from 3G and could be 5-7 times quicker. Almost as fast as home broadband
• Only certain, newer mobile handsets can use 4G networks
• 3G will still function on other handsets
• Ofcom wants 98% of the UK to have 4G coverage by the end of 2017

SOURCE: BBC Consumer
How much mobile data am I using?

There are three spectrum bandwidths available to networks looking to provide 4G services:

• The 800MHz band previously used for TV signals. This low frequency spectrum is best for providing long-distance 4G services, helping give access to the countryside, as well as offering superior indoor coverage.
• The 1.8GHz band, previously used for 2G and 3G networks, but can be reassigned for 4G.
• The 2.6GHz band, which had previously been used by operators of cord-free video cameras to send back footage of live events, including London's Olympic Games. The high frequency can deliver faster speeds across smaller distances, making it best suited for densely populated cities.

EE built its 4G network by re-appropriating some of the 1.8GHz spectrum bandwidth previously used for its 2G and 3G services. It has since bought space on both the 800Mhz and 2.6Ghz bands.
Vodafone paid the most for its spectrum bands, buying part of the 800Mhz and 2.6GHz bands for just over £790m.
O2 paid £550m for part of the 800MHz spectrum and Three paid £225m for other parts of the same band.
Limited appeal

 

 

The 2.6GHz band used by Vodafone's 4G was used by mobile cameramen at London 2012

Both Vodafone and O2 are offering added extras such as football highlights and streaming music to try and lure customers to their 4G contracts.
Stuart Orr, managing director of communications industry at Accenture, said these tactics showed 4G was not attractive enough as a standalone product.
"The move by Vodafone to package Sky Sports and Spotify in with its new 4G offering shows that operators know they have to demonstrate what new 4G services mean immediately for consumers and why they should pay more," he told the BBC.
All of the UK networks have pledged to widen their 4G offering within the next couple of years.
O2 said it would roll out 4G in a further 10 cities by the end of the year, while Vodafone plans to be in a further 12.
Three said its 4G would be available in 50 UK cities by the end of 2014.

Nasdaq admits partial blame for trading freeze

 

 

 The Nasdaq is the second-largest US stock exchange

The company behind the Nasdaq has admitted partial responsibility for a three-hour freeze in trading on the tech stock exchange last week.

But Nasdaq OMX also pointed the finger at rivals NYSE Euronext, blaming them for overwhelming Nasdaq's systems.
NYSE's Arca system sent "a stream of inaccurate symbols", and cut out over 20 times, swamping Nasdaq's computers.
Nasdaq was "deeply disappointed" that its back-up systems failed to handle the data volume. NYSE made no comment.
"Our backup system did not work" chief executive Bob Greifeld admitted in an interview.
"There was a bug in the system... and we need to work hard to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Nasdaq said it would report to regulators within 30 days on how it intends to fix its "securities information processor" (SIP) to make sure the problem would not be repeated.
'Latent flaw' The stock exchange, which specialises in the trading of shares in US technology firms, said that the data traffic generated by Arca on the morning of 22 August was double what the SIP's data ports were able to handle.
Each time Arca tried to reconnect it sent a burst of data, peaking at over 26,000 quote updates per data port per second. This compared with a daily average of just 1,000 updates per second.
"The confluence of these events vastly exceeded the SIP's planned capacity, which caused its failure and then revealed a latent flaw in the SIP's software code," the stock exchange said.
The glitch was fixed within 30 minutes, but three hours were required to complete testing before the market could open.
The glitch highlights the continuing problem of high-speed accidents, as the world's stock exchanges are increasingly dominated by automated trading controlled by computer algorithms rather than human beings.
Last Friday, the Nasdaq's Mr Greifeld alluded in an interview to outside parties as being behind the problems, implying that these may include computerised trading firms as well as rival stock exchanges.
"We have to be aware that the other person will not always act in the proper way," he told news channel CNBC, specifically mentioning high-frequency traders - financial firms that buy and sell thousands of times a second, using computers to take advantage of tiny price discrepancies between the different stock exchanges.
"We have 13 different exchanges, we have hundreds of market participants, we are all interconnected in a number of fundamental ways," the Nasdaq boss said.

Ben Affleck to play Batman in 2015 Superman sequel

Ben Affleck has been cast as Batman in a forthcoming Superman sequel, bringing together the two superheroes in one film for the first time.

The 41-year-old will star opposite British actor Henry Cavill, who will reprise his role as Superman from the most recent film, Man of Steel.
Director Zack Snyder revealed the big screen superhero mash-up at a comic convention in San Diego last month.
Production is expected to begin next year for release in the summer of 2015.
"We knew we needed an extraordinary actor to take on one of DC Comics' most enduringly popular super heroes, and Ben Affleck certainly fits that bill and then some," Warner Bros President Greg Silverman said in a statement.
Mr Snyder, who also directed Man of Steel, said in a statement that Mr Affleck will provide an "interesting counter-balance" to 31-year old Cavill's Clark Kent.
"(Affleck) has the acting chops to create a layered portrayal of a man who is older and wiser than Clark Kent and bears the scars of a seasoned crime fighter, but retain the charm that the world sees in billionaire Bruce Wayne," said Snyder. "I can't wait to work with him."
The sequel - which has yet to be given a title - will reunite Man of Steel stars Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Laurence Fishburne (Perry White) and Diane Lane (Martha Kent).

 

 

 The two superheroes will debut in the same film in 2015

Christian Bale most recently played Batman in director Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.
Michael Keaton and George Clooney have also donned the black mask and cape in previous Batman films.
Ben Affleck's film Argo, which he starred in and directed, won an Academy Award for best picture earlier this year.
The superhero genre is not new to Mr Affleck, who previously starred as the blind hero in the 2003 Daredevil film based on the Marvel Comics.
Batman and Superman are part of DC Comics universe, which is part of the Warner Bros Entertainment division.
Revenues from the latest films featuring Superman and Batman have exceeded $1bn (£655m) in recent years.

Gilbert Taylor, Star Wars cinematographer, dies aged 99

 

 

Gilbert Taylor, pictured here in 2009, said he would most like to be remembered for his work on Dr Strangelove

Gilbert Taylor, the veteran British cinematographer of Star Wars, The Omen and Dr Strangelove, has died aged 99.

According to his wife Dee, he died on Friday with his family at his bedside at his home on the Isle of Wight.
Born in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire in 1914, Taylor entered the film industry in 1929 as a camera assistant, working at Gainsborough Studios in London.
His many credits include Ice Cold in Alex, the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night and Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy.
He also worked with Roman Polanski on such films as Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac, for which he received back-to-back Bafta nominations in consecutive years.

 

 

The cinematographer said he wanted Star Wars to have a "unique visual style"

According to his wife, Taylor "turned down a Bond picture" to work with Polanski, "because he thought Roman was a very interesting guy".
"The three of us became very firm friends, and we've been friends until this day."
'Sheer magic' Taylor had a hand in the special effects for 1955 classic The Dam Busters and was director of photography on the 1980 fantasy Flash Gordon.
To many, though, he will be best remembered for his contribution to the first Star Wars film, on which he worked under the auspices of director George Lucas.
"George avoided all meetings and contact with me from day one," Taylor would later tell American Cinematographer magazine.
"So I read the extra-long script many times and made my own decisions as to how I would shoot the picture."
Taylor would have happier memories of his time photographing Ken Adam's famous War Room set for Doctor Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's 1964 Cold War satire.
"Lighting that set was sheer magic," he later recalled. "I don't quite know how I got away with it all."

Taylor was hired by Roman Polanski on the basis of his work on Dr Strangelove

Taylor's distinguished career included six years with the Royal Air Force during World War II, shooting the results of night-time raids over Germany at the request of Winston Churchill.
He went on to become a founder member of the British Society of Cinematographers, which presented him with a lifetime achievement award in 2001.
Taylor also worked on television, shooting episodes for such 1960s series as The Avengers and The Baron.

 

Dee Taylor

He stopped making feature films in 1994 but continued to shoot commercials while turning his hand to painting.

Speaking to the BBC News website on Friday, Gilbert's widow said their life together had been "a Technicolor dream".
Dee, a script supervisor, was 23 years his junior. They met on the set of the 1963 Tony Hancock film The Punch and Judy Man and married four years later.
They continued to work together for the rest of their lives. When the British film industry went through hard times in the mid-1970s, they set up a dairy farm with 250 cattle.
Mrs Taylor remembered her late husband as "wonderful, kind, funny, amusing [and] terribly talented in every aspect".
"There was nothing he couldn't do," she told the BBC.

When he speaks, global markets shudder

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

When US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke whispers, the world seems to hang on his every word. Stocks across the globe flinch if Bernanke so much as hints at a change to US monetary policy.

The Bank of England decides to keep benchmark interest rates low until unemployment falls.

US Fed sees pick-up in US growth

Signs of a healthier economy could lead the US Federal Reserve to slow its bond purchases.

But stock market sage, prognosticator or saviour isn’t exactly the role of the Fed — or any central bank for that matter. So how, exactly, did the global economy reach the point that one person seems to hold so much power over markets — where even concern over what might possibly be said can send stocks in Asia into decline hours before Bernanke and his Fed colleagues have even hit the snooze button on their alarm clocks?
It wasn’t always this way. Sure, the US economy has long been a powerful force in the world economy — the adage that when America sneezes, Europe catches a cold has been around since the Wall Street Crash of 1929 when the stock market crash that occurred before the Great Depression drastically impacted Europe.
But, as business has become increasingly global, the way money moves around the world via bank lending and equity markets have also become much more highly intertwined. That was infinitely evident during the global financial crisis and the housing market collapse, which were felt acutely in the US before quickly spreading to economies and markets around the world.
“In recent times, markets have gone up and down together,” said Barry Bosworth, economist at the Brookings Institute. “Money flows across borders and interest rates move together. Trade and finance have converted a set of (separate) international economies to a global economy.”

The obsession that equity markets have with the Fed right now is irrational. — Aswath Damodaran

Never mind that the US Fed’s real mandate is simply to keep prices stable and unemployment low in the US. The US Fed controls the price of money, or inflation, by setting interest rates, essentially controlling the cost to borrow in the US. Interest rates, which also determine exchange rates, are integral to worldwide trade.
“The US economy is roughly 20% of the global economy — whatever happens in the US influences the global economy,” said David Joy, chief market strategist of Ameriprise Financial, Inc.
What, exactly, does the Fed do? How did it accidentally get into the stock market saviour business? And what’s next on the Fed whisper chain? Great questions.

The all-powerful easing
The Fed controls the money supply in the US, the same way the European Central Bank does in the eurozone.
The Fed sets short-term rates, but with that rate at a bottom of 0.25% since December 2008, the Fed has used quantitative easing to increase the money supply. In short, the Fed buys bonds or, more recently, mortgage-backed securities, in an effort to lower long-term rates. Low rates, in turn, encourage investors to buy riskier assets like stocks and that drives up asset prices.
When riskier assets, like equities, increase in value, investment portfolios get fatter. In turn, people feel better about the future. That “wealth effect” prompts consumers to spend, said Ryan Sweet, a director at Moody's Analytics.
Lower long-term rates also sparked the US housing market recovery. “The US housing market directly and indirectly affects over one-third of the US economy, so creating demand in the housing market has ‘big bang for the buck’ if you are a central banker,” wrote chartered financial analyst Jason Voss, content director at the CFA Institute, in an email.

Dangerous obsession?
What does all this focus on the Fed and interest rates have to do with stock market — in the US or abroad? It’s part mystery, part unhealthy obsession, say experts.
Fundamentals, like growth and risk, are what should drive corporate earnings and in turn, stock prices, said Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. But, you wouldn’t know it from the hair-trigger reaction that equities have to Bernanke and other Fed officials.
“The obsession that equity markets have with the Fed right now is irrational. (It) makes no sense — it’s misplaced and dangerous,” Damodaran said.
Nevertheless, markets across the globe have reacted to Bernanke’s words — even when they are vague. Just this week, concerns that the Fed would begin tapering its bond purchases later this year sent US stock futures down Wednesday before the market opened and also weighed on Asian markets.
Many experts say the Bernanke market jitters are silliness. First off, a rise in interest rates would signal the US economy doesn’t need as much handholding to keep growing. The Fed will eventually let the bonds and mortgage-backed securities purchased through three rounds of quantitative easing roll off its balance sheet — something it says it will do when unemployment and inflation are heading in the right direction. Some stock market observers say it’s the fear of this unwinding that has the market roiled when Bernanke speaks. But it will take time for the Fed to offload the securities it has purchased, said Sweet. At first, the Fed will simply buy less each month until it stops buying securities altogether. But it could take a decade for Fed to unwind its balance sheet.
Exactly when this tapering will begin is a bit of a mystery — and may be one reason markets are so sensitive to even the slightest whispers of change from Bernanke or other Federal Reserve officials.
Of course, the macro economy is complex and multilayered. That’s one reason it’s so hard to discern when small changes will create large ripples in the market or otherwise, said Damodaran.
“These days, there’s no big hedge except to be as diversified as possible,” Bosworth said. “It’s a trade off between the rate of return and risk.”