6.18pm: And so we turn to iPad. Will we get any knocking of Android? Note there wasn't even a mention of Android (or Windows Phone) in the mentions of mobile phones just now.)

"iPads in schools.. can change how teachers teach and children learn and many educators agree with us. Every state in the US now has an iPad deployment scheme in place."

(Observation: his voice isn't as mellifluous as Jobs's; Cook's is more of a croak, with a Texan twang. Jobs's would range up and down the scale, but Cook's is more direct. It's less relaxing to listen to.)

6.14pm: iTunes started in April 2003, now has 30m songs, 16bn songs downloaded. "It's mind-boggling. And that's our music business, we're very happy with our music business."

"Next: iPhone. This may be the reason why the room is full now." Now: "iPhone 4 has sold almost half of the total iPhones sold." Gartner 2Q numbers show iPhone 125% growth, smartphones 74% growth. So outpacing the market. (Yes, yes, but what about the third quarter? Any analysts want to kick in?)

Now a big graph of "very satisfied" for different manufacturers - 70% iPhone, next is HTC with 49%.

Notable thing: Cook does his slides in different colours from Jobs. He uses greys and blues, where Jobs was greens and greys and blacks.

More broadly: iPhone is 5% of the whole mobile phone market, of 1.5bn units: "it's an enormous opportunity for Apple."

6.12pm: Music: "for us this is iTunes and iPod.." A shot of the 2001 iPod. "It reminded all of us how much we loved music." (Sort of, but the iPod was the result of an internal study - if the cards had fallen differently it might have been video or photos.)

Cumulative iPod sales over 300m; "it took Sony 30 years to sell 220,000 Walkman cassette players." OK. "The MP3 player market is a mature market. We sold 45m iPods in the last year ending in June." (Note he's giving no numbers for just-past quarter; financial quiet period.) Almost half go to people as their first iPod.

6.08pm: Updates time. OSX Lion. "The reviews have been incredible." Walt Mossberg of the WSJ is cited. Digital download only, 6m have been downloaded: "this is 80% more than Snow Leopard, our previous release." (That doesn't so much to me. Anyone else?)

Measuring installed base: took Windows 7 a total of 20 weeks to reach 10% of installed base; 2 weeks for Lion. (Um, yeah, smaller base to reach, Tim.)

Now looking at the computers which are "the best we've ever shipped". Well, yes... "iMac and Macbook are best-selling notebook and desktop in the US. Points to Mac growth of 23% over the last four quarters v 4% for the (Windows) PC market.

"We are now approaching 60m users around the world." That's about triple what it used to be back in 2000 or so, I think. (Any cites for Steve Jobs and the 20m users numbers?)

6.04pm: Showing stores in China - Nanjing. Largest store in Asia. It's a bit amazing - 100,000 visitors on the opening weekend. (By comparison in LA they got 100,000 in a month.) "There is amazing momentum here."

The Hong Kong one is in the airport. Getting the idea that this is going to be pushing the China connection. That's where the real volume is to be had.

Video already. Tai-chi, baby.

6.01pm: Crowdsource results time... over at the poll. Here's they're just starting. Applause of course and it's Tim Cook: "this is my first producdt launch since being made CEO.. I'm sure you didn't know that. It is a pleasure to host you today... I consider it the privilege of a lifetime to have worked here almost 14 years."

Welcomes folk to the campus: "a sort of second home to some people." They're in the Town Hall where they launched the original iPod ten years ago.

6.01pm: CA: I'm installed in the Apple Store in Covent Garden, where Apple has gone to a lot of trouble: four-way power adapters at every chair, including Continental adaptors: plenty of European journalists here. Apple, one senses, is treating this as very big indeed.

Latest expectations: Siri, a "virtual personal assistant", to make some sort of appearance in the new software. As long as it's not as dire as the "Knowledge Navigator" personal assistant in those way-off Apple imaginings of the future from 1987.

5.53pm: Just in! Among the leading lights at Cupertino is Dick Costolo, chief executive of Twitter, according to his Twitter page. Smartphones running Google's Android software have stolen a march on iOS with deep Twitter integration – expect Apple to launch a riposte.

5.50pm: Journalists, commentators and plain-old fashionistas are filing into Apple conference halls in Cupertino and Covent Garden, London. Our man on the ground, Charles Arthur, is setting up his stall in central London, while myself (Josh Halliday) and Juliette Garside, the Guardian's telecoms correspondent, will keep you fully informed from the office.

Mark Mulligan, the former Forrester analyst, is one of the privileged few invited to Apple's biggest store in Covent Garden. Surprisingly, he reports that it's a "very intimate sized" event for Apple announcements. Well, certainly, it's no Cupertino ampitheatre.

5.35pm: Welcome: and is your popcorn popping? It's iPhone 5 launch time. It seems so long since we were last here.

We know some details already: there's going to be an iPhone 5. Given that at WWDC in June, Steve Jobs described the next version of the software powering the iPhone as "iOS 5", and since every launch of a new number of iOS has seen a new version of the phone (3G, 3GS, 4 –see Wikipedia), the idea that there won't be an "iPhone 5" just doesn't hold any water.

Then there's the question of whether the crowd has managed to figure this out ahead of time – if you're reading this before 6pm UK time, then our crowdsourcing experiment is still open (and if you're reading it later, it's closed: tick off the results as they come by).

We also know that:
• the phones will be in the UK from 14 October: reserve your place outside the stores now;
• "iTunes in the Cloud" (so you can get your purchased music on any iOS device, without syncing with a PC or Mac) is coming to Europe, and to the UK first. Why no iTunes Match to sync all your music library? Still being negotiated with record labels, we understand.

We suspect that the iPod Classic is for the chop, but that's not certain. Sales of iPods are tailing off at about 5% annually, and iPod Touches (the app-enabled ones) taking more and more share - now up to 50% of iPod sales.

There's a huge amount at stake today. Apple is presently the world's largest mobile phone company (by revenue; Samsung is expected to be the biggest in terms of shipments). It's possible that Samsung will have overtaken it in smartphone shipments in the third quarter (July-September) just ended; it will be interesting to see if Cook announces any iPhone shipment numbers for the quarter, because this should be the "quiet period" ahead of the financials. Possibly he'll announce "iOS shipments", which would be iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad.

Being biggest is no guarantee you'll continue, though: just look at Nokia, which just one year ago could claim the title. Now it's plunged into loss and we're still waiting for its first Windows Phone device.

Everyone knows that with Steve Jobs having stepped down as chief executive, Cook needs to keep the executive team and the staff weaving the magic that has made Apple the biggest company by value in the world. That's no small order. Everyone will be looking for the slightest flaw.

And now, on with the show...

Source - [ guardian.co.uk ]