Of those old phones being put back onto the secondary market, the survey found that 49% were older iPhones, while 21% were BlackBerry smartphones and 15% were Android devices. Approximately two-thirds of those devices returned to the market were given away, with the remaining third having been sold.
According to the survey, 87% of those who sold or gave away their old iPhones expected the recipients to activate them for use, which CIRP estimates as representing 11% of carrier activations since last October. That number represents a boon for carriers, who do not have to pay subsidies to Apple on the used devices.

The research firm believes that, for every used iPhone that carriers activate, they save around $400. In the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, CIRP figures that secondary-market activations saved AT&T and Verizon between $400 million and $800 million in subsidy costs.

And while the strong market for used iPhones may seem like a detriment to Apple given that those users may be purchasing a used device offering no revenue for Apple rather than a new one, CIRP suggests that those low-priced used handsets are a common way to introduce new users to the iPhone ecosystem. That introduction then sets the users up for future purchases of new iPhones and other Apple products.

“It hurts Apple because it creates competition for new iPhones, which we see in the relatively modest sales of reduced-price iPhone 4 and free iPhone 3G units. But it also benefits the company because used iPhone customers aspire to own the newest and best iPhone, so they are likely future new phone customers. In fact, they are likely new entrants to the Apple ecosystem, who otherwise would not have found a way in.”

Beyond future hardware sales, the used iPhone market also increases the user base and market for apps and other iTunes Store content, with the device’s able to serve more good than if they had been discarded or forgotten in a drawer.

“In Great Britain, the U.S. and Australia, Apple’s new iPhone continues to fly off the shelf in the run-up to Christmas. However, this trend is far from universal,” said Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director.

Apple’s market share in the 12 weeks to end-November rose to 36 percent in the United States from 25 percent a year earlier and in Britain to 31 percent from 21 percent, Kantar said.

However, in France its share slipped to 20 percent from 29 percent and in Germany to 22 percent from 27 percent. Similar drops were seen in Italy and Spain.

The iPhone 4S debuted midway through the reporting period in most of the countries mentioned, although it did launch two weeks later in Italy and Spain. Consumer demand for the iPhone eased in the months leading up to the debut of the iPhone 4S amid high anticipation, but sales obviously surged with the release of the new hardware.

Kantar Worldpanel also reports its data as market share, and with the global smartphone market growing extremely quickly, iPhone sales are likely still rising in countries where Apple’s market share has dropped due to the influx of Android-based devices from a variety of manufacturers.

For the holiday quarter, Apple is projecting blockbuster revenue and earnings, with analysts pushing their iPhone estimates for the quarter into the range of 30 million units. That performance would shatter Apple’s current record for iPhone sales of just over 20 million units sold during the second calendar quarter of this year.

The “License” application by DriversEd.com for Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad allows users to electronically insert any digital photo and the biographic information of their choosing into a template for a driver’s license of a state of their choosing. The “License” application contains templates for driver’s licenses for all 50 states, many of which are of designs that will be valid for the next several years. The user is then able to send the high quality digital image of the completed template to an email account. From the email attachment, the image can then be printed and laminated, creating a high quality counterfeit driver’s license difficult to discern from one that’s genuine.

Casey reportedly noted in his letter that the ease with which the app allows counterfeit licenses to be produced poses significant risks related to identity theft, underage alcohol and tobacco purchases, and national security.

In his letter, Senator Casey stated that, “I believe this application poses a threat to public safety and national security…it can be used in a way that allows criminals to create a new identity, steal someone else’s identity, or permit underage youth to purchase alcohol or tobacco illegally. National security systems depend on the trustworthiness of driver’s licenses, yet with a counterfeit license created by the app, a terrorist could bypass identity verification by the Transportation Security Administration, or even apply for a passport.”

While the app had been available in the App Store for over two years, it appears that Apple has now quickly responded to Casey’s letter by removing the app from the App Store. The Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License had sent a letter to Apple’s Scott Forstall back in April, requesting removal of the application. Apple apparently did not, however, respond to that initial request.

This is not the first time that elected government officials have gotten involved in disputes over App Store applications. Earlier this year, a group of four U.S. senators sent letters to Apple, Google, and Research in Motion requesting removal of several apps that alert users to the locations of sobriety testing checkpoints. Apple took its time responding to the issue, which is considered controversial as some law enforcement agencies support public notification of the locations of such checkpoints. Ultimately, Apple updated its review guidelines to prohibit the use of DUI checkpoint location information except in cases where the information has been made publicly available by law enforcement.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced two new brand extensions to its globally recognized logo today in an effort to create consumer awareness around compatibility for new devices implementing Bluetooth v4.0 – the Bluetooth Smart Ready trademark and the Bluetooth Smart trademark. Bluetooth Smart Ready devices are phones, tablets, PCs and TVs that sit at the center of a consumer’s connected world and implement a Bluetooth v4.0 dual mode radio. Bluetooth Smart devices are sensor-type devices like heart-rate monitors or pedometers that run on button-cell batteries and were built to collect a specific piece of information. Bluetooth Smart devices include only a single-mode low energy Bluetooth v4.0 radio.

Bluetooth Smart has been promised as a way to allow devices to interact wirelessly using low-power standards, enabling countless new potential uses.

Bluetooth Smart devices are designed to gather a specific type of information—are all the windows on my house locked, what is my insulin level, how much do I weigh today?—and send it to a Bluetooth Smart Ready device.

Examples include heart-rate monitors, blood-glucose meters, smart watches, window and door security sensors, key fobs for your car, and blood-pressure cuffs—the opportunities are endless.

While the iPhone 4S is not yet able to make extensive use of the features specific to Bluetooth Smart due to a lack of peripheral single-mode Smart devices capable of transmitting data to the iPhone, it is clear the Bluetooth standards bearers and manufacturers will be quickly pushing forward to promote the adoption of Smart technology in a host of new product categories.

Beyond the iPhone 4S, Apple has also been building Bluetooth 4.0 support into several of its latest Mac lines, including the Mac mini and MacBook Air introduced back in July. Notably, today’s MacBook Pro update did not bring Bluetooth 4.0 support to that line, although the update was an extremely minor one that Apple is not even acknowledging as a refresh on its promotional product pages. Consequently, the update appears to have been limited to core “plug-and-play” features such as CPU, GPU, and hard drives that could be easily upgraded rather than features like new Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities that could require more significant engineering work.

Now it seems that an internal email has been sent to Sprint representatives, informing them that Apple and Sprint are working together on a “confirmed nationwide issue” dealing with the slow data rates many users are experiencing. There was no information about what the cause of the issues are or what the expected resolution date might be.

The email did contain a reference to a ‘Service Settings’ update, which sounds like it could be referring to the carrier settings file that contains access point info for the carriers.

The iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S broke Sprint’s “device family” one-day sales record on October 14, the first day the phones were available on the network.

The first model, which contained a 4200rpm, 1.8in Toshiba 5GB hard drive for storage, was announced on Tuesday, 23 October 2001, though didn’t find its way into buyers’ hands for another couple of weeks or so, on 10 November.

Early adopters were treated to a compact player – it was 101 x 61 x 20mm and weighed 186g – kitted out in the glossy white plastic that’s now indelibly associated with Apple’s music players, though the back panel was highly polished chrome-look stainless steel.

Yes, the now trademark white earphones first appeared bundled with the very first iPod. So too did Apple’s compact AC adaptor with a removable pin module to allow it to be connected to power sockets the world over.

Above the novel rotating mechanical navwheel – really the only innovation Apple’s first iPod brought to the portable music player market – was a 160 x 128 monochrome LCD showing iPod OS 1.0′s side-scrolling hierarchical menu structure. It had 32MB of Ram, enough to buffer data for 20 minutes, not only to provide skip protection but also to allow the player to spin down the hard drive and conserve power. It could, Apple claimed, play music for ten hours.

Aimed exclusively at Mac owners – and thereby limiting demand until a Windows-compatible version was launched a year-and-a-half later, in July 2002 – the first iPod, codenamed ‘Dulcimer’ during development, used Firewire 400 to connect to a host computer, transferring songs far more quickly than the then commonplace USB 1.1 standard allowed. USB 1.1 would have taken hours to transfer the 1000 160Kb/s songs the iPod could hold. Firewire could do it in ten minutes.

The dock connector, foundation for an entire industry of iPod accessories, didn’t debut until April 2003. Firewire support survived to 2007, but by 2005 had been replaced as a song transfer mechanism by USB, continuing from that time solely as a means for charging the player’s battery.

By then, the iPod had reached its fifth generation. The original was developed by a team put in place by Apple’s then head of hardware, Jon Rubenstein, later of Palm fame. Rubenstein put engineers Tony Fadell and Michael Duhey on the case, with industrial design being handled by Jonathan Ive.

We have another device that I think is going to dramatically change those people that are on smartphones and quick messaging devices, the [iPhone] 3GS, which is free with a 2-year contract. We’ve seen a tremendous, tremendous demand for that device even though it’s a generation old. And actually, we’re getting more new subscribers coming on the 3GS on the average than other devices. So we also have an inventory sold out on that device.

De la Vega also noted that AT&T, like Apple, had slightly slower numbers this quarter as a result of the next-generation iPhone launching in the fourth calendar quarter versus the third. He expects AT&T’s numbers to surge in the holiday quarter with the launch of the iPhone 4S, saying the company was “very, very optimistic on what the fourth quarter is going to look like in terms of smartphone growth.”

AT&T touts its network speedas one of the primary reasons customers are choosing the carrier over Verizon and Sprint.

AT&T was the first carrier in the world to launch iPhone in 2007 and is the only U.S. carrier to support iPhone 4S with 4G speeds.

“It’s no surprise that customers are clamoring for iPhone 4S and they want it to run on a network that lets them download twice as fast as competitors’,” said Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets.

Apple announced earlier this week that iPhone 4S sales had topped four million units over the opening weekend across all carriers in its seven launch countries. The iPhone 4S is scheduled to come to 22 more countries at the end of next week.

Steve Jobs’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs, sister Mona Simpson and three of his children spoke at the memorial service held for the Apple co-founder on Sunday, according to two people who attended.

…

Both people who attended described the service as incredibly moving and a fitting tribute to Mr. Jobs, who was known as a tech visionary, demanding boss and a fanatic for design. One person mentioned that many speakers cracked jokes about Mr. Jobs, who died on Oct. 5 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

The report notes that music for the service was provided by cellist Yo Yo Ma, folk singer Joan Baez, and U2 singer Bono, who read lyrics from an iPad.

Jobs’ private funeral was held two days after his death earlier this month and an event for Apple employees will be held this Wednesday. That event will reportedly include a temporary closure of Apple’s retail stores to allow employees to view a live webcast of the service.