There’s a good summary of the carrier industry over at USA Today, which helps explain why the iPhone (and other phones with cult followings) are so important to the carriers: 73% of the U.S. households already have a mobile phone, and the carriers largely have to steal customers from each other. That’s why they try to lock you into a two year contract, and hit you with conract breakage fees when you leave. The iPhone is potentially doubly potent, as evidenced by the 5 year exclusive deal with AT&T — if you want the Apple iPhone, you will have to go to AT&T to get it. iPhone aficionados will likely be stuck on AT&T for a long time.
So, the carriers need the shiniest shiny toys to drag you away. The article also covers the old news that Verizon passed on the iPhone, unwilling to cave in to Apple’s demands. I’m glad to hear that deal didn’t go through — I’ve not been fond of Verizon in the past, and they have this nasty habit of locking up abilities on their phones that other carriers leave open. [via TreoCentral forums]
According to the Boy Genius Report, the iPhone will be available to prepaid customers on AT&T service — the relevant plans there would be “Go Phone Pay As You Go” and “Go Phone Pick Your Plan.” No prices are available yet, but it does mean that you’ll still be able to buy one even if the Death Star (AT&T) deems you unworthy of an upgrade. They expect prices for the actual phone to be available very soon.
There’s a great article at Communities Dominate Brands that does a fair job of explaining why the iPhone will be a watershed moment in the mobile market. It’s a long article, but a good in-depth read as to how the iPhone is predicted to ‘frame the discussion.’ Other smartphones are going to be compared to the iPhone; it becomes their yardstick to measure against.
“What will change? Pretty much everything. And funnily enough, most of it is not actually caused by the iPhone, they only happen to occur so closely to the iPhone, that the iPhone will be given much of the credit.”
Tomi Ahonen (with a name like that he can only be Finnish) goes on to state what the iPhone will do to mobile handset design, mobile internet, mobile advertising, mobile media, Silicon Valley, the blogging communities, mobile messaging, and the inevitable roar of media come June when the device is actually available.
“But the level of the noise around mobile will double in June. Very many big guns will join the game. That is good. And it will be a change from an old Era, where handset makers like Nokia and Motorola ran the show with the major mobile operators (carriers). Now media giants will join in, as will major IT players and internet companies.”
[via Slashphone]
Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, media, hype
The FCC has approved the iPhone for sale in the U.S.A. The article from PC Worldstates that it’s a dual-band phone, which isn’t correct (dual band would mean that it only works in the USA and wouldn’t roam internationally). Thankfully, PC World is incorrect.
I was astonished to read what their article stated, that it would only be a dual-band phone, as Apple would have to manufacture a separate phone for sale in Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia later. So, I moseyed over to the FCC’s website, and sure enough, it has all of the European bands listed (900 and 1800). Those bands aren’t used in the US, so the FCC didn’t test them. PC World must have missed the clearly stated “quad band” in the first page of the FCC approval letter. Oops!
At any rate, I’m glad to see that it’s approved. That means the hardware is finalized, software is likely done or nearly fully done as well. Now we just have to wait for the chance to buy the thing!
&tThird party apps are being “considered.” I’ve been pretty confident that we’ll see 3rd party apps on the iPhone, and I’ll continue to be confident. I more or less expect them to be signed (meaning that they’ll have to be purchase through the iTunes store and wrapped with DRM or some such — I’d be happy to be wrong about this) but I think we’ll see 3rd party apps. Maybe not immediately on launch, but we’ll see it.
Steve is said to be “wrestling with the issue,” which basically means that he knows it’s the right thing to do for the iPhone platform but likely isn’t excited about giving up control. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Analysts from UBS met with executives at Apple to talk about earnings, stocks, units shipped, and the like. Its relevance? Apple’s confidence in being able to ship enough units to meet iPhone demand. I hate product launches that use artificial scarcity to drive up demand, so I’m glad to see that this isn’t supposed to be one.
According to Walter Biscardi, one can install a lite version of Final Cut Studio on the iPhone if one already has a license, and capture and edit movies in the Apple ProRes 422 video codec. There are only two audio and video tracks, that’s it, but still, it’s video editing. On the iPhone.
I have no idea if the story is true, there’s no video of it in action; it could be a photoshop, it could be false, it could be a brazen lie by Walter Biscardi to capture traffic. But if it’s true, it should quiet the doubters worried about the application ecosystem a bit, especially if it’s a sign of things to come.
[via My iPhone]
Think Secret has posted a speculative story about who will carry the iPhone in Europe. Orange and Vodaphone are listed as the top contenders.
The article doesn’t mention the most important thing about the European carrier, however (important, at least, to North Americans). There are businesses who make it their work to take advantage of foreign economies to purchase an unlocked mobile device and then resell it in a different nation. Some nations, like Belgium, mandate that all phones are sold unlocked. So, one might be able to buy an unlocked iPhone via Belgium, for example. The purchaser may end up with a European warranty, sending their device across the Atlantic to have it serviced, or an outright refusal to service the warranty.
The idea is that the purchaser gets an iPhone on Rogers or T-Mobile, etc, instead of Cingular. It’s not possible to get an iPhone on Sprint, Verizon, or Alltel, unless you can get one of them to give you a SIM card, which you likely can’t. We will, of course, post updates as they come.
According to a survey by Markitecture (via Ars Technica), only 6% of people polled plan to buy an iPhone in the next year. Only six percent, they say! You know, if they follow through, that could put Apple in front of Microsoft in market share, currently at 5.7% (via Canalys). The article doesn’t say if it was a global or national survey, however.
Markitecture notes that the RAZR had about 6% of the phone market at its peak. Ars Technica doesn’t note the margin of error, but 6% of the global phone market (around 1 billion phones) is 60 million phones. At $500 each that’s 30 billion dollars. Granted, not net profit. If Apple is looking for 20% profit margins, as they’re wont to do, it looks like they’d potentially grab about 6 billion dollars.
It’s starting to look like Jobs set the bar low in January when he announced he was looking for 1% of the global phone market. Of course, one doesn’t like to set goals and then miss them, it makes one look bad. But, that’s part of what makes watching Jobs fun. When they destroy the 1% goal, he’s going to act like the most astounded person in the world. Whaaaa?
New York Times columnist David Pogue has published an ammended blog entry containing a second round of FAQs everyone seems to interested in finding answers to. This is definitely worth the click, as it paints a clearer picture of this “micro” OSX platform. I found one comment from Steve Jobs to be rather dishy…
Markoff: “And what are you thinking about Flash and Java?”
Jobs: “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”
Markoff: “Flash?”
Jobs: “Well, you might see that.”
Markoff: “What about YouTube–”
Jobs: “Yeah, YouTube—of course. But you don’t need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get ‘em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec.”
Err..I hate to break this to Steve but YouTube’s embedded video playback feature is based on Flash, so I’m not sure whether he understood the relevance of Markoff’s line of questions regarding Flash and its inclusion in the iPhone. Partnering with YouTube isn’t going to enable playback of YouTube content on the iPhone unless that partnership involves said company building a portable Flash package for Apple’s new phone. But I digress.
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