Apple's Merry Christmas message from the fiscal cliff

• Apple dominates kids' holiday wish lists more than ever

  This year 48% want an iPad, up from 31% in 2010 and 44% in 2011

  FORTUNE -- Nielsen released the results of its annual "iHoliday" survey of U.S. children's Christmas wish lists Tuesday, and once again Apple (AAPL) dominated four of the five top spots (see Nielsen graphic below).

  What interested us was that despite increased competition in both the tablet and smartphone markets, the kids' attraction to the Apple brand has MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 21, 2012 9:14 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Children, Christmas, holidays, iPad, iPad mini, iPhone, iPod touch, Kids, Nielsen

• Apple vs. Android: Who won the X-mas bake-off? (update)

  If you count the iPad and iPod touch, it looks like iOS by about 1.6 million units

  Without a press release from Apple (AAPL) crowing about their Christmas sales, we're forced to rely on data from a mobile analytics firm and tweets from a Google (GOOG) senior vice president to make some rough guesses.

  Here's what we know:

  According to Flurry Analytics -- which claims it can detect "roughly 100%" of all new smartphone and tablet MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 28, 2011 7:24 AM ET
  Posted in: Android, Andy Rubin, Apple, Christmas, Flurry, Google, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mobile, Tablets

• Reports: iPads and iPhones accounted for 92% -- or was it 13.4%? -- of online holiday sales

  An analytical gap big enough to drive a sleigh through

  Here are a pair of headline shockers:

  AppleInsider: iOS dominates mobile shopping with 92% of market
  Forbes: iOS Took 13.4% of Online Sales on Christmas Day

  Both stories got pretty big play over the Christmas break. But they can't both be right, can they? Let's look at the facts.

  The 92% figure comes from a Dec. 21 report by a San Francisco-base company called RichRelevance MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 27, 2011 6:41 AM ET
  Posted in: Android, Apple, Christmas, Google, IBM, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, RichRelevance, Tablets

• Could Siri really help Santa?

  Would that Apple's intelligent assistant were as reliable as its Christmas TV ad suggests

  Apple (AAPL) has been pushing Siri hard as the key selling point for the iPhone 4S, especially on TV with ads like the Santa spot it began airing this week. (It's also available on YouTube.)

  But our experience is that between system outages, misunderstandings and the basic limitations of its knowledge base, Siri is considerably less reliable than MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 20, 2011 7:21 AM ET
  Posted in: Advertising, AI, Apple, artificial intelligence, Christmas, iPhone, iPhone 4S, Poll, Santa Claus, Siri, TV

• If Amazon's Kindle Fire is so hot, why is it still in stock?

  A spot check of retail sales a week before Christmas raises an interesting question

  In a note to clients issued Monday, Hudson Square Research's Daniel Ernst reported on the results of a pre-holiday scouting trip he took to retail stores in New York and Connecticut over the weekend -- only a handful of shopping days before Christmas -- where he found "floor traffic up materially, but lines at checkout short."

  Demand for MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 19, 2011 10:25 AM ET
  Posted in: Amazon, Apple, Christmas, Daniel Ernst, Hudson Square Research, iPad, Kindle Fire, Tablets

• 60 iPhones sing Deck the Halls

  Some of them are painfully out of tune, but it's for a good cause

  Ignited, a high-tech advertising agency with offices in Los Angeles and New York, has come up with a clever holiday promotion. It will donate 5 cents (up to $2,500) to the Los Angeles Mission every time this YouTube video is viewed.

  As of Friday morning, it had raised $1,282.55.

  Ignited's clients include NBC, Sony and the NFL, but not MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 16, 2011 7:10 AM ET
  Posted in: Advertising, Apple, Christmas, Ignited, iPhone, Mobile, YouTube

• J.P. Morgan: Verizon is getting its iPhone reward this quarter

  The carrier will add an estimated 1.2 million new accounts, more than double AT&T's

  "Santa's Sleigh Needs More Room for iPhones." That was the headline on a note to clients Thursday by Mark Moskowitz, who follows Apple (AAPL) for J.P. Morgan. Moskowitz was upping his iPhone sales estimate for the current quarter from 25.3 million to (a still relatively conservative) 28 million.

  "Christmas Is Coming Early for Verizon" could have been the MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 4, 2011 6:45 AM ET
  Posted in: Android, Apple, AT&T, Christmas, holidays, iPhone, J.P. Morgan, Mark Moskowitz, Mobile, Philip Cusick

• iPhones and iPads top teen wish lists this Christmas

  Only "money" and "clothes" scored higher in an annual pre-holiday survey

  For 22 years, Piper Jaffray researchers have been asking American teenagers what they want for Christmas, and for the past four years Apple (AAPL) products have been moving steadily up the wish lists.

  All told, according to a note to clients issued Monday by senior research analyst Gene Munster, 11.2% of the 5,700 teenagers surveyed this fall named one Apple product MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 28, 2011 6:29 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Christmas, Gene Munster, Google, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mobile, PCs, Piper Jaffray, Sony, Tablets, Teenagers

• Nielsen: 44% of U.S. kids 6-12 want an iPad for Christmas

  The iPod touch (30%) and iPhone (27%) came in second and third in the 2011 wish list

  Apple's (AAPL) iPad topped a new Nielsen survey of the most desired electronics products among young Americans this holiday season.

  Among kids 6-12, Apple scored a hat trick, with the iPad (44%) first, the iPod touch (30%) second and the iPhone (27%) third.

  In a similar survey last year, the iPad came in first at 31% and MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 17, 2011 1:12 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Christmas, holidays, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Nielsen, Teenagers