All Articles Tagged launch

Back on July 11, the iPhone 3G launched in 22 countries. Along with much fanfare, hippie attention seekers, lines that would stretch out for weeks on end, and constantly crashing servers. But since Apple sold about a million of the hot new handsets that weekend, you just knew they were going to do it again.

“Today” brings phase 2, where 21 more countries are supposed to come online with the iPhone 3G. (Officially Aug. 22nd, which may or may not be “today” to you depending on your timezone). How are things going so far? Reader Anton was gracious enough to send in this report (thanks Anton!):

Now it’s midnight in Estonia and I’m at the iphone launch event. No special frenzy, about 1000 people in one supermarket, a couple of DJs and a lot of light. There’s just two plans offered: us$55 and $89. First one includes 100 minutes, 100 SMS and 100 Mb; the other one - 250 of each. Every extra megabyte will cost $.25 and $.21 respectively. The phone itself is $267/8Gb and $396/16Gb with $55 plan and $149/8Gb and $278/16Gb with $89 plan.

Ouch! When will telcos worldwide realize what Henry Ford did almost 100 years ago. Mass pricing leads to mass adoption which leads to mass profits. Sheesh!

So are you standing in line right this very minute, ready to get your shiny new iPhone today? Is your carrier up? Is iTunes activating? Let us know how things are going!

And if your market still doesn’t have the iPhone 3G, just remember that Apple promised another 30+ countries — a grand total of 70+ — for 2008, which is now set to include Russia via MTS. That pretty much leaves China standing alone as the last major market sans carrier deal… for now.

During Apple’s Q3 conference call Monday, along with App Store updates, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook, announced that the iPhone 3G would launch in 20 more countries/regions on August 22nd, some six weeks after the initial 22 country launch back on July 11th.

While we’ve previously known that some 70+ countries would launch during 2008, we still don’t know which of the remaining 50 will be included in the second wave (or whether carrier and iTunes servers will remain up and running this time!).

Guesses anyone?

Here at the Providence, RI Mall, the halls are filled with lost souls as of 5:45 am, wandering in a state of limbo, unable to queue up because of a short security guard with delusions of importance. Nevertheless, Randyman was kind enough to kick our local line off with the following photo, Will was here at 3:45 am, and the other 6 us are alternately sneaking around the halls or sitting here in the parking lot, waiting for the overzealous security guard’s wristwatch to read 6am.

How’s your line going?

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Who’s first in line for the iPhone 3G at the Apple Flagship glass cube store in New York City? Exactly. TheWhoFarm, to be even more exact. Why the irony? Seems they’re hoping to use the media attention around a decidedly less-than environmentally friendly iPhone 3G to draw attention to their causes, which are sustainability, affordable housing, energy security, locally-grown food (and multi-touch, desk liberating, universe denters for every child?)

Check out their wish-list from their open letter to Steve Jobs, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and Mayor Michael Bloomburg among others, after the break.

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As Rene mentioned over the weekend, the iPhone 2G has just turned one year old, we here at TiPb look to the future, though, and the future looks great. Great enough that we’re still planning on giving away an iPhone 3G to one lucky winner who’s made at least 20 posts in our iPhone Forums. Grab the full contest details here. Even better - when you visit the forums from your iPhone you should see a big ol’ “iPhone Version” that lets you interact with the forums via an iPhone interface. Don’t like it? The option to switch back is on the bottom of the iPhone version. What are you waiting for? Go on and register, post, and possibly win!

Also notable, you can now get your iPhone Blog six ways from Sunday. Ok, just two ways. You can now just punch in http://tipb.com into your browser to be brought to our main page. Easy, no? We’re not bringing out an iPhone version of the blog proper just yet — when we find / develop a verison that’s both fast and usable enough you’ll be the first to know.

Meanwhile, there’s only a couple weeks left now in the iPhone Wait-a-Thon, wherein we give away an iTunes Gift card worth $100 to somebody who’s commented on a Wait-a-Thon-tagged post (like, you know, this one). Details and rules here. Congrats to our latest winners, Tom, Mark, and Rafael. Your Gift Cards forthcoming just as soon as we convince Apple we’re not trying to defraud them by buying too many gift cards.

So with just a couple weeks left, we gotta ask: What’s your game plan for July 11th?. Rumor has it the launch will happen at 8 in the morning, so will you be camping out the night before? Sitting at home and pretending your iPhone 2G hasn’t been replaced with newer, faster, better, more? Answer in the comments for a chance to win!

Adding further fuel to the fire that Apple Inc. will drop the 3G bomb on June 9th, during CEO Steve Jobs’ Keynote address, InfoSyncWorld is claiming that, once announced, the 2nd generation iPhone will be made available via AT&T roughly 10 days later, on approximately the 18th or 19th.

InfoSyncWorld further speculates on HSDPA, GPS, Mobile TV, and other oft-cited iPhone 3G rumors.

And with the time left before WWDC growing shorter and shorter, when it comes to speculation and rumors, no doubt we ain’t seen nothing yet!

Read

And now, the tail end of our coverage of Friday’s iPhone launch at the Mall of America.

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Mike’s in line at the Mall of America - lucky number 13! Which means that a) at least one of the proprietors this website, which is dedicated to the iPhone, will actually have an actual iPhone in their hands, b) he has been there since 7am CST, and c) he has a good long wait ahead of him.

As Mike mentioned in his post below, news is taking a back seat to getting an iPhone today. However, you can keep an eye on this post right here for more pictures and updates of the Mall of America’s Apple Store iPhone craziness throughout the day.

(Latest update: 4:45:00 CST)

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