The world’s most popular portable gaming device is even more fun.

Now available in black and white, iPod touch includes iOS 5 with over 200 new features, like iMessage, Notification Center, and Twitter integration.

Send free, unlimited text messages over Wi-Fi with iMessage.

Record HD video and make FaceTime calls. Visit the App Store to choose from over 500,000 apps.

iPod touch also features iCloud, which stores your music, photos, apps, and more and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices.

Apple® today announced iPhone® 4S, the most amazing iPhone yet, packed with incredible new features including Apple’s dual-core A5 chip for blazing fast performance and stunning graphics; an all new camera with advanced optics; full 1080p HD resolution video recording; and Siri™, an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. With the launch of iPhone 4S also comes the launch of iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system with over 200 new features; and iCloud®, a breakthrough set of free cloud services that work with your iPhone, iPad®, iPod touch®, Mac® or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices.

“iPhone 4S plus iOS 5 plus iCloud is a breakthrough combination that makes the iPhone 4S the best iPhone ever,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “While our competitors try to imitate iPhone with a checklist of features, only iPhone can deliver these breakthrough innovations that work seamlessly together.”

iPhone 4S comes with iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, which includes over 200 new features including Notification Center, an innovative way to easily view and manage notifications in one place without interruption and iMessage™, a new messaging service that lets you easily send text messages, photos and videos between all iOS 5 users. iOS 5 will also be available as a free software update for iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS customers allowing them to experience these amazing new features.*

iPhone 4S also introduces Siri, an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. Siri understands context allowing you to speak naturally when you ask it questions, for example, if you ask “Will I need an umbrella this weekend?” it understands you are looking for a weather forecast. Siri is also smart about using the personal information you allow it to access, for example, if you tell Siri “Remind me to call Mom when I get home” it can find “Mom” in your address book, or ask Siri “What’s the traffic like around here?” and it can figure out where “here” is based on your current location. Siri helps you make calls, send text messages or email, schedule meetings and reminders, make notes, search the Internet, find local businesses, get directions and more. You can also get answers, find facts and even perform complex calculations just by asking.

iCloud is a breakthrough set of free cloud services, including iTunes® in the Cloud, Photo Stream and Documents in the Cloud, that work seamlessly with your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices. When content changes on one device, all your other devices are updated automatically and wirelessly.

iPhone 4S includes an all new camera with the most advanced optics of any phone. The 8 megapixel sensor has 60 percent more pixels so you can take amazing high quality photos with more detail than ever. iPhone 4S includes a new custom lens, a larger f/2.4 aperture and an advanced hybrid IR filter that produce sharper, brighter and more accurate images. The Apple-designed image signal processor in the A5 dual-core chip is built for performance, and coupled with the features built into iOS 5, makes the camera one of the fastest on any phone. With iPhone 4S, the Camera app launches much faster and the shot to shot capability is twice as fast, so you’ll never miss another shot.

New features in the Camera and Photos apps give you instant access to the camera right from the lock screen, and you can also use the volume-up button to quickly snap a photo. Optional grid lines help line up your shot and a simple tap locks focus and exposure on one subject; and the new Photos app lets you crop, rotate, enhance and remove red-eye, and organize your photos into albums right on your device to share them on the go. New iOS 5 features include built-in Twitter integration and iMessage, so you can instantly share your photos via Twitter directly from the Photos app and send photos via iMessage to individuals or groups. And with iCloud’s innovative new Photo Stream service, a photo you take on your iPhone is sent to iCloud and automatically pushed to your iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC. You can even view your Photo Stream album on your Apple TV®.

iPhone 4S can also now record video in full 1080p HD resolution and with the new video image stabilization feature, you can take richer, smoother videos. Other iPhone 4S video camera improvements include increased sensitivity, sharpness and an increased ability to capture video in low light conditions. With the new iMessage service in iOS 5, you can now instantly share videos with family and friends.

iPhone 4S has the same beautifully thin glass and stainless steel design that millions of customers around the world love, while being completely redesigned on the inside. Apple’s dual-core A5 chip delivers up to twice the processing power and up to seven times faster graphics than iPhone 4, all while maintaining incredible battery life-now up to 8 hours of 3G talk time.

Improving on the innovative stainless steel external, dual-antenna design of iPhone 4, iPhone 4S is the first phone to intelligently switch between two antennas to send and receive. iPhone 4S now supports twice the download speed with HSDPA of up to 14.4 Mbps and iPhone 4S is a world phone, so both CDMA and GSM customers can now roam internationally on GSM networks.**

Pricing & Availability
iPhone 4S comes in either black or white and will be available in the US for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model and $399 (US) for the new 64GB model.*** iPhone 4S will be available from the Apple Online Store, Apple’s retail stores and through AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and select Apple Authorized Resellers. iPhone 4S will be available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK on Friday, October 14 and customers can pre-order their iPhone 4S beginning Friday, October 7. iPhone 4 will also be available for just $99 (US) and iPhone 3GS will be available for free with a two year contract. Siri will be available in beta on iPhone 4S in English (localized for US, UK and Australia), French and German. iOS 5 software will be available on October 12 as a free software update via iTunes 10.5 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch customers.

iPhone 4S will roll out worldwide to 22 more countries by the end of October including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

*Some features may not be available on all products.

**Carrier roaming policies apply. HSDPA availability and network speeds are dependent on carrier networks.

***Qualified customers only. Requires a new two year rate plan, sold separately.

Appcelerator®, the leading mobile cloud platform for rapidly developing native mobile, desktop, and tablet applications using web technologies, and industry-leading analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC), today announced results from a joint survey of 2,012 Appcelerator developers around the world. New analysis shows that Apple and Google are accelerating their lead in mobile by redefining mobile app engagement, loyalty, and cloud connectivity through their new Google+ and iCloud offerings. Developers also indicate that they see Apple and Google gains in the consumer application space translating into significant traction in the enterprise space over time. The full report can be viewed at: http://appcel.us/q3_2011_report.

“Google and Apple are pushing mobile competition beyond OS platforms into the cloud and into social integration,” notes Scott Ellison, IDC VP Mobile & Consumer Connected Platforms. “This means even broader battles with major players like Amazon and Facebook, creating new competitive complexities and opportunities going forward for everyone in the mobile ecosystem.”

New Apple and Google Announcements Put Mobile Cloud Opportunity on the Map

As mobile app and platform leadership continues to coalesce around Apple and Google, both players are leveraging their strengths into the cloud in different, but compelling new ways that are likely to generate long-term value and competitive differentiation for each of their respective ecosystems. Topline findings from this quarter’s report focus on how developers eye new opportunities for applications to become more social and more connected:

• When asked what will impact the growth and adoption of mobile the most, Apple and Google come out on top. In order of priority:

o    Google+: 25%
o    Apple iCloud: 22%
o    Near-Field Communication: 18%
o    iOS 5 Twitter Integration: 14%
o    Android Patent Issues: 13%
o    Amazon Android Tablet Rumors: 6%
o    HP TouchPad Launch: 2%

• Two-thirds of respondents believe that Google can catch up to Facebook in social with Google+. When asked why, 68% of developers say that leveraging Google’s assets (eg: Search, YouTube, Maps, etc) trumps Facebook’s social graph lead. 49% say that Google shows more innovation than Facebook with new Google+ features like circles, sparks, hangouts, etc.
• While Google+ may be the future, today 83% of developers using social in their apps say they use or are planning to use Facebook this year. Twitter is second at 73%, followed closely by Google+ (when API is released) at 72%, LinkedIn at 30%, and Foursquare at 23%.
• When asked what social capabilities are most important in their apps, developers said that features that encourage repeat usage and offer fresh content are more important than location checkins and photo sharing. In order of priority, developers use social for: notifications (52%), status updates (49%), login/identity (44%), messaging (38%), news (35%), location sharing (32%), photo sharing (31%), and friend requests (26%).
• Continuing on the real-time update theme, when it comes to iOS 5 features, developers are most interested in: improved notifications (58%), iCloud (51%), integrated Twitter support (40%), reminders (36%), and iMessage (32%).
• iCloud may significantly disrupt the mobile cloud computing space, as developers envision a tight race between Amazon and Apple. Developers who are using or planning to use cloud services over the next year see Amazon (51%), iCloud (50%), Microsoft Windows Azure (20%), VMWare (20%), and RedHat OpenShift (17%) as the top five players.
• Apple and Google’s strengths in the mobile consumer space are clearly making inroads in developer perceptions of the enterprise arena. When asked which platform is best positioned to win in the enterprise, respondents were evenly divided between iOS and Android at 44% each. Only 7% believe Windows Phone has a shot, 4% for BlackBerry, and 2% for webOS. Appcelerator and IDC note that enterprises are taking a more cautious approach with Android at scale due to security concerns in which case they are looking to Apple when they go beyond BlackBerry and Windows mobile deployments. In the near to medium-term, despite being equivalent from a developer perception-standpoint, Apple is leading with CIOs today when it comes to mobile deployments beyond Microsoft and RIM.
• While neck and neck in the enterprise, perceptions on why Apple or Google might win in the enterprise are dramatically different. We posed two reasons why each platform might win and then asked developers to rank which statements were most accurate across all platforms. Topping the list, 30% of developers believe Android’s marketshare lead will be the key driver for success in the enterprise followed by 24% of respondents saying that Apple’s consumerization of the user experience will carry iOS into mainstream enterprise adoption.
• With relatively few new product announcements this past quarter, platform priorities haven’t changed significantly. iPhone remains tops as 91% say they are ‘very interested’ in developing for the device. iPad is number two at 88%, Android pulled up a couple points with Android phone interest climbing to 87% from 85% last quarter and Android Tablets rose back to Q1 levels to 74%. We added HTML5 mobile web as a new option to rank this quarter, which comes in fifth at 66%. The second tier remains the same: Windows Phone (30%), BlackBerry phones (28%), BlackBerry Playbook (20%), HP TouchPad (18%), HP Palm Pre (12%), Symbian (7%), and MeeGo (5%) rounding out the list. The new addition of mobile web in the middle of the pack suggests developers are seeing the increasing requirement for both a mobile app and mobile website, though the former continues to be the number one priority.

Key Trend: Mobile Leaders are Extending their Lead by Redefining the Application Experience
As OSes and consumer expectations mature, “the app” is undergoing a transformation. Applications are becoming more engaging with real-time notifications, social, local context, and always-on cloud connectivity becoming the norm. That “upstarts” iCloud and Google+ can challenge entrenched players Amazon and Facebook shows how quickly these new capabilities will shake up what’s possible in mobile.

As utility, loyalty, and engagement drive applications to become ‘stickier’ in our mobile virtual wallets, so too are transaction models adapting to move away from the app store and into the application. We revisited the business model question from January to see how priorities are evolving and continue to see acceleration in strategies that monetize ongoing usage. In January, 59% of developers said that app store sales are the number one preferred business model. Now, that figure has dropped to 50% and developers see this trend continuing into 2012. At the same time, in-app purchasing has increased from 42% saying in January they plan to use this model to 43% today and 50% by next year, rivaling app store sales. Similarly, mobile commerce applications are seen as surpassing free “brand” affinity apps late this year along with an increase in near-field communication (NFC) usage next year.

Ultimately, these changes are an evolution of the mobile engagement lifecycle. From customer acquisition/awareness to engagement, to monetization to loyalty, mobile leaders are focusing on leveraging their ubiquitous adoption levels into new areas that, in the end, significantly enlarge the overall value that’s possible on each of their platforms in the post-PC era.

A complete breakdown of these trends and a more detailed analysis is available online: http://appcel.us/q3_2011_report.

Apple® today introduced iCloud®, a breakthrough set of free new cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on your iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch®, Mac® or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices. When anything changes on one of your devices, all of your devices are wirelessly updated almost instantly.

“Today it is a real hassle and very frustrating to keep all your information and content up-to-date across all your devices,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iCloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices. All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and because it’s integrated into our apps you don’t even need to think about it—it all just works.”

The free iCloud services include:

• The former MobileMe® services—Contacts, Calendar and Mail—all completely re-architected and rewritten to work seamlessly with iCloud. Users can share calendars with friends and family, and the ad-free push Mail account is hosted at me.com. Your inbox and mailboxes are kept up-to-date across all your iOS devices and computers.
• The App Store™ and iBookstore? now download purchased iOS apps and books to all your devices, not just the device they were purchased on. In addition, the App Store and iBookstore now let you see your purchase history, and simply tapping the iCloud icon will download any apps and books to any iOS device (up to 10 devices) at no additional cost.
• iCloud Backup automatically and securely backs up your iOS devices to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi when you charge your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Backed up content includes purchased music, apps and books, Camera Roll (photos and videos), device settings and app data. If you replace your iOS device, just enter your Apple ID and password during setup and iCloud restores your new device.
• iCloud Storage seamlessly stores all documents created using iCloud Storage APIs, and automatically pushes them to all your devices. When you change a document on any device, iCloud automatically pushes the changes to all your devices. Apple’s Pages®, Numbers® and Keynote® apps already take advantage of iCloud Storage. Users get up to 5GB of free storage for their mail, documents and backup—which is more amazing since the storage for music, apps and books purchased from Apple, and the storage required by Photo Stream doesn’t count towards this 5GB total. Users will be able to buy even more storage, with details announced when iCloud ships this fall.
• iCloud’s innovative Photo Stream service automatically uploads the photos you take or import on any of your devices and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices and computers. So you can use your iPhone to take a dozen photos of your friends during the afternoon baseball game, and they will be ready to share with the entire group on your iPad (or even Apple TV®) when you return home. Photo Stream is built into the photo apps on all iOS devices, iPhoto® on Macs, and saved to the Pictures folder on a PC. To save space, the last 1,000 photos are stored on each device so they can be viewed or moved to an album to save forever. Macs and PCs will store all photos from the Photo Stream, since they have more storage. iCloud will store each photo in the cloud for 30 days, which is plenty of time to connect your devices to iCloud and automatically download the latest photos from Photo Stream via Wi-Fi.
• iTunes® in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from iTunes can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that replaces your music with a 256 kbps AAC DRM-free version if we can match it to the over 18 million songs in the iTunes Store®, it makes the matched music available in minutes (instead of weeks to upload your entire music library), and uploads only the small percentage of unmatched music. iTunes Match will be available this fall for a $24.99 annual fee. Apple today is releasing a free beta version of iTunes in the Cloud, without iTunes Match, for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users running iOS 4.3. iTunes in the Cloud will support all iPhones that iOS 5 supports this fall.

Apple is ready to ramp iCloud in its three data centers, including the third recently completed in Maiden, NC. Apple has invested over $500 million in its Maiden data center to support the expected customer demand for the free iCloud services.

Pricing & Availability
The iCloud beta and Cloud Storage APIs are available immediately to iOS and Mac Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iCloud will be available this fall concurrent with iOS 5. Users can sign up for iCloud for free on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5 or a Mac running Mac OS® X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. iTunes Match will be available for $24.99 per year (US only).

iTunes in the Cloud is available today in the US and requires iTunes 10.3 and iOS 4.3.3. Automatic download of apps and books is available today. Using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7; Outlook 2010 or 2007 is recommended for accessing contacts and calendars.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.