Image: Mock Up Not Real

Foxconn, Apple’s Taiwanese iPhone manufacturer, has reportedly received an order to build the next-generation handset, likely to arrive in mid-2010.

Eldar Murtazin, editor in chief of Mobile Review, broke the news on his Twitter account Thursday in a brief, singular post: “Foxconn received order for next generation iphone.” As noted by Engadget, Murtazin is the “ultimate insider” for news in the mobile phone world.

The timing makes sense, as Apple’s first three iPhone product debuts hit a June launch. For Apple to ramp up the production of millions of handsets in time for a global debut would take a significant amount of time. Read more…

Apple this week revealed the most critically acclaimed and best selling content of the year in the iTunes Store, the world’s most popular online music seller and mobile application destination.

iTunes Rewind 2009 is a feature on the iTunes Store that gives a glimpse into trends for the duration of the year. Content is presented as an editorially chosen “Best of 2009,” along with a list of the year’s “Top Sellers.”

But while Apple numbered individual songs in terms of sales rank for the year, App Store software for the iPhone and iPod touch is not as clearly defined.

Instead, the “Top Sellers” for 2009 in the App Store are divided into two sections: Games and Apps. Featured games among the top sellers are The Sims 3, The Oregon Trail, Madden NFL 10 and Flight Control. Among the top selling apps are MLB.com at Bat, Textfree Unlimited, ColorSplash and The Moron Test. None of the software listed are free downloads. Read more…

Molinker, the prolific Chinese development company behind numerous iPhone apps, saw all its titles pulled from the App Store on Sunday after an attentive user noted that most – if not all – of its five-starreviews appeared to be fake. The scam caused over 1,000 apps – nearly 1% of all of the titles on the App Store – to disappear at once.

The user, “SCW,” contacted a Glyn Evans of the iphoneography blog whom he knew to have contacts at Apple top management. SCW had noted something odd about the glowing (and poorly written) reviews of the “NightCam Pro” app and went through the applications offered by Molinker. As many as 90% of the reviews on some of their applications appeared to be written by a group of people who only reviewed Molinker applications. On “NightCam Pro”, for example, 42 of the 44 5-starreviews appeared to be fake.
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Slashdot reported last week on research published by Swiss iPhone developer Nicolas Seriot about security holes in unjailbroken – that’s UNjailbroken – iPhones that could potentially compromise email accounts, browser history and even keytaps held in cache. The closed and unmodifiable nature of the stock iPhone OS means that malware could be carried by any app: even one legitimately purchased and downloaded from the App Store.
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Apple’s surprise purchase of music streaming service Lala last week has been given an unconfirmed price tag of about $80 million, placing a premium on the company.

Citing multiple sources, Peter Kafka of MediaMemo reported Monday that Apple’s acquisition price was less than half of what investors agreed to pay in 2008. However, it is more than the $35 million the company had raised, meaning some — but not all — could see a return on their investment in the company.
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Ever since Apple rolled out their iPod touch based EasyPay POS to some of it’s retail stores they have been flooded with inquires from other retailers looking to get in on the Apple goodness. It was just a a few short weeks ago that certain Apple retail stores ditched their crash prone Windows CE + stylus based EasyPay point-of-sale devices and since then it has raised the curiosity of other retailers. Read more…

Apple has begun introducing the iPhone to Asia with varying results. After a slow launch in China, the iPhone and App Store are now doing well, despite the lack of Wi-Fi and an active black market. In Korea, however, enthusiastic customers are snapping them up.

Some customers lined up as much as 26 hours in advance, and were rewarded with balloons and a live band once sales began. According to CNNMoney, carrier KT Corp. received approximately 65,000 pre-orders. Read more…

In a strange twist of events, the CrunchPad tablet ready for its unveiling on November 10th is now dead.

Michael Arrington describes the turn of events and a partnership gone bad…

Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.
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Qualcomm is talks with Apple for interest in future cooperation due to its concern about market share in the high end handset segment, reports DigiTimes.

Qualcomm is supplying handset chips to Korea-based Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics (LGE) and Taiwan-based High Tech Computer (HTC). However, none of the most popular smartphones – iPhone, Blackberry and Palm Pre –adopt Qualcomm’s 3G solutions. On the other hand, Motorola has a tight relationship with Freescale Semiconductor, while Nokia and Sony Ericsson are more likely to give ST-Ericsson priority on their supplier lists, the sources indicated.

Recently it was rumored that Apple will produce a new hybrid phone which will work will all global handset carriers whether UMTS or CDMA. Qualcomm has announced such a chip but its not likely to ship until 2011.

Via iclarified.com

Apple is gonna be pissed about this one, but I hope they now accept that jailbreaking their i-products makes them so much better. Below is a commercial for the all new 2010 Kia Sorento and to my surprise theres a jailbroken ipod touch with cydia and winterboard installed in the dock ipod dock of the car shown at the 42 sec mark of the video check it out:

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