How many iPads were sold last quarter?

Another Fortune survey of analysts finds a wide gap in forecasts, with a median estimate of 18 million for the third quarter.

Apple may have sold anywhere from 14.8 million to 23 million iPads last quarter, at least according to a poll of analysts compiled by Fortune. The low and high estimates offered by the 61 analysts showed a huge disparity in opinion.

On the low end, Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty sees just 15 million tablets sold, while Stern Agee's Shaw Wu predicts 16.5 million. On the high end, many of the forecasts came from analysts who work for independent research firms -- not Wall Street investment groups -- and showed a range of 19.5 million up to 23 million.

The estimates were taken at different times of the year. Most of them are from October, but several are from September and a few date back as far as July. The average forecast among the analysts was 18.38 million, while the median was 18.13 million.

How do those numbers compare with those from previous quarters? In second quarter, Apple sold 17 million iPads, a jump from 11.8 million in the first quarter. In 2011, Apple sold 15.4 million tablets in the fourth quarter, up from 11.1 million in the third quarter.

Next Thursday, the company will report earnings from the third quarter -- which is Apple's fourth fiscal quarter. Apple's bread-and-butter is the iPhone, which likely contributes almost two-thirds of the company's profits, according to Business Insider. In contrast, the iPad may generate only around 10 percent to 15 percent of total profits.

The iPad may get some competition very soon, and from Apple itself. The company is hosting a media event on October 23 in which it's expected to unveil the iPad Mini.

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Acer introduces $200 Acer Iconia Tab A110 quad-core tablet

Acer unveiled the Iconia Tab A110 – a 7” tablet based on the quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 platform. It measures 11.4mm in thickness and weighs 370g.



What’s most interesting about the Tab A110 is its awesome price – Acer says it will be a sub $200 device. How about that?!

The Iconia Tab A110 features a 7-inch TFT display with a WSVGA resolution (1024×600 pixels), a 1.2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, GeForce graphics, 1GB DDR3 RAM, 8GB internal storage expandable via microSD slot, a 5 megapixel rear snapper and a 2 megapixel front-facing snapper.

The wireless connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS and there is also an HDMI port as well.

Acer’s Iconia Tab runs on the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It will be released Q3 this year and will be priced below $200, which most probably means $199.99, still an awesome price for a quad-core slate.

Acer also showcased the Iconia Tab A210, which has a virtually identical specs sheet to the A110, but for the 10.1-inch 1280×800 display and the regular USB port. It will be also released in Q3 but will cost a bit more.

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Is this the Surface phone? (Win phone 8 from microsoft)

Microsoft has draped a new Windows Phone 8 handset rather casually on the set of some Surface “hero” pictures.

Interestingly however the unbranded device does not look anything like any phone we have seen before, and the rather square design looks a lot close to the Surface than anything else.

It is of course rather unlikely that Microsoft is showing us a real Surface phone, but I think it does give us an idea of the direction of Microsoft’s possible designs.

See the original pictures after the break.

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Nokia sold 2.9 million Lumia Windows Phones in Q3 2012

Nokia sold 2.9 million Lumia Windows Phone devices in the third quarter of 2012, as sales of its Windows Phone-based smartphones declined from a 4 million sales peak in Q2 2012. Overall, Nokia smartphone sales stood at 6.3 million, and that means that Symbian sales stand at 3.4 million still outselling Windows Phone.

With more Windows Phone sales being sold and the share of Symbian rapidly diminishing, Nokia's average sales price (ASP) for smart device has also grown to 155 euro, up from 151 in the previous quarter.

But at the same time, the average price of Lumias continues falling sharply. From an average price of 220 euro per Lumia phone in Q1 2012 to 186 euro in the second trimester and now to the much lower 160 euro in the last quarter. Nokia was hoping to make a comeback in the United States with Lumia Windows Phones, but that obviously isn't happening and this quarter the company took an additional 50% hit in sales in North America.

Nokia Lumia sales in North America (including the U.S.) stood at the meager 300,000 units.

"Q3 was a difficult quarter in our Devices & Services business," Nokia's chief executive Stephen Elop, the person who started the transition to Windows Phone, commented.

Nokia's feature phones headed by the Asha lineup continue sustaining the company's phone business throughout the transition. In Q3 2012, feature phone sales amounted to 76.6 million, up 4% consequentially, but down 15% when compared to the same period last year. Nokia Asha full touch phones sold 6.5 million, and those are too accounted as feature phones, of course.

Overall, Nokia's net sales stood at around $9.48 billion (7.24 billion euro). This means the company ended up around $754 million (576 million euro) in the red. This loss brings Nokia's net cash to some $4.7 billion (3.56 billion euro), down from $5.5 billion in Q2 2012. This is overall in line with analysts' expectations, the losses are only slightly larger than projected.

Next quarter will be very important for Nokia. The company launches its first Windows Phone 8 devices, the Lumia 920 with PureView camera and wireless charging and the more affordable Lumia 820. The Lumia 920 is expected to be an AT&T exclusive in its first months availability, competing with phones like the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S III and the LG Optimus G.

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available for $249 : Google announces new Samsung Chromebook, (hands-on video and photos)

Google is making the case for the Chromebook to become everybody's second computer with a new model retailing for only $249. Available Monday, the new Samsung Chromebook is based an ARM chip (rather than Intel) which could help to explain the lower cost... only this particular ARM chip may perform better than most any we've seen before. It's a Exynos 5 Dual processor, which makes it the very first device to use ARM's new Cortex-A15 architecture. As far as the laptop goes, it connects to the internet solely via Wi-Fi, has an 11.6-inch screen, 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM, and Bluetooth — and it has an SD card slot to expand storage further. It weighs 2.5 pounds and is 0.8 inches thick with two USB ports and an HDMI-out port. All of the internal specs are designed to keep the price down while keeping the speed up — Google is touting that it's able to run 1080p video at 30fps and SVP Sundar Pichai today showed the product running a YouTube clip at that resolution.

Because it's based on an ARM processor, it doesn't have a fan — or any other moving parts — and Google says that it will run for 6.5 hours on its battery. We're grabbing some hands-on time now, but it certainly looks every bit of its $249 price — which is to say it has decent but not inspiring build quality. The design is not unlike a plastic, 11-inch MacBook Air. The keyboard layout is nearly identical, with low-profile black keys. Despite the considerably lower price, however, the keys feel great and are surprisingly responsive. The display, on the other hand, is less inspiring. While offering a decent 11.6-inches with 1366 x 768 resolution, it offers little in the way of brightness and color representation. Hues are subdued and text can be difficult to read with conflicting light sources. With that dual-core Cortex-A15 chip under the hood, the new Chromebook loads and runs HD video quickly, and delivering the 30fps as promised. If Google's presentation was any indication, however, performance diminishes rapidly when pushed to a projector or external display.

While the Chrome OS remains largely unchanged, Google is offering 100GB of Google Drive storage to new Chromebook adopters, as rumored earlier this year. Those who pick up the new Chromebook, Samsung Series 3 Chromebook, or the original Samsung Chromebook will be able to redeem the additional storage for two years.

We'll be conducting more extensive testing of the new Chromebook soon, but those eager to see one for themselves can pre-order today or check it out when it hits retailer shelves on Monday.

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Skype on Windows Phone 8 gets a comprehensive video demo

Its amazing what pops up on YouTube some times, such as this detailed demo of the Windows Phone 8 Skype app, which has been completely rewritten for Windows Phone, and now integrates in the OS.

The app will now form part of the contact card, and will allow incoming calls without the app actually running.

The service the app uses will actually support other services, so expect Windows Phone 8 to be much more VOIP friendly in the future.

Update: As expected we were asked to take the video down, but I expect it will be published in about 10 days again

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Asus Padfone 2 to get JB next month, keyboard dock later

The Asus event, which brought us the new Padfone 2 smartphone/tablet was over all too quickly and some details almost slipped through. Among them were the Jelly Bean update schedule and the keyboard dock, which wasn’t presented.

According to an Asus representative, the company plans to have the Android 4.1 update ready by November. This means that even if you are among the very first to buy it, you will only have to wait a couple of weeks to get it.

As for the keyboard dock, that's still in development too. Asus says it's trying to create the best keyboard dock possible, but didn’t commit to a time frame. Of course, there's a possibility that Asus might ax the dock, but chances of that happening are slim.

Anyway, you can check out our hands-on impressions of the Asus Padfone 2 from Tuesday's event, complete with a close look at the hardware, some benchmarks of the Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset and even a sample from the 13MP camera.

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