Articles by Casey Chan
One thing the FCC is really good at: unknowingly or “accidentally” leaking information about heavily anticipated, top-secret technology. At the very least, you gotta love them for that. There latest misstep? Leaking the size of the fabled HTC Dream, which you may remember as the world’s first Android device. Yeap, that Android.
Surprisingly, it looks like it’s going to be a wee bit shorter and a wee bit skinnier than the iPhone 3G. However, it is expected to be thicker than the iPhone given its inclusion of a full QWERTY keyboard in some way, shape, or form. Even though we are the iPhone blog, we give credit where credit is due: HTC must’ve done a helluva job making the Dream a bit smaller than the iPhone. I guess the Dream is making no secret about going after the iPhone
Now about that big slow fatty Blackberry Bold…
Have you checked out our forums lately? The community is growing and the commentary is getting better and better each day. Unconvinced? I’ll bring out a thread, a post, a topic, or a comment directly from the forums and post it on TiPb’s front page every week to prove it to you. We here at TiPb love the interplay, quid pro quo, repartee with our readers, so step up your creativity and tighten up your diction, you could be next!
This week we have a great and interesting thread going on in our forums. CharlieBall asks when did your iPhone make your life easier? Obviously, we all know that the iPhone is a multipurpose tool that’s the best iPod, best internet device, etc. but what about those little, less important times where the iPhone just made your life easier? The current answers range from trivia questions to phone saber battles, directions to movie times. So, when has the iPhone helped you out?
For me, I always Shazam songs that play on the radio and play games to kill the dead time. How about you?
Go Read CharlieBall’s post on when the iPhone made your life easier!
So while Apple is ramping up production of the iPhone 3G, it looks like the rest of the cell phone industry is in a serious slump. Kind of. According to the NPD, (via Ars Technica) only 28 million cell phones were sold this quarter representing a 13% year-to-year decline. But looking specifically at the model-by-model numbers, it looks like everyone is enjoying success on Motorola’s dime.
“Quarterly unit-sales of handsets fell to their lowest level, since NPD begin tracking the category in 2005,” NPD director of industry analysis Ross Rubin said in a statement. “Even so, most major manufacturers picked up market share that was lost by Motorola.”But it’s not all bad news for the industry. Phones with QWERTY keyboards saw a 28% increase in sales and smartphones increased sales by 9%. The average price of a cell phone sold increased by 14% to $84 year-to-year. Consumers are more likely to spend more money on a handset since the iPhone was introduced and that feeling extends toward Blackberries, HTC devices, etc.
In related news, MobileSafari has been on an absolute tear since the release of the iPhone 3G. According to Analysts, (via MacDailyNews) MobileSafari has nearly doubled its market share to 0.31% since the launch. Doing rudimentary math, having more handsets on the market that are twice as fast as the old one, well, I guess it adds up.
And to top it all off, our friends at Engadget have created an iPhone specific web page. Why, you ask? Because in 2008, the iPhone/iPod Touch Family has accounted for nearly 96% of all mobile views on their full Engadget site. That’s just jaw dropping.
So that’s the state of the industry. Surprised that the iPhone 3G has had such an effect on the numbers? What’s to come?
Everybody has been playing the guessing game on how many iPhone 3Gs Apple has sold. The numbers have been pitted at 11 million this year and 25 million in 2009 on the low end and 13 million this year and 45 million in 2009 on the optimistic side. Well according to people familiar with Apple’s production plans, it looks like Apple is preparing for the high end of the spectrum, upping their yearly production to around 40 million.
As it stands, Apple is pumping out 150,000 iPhones a day which roughly equates to 39 million a year (5 days a week, 52 weeks a year). Apple should have no problem selling these iPhones because of the international rollout and the Best Buy initiative, greater availability leads to more sales.
What does need to be fixed is the activation process, analysts deem the current process as the bottleneck that limits efficiency. Analysts are also pointing at a cheaper iPhone model to be announced during Macworld. That’ll certainly help Apple reach its ambitious goals.
We at TiPb think it’s entirely feasible to reach 40 million by 2009. Even after the initial hype subsides, there are still plenty of new markets to reach. If the iPhone begins to come in colors, new models, and more polished apps the iPhone 3G will continue to stay fresh for a long while. Now if Apple ever decided to sell the iPhone online again, well then, 40 million will be easy as pie. What do you think?
Those Nike+ Pictures we reported a few days back? There’s some rumblings that they may be fake. Yes, Apple and Nike are still in cahoots and plan on releasing Nike+ for the iPhone, but the pictures floating around the web are not a production of Apple or Nike but rather some enterprising photoshop expert.
Who knows when we’ll get some solid info on Nike+ for iPhone. Hopefully, Apple and Nike are working on creating a great program that includes some of the features we saw in the screenshots like the ability to map out a running route. There currently is no timetable for Nike+ to be released on the iPhone.
This one should get the iPhone-haters, WinMob Supporters, RIM Followers, and Treo Elderly (?) to come out of the woodworks. According to one of those reputable, old-timer print publications, Orange Poland has reportedly paid actors to line up for Poland’s release of our favorite toy, the iPhone 3G.
“We have these fake queues at front of 20 stores around the country to drum up interest in the iPhone,” a spokesman saidSupposedly it’s part of a marketing campaign to drive up interest in the iPhone 3G. I’m assuming the logic goes if people see that people want it, they’ll want it themselves…riiight. The competing carrier (Era aka T-Mobile Poland) which also distributes the iPhone 3G reportedly has no lines so I’m not sure if creating lines will create demand. In fact, we at TiPb are fairly certain that many of us hate lines.
What do you think? Would you buy a product because it looks like it’s going to be popular? What do you think the ‘actors’ are going to do when Orange Poland asks for personal information? Is this the most ridiculous act of advertising ever?
We’ve all known that Nike+ was supposed to come to the iPhone, we’ve just been waiting a bit longer than expected. So what has been cooking over at the Nike+ factory? A lot of great features and smart implementation, Nike+ definitely uses the iPhone’s technology to its advantage to create a better user experience and offer a better feature set.
Because of the capabilities of the iPhone, a lot of the stuff that Nike+ used to run on the Mac and on the Web are now being run on the iPhone itself. You’re able to keep track of all the classic stats and maybe even map out your route with GPS. Taking in all these screenshots, Nike+ and the iPhone has the looks of a winner.
It’s happened to a lot of us, I know. You’re in a new city and you’re hungry but you don’t know where or what to eat. You delay the decision, growing edgier by the second and maybe even a little dizzy. Finally, you give in and order McDonald’s or Pizza Hut or any fast food joint you can eat anywhere in this world when a great local spot was right next door. But of course, you had no idea.
With LocalEats, that scenario no longer exists. You’re in a new city, you’re hungry, you fire up LocalEats on your iPhone to find a great restaurant. You eat at said great restaurant. Don’t be mistaken, this isn’t a comprehensive food-review app like Yelp but rather a program that points you to the best restaurants when you need it most. To quote our own Dieter Bohn about LocalEats:
“It’s [really] spot on!”LocalEats uses a team of experts to find the best tasting restaurants in each locale. It’s currently limited to 50 cities nationwide but there are plans for more. Click the Read Link to learn more about LocalEats or download the paid app HERE.
Obviously, this tip won’t apply to everyone. The ‘killswitch’ is there to remotely remove potentially malicious apps on your iPhone. Apple has stated before that to not have a ‘killswitch’ would simply be negligible on their part. So if Apple is activating the ‘killswitch’ they’ll have good reason. But for those who would rather keep all the Apps that may not be okay by Apple’s standards, this is the easiest way to disable the ‘killswitch’.
So for those with jailbroken iPhones, you can sleep a little easier at night knowing that you’ve turned Big Brother off. Simply point your jailbroken iPhone to Cydia and download BossPrefs and you’ll see the switch to switch off the ‘killswitch’. Viva La Revolucion.
Have you run into any 3G connection issues? Do you notice a slower tick than expected with your iPhone 3G? Well, take a part in Wired.com’s global study so you can see if your iPhone is the slowest horse in the race or if it’s just your area. Just point your iPhone Safari browser to TestMyiPhone.com and start a download and upload test and remember your location to import into Wired.com’s interactive ZeeMap.
Maybe all this data won’t amount to anything but it sure is cool to see how blazing fast 3G is in different parts of the world. Also, it serves as good reference to see if your iPhone 3G is part of the unlucky 2%. Click the Read Link for more info.
