All Articles Tagged iPhone 3G

It’s that season again. No, not football — Apple iPhone rumor release season. The fans smell 3G. The pundits smell 3G. The press smells 3G. And boy do the analysts smell them some Apple cooked 3G.

Risking feet to fall firmly in mouth, the bold, brash predictions are now coming hot and heavy. The rumors are flying faster than Vista downgrades. Everyone knows its coming. (It’s gotta be coming!) And while no one outside the Jobspod knows precisely when, the interweb pools are filling up fast and furious.

Starting now and working back, Macrumors does some myth-on-math and determines that “Apple will announce before the FCC leaks” amounts to a 6 week shipping window. So if Apple announces today, and the iPhone 3G shows up in the FCC database tomorrow, it could be shipping as soon as late May. If it announces in June, then it could clear FCC by July/August.

Uncle Walt, the Wall Street Journal’s own Mac Daddy, went and brought’nd’it saying we’ll see the iPhone 3G within 60 days. That’s early June.

iPod Observer brings us a pic of what may be the 3G iPhone in the wild, all dressed up in glossy Vader black. The iPod Nano fatty pics leaked online immediately prior to launch, could this be another breach of the nigh-impenetrable Apple vault? If so, a special Jobsnote would have to be around the corner… Like WWDC?

Every Apple-site and their feed server have been reporting wide spread shortages of the current iPhone at Apple Stores, and a longer-than-usual wait of 5-7 days for shipping online. A sign of inventory clearing ahead of a new release? Despite denials, Apple’s done that before. But Roughly Drafted disagrees, believing its simply an incredible increase in gray market demand around the globe.

AT&T Mobility’s CEO may or may not be part of the Jobsian inner-circle, but he’s saying their integrated product line will be 3G in a matter of months, and when pressed on the iPhone, he repeated his repetition repeatedly. A matter of months. June is certainly a month that matters. Unfortunately, so are July through December.

Shaw Wu of American Technology Research claims some inside checks on supply chains show an iPhone 3G heading our way in June or July, a quarter earlier than he believes was/is to be expected.

Macrumors also lays out their evidence and makes their case for a June release. And Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray agrees, and tosses in a lower-price iPhone, and a mind-boggling 45 million units prediction to boot.

Some EGDE 2.75 technology promises notwithstanding (now with half the slow!), Gartner’s Kim Dulany thinks Apple has already ordered 10 million OLED equipped iPhone 3Gs from their suppliers. Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek believes there’s 3G fire in the current out-of-stock Apple Store smoke signs.

Batting next-to-zero on current generation iPhone speculation also hasn’t stopped Digg’s Kevin Rose from stepping up to the plate and swinging for the sky with predictions for a June launch with built in GPS and iChat.

Whew! If that’s not enough 3G goodness for you, be sure to check out the Phone Different archives for more rumors, analyst expulsiveness, and general OMG 3G!!11 merriment.

Personally, I’ve taken WWDC as my pick for the iPhone 3G announcement pool. What’s your pick?

The iPod observer has a great shot of what could be the “back” of Apple’s 3G iPhone. With the inventory running low across the country, could this be the next iteration? Will we know soon?

The iPhone is going on a year old and it would make sense for there to be a product refresh soon. But we are not even to the 12-month anniversary yet. What does Steve Jobs have up his sleeve?

I think the black back looks great. It appears to be “soft touch” and not a painted aluminum. It also does not appear to be a Colorware painted iPhone either. Could their be other product enhancements such as a front facing camera too? I think we need a shot of the iPhone from the front to be sure…

As previously mentioned, US Apple Store’s have been surprisingly (or suspiciously) out of iPhone stock lately.

Some have speculated that this is due to the immanent release of a 3G iPhone, others have cited atypical supply chain management issues, component shortages, or shipping problems.

In a long post based on info from an anonymous source nom-de-tip’d, Tantrum, Roughly Drafted brings a third option to the table: Pirates. (JAR!)

“Demand for iPhones outside the United States, particularly in emerging markets, is out of control and has reached the point where it has started to impact Apple’s normalized supply chain projections,” Tantrum wrote. “It’s okay to have a delta of, say, 100,000 units or so per year between actual and forecast. International demand is driving that delta upwards of 1 million. That’s a whole different ball game for component sourcing, quality control and production ramp-up and some things are starting to come unstuck, even for a finely managed company like Apple.”

Tantrum mentions 5 specific reasons for the increased international demand:

Ease of jailbreak/unlock with new GUI-based solution. Organizations specializing in getting iPhones into Eastern Europe and Asia. Spread of Wi-Fi and EDGE being “good enough” in most countries. GSM compatibility. Low price (due to weak American dollar and high local smartphone costs).

There’s much more in the original post, so be sure to check it out. Could the pirates (JAR!) be sucking the US channels dry? Or is this just another crazy theory in face of the impending 3G monster birthing any minute now? What do you think?

“Phone different, real posts no gimmicks”

[With apologies to Eminem and - ahem - our readers.]

Rumor’s back. Back again. iPhone packed. Tell your friends.
From VP. Close to APPL. Kevin tweets. He’s top lvl.
3G soon. GPS spin. Here by June. FTW!
Kevin’s back. Back again. {interweb hums}

For those of you who aren’t up on either your Eminem or your Twitter, the story here is Kevin Rose posted up another teaser, this time on Twitter, that he has the inside line on the 3G iPhone with the above specs. He’s playing with us, right?

Right?

Ken Dulaney, a Gartner analyst has divulged to the iPod Observer that Apple may have already placed an order for 10 million 3G iPhones. Mr. Dulaney is aware of this based on the rumors he his following in Asia.

Mr. Delany also goes on to speculate that the 3G iPhone will also use organic LED’s allowing the device to be thinner and have a lower consumption. This comes just days off of Kevin Rose’s declaration that the 3G iPhone will have a built-in forward facing camera, possibly for video chatting via an iChat like client.

Will we see a new iPhone in a “few months”? My bet is the announcement will have to be at the WWDC this June.

Digg and Pownce founder and web 2.0 darling Kevin Rose, during the latest Diggnation podcast, made the following prognostications about the eventual 3G iPhone (via Apple Insider):

[Kevin Rose] claims that a 3G version of the iPhone hardware due in a few months will employ two digital cameras situated back-to-back — one on the front side of the unit behind the transparent touch-screen, and a second one on the back of the handset as it exists today.

Rose also conjectures that this may be why Apple has limited background processes in the current SDK: to prevent competition to their upcoming iChat Touch application.

iChat Touch, according to Rose, will allow full-on video conferencing via high-speed HSDPA between 3G iPhone users and desktop iChat users alike.

As to how reliable Rose’s predictions may be, Apple Insider reminds us:

In the week’s leading up to last year’s iPhone introduction, the Digg founder cited sources in saying Apple would introduce the handset with a slide-out keyboard, two separate battery compartments, and make it available for both CDMA and GSM networks — all of which turned out to be false.

So, um… er… yeah — we’ll take this with a shovel full of salt for now.

Still, the idea iChat Touch with video is exciting and functionality I’d love to see on the second generation iPhone. What do you think?

The Inquirer is rumormongering that the fabled iPhone 3G (in this case, iPhone version 3, rocking 3G HSDPA data speeds) will, like big brother Mac before it, be undergoing a brain transplant. And Intel once again has the technology.

Crutching itself on a CeBIT slide showing Intel’s MID (mobile internet device) roadmap, they point to a very conspicuous iPhone image in the bottom right corner. Wassup indeed?

The lucky chip is prognosticated to be a second-gen Atom, code-named Moorestown, Intel’s 45nm integrated memory, video/graphics engine, with optional Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and — you guessed it! — 3G all possible right there on the little super-chip.

So if all of this is still way off in 2009, with iPhone v3, where does that leave us (hopefully later this very year!) with iPhone v2? Maybe those previous Infineon rumors have some legs?

And with Apple hyping their mobile internet platform as the “next big thing” and rumors of a larger form-factor Safari Pad (iTablet), could it make sense for Apple to unify around a single chipset supplier? Or, like TUAW, will you believe it only when you see it (and pigs) fly?

(via Apple Insider)

Monday was analyst prediction day, as RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky and Banc of American analyst Scott Craig separately provided the following guestimates on Apple’s next gen iPhone:

Abramsky predicts him some amped up CPU, more memory, and the faster 3G speeds that allow for higher def (HD?) video, voice capture, streaming HD video, real-time GPS, and other Trekkie goodness. All this would, coupled with a mid-2008 release, would let Apple blow past 10 million, and hit a potential 11 million unites sold by year end.

For his part, Craig skipped features and stuck to the money: “We believe that demand in the U.S. may have been impacted by the anticipation of a new 3G phone…” (Perhaps because of continued analyst bombardment of same?) Craig also sees a 3G handset in 2008 as necessary to complete the 10 million handset march.

Check out AppleInsider for more.

In the always entertaining game of analyst hot potato, Apple Insider brings word from global equity research analyst Nicolas Gaudois who writes that his checks agree with their Apple analyst, Ben Reitzesa’s checks, that a 3G HSDPA “will be released by mid-year”.

According to Gaudois, current iPhone chip supplier Infineon, in anticipation of the switch, is ramping down production of 2.5G Edge basebands.

Everyone, everywhere seems to agree that Apple will need to drop a 3G iPhone this year in order to make good on the 10 million unit sales prediction (by end of 2008) most recently reaffirmed by COO Tim Cook, so this isn’t exactly Nostradamus-level prognostication, but the Apple rumor-mill has gotten better as of late (fatty Nano and MacBook Air being prime example).

So, will we see a 3G iPhone sporting Infineon by the summer? Does Intel’s mobile platform fit in anywhere?

There are a lot of rumors floating around that various carriers will get the 3G iPhone. Telefonica is one of the carriers usually named, Vodafone is usually the other. The rumors lately indicate that the next generation of iPhone, the iPhone 3G, will be available in May.

This blog post is basically for the record — I don’t buy it. These posts are all referencing obscure foreign blogs while the more traditional scoop-based mac sites remain silent on the matter (like thinksecret.com, for example). I don’t think Apple will replace the iPhone hardware that soon, either — part of me thinks that Apple will unveil a new iPhone right about the time that original purchasers near the end of their contracts. You know, selling stuff to their already-captive audience. Apple has hinted that maybe we’d maybe see something iPhoney with 3G in late 2008, and that’s probably still true.