Other tablets might be making inroads into Apple’s dominance of the tablet market, but if the Ecommerce Quarterly released by Monetate this morning serves as any indication, they have a heck of a long way to go. As reported by Apple Insider, iPads account for a staggering nine out of 10 tablets used to access e-commerce sites in 2013′s first quarter. That’s down a mere 2.4 percent from last year during the same quarter.

All total, Monetate’s findings revealed that Apple’s iPad currently accounts for 89.28 percent of all tablet traffic to e-commerce sites. According to the report, during the same period Android tablet usage grew by 4.75 percent to grab an 8.20 percent share of the traffic, while the Amazon Kindle fell from 3.58 percent to 2.51 percent.

Image source: Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly report for Q1 2013/Apple Insider

In addition, the report revealed that iPad users are more likely to spend more online than users of others tablets, according to Monetate’s sampling of 500 million shopping experiences drawn from sites like Best Buy, Frontier Airlines, Aeropostale, The Sports Authority and PETCO. On average, individual Apple tablet users spent .05 while users of the Kindle and Android tablets averaged out at .48 and .58 respectively.

And business is apparently booming. The use of tablets to access ecommerce sites shot up from 5.95 percent to 10.58 percent in the year between the first quarters of 2012 and 2013, with tablets remaining slightly more popular than cell phones for browsing ecommerce sites. (Desktop computers unsurprisingly retain the edge here, with a 78.13 percent hold on the market in first quarter of 2013.)

Follow this article’s writer, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.

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Other tablets might be making inroads into Apple’s dominance of the tablet market, but if the Ecommerce Quarterly released by Monetate this morning serves as any indication, they have a heck of a long way to go. As reported by Apple Insider, iPads account for a staggering nine out of 10 tablets used to access e-commerce sites in 2013′s first quarter. That’s down a mere 2.4 percent from last year during the same quarter.

All total, Monetate’s findings revealed that Apple’s iPad currently accounts for 89.28 percent of all tablet traffic to e-commerce sites. According to the report, during the same period Android tablet usage grew by 4.75 percent to grab an 8.20 percent share of the traffic, while the Amazon Kindle fell from 3.58 percent to 2.51 percent.

Image source: Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly report for Q1 2013/Apple Insider

In addition, the report revealed that iPad users are more likely to spend more online than users of others tablets, according to Monetate’s sampling of 500 million shopping experiences drawn from sites like Best Buy, Frontier Airlines, Aeropostale, The Sports Authority and PETCO. On average, individual Apple tablet users spent .05 while users of the Kindle and Android tablets averaged out at .48 and .58 respectively.

And business is apparently booming. The use of tablets to access ecommerce sites shot up from 5.95 percent to 10.58 percent in the year between the first quarters of 2012 and 2013, with tablets remaining slightly more popular than cell phones for browsing ecommerce sites. (Desktop computers unsurprisingly retain the edge here, with a 78.13 percent hold on the market in first quarter of 2013.)

Follow this article’s writer, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.

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Apple seems to be the target of government and media criticism, once again, for operating the same way every other company in the industry operates. Why does Apple get held to a higher standard in the headlines and in the Senate than its competition? And isn’t there anyone willing to suggest that perhaps this treatment is not entirely fair? Of course there is.

U.S. Senate vs. Apple

On Monday, the New York Times published a report detailing Apple’s off-shore tax practices, just in time to stir up public opinion for scheduled testimony from Apple to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday. The article detailed the amount of money Apple allegedly avoided paying in taxes, and included several flamboyant comments from Senators and law professors who had plenty of snarky things to say about Cupertino. Also included in the article was a brief mention that Apple’s tax practices are basically the exact same things being done by others in the tech industry, including Google, Amazon, and Yahoo, but the focus of the piece was to paint Apple as a legal-yet-problematic tax avoider.

In preparation for the hearing, Apple published a pair of documents featuring the opening statements of Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook (PDF) and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer (PDF). The statements focus on Apple’s significant contributions to the US economy and defend overseas business practices. Oppenheimer’s statement even details how close Apple came to disappearing forever in the late ’90s by reminding the committee “I can tell you firsthand, we were facing the very real possibility of a world without Apple.” 

The Senators present at the hearing, however, picked up right where the NYT article left off, and blistered Apple with what the Washington Post called “righteous indignation.” All of the Senators, that is, except for one: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

Don’t make me filibuster up in here.

“Frankly, I’m offended by the tone and tenor of this hearing,” Sen. Paul stated. “I’m offended by a trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one of America’s greatest success stories.”

Sen. Paul went on to point the finger at his colleagues, stating that Apple was operating as best it could inside of a severely flawed tax system that Congress has done nothing to fix.  ”If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress,” Sen. Paul continued. “I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple. The Congress should be on trial here for creating a Byzantine and bizarre tax code.”

In a long prepared testimony, though not as long as others he has provided, Sen. Paul made clear that Apple was not being accused of violating any laws whatsoever, and implied that the entire hearing, much like the NYT piece that preceded it, was being done for hype and publicity.

“This committee will admit: Apple has not broken any laws,” Paul said. “Yet they are forced into a show trial at the whims of politicians, when in fact; Congress should be on trial for chasing the profits of great American companies overseas.” 

Sen. Paul went on to pose the rhetorical question, “You haul before this committee one of America’s greatest success stories, and you want applause?”

Clearly Apple could not have originated or prospered without the talent and infrastructure that exists in the U.S., and the shell-game accounting methods that Cupertino uses to shelter taxes feel somewhat ungrateful. But singling out Apple as a problem while glossing over the fact that this is what many U.S. tech companies do, and ignoring the fact that the bigger problem lies in the tax code itself, seems disingenuous and self-serving. 

In this situation, if anyone deserves applause for calling out the hypocrisy and speaking the truth, it is Sen. Rand Paul.

Follow the writer, Adrian Hoppel, on Facebook.

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Apple seems to be the target of government and media criticism, once again, for operating the same way every other company in the industry operates. Why does Apple get held to a higher standard in the headlines and in the Senate than its competition? And isn’t there anyone willing to suggest that perhaps this treatment is not entirely fair? Of course there is.

U.S. Senate vs. Apple

On Monday, the New York Times published a report detailing Apple’s off-shore tax practices, just in time to stir up public opinion for scheduled testimony from Apple to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday. The article detailed the amount of money Apple allegedly avoided paying in taxes, and included several flamboyant comments from Senators and law professors who had plenty of snarky things to say about Cupertino. Also included in the article was a brief mention that Apple’s tax practices are basically the exact same things being done by others in the tech industry, including Google, Amazon, and Yahoo, but the focus of the piece was to paint Apple as a legal-yet-problematic tax avoider.

In preparation for the hearing, Apple published a pair of documents featuring the opening statements of Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook (PDF) and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer (PDF). The statements focus on Apple’s significant contributions to the US economy and defend overseas business practices. Oppenheimer’s statement even details how close Apple came to disappearing forever in the late ’90s by reminding the committee “I can tell you firsthand, we were facing the very real possibility of a world without Apple.” 

The Senators present at the hearing, however, picked up right where the NYT article left off, and blistered Apple with what the Washington Post called “righteous indignation.” All of the Senators, that is, except for one: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

Don’t make me filibuster up in here.

“Frankly, I’m offended by the tone and tenor of this hearing,” Sen. Paul stated. “I’m offended by a trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one of America’s greatest success stories.”

Sen. Paul went on to point the finger at his colleagues, stating that Apple was operating as best it could inside of a severely flawed tax system that Congress has done nothing to fix.  ”If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress,” Sen. Paul continued. “I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple. The Congress should be on trial here for creating a Byzantine and bizarre tax code.”

In a long prepared testimony, though not as long as others he has provided, Sen. Paul made clear that Apple was not being accused of violating any laws whatsoever, and implied that the entire hearing, much like the NYT piece that preceded it, was being done for hype and publicity.

“This committee will admit: Apple has not broken any laws,” Paul said. “Yet they are forced into a show trial at the whims of politicians, when in fact; Congress should be on trial for chasing the profits of great American companies overseas.” 

Sen. Paul went on to pose the rhetorical question, “You haul before this committee one of America’s greatest success stories, and you want applause?”

Clearly Apple could not have originated or prospered without the talent and infrastructure that exists in the U.S., and the shell-game accounting methods that Cupertino uses to shelter taxes feel somewhat ungrateful. But singling out Apple as a problem while glossing over the fact that this is what many U.S. tech companies do, and ignoring the fact that the bigger problem lies in the tax code itself, seems disingenuous and self-serving. 

In this situation, if anyone deserves applause for calling out the hypocrisy and speaking the truth, it is Sen. Rand Paul.

Follow the writer, Adrian Hoppel, on Facebook.

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Author: BBC

A U.S. Senate subcommittee may have spent the better part of Tuesday grilling Apple executives over untaxed offshore fortunes, but Cupertino isn’t the only tech company taking advantage of the same loophole.

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that search giant Google Inc. is among a long list of companies who, like Apple, have set up corporations in Ireland as a way to avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes on income made offshore.

Even as the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations puts pressure on Apple to pay income tax on billion made overseas during the last four years, it turns out that Google and Yahoo! are both guilty of the same tactics.

In Google’s case, Mountain View established a pair of tax shelters in Ireland and the Netherlands, referred to as “Double Irish” and “Dutch Sandwich” by tax attorneys. According to the company’s own filings, Google avoids billion in income tax payments to the U.S. each year by shifting profits to Bermuda — a country with no corporate income tax.

Yahoo! also has an Irish subsidiary where its overseas profits are deposited, but claims to be a tax resident of the Cayman Islands rather than Ireland. The report notes that profits totaling “hundreds of million of dollars” have been funneled through the suburban home of the company’s Dutch bookkeeper, where it eventually lands with subsidiaries based on Mauritius and Switzerland.

Apple executives were quick to note that the company does not hold money in the Caribbean as Google and Yahoo! have done, and current U.S. tax laws are based on where a company is incorporated, not where it is actually managed.

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

(Image courtesy of Intuit)

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Author: BBC

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Author: BBC

The biggest news to come out of the tech world this morning was easily Microsoft’s announcement of its new Xbox One console (along with the 9 percent spike in Sony’s stock price during the reveal). Surprisingly, the upcoming release of Microsoft’s new gaming console brings with it some good news for iOS users as well. Specifically, Xbox’s SmartGlass application will be “fully integrated” with Microsoft’s new console, thus allowing users of iPhones and iPads to connect seamlessly with the next generation of Microsoft’s popular console series.

Introduced last year and allegedly downloaded by over 10 million people, SmartGlass currently allows users to interact with their Xbox 360 consoles in a number of limited ways, such as using the iPhone’s keyboard to type onscreen (a significant improvement over the hunt-and-peck nature of gamepad-based input), watching videos, and navigating menus. It’s a little gimmicky in its current implementation, as specialized apps such as HBO Go and Netflix arguably do a better job with the video services.

Currently, it’s not too clear what Microsoft’s “fully integrated” service entails. According to an article from Wired this morning, future versions of SmartGlass will let users turn their iPhones or iPads into a “skeuomorphic remote control, able to emulate any other control device.” The Verge also announced that “We’ve also learned that it’ll let more devices connect at once for multiplayer and shared experiences,” but failed to elaborate. That’s not terribly different from SmartGlass’s current design, however, although other features might make it worth checking out for Xbox fans with iDevices.

Further details are expected to be revealed at this year’s E3 conference in Los Angeles from June 11-13.

Follow this article’s author, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.

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