This text is all about the new iPhone5 and Apple maps. Both are in the news but for different reasons. Various bits of useful business vocabulary and phrases that are related to new products are highlighted and explained at the vocab glossary. However, these words are not only used in the world of Business English; they are quite common in everyday, general conversation, too. Don’t forget to vote in our polls at the end to give your opinion! They only need one click – and no sign-up or registering! 
The iPhone 5 is out and Apple are raking it in. As usual, die hard Apple fans are breaking open their piggy banks to buy the latest mobile phone Even owners of the iPhone 4S are trading in their old phones for the new model. Experts say sales are impressive. Apple shifted an unimaginable 5 million iPhone 5 handsets within the first weekend. That number continues to grow by the second. That’s over 1m more than the iPhone 4S managed. It’s not just analysts who are shocked, even Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple is impressed. He described the 5m sales as simply “incredible’ and told reporters that every single phone from their first shipment has been sold. That means that Apple needs to quickly produce more phones to keep up with demand. It’s not all good news though for Mr Cook. Far from it. The latest iPhone model runs Apple’s very own map app. It’s well known that Apple and Google have an intense rivalry and don’t get on, so it’s not surprising to hear that Apple has made their own alternative to the massively successful, ubiquitous Google Maps Apple and iPhone fans had high hopes for this app. After all, Apple has set the bar pretty high with their hardware and software. The iPhone 5 comes with iOS6 which is a decent improvement to the last operating system. However, Google maps is a tough act to follow. Watch this video to see a CNN review of the map app: As you can see, it’s not quite as good as Google maps but Apple have promised that it will get better. By the looks of this critical review though, Apple engineers definitely have their work cut out. To see just how much they need to improve (and some of the funny bugs and mistakes in the software), check out this blog which shows quite clearly that Apple maps is nowhere near as good as Google Earth. Sorry, Mr Cook but your app has a long way to go yet.
Useful Business Vocabulary
- Raking it in
- making lots of money
- Die hard fans
- loyal followers of sth or sb
- Trading in
- using an old product to pay for part of a new one like when you trade in an old car. It can also just mean getting a new version of a product.
- Shifted
- this refers to moving goods from the shelves i.e. selling them.
- Shipment
- an order of goods delivered from the factory
- Keep up with demand
- to be able to sell as many products as customers want
- ubiquitous
- appears everywhere
- Had high hopes for sth
- had positive expectations of sth
- Set the bar pretty high
- when someone or thing is very good it creates a certain standard that everybody else needs to compete with or match
- A tough act to follow
- when someone of thing is very good it is very hard to make or do something better
- Have their work cut out
- have a lot of difficult and time-consuming work to do in order to them succeed at something
- A long way to go
- have a great deal of work to do which will take a lot of time so as to reach a certain goal
[poll id=’50’] [poll id=’51’]
