One button. For years, that's all Apple would allow on the mouse that accompanied its Macintosh pcs, arguing that more would complicate a system that stressed simplicity. Now it's one button on Apple's iPhone, a radical experiment in cellphones that has become a phenomenon before it has even been subjected to the ultimate test: consumers around the world. It's unclear if the iPhone can meet Apple's ambitious goals, much less satisfy runaway expectations in an always hyped-up market. But there is no question that the iPhone, which is scheduled to be shipped to stores on June 29, has already had a tectonic impact. "You have to give them credit for shifting the way we even think about a phone," says Gerry Purdy, an analyst at the market research firm Frost & Sullivan.
Rivals are racing to match the device's new approach, which abandons traditional keys for a touchpad, opening space for a larger screen and elbow room for photos and video. Competitors hope to capture a slice of a market that until now has not even existed in the United States, where no one has ever sold a $500-and-up phone that is more about multimedia than about voice calls.
Not that others couldn't have. Most, if not all, of the gear that Apple has packaged into the iPhone is not unique, be it touch-screens, WiFi, Bluetooth, or a camera—even the iPhone's seeming magic in sensing if it's being held vertically or horizontally, shifting its screen appropriately. But that kitchen-sink approach is Apple's gamble: deftly packing oodles of capability into one sleek device and assuming Americans will pay for it (with no discount while being handcuffed to a two-year service plan).
Expectations. Apple is wagering that it can be first because of its superior fit and finish. The iPhone's raw technical specs left him cold, says Avi Greengart, recalling his initial reaction as Steve Jobs described the new product in a January speech. Then he got 15 minutes to try one, and his skepticism melted. "I realized it lives up to the hype," says Greengart, who has tested scores of hand-held devices for the market-tracking firm Current Analysis.
Apple understands that it's the software, stupid, and has written numerous nice touches into the system that runs all that gear. Some of them make the iPhone uniquely attractive: shadows behind objects, like a desktop computer, and fade transitions between screens. Flick the touch-screen and send a list scrolling, then watch it slow down as if on a physical spindle. Apple also manages to walk users through tasks like setting up a conference call—who can manage one of those on a cellphone?—without patronizing them with dumbed-down "wizards" or cutesy characters. "Many people hate, hate, hate their cellphones," Greengart says. "The iPhone doesn't make you feel stupid—it makes you feel cool."
There are things missing from the iPhone, including high-speed Internet, even though Jobs touted its Web browser. The phone won't tap the fastest data rates available from AT&T, with which Apple will sell the phone.
2007年6月23日星期六
The iPhone's Top Pros and Cons
Face it, the iPhone can only have so many folks swooning if it's got raw sex appeal. This is one device that will appeal to both genders, leaving us to ponder just what will draw people when Apple launches the phone on June 29–and what everyone should be wary of.
Seven attractions:
Striking looks: And we don't just meet the slim, hot look of the case. This phone has a large, beautiful, and bright screen–which is all the more surprising since it's a touch-screen, which is usually less vivid. The screen measures 3.5 inches across, bigger than just about anything made for the hand, and can produce as good an image as a typical desktop monitor did just a few years ago.
Friendly demeanor: This looks to be one of the easiest cellphones to get to know and use. Apple does software well and has packed nearly 30 years of experience into lists that scroll with the flick of a finger, photos that expand and shrink with a stretch of a thumb, and a screen that gets wider or taller with the twist of a wrist. In short, the iPhone strives to become one with your hands.
Smarts: The phone comes with all the elements of a smart phone, including an address book, calendar, maps, notes, and, of course, E-mail. A full-fledged Web browser comes with the system, which also is a version of the OS X that runs Apple's computers. That means it can do several things at once, such as send a photo to a friend while checking the calendar.
Good voice: The iPhone hails from the folks who brought you the iPod, and you can bet this will be the best phone yet for listening to tunes. Plus it will work with the hundreds of iPod speakers and other accessories out there, including docks built into your Mercedes or Volkswagen, and maybe even at your seat on a Boeing Dreamliner. Just be sure to turn off the wireless before take-off.
Sensitive communicator: Besides a cellphone, the iPhone has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, which should make it easy to connect to high-speed Internet hot spots and companion devices, like headsets. The phone itself is no slacker, with the industry's first visual voice mail: Your messages show up on a list, making it easy to find the one you want to hear first.
Buff muscles: With built-in memory of at least 4 gigabytes, the phone has the heft to carry a goodly amount of music, photos, and videos.
Worldliness: The iPhone is ready to roam the globe, with its four bands of cellphone reception.
Seven reasons to be wary:
Gold-digging: Starting at $500, the iPhone is one pricey date. That's even before the cost of a monthly voice and data plan, whose prices AT&T and Apple haven't yet revealed. Analysts estimate that Apple's cost is about half of that $500, suggesting that the company is milking the early adopters.
No prenup: Purchasing an iPhone will force you to sign a two-year contract with AT&T, which will provide voice and data service. And unlike just about every other phone out there, there is no discount on the purchase price for signing that two-year agreement.
Seven attractions:
Striking looks: And we don't just meet the slim, hot look of the case. This phone has a large, beautiful, and bright screen–which is all the more surprising since it's a touch-screen, which is usually less vivid. The screen measures 3.5 inches across, bigger than just about anything made for the hand, and can produce as good an image as a typical desktop monitor did just a few years ago.
Friendly demeanor: This looks to be one of the easiest cellphones to get to know and use. Apple does software well and has packed nearly 30 years of experience into lists that scroll with the flick of a finger, photos that expand and shrink with a stretch of a thumb, and a screen that gets wider or taller with the twist of a wrist. In short, the iPhone strives to become one with your hands.
Smarts: The phone comes with all the elements of a smart phone, including an address book, calendar, maps, notes, and, of course, E-mail. A full-fledged Web browser comes with the system, which also is a version of the OS X that runs Apple's computers. That means it can do several things at once, such as send a photo to a friend while checking the calendar.
Good voice: The iPhone hails from the folks who brought you the iPod, and you can bet this will be the best phone yet for listening to tunes. Plus it will work with the hundreds of iPod speakers and other accessories out there, including docks built into your Mercedes or Volkswagen, and maybe even at your seat on a Boeing Dreamliner. Just be sure to turn off the wireless before take-off.
Sensitive communicator: Besides a cellphone, the iPhone has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, which should make it easy to connect to high-speed Internet hot spots and companion devices, like headsets. The phone itself is no slacker, with the industry's first visual voice mail: Your messages show up on a list, making it easy to find the one you want to hear first.
Buff muscles: With built-in memory of at least 4 gigabytes, the phone has the heft to carry a goodly amount of music, photos, and videos.
Worldliness: The iPhone is ready to roam the globe, with its four bands of cellphone reception.
Seven reasons to be wary:
Gold-digging: Starting at $500, the iPhone is one pricey date. That's even before the cost of a monthly voice and data plan, whose prices AT&T and Apple haven't yet revealed. Analysts estimate that Apple's cost is about half of that $500, suggesting that the company is milking the early adopters.
No prenup: Purchasing an iPhone will force you to sign a two-year contract with AT&T, which will provide voice and data service. And unlike just about every other phone out there, there is no discount on the purchase price for signing that two-year agreement.
AT&T Hoping the iPhone Has Coattails
SAN FRANCISCO, June 22 — When the iPhone goes on sale next Friday, people are likely to flood AT&T Wireless and Apple stores to check out the new device. But will the curiosity translate into big business for AT&T?
Skip to next paragraph MultimediaGraphic Plugging Into the Wireless Market Industry analysts and executives offer mixed opinions about how much the iPhone will shake up the wireless business. They are torn, too, about how much it will benefit AT&T — Apple’s exclusive partner — in its fierce competition with Verizon, Sprint Nextel and other carriers.
But analysts can generally agree on one thing: the sleek touch-screen iPhone will change what consumers expect from the mobile phones offered by wireless companies.
The shift will be like the one caused by the skinny Razr from Motorola, the once wildly popular phone that became perhaps the first that people regularly asked for by name, said Chetan Sharma, a wireless industry consultant.
“The Razr redefined expectations,” Mr. Sharma said. “The iPhone will have a similar and larger impact.”
For Mr. Sharma, that impact will benefit AT&T only if its competitors fail to offer solid alternatives: “If they don’t have a compelling product in the market, it’ll start to show.”
The other carriers argue that they already have competitive devices that take sharp pictures, allow music downloads and are tailored for heavy use of text messaging and Internet access.
But it is a testament to the power of Apple’s brand name and reputation that many consumers appear to be giving it a chance to redefine phones as the iPod did music players. AT&T said 1.1 million potential customers had signed up on the company’s Web site asking to be contacted when the phone is for sale.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, has said that he expects Apple to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. That projection could include sales outside the United States, but Apple has not yet announced any deals with foreign carriers.
M:Metrics, a market research firm, found in a recent study that 64 percent of American mobile phone users had heard of the iPhone and 14 percent of those would be “highly interested in buying one.”
The iPhone could bring AT&T more subscribers, but perhaps more important it could allow AT&T to position itself as a younger, hipper company, said John Hodulik, a telecommunications industry analyst at UBS.
For AT&T “the iPhone launch is bigger than the launch of a new device,” Mr. Hodulik said. “It’s something more strategic. It’s about moving the whole brand.”
The new phone comes at a challenging time for AT&T and an inflection point for the industry.
AT&T’s share of new monthly wireless subscribers has fallen steadily over the last year, notably since it purchased BellSouth and changed its wireless brand to AT&T from Cingular. In the second quarter of last year, 29.5 percent of new cellphone subscribers chose AT&T, but that figure was 25.8 percent in this year’s first quarter, Mr. Hodulik said.
At the end of the first quarter, AT&T had 62.2 million subscribers, slightly more than Verizon’s 61.5 million, said Jonathan Atkin, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. But Verizon is catching up a little bit each quarter.
AT&T is already doing worse than Verizon in terms of customer turnover, or churn, Mr. Atkin said. AT&T is now losing around 1.7 percent of its subscribers each month, compared with 1.1 percent at Verizon. T-Mobile’s churn is 2.6 percent, while Sprint’s is 2.3 percent.
AT&T executives say the buzz created by the iPhone will generate interest in their other products and inspire customers who do not buy the Apple device to perhaps buy a different phone from the company. To accommodate the expected demand this summer, AT&T is hiring an average of one extra temporary worker in about 1,900 of its wireless stores who will be trained to sell the iPhone.
“This is going to drive a tremendous amount of traffic and energy to our stores,” said Glenn Lurie, president for national distribution of AT&T’s wireless group. He added: “It’ll help our growth not just in iPhones but in our overall business.”
Mr. Lurie declined to say how much money AT&T is spending to market the iPhone or how many phones it expects to sell. He said he was not concerned that consumers would balk at the price of the iPhone, which costs $499 or $599, depending on how much memory it has. The phones require a two-year service contract and, unlike most other phones AT&T offers, it will not be subsidized by the company.
“Price is not an issue,” Mr. Lurie said. “It combines multiple functions and it’s the best iPod ever built.”
On this issue, and others, Verizon begs to differ.
“AT&T set the initial price very high, so it’ll likely do better once they lower the price, and align it with the value they offer,” said Mike Lanman, the chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless.
Mr. Lanman said Verizon already had at least 18 music-capable phones. In the next few weeks, he said, it plans to introduce a new model of its Chocolate phones that allows not just downloading of songs over the air but also transferring music from computers.
Mr. Lanman said he was not worried that AT&T would steal customers because Verizon’s network infrastructure is superior and offers better connection coverage and stability. “For Apple, I think the big risk is the AT&T network.”
Some industry analysts agree that the iPhone is not necessarily destined to be an instant or significant buoy to AT&T’s business.
Edward Snyder, an equity analyst with Charter Equity Research, said that many people would be turned off by the price; older customers who can afford it, he said, will not care about all the fancy features of the iPhone, while younger ones who are excited about the device will not like the cost.
Over all, Mr. Snyder said, the iPhone will appeal to maybe 3 percent to 5 percent of wireless phone users. And he said he was skeptical that it would work as well as advertised.
“Implementing a cellphone is absolutely more difficult than anything Apple’s done to date,” he said, noting that, in particular, the phones might have trouble delivering consistently good voice communications and that the devices could suffer overall reliability problems. “Go out and buy an iPod and hold it at waist level and drop it. That’s the end of the iPod.”
“I don’t think Apple’s going to be a big player in this at all.”
The deal could actually go badly for AT&T because it will spend a lot of money to market the phone and then not wind up with the returns it hopes for, Mr. Snyder said. But Mr. Snyder joins other analysts who agree that, if nothing else, the iPhone will accelerate innovation in the handset market.
Bill Plummer, vice president of Nokia’s multimedia group in North America, disagreed with the assertion that the iPhone would bring fundamental change to the market. He said Nokia already sold high-end phones with a wide range of functions, including the N95, which has a five-megapixel camera and a hard drive to store and play music. The phone works on either the AT&T or T-Mobile network and sells for $749.
The iPhone, he argued “is an evolution of the status quo.”
Skip to next paragraph MultimediaGraphic Plugging Into the Wireless Market Industry analysts and executives offer mixed opinions about how much the iPhone will shake up the wireless business. They are torn, too, about how much it will benefit AT&T — Apple’s exclusive partner — in its fierce competition with Verizon, Sprint Nextel and other carriers.
But analysts can generally agree on one thing: the sleek touch-screen iPhone will change what consumers expect from the mobile phones offered by wireless companies.
The shift will be like the one caused by the skinny Razr from Motorola, the once wildly popular phone that became perhaps the first that people regularly asked for by name, said Chetan Sharma, a wireless industry consultant.
“The Razr redefined expectations,” Mr. Sharma said. “The iPhone will have a similar and larger impact.”
For Mr. Sharma, that impact will benefit AT&T only if its competitors fail to offer solid alternatives: “If they don’t have a compelling product in the market, it’ll start to show.”
The other carriers argue that they already have competitive devices that take sharp pictures, allow music downloads and are tailored for heavy use of text messaging and Internet access.
But it is a testament to the power of Apple’s brand name and reputation that many consumers appear to be giving it a chance to redefine phones as the iPod did music players. AT&T said 1.1 million potential customers had signed up on the company’s Web site asking to be contacted when the phone is for sale.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, has said that he expects Apple to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. That projection could include sales outside the United States, but Apple has not yet announced any deals with foreign carriers.
M:Metrics, a market research firm, found in a recent study that 64 percent of American mobile phone users had heard of the iPhone and 14 percent of those would be “highly interested in buying one.”
The iPhone could bring AT&T more subscribers, but perhaps more important it could allow AT&T to position itself as a younger, hipper company, said John Hodulik, a telecommunications industry analyst at UBS.
For AT&T “the iPhone launch is bigger than the launch of a new device,” Mr. Hodulik said. “It’s something more strategic. It’s about moving the whole brand.”
The new phone comes at a challenging time for AT&T and an inflection point for the industry.
AT&T’s share of new monthly wireless subscribers has fallen steadily over the last year, notably since it purchased BellSouth and changed its wireless brand to AT&T from Cingular. In the second quarter of last year, 29.5 percent of new cellphone subscribers chose AT&T, but that figure was 25.8 percent in this year’s first quarter, Mr. Hodulik said.
At the end of the first quarter, AT&T had 62.2 million subscribers, slightly more than Verizon’s 61.5 million, said Jonathan Atkin, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. But Verizon is catching up a little bit each quarter.
AT&T is already doing worse than Verizon in terms of customer turnover, or churn, Mr. Atkin said. AT&T is now losing around 1.7 percent of its subscribers each month, compared with 1.1 percent at Verizon. T-Mobile’s churn is 2.6 percent, while Sprint’s is 2.3 percent.
AT&T executives say the buzz created by the iPhone will generate interest in their other products and inspire customers who do not buy the Apple device to perhaps buy a different phone from the company. To accommodate the expected demand this summer, AT&T is hiring an average of one extra temporary worker in about 1,900 of its wireless stores who will be trained to sell the iPhone.
“This is going to drive a tremendous amount of traffic and energy to our stores,” said Glenn Lurie, president for national distribution of AT&T’s wireless group. He added: “It’ll help our growth not just in iPhones but in our overall business.”
Mr. Lurie declined to say how much money AT&T is spending to market the iPhone or how many phones it expects to sell. He said he was not concerned that consumers would balk at the price of the iPhone, which costs $499 or $599, depending on how much memory it has. The phones require a two-year service contract and, unlike most other phones AT&T offers, it will not be subsidized by the company.
“Price is not an issue,” Mr. Lurie said. “It combines multiple functions and it’s the best iPod ever built.”
On this issue, and others, Verizon begs to differ.
“AT&T set the initial price very high, so it’ll likely do better once they lower the price, and align it with the value they offer,” said Mike Lanman, the chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless.
Mr. Lanman said Verizon already had at least 18 music-capable phones. In the next few weeks, he said, it plans to introduce a new model of its Chocolate phones that allows not just downloading of songs over the air but also transferring music from computers.
Mr. Lanman said he was not worried that AT&T would steal customers because Verizon’s network infrastructure is superior and offers better connection coverage and stability. “For Apple, I think the big risk is the AT&T network.”
Some industry analysts agree that the iPhone is not necessarily destined to be an instant or significant buoy to AT&T’s business.
Edward Snyder, an equity analyst with Charter Equity Research, said that many people would be turned off by the price; older customers who can afford it, he said, will not care about all the fancy features of the iPhone, while younger ones who are excited about the device will not like the cost.
Over all, Mr. Snyder said, the iPhone will appeal to maybe 3 percent to 5 percent of wireless phone users. And he said he was skeptical that it would work as well as advertised.
“Implementing a cellphone is absolutely more difficult than anything Apple’s done to date,” he said, noting that, in particular, the phones might have trouble delivering consistently good voice communications and that the devices could suffer overall reliability problems. “Go out and buy an iPod and hold it at waist level and drop it. That’s the end of the iPod.”
“I don’t think Apple’s going to be a big player in this at all.”
The deal could actually go badly for AT&T because it will spend a lot of money to market the phone and then not wind up with the returns it hopes for, Mr. Snyder said. But Mr. Snyder joins other analysts who agree that, if nothing else, the iPhone will accelerate innovation in the handset market.
Bill Plummer, vice president of Nokia’s multimedia group in North America, disagreed with the assertion that the iPhone would bring fundamental change to the market. He said Nokia already sold high-end phones with a wide range of functions, including the N95, which has a five-megapixel camera and a hard drive to store and play music. The phone works on either the AT&T or T-Mobile network and sells for $749.
The iPhone, he argued “is an evolution of the status quo.”
2007年6月12日星期二
Verizon, Sprint await iPhone onslaught
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- While AT&T Inc. executives talk confidently about gaining market share in the wireless business after the iPhone is released, skeptical rivals have reserved their fire.Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. all say they are prepared for the iPhone, but none has offered a clear strategy to combat the introduction of the highly anticipated device. "I'm not sure it is wise to pick on a particular product and say: 'This is the product that we want to compete head-to-head with,'" Denny Strigl, Verizon's chief operating officer, said last week. "It does not make a lot of sense to me." Apple Inc. (AAPL : Apple IncNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 120.38+0.19+0.16%
12:15am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:AAPL120.38, +0.19, +0.2%) has designated June 29 for the debut of the wireless device, which will work only on AT&T's network. The iPhone is a first-of-its-kind mobile handset based entirely on a touch-screen design but will sport a high price tag of $500 for the cheapest model. AT&T (T : AT&T IncNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 39.08-1.04-2.59%
12:07am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:T39.08, -1.04, -2.6%) has repeatedly called the iPhone a "game changer," saying more than 1 million potential customers have made inquiries about the device. Many of them have declined to re-sign annual commitments with their current providers so they'll have a chance to check out the iPhone, AT&T executives say. "We believe the big shift that will occur is it's going to be an opportunity to take share," John Stankey, AT&T's group president for operations, told investors Tuesday at a Bear Stearns conference. Looking for an edgeCertainly AT&T could use a big winner. Although it is the largest mobile operator in the U.S. with 62.2 million subscribers, Verizon Wireless has been gaining fast. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ : verizon communications comNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 43.08-0.43-0.99%
12:07am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:VZ43.08, -0.43, -1.0%) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD : vodafone group plc new spons adr newNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 31.18-0.11-0.35%
12:07am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:VOD31.18, -0.11, -0.4%) , has out-gained AT&T by an average of 220,000 customers each quarter since the beginning of 2006. Verizon now has 60.7 million mobile customers. Verizon also generates higher total revenue from its wireless business than AT&T and the company's customers spend more -- $50.73 per Verizon user compared with $49.21 for AT&T, according to data from company reports. Because the iPhone is a data-intensive device -- Web surfing and music playing are two of its most crucial features -- AT&T expects customers who choose the device will spend more each month. Data plans are priced significantly higher than voice-only service. AT&T executives also figure that iPhone users will prove more loyal, helping the company to cut its current churn rate of 1.7%. Churn, a key measure in the wireless business, reflects the percentage of customers who cancel service. Verizon also leads in that category with a 1.08% churn rate. Sizing up AppleRival executives know Apple and its iPhone pose a serious threat. They've even put a positive spin on the device's introduction, saying awareness of the iPhone could create broader consumer demand for handsets that play music or offer speedy connections to the Internet. "We've been anticipating, as the industry has, the coming of the iPhone," Sprint Chief Executive Gary Forsee acknowledged. Added Strigl: "I think they will have a good product. So I don't deny them that." Nonetheless, rival operators and handset makers have expressed skepticism about whether the iPhone will truly shake up a wireless market in which the vast majority of consumers pay less than $100 for the handsets they own. They point to the iPhone's $500 starting price tag and note that consumers would also have to sign up for more costly monthly plans. "It's an expensive device," Forsee said. "If the customer is buying that for music, then we're going to be able to provide very significant alternatives to that at a much cheaper price point." Effect on rivalsIf Forsee's skepticism is misplaced, Sprint (S : Sprint Nextel CorporationNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 21.60-0.40-1.82%
12:07am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:S21.60, -0.40, -1.8%) has the most to lose. The company has lost thousands of its best customers over the past year to AT&T and Verizon and its churn rate remains stubbornly high. Since the start of 2006, Sprint has added just 3.56 million net customers, most of whom signed up through less profitable wholesale channels or subscribed to its cheaper prepaid service. In the last three quarters alone, Sprint has lost more than 700,000 highly valued postpaid subscribers -- those on yearly plans who pay their bills at the end of each month. By contrast, Verizon has added 9.4 million net customers during the same period, almost all of them postpaid subscribers signed up directly by the company. AT&T added 8.3 million net customers. Even T-Mobile, the fourth biggest wireless operator in the U.S., has outpaced Sprint by adding 4.3 million net customers over the past five quarters. Verizon is not immune either, but the company's relatively high consumer-satisfaction rating and the perception that it operates a superior network could mitigate losses over the iPhone. But just in case the iPhone proves to be a huge hit, Verizon executives are plotting out their response. "You will see you will see more products from us by year-end, so stay tuned," Strigl said.
12:15am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:AAPL120.38, +0.19, +0.2%) has designated June 29 for the debut of the wireless device, which will work only on AT&T's network. The iPhone is a first-of-its-kind mobile handset based entirely on a touch-screen design but will sport a high price tag of $500 for the cheapest model. AT&T (T : AT&T IncNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 39.08-1.04-2.59%
12:07am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:T39.08, -1.04, -2.6%) has repeatedly called the iPhone a "game changer," saying more than 1 million potential customers have made inquiries about the device. Many of them have declined to re-sign annual commitments with their current providers so they'll have a chance to check out the iPhone, AT&T executives say. "We believe the big shift that will occur is it's going to be an opportunity to take share," John Stankey, AT&T's group president for operations, told investors Tuesday at a Bear Stearns conference. Looking for an edgeCertainly AT&T could use a big winner. Although it is the largest mobile operator in the U.S. with 62.2 million subscribers, Verizon Wireless has been gaining fast. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ : verizon communications comNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 43.08-0.43-0.99%
12:07am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:VZ43.08, -0.43, -1.0%) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD : vodafone group plc new spons adr newNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 31.18-0.11-0.35%
12:07am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:VOD31.18, -0.11, -0.4%) , has out-gained AT&T by an average of 220,000 customers each quarter since the beginning of 2006. Verizon now has 60.7 million mobile customers. Verizon also generates higher total revenue from its wireless business than AT&T and the company's customers spend more -- $50.73 per Verizon user compared with $49.21 for AT&T, according to data from company reports. Because the iPhone is a data-intensive device -- Web surfing and music playing are two of its most crucial features -- AT&T expects customers who choose the device will spend more each month. Data plans are priced significantly higher than voice-only service. AT&T executives also figure that iPhone users will prove more loyal, helping the company to cut its current churn rate of 1.7%. Churn, a key measure in the wireless business, reflects the percentage of customers who cancel service. Verizon also leads in that category with a 1.08% churn rate. Sizing up AppleRival executives know Apple and its iPhone pose a serious threat. They've even put a positive spin on the device's introduction, saying awareness of the iPhone could create broader consumer demand for handsets that play music or offer speedy connections to the Internet. "We've been anticipating, as the industry has, the coming of the iPhone," Sprint Chief Executive Gary Forsee acknowledged. Added Strigl: "I think they will have a good product. So I don't deny them that." Nonetheless, rival operators and handset makers have expressed skepticism about whether the iPhone will truly shake up a wireless market in which the vast majority of consumers pay less than $100 for the handsets they own. They point to the iPhone's $500 starting price tag and note that consumers would also have to sign up for more costly monthly plans. "It's an expensive device," Forsee said. "If the customer is buying that for music, then we're going to be able to provide very significant alternatives to that at a much cheaper price point." Effect on rivalsIf Forsee's skepticism is misplaced, Sprint (S : Sprint Nextel CorporationNews , chart , profile , moreLast: 21.60-0.40-1.82%
12:07am 06/13/2007
Delayed quote dataAdd to portfolioAnalyst Create alertInsiderDiscussFinancials Sponsored by:S21.60, -0.40, -1.8%) has the most to lose. The company has lost thousands of its best customers over the past year to AT&T and Verizon and its churn rate remains stubbornly high. Since the start of 2006, Sprint has added just 3.56 million net customers, most of whom signed up through less profitable wholesale channels or subscribed to its cheaper prepaid service. In the last three quarters alone, Sprint has lost more than 700,000 highly valued postpaid subscribers -- those on yearly plans who pay their bills at the end of each month. By contrast, Verizon has added 9.4 million net customers during the same period, almost all of them postpaid subscribers signed up directly by the company. AT&T added 8.3 million net customers. Even T-Mobile, the fourth biggest wireless operator in the U.S., has outpaced Sprint by adding 4.3 million net customers over the past five quarters. Verizon is not immune either, but the company's relatively high consumer-satisfaction rating and the perception that it operates a superior network could mitigate losses over the iPhone. But just in case the iPhone proves to be a huge hit, Verizon executives are plotting out their response. "You will see you will see more products from us by year-end, so stay tuned," Strigl said.
That iPhone Has a Keyboard, but It’s Not Mechanical
SAN FRANCISCO, June 12 — If there is a billion-dollar gamble underlying Apple’s iPhone, it lies in what this smart cellphone does not have: a mechanical keyboard.
Skip to next paragraph MultimediaGraphic Compare the iPhone RelatedTimes Topics: iPhoneTimes Topics: Steven P. JobsAs the clearest expression yet of the Apple chief executive’s spartan design aesthetic, the iPhone sports only one mechanical button, to return a user to the home screen. It echoes Steven P. Jobs’s decree two decades ago that a computer mouse should have a single button. (Most computer mice these days have two.) His argument was that one button ensured that it would be impossible to push the wrong button.
The keyboard is built into other phones, those designed for businesspeople as well as those for teenagers. But the lack of a keyboard could be seen as a clever industrial design solution. It has permitted the iPhone to have a 3.5-inch screen. A big screen makes the phone attractive for alternative uses like watching movies and that could open up new revenue streams for Apple and its partner, AT&T.
The downside is that typing is done by pecking on the screen with thumbs or fingers, something hardly anyone outside of Apple has experienced yet. “The tactile feedback of a mechanical keyboard is a pretty important aspect of human interaction,” said Bill Moggeridge, a founder of Ideo, an industrial design company in Palo Alto, Calif. “If you take that away you tend to be very insecure.”
Mr. Jobs and other Apple executives argue that the keyboard that pops up onscreen will be a painless compromise. The iPhone’s onscreen keyboard has a dictionary-lookup feature that tries to predict the word being typed, catching errors as they are made.
That, of course, requires users to learn the new system, a task that Apple executives acknowledge may require several days. Last month at an industry conference, Mr. Jobs dismissed doubts about the decision to rely on a virtual keyboard, saying that users only had to learn to trust the keyboard, “and then you will fly.”
Yet in the days before the phone is scheduled to go on sale at Apple and AT&T stores around the country, designers and marketers of electronic devices centers are having a spirited debate about whether consumers will have the patience to overcome the hurdle that will be required to type without the familiar tactile feedback offered by conventional keyboards.
Apple is making other compromises. The AT&T Edge cellular network transmits data more slowly than those of rivals, but the iPhone will still be equipped with Wi-Fi for Web access. The phone will not accept memory cards.
The keyboard, however, is the biggest worry. At worst, customers will return the products. Currently AT&T gives customers 30 days to return handsets, but it is not clear whether it will maintain that policy for the iPhone. Any significant number of returns of the iPhone could conceivably undermine what until now has been a remarkable promotional blitzkrieg that culminates in the phone’s release June 29.
“There has never been a massively successful consumer device based solely on a touch screen,” warned Sky Dayton, chief executive of Helio, a cellular network service that has recently introduced an innovative handset that integrates Google maps with a G.P.S. system and another feature that physically locates friends using Helio phones.
Palm was successful, he noted, despite requiring the Palm Pilot’s users to enter text with a stylus using its own writing system called Graffiti. But the company eventually retreated and put a mechanical keyboard on its Treo smartphones.
“Texting” is central to an entire generation of people, Mr. Dayton argued, and Apple is taking a risk in not making that a central design feature. “There is a generation of users who are always online and who don’t communicate the way their parents did,” he said. “They’re e-mailing; they’re texting; they’re I.M.-ing.”
To be sure, Apple has had its share of product design hits and misses both under Mr. Jobs’s command and while he was in exile from the computer maker from 1985 to 1997. The Apple III was a well-designed computer, but was undermined by shoddy manufacturing. Several years later, the Lisa, the first commercial PC with a graphical user interface, and an infamously poorly designed “Twiggy” floppy disk drive, generated excitement but failed commercially. More recently, the Apple Cube, which was perhaps Mr. Jobs’s most daring design statement, drew critical praise and few sales.
But the comparison that could haunt the iPhone most comes from the specter of a former Apple chief executive, John Sculley, and his Newton. Billed as the original “personal digital assistant,” the Newton relied on a stylus for entering text. When users fumbled with its character recognition system, the machine went from hype to humiliation.
Although a small team of dedicated Apple engineers ultimately improved the technology, it was too late to save the Newton as a product.
Few industrial designers believe that the iPhone will suffer the Newton’s fate. Indeed, many leading designers argue that even before the iPhone has reached the market, it has changed consumer electronics industry standards irrevocably. Dispensing with a physical keyboard has given software an increased importance over hardware in product design, said Mark Rolston, senior vice president at Frog Design, an industrial design consulting firm.
A result, he said, has been a richer conversation between Frog’s designers and customers because the software presents a much wider range of options for features. “This is great for us because the carriers weren’t listening,” Mr. Rolston said. “They were slightly adjusting the soft-keys.”
Overnight that has changed and that has resulted in significant new business for design companies like Frog. “We’re being engaged by many more customers with more aggressive ideas about what to do,” he said.
Mr. Rolston believes that Mr. Jobs will get away with his gamble. “They took a risk and it’s a bold step for the industry,” he said. “This is a worthwhile risk.”
Indeed, the handful of users outside Apple who have been able to play with the hand-held device report that the quirky company has made an important step forward in the art of controlling computer systems. It may teach a new generation of technology users to use their fingers rather than a mouse — a four-decade-old technology — as a pointing and command device.
Apple’s multitouch technology — which permits control gestures with one or more fingers or thumbs — and which is now also being explored by a variety of other companies, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and others, is a much more direct way to interact with a computer. Software designers have injected virtual “physics” into the user’s experience. For example, sliding a finger along the screen in a directory will cause the index to slide as if it were a piece of paper on a flat surface.
Mr. Jobs’s new phone may resonate with a new kind of mobile user, said Donald A. Norman, a product designer who is co-director of the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
“Apple says, ‘We’re not selling to the person who lives on his BlackBerry, we’re selling to the person who listens to music and surfs the Web,’ ” he said.
And even Mr. Jobs’s competitors are rooting for him to win.
“When I first saw iPhone I was very excited,” said Benjamin Bederson, co-founder and vice president for client technologies at ZenZui, a Seattle-based mobile phone software company, which is commercializing technologies that were developed at Microsoft’s research labs. “It will raise the expectations. I think that consumers have had the central assumption that cellphone experiences are terrible and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Skip to next paragraph MultimediaGraphic Compare the iPhone RelatedTimes Topics: iPhoneTimes Topics: Steven P. JobsAs the clearest expression yet of the Apple chief executive’s spartan design aesthetic, the iPhone sports only one mechanical button, to return a user to the home screen. It echoes Steven P. Jobs’s decree two decades ago that a computer mouse should have a single button. (Most computer mice these days have two.) His argument was that one button ensured that it would be impossible to push the wrong button.
The keyboard is built into other phones, those designed for businesspeople as well as those for teenagers. But the lack of a keyboard could be seen as a clever industrial design solution. It has permitted the iPhone to have a 3.5-inch screen. A big screen makes the phone attractive for alternative uses like watching movies and that could open up new revenue streams for Apple and its partner, AT&T.
The downside is that typing is done by pecking on the screen with thumbs or fingers, something hardly anyone outside of Apple has experienced yet. “The tactile feedback of a mechanical keyboard is a pretty important aspect of human interaction,” said Bill Moggeridge, a founder of Ideo, an industrial design company in Palo Alto, Calif. “If you take that away you tend to be very insecure.”
Mr. Jobs and other Apple executives argue that the keyboard that pops up onscreen will be a painless compromise. The iPhone’s onscreen keyboard has a dictionary-lookup feature that tries to predict the word being typed, catching errors as they are made.
That, of course, requires users to learn the new system, a task that Apple executives acknowledge may require several days. Last month at an industry conference, Mr. Jobs dismissed doubts about the decision to rely on a virtual keyboard, saying that users only had to learn to trust the keyboard, “and then you will fly.”
Yet in the days before the phone is scheduled to go on sale at Apple and AT&T stores around the country, designers and marketers of electronic devices centers are having a spirited debate about whether consumers will have the patience to overcome the hurdle that will be required to type without the familiar tactile feedback offered by conventional keyboards.
Apple is making other compromises. The AT&T Edge cellular network transmits data more slowly than those of rivals, but the iPhone will still be equipped with Wi-Fi for Web access. The phone will not accept memory cards.
The keyboard, however, is the biggest worry. At worst, customers will return the products. Currently AT&T gives customers 30 days to return handsets, but it is not clear whether it will maintain that policy for the iPhone. Any significant number of returns of the iPhone could conceivably undermine what until now has been a remarkable promotional blitzkrieg that culminates in the phone’s release June 29.
“There has never been a massively successful consumer device based solely on a touch screen,” warned Sky Dayton, chief executive of Helio, a cellular network service that has recently introduced an innovative handset that integrates Google maps with a G.P.S. system and another feature that physically locates friends using Helio phones.
Palm was successful, he noted, despite requiring the Palm Pilot’s users to enter text with a stylus using its own writing system called Graffiti. But the company eventually retreated and put a mechanical keyboard on its Treo smartphones.
“Texting” is central to an entire generation of people, Mr. Dayton argued, and Apple is taking a risk in not making that a central design feature. “There is a generation of users who are always online and who don’t communicate the way their parents did,” he said. “They’re e-mailing; they’re texting; they’re I.M.-ing.”
To be sure, Apple has had its share of product design hits and misses both under Mr. Jobs’s command and while he was in exile from the computer maker from 1985 to 1997. The Apple III was a well-designed computer, but was undermined by shoddy manufacturing. Several years later, the Lisa, the first commercial PC with a graphical user interface, and an infamously poorly designed “Twiggy” floppy disk drive, generated excitement but failed commercially. More recently, the Apple Cube, which was perhaps Mr. Jobs’s most daring design statement, drew critical praise and few sales.
But the comparison that could haunt the iPhone most comes from the specter of a former Apple chief executive, John Sculley, and his Newton. Billed as the original “personal digital assistant,” the Newton relied on a stylus for entering text. When users fumbled with its character recognition system, the machine went from hype to humiliation.
Although a small team of dedicated Apple engineers ultimately improved the technology, it was too late to save the Newton as a product.
Few industrial designers believe that the iPhone will suffer the Newton’s fate. Indeed, many leading designers argue that even before the iPhone has reached the market, it has changed consumer electronics industry standards irrevocably. Dispensing with a physical keyboard has given software an increased importance over hardware in product design, said Mark Rolston, senior vice president at Frog Design, an industrial design consulting firm.
A result, he said, has been a richer conversation between Frog’s designers and customers because the software presents a much wider range of options for features. “This is great for us because the carriers weren’t listening,” Mr. Rolston said. “They were slightly adjusting the soft-keys.”
Overnight that has changed and that has resulted in significant new business for design companies like Frog. “We’re being engaged by many more customers with more aggressive ideas about what to do,” he said.
Mr. Rolston believes that Mr. Jobs will get away with his gamble. “They took a risk and it’s a bold step for the industry,” he said. “This is a worthwhile risk.”
Indeed, the handful of users outside Apple who have been able to play with the hand-held device report that the quirky company has made an important step forward in the art of controlling computer systems. It may teach a new generation of technology users to use their fingers rather than a mouse — a four-decade-old technology — as a pointing and command device.
Apple’s multitouch technology — which permits control gestures with one or more fingers or thumbs — and which is now also being explored by a variety of other companies, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and others, is a much more direct way to interact with a computer. Software designers have injected virtual “physics” into the user’s experience. For example, sliding a finger along the screen in a directory will cause the index to slide as if it were a piece of paper on a flat surface.
Mr. Jobs’s new phone may resonate with a new kind of mobile user, said Donald A. Norman, a product designer who is co-director of the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
“Apple says, ‘We’re not selling to the person who lives on his BlackBerry, we’re selling to the person who listens to music and surfs the Web,’ ” he said.
And even Mr. Jobs’s competitors are rooting for him to win.
“When I first saw iPhone I was very excited,” said Benjamin Bederson, co-founder and vice president for client technologies at ZenZui, a Seattle-based mobile phone software company, which is commercializing technologies that were developed at Microsoft’s research labs. “It will raise the expectations. I think that consumers have had the central assumption that cellphone experiences are terrible and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
2007年6月6日星期三
Apple iPhone Accessories by BoxWave Corporation Shipping Before iPhone Release
BELLEVUE, Wash., June 6 /PRNewswire/ -- BoxWave(R) Corporation announces the immediate availability of its Apple iPhone accessories. Ready with a complete line of iPhone accessories before the iPhone is available for public retail sale on June 29, 2007, BoxWave continues its trend of "Bringing You Tomorrow's Products Today."
BoxWave is one of the first major handheld accessories manufacturers and online retailers to produce and release a complete line of iPhone accessories. With a proven track record for creating high quality accessories, BoxWave is fast gaining attention for bringing premium iPhone accessories to market quickly. BoxWave's iPhone accessories have been available for ordering since April 2007 and the company has been fulfilling orders of iPhone ClearTouch(R) screen protectors, iPhone chargers, and iPhone cases for customers who want to protect and enhance their several hundred dollar Apple iPhone investment.
BoxWave is one of the first major handheld accessories manufacturers and online retailers to produce and release a complete line of iPhone accessories. With a proven track record for creating high quality accessories, BoxWave is fast gaining attention for bringing premium iPhone accessories to market quickly. BoxWave's iPhone accessories have been available for ordering since April 2007 and the company has been fulfilling orders of iPhone ClearTouch(R) screen protectors, iPhone chargers, and iPhone cases for customers who want to protect and enhance their several hundred dollar Apple iPhone investment.
iPhone Will Promote All Smartphones, Exec Says
The iPhone is about to do for smartphones what the iPod did for digital music players: put one in everyone's pocket.
That's the message Warren East, CEO of ARM Holdings PLC, brought to Computex Wednesday in a talk about the future of mobile computing.
The idea of putting computing power into a small device has been around for years. Apple Inc. put out the Newton personal digital assistant (PDA) in the early 1990s, followed by U.S. Robotics with its Pilot (which later became the Palm). Adding computing functions to mobile phones, to create smartphones, happened soon after. Now, demand for Internet access while on the move is making small computing devices even more popular. Even the computer industry has taken up the challenge, with its ultramobile PC.
"This has been an emerging market for a long time," East said in an interview. And the hype surrounding the iPhone will put smartphones in the lead as demand for Internet access at all times takes off, he said.
In fact, he believes that smartphone sales could double this year if the iPhone proves to be the hit that some people expect. Sales will end up close to 200 million units, or double last year's figure, if the iPhone is a hit, East said, because smartphone demand overall will take off. "Within the next few years, smartphones will make up half the mobile phone market," he said.
East stands to gain from such a prediction, of course. ARM processing cores are in around 95 percent of all smartphones, so his company will be a direct beneficiary of the growing market. They are also in certain iPods, leading to speculation that several of its chip designs will end up in iPhones. East declined to comment on the matter, saying Apple prefers to keep such details secret.
Another key to the success of smartphones and other small devices is software. A lot of computing software that works well on a PC has trouble on portable gadgets because of the smaller screen size. Mobile web browsers, for example, don't shrink all Web sites very well. ARM is working with software makers on rewriting their applications to better fit smaller devices, East said.
The ultramobile PC is also an area that East doesn't mind competition from, since ARM processing cores go into them, too. The new product category is also boosting interest in devices such as smartphones, he said. Besides, the mobile industry has an advantage over the computer industry's ultramobile PC: its expertise in power consumption.
Mobile phone makers have worked for years to ensure users have plenty of battery power on their handsets. Companies focused on the ultramobile PC come from a far different background, where power consumption has not been a big issue until recently. That gives the mobile phone industry an advantage, East said.
It won't take long to see if East's predictions are correct. The iPhone will be out in the U.S. around the end of this month. It may end up creating a smartphone craze, as the iPod did for digital music players. At the very least, the much hyped product should spur interest in small computing devices.
"Apple's iPhone... is clearly the most widely anticipated product the industry has seen for years, potentially ever," said Michael Ounjian, a research analyst at Credit Suisse, in a recent report.
That's the message Warren East, CEO of ARM Holdings PLC, brought to Computex Wednesday in a talk about the future of mobile computing.
The idea of putting computing power into a small device has been around for years. Apple Inc. put out the Newton personal digital assistant (PDA) in the early 1990s, followed by U.S. Robotics with its Pilot (which later became the Palm). Adding computing functions to mobile phones, to create smartphones, happened soon after. Now, demand for Internet access while on the move is making small computing devices even more popular. Even the computer industry has taken up the challenge, with its ultramobile PC.
"This has been an emerging market for a long time," East said in an interview. And the hype surrounding the iPhone will put smartphones in the lead as demand for Internet access at all times takes off, he said.
In fact, he believes that smartphone sales could double this year if the iPhone proves to be the hit that some people expect. Sales will end up close to 200 million units, or double last year's figure, if the iPhone is a hit, East said, because smartphone demand overall will take off. "Within the next few years, smartphones will make up half the mobile phone market," he said.
East stands to gain from such a prediction, of course. ARM processing cores are in around 95 percent of all smartphones, so his company will be a direct beneficiary of the growing market. They are also in certain iPods, leading to speculation that several of its chip designs will end up in iPhones. East declined to comment on the matter, saying Apple prefers to keep such details secret.
Another key to the success of smartphones and other small devices is software. A lot of computing software that works well on a PC has trouble on portable gadgets because of the smaller screen size. Mobile web browsers, for example, don't shrink all Web sites very well. ARM is working with software makers on rewriting their applications to better fit smaller devices, East said.
The ultramobile PC is also an area that East doesn't mind competition from, since ARM processing cores go into them, too. The new product category is also boosting interest in devices such as smartphones, he said. Besides, the mobile industry has an advantage over the computer industry's ultramobile PC: its expertise in power consumption.
Mobile phone makers have worked for years to ensure users have plenty of battery power on their handsets. Companies focused on the ultramobile PC come from a far different background, where power consumption has not been a big issue until recently. That gives the mobile phone industry an advantage, East said.
It won't take long to see if East's predictions are correct. The iPhone will be out in the U.S. around the end of this month. It may end up creating a smartphone craze, as the iPod did for digital music players. At the very least, the much hyped product should spur interest in small computing devices.
"Apple's iPhone... is clearly the most widely anticipated product the industry has seen for years, potentially ever," said Michael Ounjian, a research analyst at Credit Suisse, in a recent report.
2007年6月4日星期一
Developers see possibilities in iPhone apps
Users eager to get their hands on an iPhone may have June 29 circled on their calendars to mark the mobile device’s announced ship date. But for software developers, the most significant date in the build-up to the iPhone’s release was easily May 30. That’s the day Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the D: All Things Digital Conference near San Diego and announced that his company is working to make its eagerly anticipated mobile phone open to outside developers, reversing months of skeptical statements about third-party involvement.
For software makers, the latest pronouncement by Jobs, though lacking specifics, couldn’t be more welcome. It indicates that they’ll have a chance to create versions of their apps—or come up with entirely new programs—that will run on what potentially could be the most popular mobile device since Apple’s iPod.
“Overall, I think this is a great decision on Apple’s part,” Austin Sarner, the developer of AppZapper and Disco said. “Apple really excels at creating a solid foundation for a community of users and developers, and the iPhone seems no different.”
Jobs’ encouraging words to developers came during a Q-and-A session at the D: All Things Digital conference, an annual gathering of tech industry heavy hitters sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. Asked by an audience member about the possibility of third-party companies creating iPhone apps, Jobs suggested that was a distinct possibility in the months following the device’s June launch.
“We’re working through a way [to support third-party development],” Jobs said. “We’ve got some pretty good ideas that we’re working through, and I think sometime later this year we will find a way to let third parties write apps and still preserve security.”
Apple’s position evolves
That’s a decided shift from Apple’s previous—and scanty—public pronouncements on the subject. Shortly after unveiling the phone in January, Jobs told the New York Times that Apple intended to closely control what went on the iPhone. “We define everything that is on the phone,” Jobs told the Times. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore.”
Many interpreted that comment to mean that Apple would keep the iPhone closed to third-party development. But on May 10, at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting, Jobs’s tone toward such development changed. The CEO said that Apple was “wrestling” with a way to support third-party development on the iPhone. And Jobs’s comments at last week’s D conference suggest that Apple is open to third-party iPhone apps—once the security and stability of the phone can be established.
“Nobody’s perfect, but we sure don’t want our phone to crash,” Jobs told D attendees. “We would like to solve this problem, if you could be just a little more patient with us, I think everyone can get what they want.”
That’s a stance developers can appreciate. “I can understand their concern where they don’t want after-market apps taking down the whole phone network,” said iClip developer John Casasanta, who called last week’s comments by Jobs “fantastic.” “I’m sure it’s doable to have a good balance between safety and development freedom.”
If Apple is able to balance security and stability concerns with the demand for third-party software, one analyst expects a big payoff for both Apple and its developers.
“This opens up new opportunities and new revenue streams for Apple and the developers,” said Ross Rubin, director of analysis at NPD Group. “This makes it a more appealing prospect for customers who will have more options and be able to customize the iPhone to fit their needs.”
Indeed, in the months following the iPhone’s unveiling, many mobile-device industry analysts pointed out that a closed system would put the iPhone at a disadvantage. Competing devices have that capability, those analysts argued, meaning users would expect a certain degree of customization from the iPhone.
Whither Widgets?
As with many specifics about the iPhone, the details on just when and how developers will be able to create programs for the mobile device are still up in the air. Chief among the questions: Will Apple release a developers’ kit for the iPhone? Next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco figures to shed some light on that issue, with the New York Times reporting that Apple “intends to announce that it will make it possible for developers of small programs written for the SEARCH Macintosh to easily convert them to run on the iPhone.”
What the Times’s source refers to as “small programs” is still in question, but it’s possible that this refers to Mac OS X’s Dashboard technology, in which small “widgets” written largely in the JavaScript scripting language grab basic data from the Internet and display it in an attractive interface.
But beyond simple software such as widgets, the question remains: what kinds of full-blown apps would be appropriate for the iPhone? One of the post-interview questions during Jobs’ appearance at the D: All things Digital conference last week was posed by Blake Krikorian, the CEO of Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox video-streaming product. Sling has created remote SlingPlayer applications for cell phones running the Windows Mobile and Palm operating systems.
While the company hasn’t announced any specific interest in creating a version of SlingPlayer for the iPhone, Krikorian’s question to Jobs complained about the limited bandwidth on the iPhone’s built-in EDGE cellular data network. (Jobs responded by praising the speed of EDGE and pointing out that when an iPhone senses a Wi-Fi network, it attempts to join that network and use it for data transmission instead.)
A phone is not a desktop
Even at this early stage, Mac developers are realistic that much of their existing programs and user-interface designs may not make it over to a new platform—even if it is based on Mac OS X.
“In general I think it’s an interesting idea, but I think it’s important to remember that even though it may run Mac OS X, a phone is not a desktop platform, so the considerations for both developers and customers are very different from Mac OS X on the desktop,” said Rich Siegel, president of Bare Bones Software, echoing Jobs’s own statements on the need for a different user interface for iPhone-based software.
Having said that, Siegel did not rule out bringing his existing products over to the iPhone at some point. “I think that certain products in our line could be expressed very nicely on the iPhone,” he added.
Developer Sarner finds himself in a similar situation with his popular uninstall utility AppZapper. “If a strong enough community develops with a good amount of third-party apps and the technology is similar enough, AppZapper could definitely be ported,” he said.
iClip develop Casasanta doesn’t see his app as a good match for the iPhone—“I just don’t see [porting iClip] making sense,” he said—he has some other ideas for projects that might appeal to iPhone users. “Atmosphere, an app that we’re working on at My Dream App that puts a beautiful image of the current weather on your desktop, is a prime candidate,” Casasanta said. “With a bit of adapting, we should be able to make a version of it that’s at home on the iPhone.”
NPD analyst Rubin sees iTunes as being one possible vehicle for delivering applications to the iPhone. Besides giving users a familiar interface, it will also give Apple the chance to certify applications for the device.
For example, Apple tightly controls all development of software for the iPod. All games developed for the iPod are distributed by Apple via the iTunes Store, rather than being made available for individual download on developers’ web sites. It’s a situation that’s left some Mac game developers disappointed.
In any event, Mac developers see the iPhone potentially being a catalyst for having even more Apple-based developers in the future, which could in turn, mean more developers on the Mac platform as well.
“Developer tools like XCode and Interface Builder are absolutely phenomenal,” Sarner said. “With the release of Tiger, the Widget development scene exploded and there are an insane number of widgets being created and used every day. I’ve got no reason to believe the iPhone would be any less important, and with the raw cool factor the device has going for it, I’d say we could see the iPhone dev scene rising up quite quickly.”
For software makers, the latest pronouncement by Jobs, though lacking specifics, couldn’t be more welcome. It indicates that they’ll have a chance to create versions of their apps—or come up with entirely new programs—that will run on what potentially could be the most popular mobile device since Apple’s iPod.
“Overall, I think this is a great decision on Apple’s part,” Austin Sarner, the developer of AppZapper and Disco said. “Apple really excels at creating a solid foundation for a community of users and developers, and the iPhone seems no different.”
Jobs’ encouraging words to developers came during a Q-and-A session at the D: All Things Digital conference, an annual gathering of tech industry heavy hitters sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. Asked by an audience member about the possibility of third-party companies creating iPhone apps, Jobs suggested that was a distinct possibility in the months following the device’s June launch.
“We’re working through a way [to support third-party development],” Jobs said. “We’ve got some pretty good ideas that we’re working through, and I think sometime later this year we will find a way to let third parties write apps and still preserve security.”
Apple’s position evolves
That’s a decided shift from Apple’s previous—and scanty—public pronouncements on the subject. Shortly after unveiling the phone in January, Jobs told the New York Times that Apple intended to closely control what went on the iPhone. “We define everything that is on the phone,” Jobs told the Times. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore.”
Many interpreted that comment to mean that Apple would keep the iPhone closed to third-party development. But on May 10, at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting, Jobs’s tone toward such development changed. The CEO said that Apple was “wrestling” with a way to support third-party development on the iPhone. And Jobs’s comments at last week’s D conference suggest that Apple is open to third-party iPhone apps—once the security and stability of the phone can be established.
“Nobody’s perfect, but we sure don’t want our phone to crash,” Jobs told D attendees. “We would like to solve this problem, if you could be just a little more patient with us, I think everyone can get what they want.”
That’s a stance developers can appreciate. “I can understand their concern where they don’t want after-market apps taking down the whole phone network,” said iClip developer John Casasanta, who called last week’s comments by Jobs “fantastic.” “I’m sure it’s doable to have a good balance between safety and development freedom.”
If Apple is able to balance security and stability concerns with the demand for third-party software, one analyst expects a big payoff for both Apple and its developers.
“This opens up new opportunities and new revenue streams for Apple and the developers,” said Ross Rubin, director of analysis at NPD Group. “This makes it a more appealing prospect for customers who will have more options and be able to customize the iPhone to fit their needs.”
Indeed, in the months following the iPhone’s unveiling, many mobile-device industry analysts pointed out that a closed system would put the iPhone at a disadvantage. Competing devices have that capability, those analysts argued, meaning users would expect a certain degree of customization from the iPhone.
Whither Widgets?
As with many specifics about the iPhone, the details on just when and how developers will be able to create programs for the mobile device are still up in the air. Chief among the questions: Will Apple release a developers’ kit for the iPhone? Next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco figures to shed some light on that issue, with the New York Times reporting that Apple “intends to announce that it will make it possible for developers of small programs written for the SEARCH Macintosh to easily convert them to run on the iPhone.”
What the Times’s source refers to as “small programs” is still in question, but it’s possible that this refers to Mac OS X’s Dashboard technology, in which small “widgets” written largely in the JavaScript scripting language grab basic data from the Internet and display it in an attractive interface.
But beyond simple software such as widgets, the question remains: what kinds of full-blown apps would be appropriate for the iPhone? One of the post-interview questions during Jobs’ appearance at the D: All things Digital conference last week was posed by Blake Krikorian, the CEO of Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox video-streaming product. Sling has created remote SlingPlayer applications for cell phones running the Windows Mobile and Palm operating systems.
While the company hasn’t announced any specific interest in creating a version of SlingPlayer for the iPhone, Krikorian’s question to Jobs complained about the limited bandwidth on the iPhone’s built-in EDGE cellular data network. (Jobs responded by praising the speed of EDGE and pointing out that when an iPhone senses a Wi-Fi network, it attempts to join that network and use it for data transmission instead.)
A phone is not a desktop
Even at this early stage, Mac developers are realistic that much of their existing programs and user-interface designs may not make it over to a new platform—even if it is based on Mac OS X.
“In general I think it’s an interesting idea, but I think it’s important to remember that even though it may run Mac OS X, a phone is not a desktop platform, so the considerations for both developers and customers are very different from Mac OS X on the desktop,” said Rich Siegel, president of Bare Bones Software, echoing Jobs’s own statements on the need for a different user interface for iPhone-based software.
Having said that, Siegel did not rule out bringing his existing products over to the iPhone at some point. “I think that certain products in our line could be expressed very nicely on the iPhone,” he added.
Developer Sarner finds himself in a similar situation with his popular uninstall utility AppZapper. “If a strong enough community develops with a good amount of third-party apps and the technology is similar enough, AppZapper could definitely be ported,” he said.
iClip develop Casasanta doesn’t see his app as a good match for the iPhone—“I just don’t see [porting iClip] making sense,” he said—he has some other ideas for projects that might appeal to iPhone users. “Atmosphere, an app that we’re working on at My Dream App that puts a beautiful image of the current weather on your desktop, is a prime candidate,” Casasanta said. “With a bit of adapting, we should be able to make a version of it that’s at home on the iPhone.”
NPD analyst Rubin sees iTunes as being one possible vehicle for delivering applications to the iPhone. Besides giving users a familiar interface, it will also give Apple the chance to certify applications for the device.
For example, Apple tightly controls all development of software for the iPod. All games developed for the iPod are distributed by Apple via the iTunes Store, rather than being made available for individual download on developers’ web sites. It’s a situation that’s left some Mac game developers disappointed.
In any event, Mac developers see the iPhone potentially being a catalyst for having even more Apple-based developers in the future, which could in turn, mean more developers on the Mac platform as well.
“Developer tools like XCode and Interface Builder are absolutely phenomenal,” Sarner said. “With the release of Tiger, the Widget development scene exploded and there are an insane number of widgets being created and used every day. I’ve got no reason to believe the iPhone would be any less important, and with the raw cool factor the device has going for it, I’d say we could see the iPhone dev scene rising up quite quickly.”
2007年6月3日星期日
The combination cell phone, media player and wireless Web-surfing device will retail for $499 and $599, depending on configuration. It will be offered
The incoming CEO of AT&T said Wednesday that expectations are "too low" for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, which his company will start selling next month.
"The iPhone is going to be a game changer," Randall Stephenson said at an investor conference in New York. "I don't know what your expectations are for the iPhone, but I would tell you they're probably too low at this point."The iPhone, which blends a mobile phone with the iPod music player, has attracted interest from more than 1 million customers, he said. Apple expects to sell 10 million iPhones next year, and AT&T won exclusive rights to distribute the product in the U.S.
AT&T's cell phone unit, formerly known as Cingular Wireless, plans to use the iPhone to recruit subscribers. San Antonio-based AT&T has 62.2 million wireless customers, the most in the nation.
Stephenson, chief operating officer of AT&T, will replace Edward Whitacre on Sunday as CEO.
Verizon Wireless reportedly plans to introduce a device this summer to compete with the iPhone. Last month Sprint did the same when it introduced its Upstage.
(c) 2007 Tulsa World. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Tulsa World
"The iPhone is going to be a game changer," Randall Stephenson said at an investor conference in New York. "I don't know what your expectations are for the iPhone, but I would tell you they're probably too low at this point."The iPhone, which blends a mobile phone with the iPod music player, has attracted interest from more than 1 million customers, he said. Apple expects to sell 10 million iPhones next year, and AT&T won exclusive rights to distribute the product in the U.S.
AT&T's cell phone unit, formerly known as Cingular Wireless, plans to use the iPhone to recruit subscribers. San Antonio-based AT&T has 62.2 million wireless customers, the most in the nation.
Stephenson, chief operating officer of AT&T, will replace Edward Whitacre on Sunday as CEO.
Verizon Wireless reportedly plans to introduce a device this summer to compete with the iPhone. Last month Sprint did the same when it introduced its Upstage.
(c) 2007 Tulsa World. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Tulsa World
Ads confirm Apple iPhone 6/29 sale date
NEW YORK - Apple Inc.'s highly anticipated iPhone will be available June 29, according to TV commercials broadcast Sunday night and posted on the company's Web site.
The combination cell phone, media player and wireless Web-surfing device will retail for $499 and $599, depending on configuration. It will be offered exclusively by AT&T Inc.'s wireless division, formerly known as Cingular.
The iPhone, which sports no keypad but instead a touch-sensitive screen, was unveiled with great fanfare in early January by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. He said it would appear in stores in June but gave no specific date.
Sunday night's ads showed off several of the gadget's features and ended with the pronouncement that the phone will be available "Only on the new AT&T" and "Coming June 29." One aired on the CW network before a 7 p.m. broadcast of "7th Heaven."
Apple and AT&T spokespeople did not immediately return phone calls.
In recent months, the company's stock has been served by speculation and excitement over the iPhone. Shares of Apple's stock rose May 25 after a media report said that the iPhone would go on sale June 20. Neither AT&T nor Apple would confirm or deny that date at the time.
The combination cell phone, media player and wireless Web-surfing device will retail for $499 and $599, depending on configuration. It will be offered exclusively by AT&T Inc.'s wireless division, formerly known as Cingular.
The iPhone, which sports no keypad but instead a touch-sensitive screen, was unveiled with great fanfare in early January by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. He said it would appear in stores in June but gave no specific date.
Sunday night's ads showed off several of the gadget's features and ended with the pronouncement that the phone will be available "Only on the new AT&T" and "Coming June 29." One aired on the CW network before a 7 p.m. broadcast of "7th Heaven."
Apple and AT&T spokespeople did not immediately return phone calls.
In recent months, the company's stock has been served by speculation and excitement over the iPhone. Shares of Apple's stock rose May 25 after a media report said that the iPhone would go on sale June 20. Neither AT&T nor Apple would confirm or deny that date at the time.
Apple iPhone buzz prompts new production reports
With thousands of Apple aficionados signing up for the iPhone sight unseen and thousands more on waiting lists, the firm is reported to have turned to longtime Apple manufacturer Quanta Computer to ramp up production.
Responding to reports that it had received an order to produce 5 million iPhones with delivery scheduled to begin in September, Quanta issued a cryptic statement that neither confirmed not denied the reports.
"It is important for the Company to gain new business to sustain growth and development," the company said, according to media reports adding that "the Company will not comment on specific customer, order or any types of confidential information."
Taiwan's Quanta is the world's largest producer of laptop computers and has produced various products for Apple in the past.
Earlier this week, WR Hambrecht analyst Matthew Kather released the results of a survey of AT&T Cingular stores the investment banking firm queried.
"Most stores expect the phone on 6/15 or 6/22, and most expect to only have a few (highest number was 40 at one store) on hand initially." Kather's report states, "Overall pent-up retail demand at Cingular stores appears very strong, with about 15-20 percent of the stores we contacted keeping a waiting list for customers interested to purchase it."
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Wednesday that he expects to begin selling the iPhone before the end of June. The widespread expectation by analysts is that the launch will coincide with Apple's World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Jobs is scheduled to deliver his keynote on Monday, June 11.
At the January Macworld keynote, Apple said the iPhone will initially be sold in the U.S. by Cingular Wireless (now AT&T). The handset is expected to include a touch screen and includes a music and video player. The iPhone is expected to come in two versions with a starting cost of $500 without the accompanying phone contract.
Responding to reports that it had received an order to produce 5 million iPhones with delivery scheduled to begin in September, Quanta issued a cryptic statement that neither confirmed not denied the reports.
"It is important for the Company to gain new business to sustain growth and development," the company said, according to media reports adding that "the Company will not comment on specific customer, order or any types of confidential information."
Taiwan's Quanta is the world's largest producer of laptop computers and has produced various products for Apple in the past.
Earlier this week, WR Hambrecht analyst Matthew Kather released the results of a survey of AT&T Cingular stores the investment banking firm queried.
"Most stores expect the phone on 6/15 or 6/22, and most expect to only have a few (highest number was 40 at one store) on hand initially." Kather's report states, "Overall pent-up retail demand at Cingular stores appears very strong, with about 15-20 percent of the stores we contacted keeping a waiting list for customers interested to purchase it."
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Wednesday that he expects to begin selling the iPhone before the end of June. The widespread expectation by analysts is that the launch will coincide with Apple's World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Jobs is scheduled to deliver his keynote on Monday, June 11.
At the January Macworld keynote, Apple said the iPhone will initially be sold in the U.S. by Cingular Wireless (now AT&T). The handset is expected to include a touch screen and includes a music and video player. The iPhone is expected to come in two versions with a starting cost of $500 without the accompanying phone contract.
You've Got to Hide Your iPhone Away
A little more than two years ago, Glenn Lurie's new bosses at Cingular Wireless put the Portland, Ore., native in charge of a super-secret project: Negotiating the rights to be the exclusive wireless carrier for Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) long-awaited iPhone.
Lurie, a onetime soccer standout at Wilson High School, played professionally in Cleveland, Atlanta and Portland before launching his cellular career in 1993 selling phones at a store in Mall 205. He worked his way into the management ranks, then weathered a succession of mergers in the cell phone industry. He's now a top executive in the wireless division of AT&T (NYSE: T) -- whose name Cingular took after its latest merger.
Meeting behind-the-scenes with Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and other tech heavyweights, Lurie won the deal for Cingular and took part in the unveiling in January at the MacWorld conference. Lurie, who now lives in Atlanta, stands at the center of a frenzy of anticipation as techies await the product's formal launch next month.
Yes, He Has One
The iPhone is a cell phone, address book, Web browser, music player and TV rolled into one. It's the most eagerly awaited tech product in years, and Lurie, in Portland this weekend to watch his son in a soccer tournament, is one of the few people in the world with his own iPhone.
He won't show it to you, though, or tell you much about it, Jobs or the negotiations. Mystery, he's learned from Apple, is an extremely valuable commodity.
"Steve was very clear on what he thought the benefits of us doing it that way," Lurie said during a conversation last week.
"The buzz has exceeded all of our expectations," he said. "That's probably the biggest benefit out of this."
(Comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.)
Question: Have your kids seen your iPhone?
Answer: My oldest is 13. I went to MacWorld, and I'd been working on it for, gosh, almost two years, and we announce at MacWorld and I got home and he was not happy with me because he didn't know about it. I didn't tell my family. I said, "Look, this is a project I really can't talk about." And [they] respected that. One of the things that was really important to me is I wanted to earn [Apple's] trust. As a lead guy, I had to take that to the Nth degree to earn their trust and respect.
Q: So you're not passing it around your house, even now?
A: No. It'll be a very, very cool day when we launch this thing. For lack of a better term, it's like giving birth. We're hiding it, hiding it, hiding it. We're all very excited about it and what it can be. But bottom line is no, we're not showing it around and are being very secretive with it.
Q: Your son, college students, these people love it. But who can afford a (US)$600 cell phone? (Apple plans to charge $499 and $599 for two models of iPhone.)
A: One-hundred million iPods have been sold. Obviously, those people are all target customers. We have 62 million subscribers. So there are 180 million people out there who aren't AT&T Mobility customers, who might want one of these, too. So that's the target, it's everybody.
I'll tell the story about my CES (Consumer Electronics Show) press conference (in January). I asked everybody in the room, I said, 'How many of you carry a wireless phone?' And literally 100 percent had a phone. Then I asked how many are carrying a smart phone -- RIM, Blackberry, whatever. Eighty percent had (one of those). Then I asked a third question: How many had an iPod. And it was 100 percent. If you just do the math of those, a 4 gig (iPod) Nano is, what 200 bucks? A Blackberry, if you get a great price on those let's just call it 200 bucks. And if you've got a decent handheld (phone) you pay 50 bucks. You have all these other things this (iPhone) does. It's a widescreen iPod. Right now, there isn't a widescreen iPod. So I am really not concerned at all about the price that Apple has set for the device.
We're not doing any pre-orders. But we put on our Web site: If you want more information, just give us your name and e-mail address and we'll be glad to let you know. And we just crested 1.1 million people who have given us their names. That completely eclipses everything that we would have imagined.
Q: What are you guys going to be charging?
A: Service pricing we're not talking about. But I would say that the pricing is going to be similar to what you see today (from AT&T).
Q: This is not a 3G product at this point. (The iPhone uses Cingular's slower, second-generation EDGE rather than its new, faster, third-generation technology.) Is that frustrating as you use it?
A: Not at all. We have the largest high-speed data network, and that's EDGE. We're very excited about what we're building on our 3G network. But for the applications, the majority on the device, they work wonderfully in the EDGE environment. On the browsing side, I'll tell you the experience is very, very good in EDGE. Now, let's not forget: The device also has WiFi in it. You can tell the device to see that, and it automatically connects over when it sees that. We see those working hand-in-hand with our network.
Q: What did you think when they (Cingular) pulled you in and put you in charge? You were pretty new to that organization (He'd joined four months earlier, when Cingular bought AT&T Wireless).
A: I was pleased that they had that confidence in me. They gave me an opportunity to go out and prove what I could do for the business, and it's worked out terrific. I took it on as a challenge. I'm obviously a pretty competitive guy.
There were high times in this project, and also low times when you think, "Gosh, we've got to get through this issue." The great thing is everybody saw the potential that this could have for the company's success.
Q: So during those low times -- can you tell me what any of those were?
A: No.
Q: But there was a commitment by you, and the people you were working with, that we're going to see this through?
A: We went to the board and got the board to approve this deal without ever seeing a phone. They never saw a device. We never knew exactly what we were getting. And you know why we did that? Because we made a bet on people. We made a bet on Apple's people. You know what? It was a great bet.
Lurie, a onetime soccer standout at Wilson High School, played professionally in Cleveland, Atlanta and Portland before launching his cellular career in 1993 selling phones at a store in Mall 205. He worked his way into the management ranks, then weathered a succession of mergers in the cell phone industry. He's now a top executive in the wireless division of AT&T (NYSE: T) -- whose name Cingular took after its latest merger.
Meeting behind-the-scenes with Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and other tech heavyweights, Lurie won the deal for Cingular and took part in the unveiling in January at the MacWorld conference. Lurie, who now lives in Atlanta, stands at the center of a frenzy of anticipation as techies await the product's formal launch next month.
Yes, He Has One
The iPhone is a cell phone, address book, Web browser, music player and TV rolled into one. It's the most eagerly awaited tech product in years, and Lurie, in Portland this weekend to watch his son in a soccer tournament, is one of the few people in the world with his own iPhone.
He won't show it to you, though, or tell you much about it, Jobs or the negotiations. Mystery, he's learned from Apple, is an extremely valuable commodity.
"Steve was very clear on what he thought the benefits of us doing it that way," Lurie said during a conversation last week.
"The buzz has exceeded all of our expectations," he said. "That's probably the biggest benefit out of this."
(Comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.)
Question: Have your kids seen your iPhone?
Answer: My oldest is 13. I went to MacWorld, and I'd been working on it for, gosh, almost two years, and we announce at MacWorld and I got home and he was not happy with me because he didn't know about it. I didn't tell my family. I said, "Look, this is a project I really can't talk about." And [they] respected that. One of the things that was really important to me is I wanted to earn [Apple's] trust. As a lead guy, I had to take that to the Nth degree to earn their trust and respect.
Q: So you're not passing it around your house, even now?
A: No. It'll be a very, very cool day when we launch this thing. For lack of a better term, it's like giving birth. We're hiding it, hiding it, hiding it. We're all very excited about it and what it can be. But bottom line is no, we're not showing it around and are being very secretive with it.
Q: Your son, college students, these people love it. But who can afford a (US)$600 cell phone? (Apple plans to charge $499 and $599 for two models of iPhone.)
A: One-hundred million iPods have been sold. Obviously, those people are all target customers. We have 62 million subscribers. So there are 180 million people out there who aren't AT&T Mobility customers, who might want one of these, too. So that's the target, it's everybody.
I'll tell the story about my CES (Consumer Electronics Show) press conference (in January). I asked everybody in the room, I said, 'How many of you carry a wireless phone?' And literally 100 percent had a phone. Then I asked how many are carrying a smart phone -- RIM, Blackberry, whatever. Eighty percent had (one of those). Then I asked a third question: How many had an iPod. And it was 100 percent. If you just do the math of those, a 4 gig (iPod) Nano is, what 200 bucks? A Blackberry, if you get a great price on those let's just call it 200 bucks. And if you've got a decent handheld (phone) you pay 50 bucks. You have all these other things this (iPhone) does. It's a widescreen iPod. Right now, there isn't a widescreen iPod. So I am really not concerned at all about the price that Apple has set for the device.
We're not doing any pre-orders. But we put on our Web site: If you want more information, just give us your name and e-mail address and we'll be glad to let you know. And we just crested 1.1 million people who have given us their names. That completely eclipses everything that we would have imagined.
Q: What are you guys going to be charging?
A: Service pricing we're not talking about. But I would say that the pricing is going to be similar to what you see today (from AT&T).
Q: This is not a 3G product at this point. (The iPhone uses Cingular's slower, second-generation EDGE rather than its new, faster, third-generation technology.) Is that frustrating as you use it?
A: Not at all. We have the largest high-speed data network, and that's EDGE. We're very excited about what we're building on our 3G network. But for the applications, the majority on the device, they work wonderfully in the EDGE environment. On the browsing side, I'll tell you the experience is very, very good in EDGE. Now, let's not forget: The device also has WiFi in it. You can tell the device to see that, and it automatically connects over when it sees that. We see those working hand-in-hand with our network.
Q: What did you think when they (Cingular) pulled you in and put you in charge? You were pretty new to that organization (He'd joined four months earlier, when Cingular bought AT&T Wireless).
A: I was pleased that they had that confidence in me. They gave me an opportunity to go out and prove what I could do for the business, and it's worked out terrific. I took it on as a challenge. I'm obviously a pretty competitive guy.
There were high times in this project, and also low times when you think, "Gosh, we've got to get through this issue." The great thing is everybody saw the potential that this could have for the company's success.
Q: So during those low times -- can you tell me what any of those were?
A: No.
Q: But there was a commitment by you, and the people you were working with, that we're going to see this through?
A: We went to the board and got the board to approve this deal without ever seeing a phone. They never saw a device. We never knew exactly what we were getting. And you know why we did that? Because we made a bet on people. We made a bet on Apple's people. You know what? It was a great bet.
2007年6月1日星期五
iPhone's Secret Ingredient: Google
Apple and Google just can't stand to be apart. Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced this week that Apple TV will soon play YouTube videos. Google recently unveiled a desktop search program especially for Mac users. And Google tools increasingly appear to be a key part of the secret sauce behind Apple's signature new gadget, the iPhone, set for release in June.
Both brands are beloved by legions of fans, and with Google CEO Eric Schmidt embedded on Apple's board of directors, the companies have gotten wise to the benefits of synergistic coupling. Call it the power of Gapple.
The partnership is more a friendship of convenience than a permanent pact. Apple benefits by bolstering its phone with popular Web tools, while Google gives its users a slick new way to access its services. One concern for Apple might be that the growing popularity of Google's mobile e-mail and calendar programs could reduce interest in Apple's own such offerings. But Apple already gives that software away for free, so the competition isn't likely to pose a lasting problem.
The iPhone's Web widgets and browsing software will enable access to a wide range of Google applications, with built-in tools for Google Maps and searches. A number of the portal's other mobile applications, such as Google News, will also work on the iPhone, benefiting from its touch-friendly browser. And Google's newest mobile tool, an on-the-go version of its calendar program, will take advantage of the iPhone's bright colors, though Apple will offer an alternative in the form of a built-in version of its own iCal software.
Sumit Agarwal, product manager for Google Mobile, says Google has been working with Apple and is moving in the direction of universal access to its suite of search and software applications on mobile devices. "Generally speaking, everything that you see on Macs, pending the technical ability of the device itself, will migrate into mobile applications," Agarwal says. That's likely to include a universal sign-on, so that you don't have to sign into each of Google's services separately.
Programs that require significant data input or are compromised by screen size aren't likely to be ported over in the near term, though. Agarwal says he doesn't expect consumers will demand a mobile Notebook product anytime soon, for instance, referring to Google's popular Web-clipping tool. And he doesn't see consumers clamoring to do heavy word processing on their mobile phones. They may want to comment on and communicate about such documents, though, to facilitate collaboration.
Rather than dumping huge applications onto small devices, Google's mobile applications are streamlined and stripped down to focus on the primary ways consumers use them on the go. "With Blogger, for example, it isn't as important that I be able to leave lots of comments, as that I can capture the essence of what I'm doing at that moment and share it in real time," Agarwal says. "I may want to snap a photo of a monument and store a voice annotation."
Google may have surprises yet to come for the iPhone. The portal partnered with LG in March to offer a blogging tool, and a related widget for the iPhone would be a logical next step. Google already offers a GMail widget for Macs, and a similar program on the iPhone would complement the pre-installed Apple mail software.
What else might Google offer? Possibly a Google Reader widget. The portal recently announced that its blog-reading tool can now be accessed offline. And though the iPhone could access Reader through its browser, a widget would be particularly useful when speedy mobile Web access isn't available. And why not a YouTube iPhone widget, now that YouTube is on Apple TV?
Though Google is key, it is far from the only iPhone partner. Yahoo will offer a mail widget and others, such as Sling Media, may offer software add-ons later to enable access to Web content and TV. Jobs has said that he is open to third-party applications that work within Apple's software framework.
AT&T, the iPhone's wireless carrier, has followed Apple's secrecy lead in keeping mum about the iPhone's features. But AT&T's Glenn Lurie recently alluded to Google applications on the iPhone as particularly appealing features that would make the device worth its $500 sticker.
Lurie and Jobs are both betting that supplementing Apple's sleek mobile browser with Google goodies will encourage consumers to capitalize on the mobile Web in a way that so far they haven't. Although about 90% of phones have some sort of built-in browser, Forrester Research has found that only about 45% of consumers say they are aware of their phone's Web capabilities. And given that 55% of those surveyed by the Equs Group, a market research firm, said they would buy a Google or Yahoo-branded phone, Apple looks smart partnering up.
Both brands are beloved by legions of fans, and with Google CEO Eric Schmidt embedded on Apple's board of directors, the companies have gotten wise to the benefits of synergistic coupling. Call it the power of Gapple.
The partnership is more a friendship of convenience than a permanent pact. Apple benefits by bolstering its phone with popular Web tools, while Google gives its users a slick new way to access its services. One concern for Apple might be that the growing popularity of Google's mobile e-mail and calendar programs could reduce interest in Apple's own such offerings. But Apple already gives that software away for free, so the competition isn't likely to pose a lasting problem.
The iPhone's Web widgets and browsing software will enable access to a wide range of Google applications, with built-in tools for Google Maps and searches. A number of the portal's other mobile applications, such as Google News, will also work on the iPhone, benefiting from its touch-friendly browser. And Google's newest mobile tool, an on-the-go version of its calendar program, will take advantage of the iPhone's bright colors, though Apple will offer an alternative in the form of a built-in version of its own iCal software.
Sumit Agarwal, product manager for Google Mobile, says Google has been working with Apple and is moving in the direction of universal access to its suite of search and software applications on mobile devices. "Generally speaking, everything that you see on Macs, pending the technical ability of the device itself, will migrate into mobile applications," Agarwal says. That's likely to include a universal sign-on, so that you don't have to sign into each of Google's services separately.
Programs that require significant data input or are compromised by screen size aren't likely to be ported over in the near term, though. Agarwal says he doesn't expect consumers will demand a mobile Notebook product anytime soon, for instance, referring to Google's popular Web-clipping tool. And he doesn't see consumers clamoring to do heavy word processing on their mobile phones. They may want to comment on and communicate about such documents, though, to facilitate collaboration.
Rather than dumping huge applications onto small devices, Google's mobile applications are streamlined and stripped down to focus on the primary ways consumers use them on the go. "With Blogger, for example, it isn't as important that I be able to leave lots of comments, as that I can capture the essence of what I'm doing at that moment and share it in real time," Agarwal says. "I may want to snap a photo of a monument and store a voice annotation."
Google may have surprises yet to come for the iPhone. The portal partnered with LG in March to offer a blogging tool, and a related widget for the iPhone would be a logical next step. Google already offers a GMail widget for Macs, and a similar program on the iPhone would complement the pre-installed Apple mail software.
What else might Google offer? Possibly a Google Reader widget. The portal recently announced that its blog-reading tool can now be accessed offline. And though the iPhone could access Reader through its browser, a widget would be particularly useful when speedy mobile Web access isn't available. And why not a YouTube iPhone widget, now that YouTube is on Apple TV?
Though Google is key, it is far from the only iPhone partner. Yahoo will offer a mail widget and others, such as Sling Media, may offer software add-ons later to enable access to Web content and TV. Jobs has said that he is open to third-party applications that work within Apple's software framework.
AT&T, the iPhone's wireless carrier, has followed Apple's secrecy lead in keeping mum about the iPhone's features. But AT&T's Glenn Lurie recently alluded to Google applications on the iPhone as particularly appealing features that would make the device worth its $500 sticker.
Lurie and Jobs are both betting that supplementing Apple's sleek mobile browser with Google goodies will encourage consumers to capitalize on the mobile Web in a way that so far they haven't. Although about 90% of phones have some sort of built-in browser, Forrester Research has found that only about 45% of consumers say they are aware of their phone's Web capabilities. And given that 55% of those surveyed by the Equs Group, a market research firm, said they would buy a Google or Yahoo-branded phone, Apple looks smart partnering up.
Apple iPhone sells for $800... on eBay
Decatur (GA) - An eBay auction for a brand spanking new Apple iPhone has just ended for $800 dollars.
The phone was put on the auction block on May 27th at 11:59 AM PDT and was quickly bought at 3:20 PM for the $800 "Buy it Now" price. My notes - Sorry, TG Daily, it appears since you posted your story the auction was pulled.First (as they noted), $800 seems low for something that would be in such high demand.
AND, though TG Daily seemed to think the seller was legit because he had a positive feedback of 11, I would say ..no way. I would only buy from a seller with an 11 feedback, 100% positive or no, if it was a) an inexpensive item, b) not something hot like this.11 feedback can be easily faked. Seems like not just the buyer, but TG Daily was scammed. via TG Daily.
The phone was put on the auction block on May 27th at 11:59 AM PDT and was quickly bought at 3:20 PM for the $800 "Buy it Now" price. My notes - Sorry, TG Daily, it appears since you posted your story the auction was pulled.First (as they noted), $800 seems low for something that would be in such high demand.
AND, though TG Daily seemed to think the seller was legit because he had a positive feedback of 11, I would say ..no way. I would only buy from a seller with an 11 feedback, 100% positive or no, if it was a) an inexpensive item, b) not something hot like this.11 feedback can be easily faked. Seems like not just the buyer, but TG Daily was scammed. via TG Daily.
Apple's iPhone: Who Really Wins?
I can't recall when there has been more anticipation built up about the release of a cellular phone -- or any consumer device -- than now, with the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone. The buzz has been incessant and almost as long-lasting as the ringing in my ears.
Yet all the talk and speculation has got me thinking -- even if the iPhone only partially lives up to the hype, who really benefits from it? Of course, we could look at who builds the guts of the iPhone and buy stock in those companies. But beyond this, who will profit the most from the supposed "sea change" that the iPhone is ushering in?
Getting a little crazyIn case you live on Venus, have no communication with the outside world, or simply don't know why everyone is talking about the iPhone, look here, here, and here. Its pending release has caused markets to gasp, has forced competitors such as Motorola (NYSE: MOT), LG, and Samsung to push out "iPhone killers," and has carriers scrambling to offer them. The only thing the iPhone buzz hasn't done yet is change the earth's magnetic polarity.
Even smartphone manufacturers that haven't yet built a media device to go directly mano a mano with the iPhone have commented on its impact on sales of their devices. Everyone from Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) to Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) to Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has had to assure investors and the general public that they will not implode under the weight of a giant apple with CEO Steve Jobs' smug profile beaming on the side.
You phone, iPhone, we all phoneAnd I agree that the iPhone story is not so much about who or what it will squash, displace, or otherwise somehow render moot. I'm much more interested in what the iPhone will increase, multiply, and magnify -- and I believe investors should be as well. Thus, the story I'm most interested in is that of the iPod, where an entirely new, thriving ecosystem was built on the back of a smash-hit consumer device.
To this end, much has been said about the high price the iPhone will supposedly command -- $500 even for the cheapest version -- and how that will affect its popularity. Certainly, a high price will keep it out of the hands of millions, but given time, the price should come into a range more digestible to the mass market, just like with the iPod. On this point, I agree with my Foolish colleague Tim Beyers that a premium price for the device may be the smarter move in the long run.
A premium product also sets up a more lucrative value chain for companies that will eventually build products or services around the iPhone. So while the exclusive provider of the iPhone -- AT&T (NYSE: T) -- won't see a huge crush of new subscribers on the back of a cheap device, the premium pricing of the iPhone will place it a level above the competition and attract big spenders. And I believe consumers will pay for a higher-quality device and service, even if this is only in perception and not fact.
A question of controlOne of the biggest debates around the iPhone, and one with large, long-term consequences, is whether the device will change the balance of power between mobile device manufacturers like Motorola and Ericsson and wireless service providers such as AT&T and Verizon (NYSE: VZ). Historically, the carriers call the shots and largely dictate what features and services they want to offer consumers. Additionally, carriers want to control the branding and distribution of products and services, to achieve the maximum benefit of paying subscribers sticking with them, rather than another member of the value chain.
While many pundits have offered the opinion that Apple will finally break the carriers' control over wireless services and devices, I don't buy it. The same was said about offering the Internet on mobile phones and how it would destroy the carriers' "walled garden," where consumers are captive mostly to carriers' product pages. While Apple and other manufacturers of high-buzz products will get preferential treatment, carriers will not go so far as to sabotage the value chain that keeps them growing.
Not only do I believe carriers will maintain their position, I actually think they all stand to benefit tremendously from the "iPhone effect." Devices with cool new features bring more media applications into the mobile realm, where carriers can bill for them -- even considering the potential that carriers may lose billable bandwidth to services carried over the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection. Carriers will reap not only the benefits of iPhone and iPhone-like device sales, but also the new revenue generated by mobile applications on all those devices.
It's a win-winOf course, Apple itself should do well with the iPhone -- it's really only a matter of how well. And I really have to hand it to Steve Jobs and the Apple team -- no matter how well or how badly the iPhone is received in the market, Apple hit pay dirt with the amount of press and "free" advertising it has received.
So, in my mind, Apple has already won. Even if the iPhone gets raked over the coals as a high-priced, over-hyped glam device, it will still garner more attention and promotion than any massive marketing budget could have bought. And I believe the wave of euphoria is a tide that will eventually lift all boats, even the ones that many have pegged as losers.
For related Foolishness:
This iPhone Would Be Worth $600
Great Investments For Busy People
Avoid the VoIP Value Trap
Palm is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor selection. To find out which other stocks are currently making the cut with Fool founders Tom and Dave Gardner, check out an all-access 30-day free trial today.
Fool contributor Dave Mock is betting the iPhone will top Tickle Me Elmo as the "must have" item this year. He owns shares of Motorola. Dave is the author of The Qualcomm Equation. The Fool's disclosure policy thinks you're a winner no matter what.
Yet all the talk and speculation has got me thinking -- even if the iPhone only partially lives up to the hype, who really benefits from it? Of course, we could look at who builds the guts of the iPhone and buy stock in those companies. But beyond this, who will profit the most from the supposed "sea change" that the iPhone is ushering in?
Getting a little crazyIn case you live on Venus, have no communication with the outside world, or simply don't know why everyone is talking about the iPhone, look here, here, and here. Its pending release has caused markets to gasp, has forced competitors such as Motorola (NYSE: MOT), LG, and Samsung to push out "iPhone killers," and has carriers scrambling to offer them. The only thing the iPhone buzz hasn't done yet is change the earth's magnetic polarity.
Even smartphone manufacturers that haven't yet built a media device to go directly mano a mano with the iPhone have commented on its impact on sales of their devices. Everyone from Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) to Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) to Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has had to assure investors and the general public that they will not implode under the weight of a giant apple with CEO Steve Jobs' smug profile beaming on the side.
You phone, iPhone, we all phoneAnd I agree that the iPhone story is not so much about who or what it will squash, displace, or otherwise somehow render moot. I'm much more interested in what the iPhone will increase, multiply, and magnify -- and I believe investors should be as well. Thus, the story I'm most interested in is that of the iPod, where an entirely new, thriving ecosystem was built on the back of a smash-hit consumer device.
To this end, much has been said about the high price the iPhone will supposedly command -- $500 even for the cheapest version -- and how that will affect its popularity. Certainly, a high price will keep it out of the hands of millions, but given time, the price should come into a range more digestible to the mass market, just like with the iPod. On this point, I agree with my Foolish colleague Tim Beyers that a premium price for the device may be the smarter move in the long run.
A premium product also sets up a more lucrative value chain for companies that will eventually build products or services around the iPhone. So while the exclusive provider of the iPhone -- AT&T (NYSE: T) -- won't see a huge crush of new subscribers on the back of a cheap device, the premium pricing of the iPhone will place it a level above the competition and attract big spenders. And I believe consumers will pay for a higher-quality device and service, even if this is only in perception and not fact.
A question of controlOne of the biggest debates around the iPhone, and one with large, long-term consequences, is whether the device will change the balance of power between mobile device manufacturers like Motorola and Ericsson and wireless service providers such as AT&T and Verizon (NYSE: VZ). Historically, the carriers call the shots and largely dictate what features and services they want to offer consumers. Additionally, carriers want to control the branding and distribution of products and services, to achieve the maximum benefit of paying subscribers sticking with them, rather than another member of the value chain.
While many pundits have offered the opinion that Apple will finally break the carriers' control over wireless services and devices, I don't buy it. The same was said about offering the Internet on mobile phones and how it would destroy the carriers' "walled garden," where consumers are captive mostly to carriers' product pages. While Apple and other manufacturers of high-buzz products will get preferential treatment, carriers will not go so far as to sabotage the value chain that keeps them growing.
Not only do I believe carriers will maintain their position, I actually think they all stand to benefit tremendously from the "iPhone effect." Devices with cool new features bring more media applications into the mobile realm, where carriers can bill for them -- even considering the potential that carriers may lose billable bandwidth to services carried over the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection. Carriers will reap not only the benefits of iPhone and iPhone-like device sales, but also the new revenue generated by mobile applications on all those devices.
It's a win-winOf course, Apple itself should do well with the iPhone -- it's really only a matter of how well. And I really have to hand it to Steve Jobs and the Apple team -- no matter how well or how badly the iPhone is received in the market, Apple hit pay dirt with the amount of press and "free" advertising it has received.
So, in my mind, Apple has already won. Even if the iPhone gets raked over the coals as a high-priced, over-hyped glam device, it will still garner more attention and promotion than any massive marketing budget could have bought. And I believe the wave of euphoria is a tide that will eventually lift all boats, even the ones that many have pegged as losers.
For related Foolishness:
This iPhone Would Be Worth $600
Great Investments For Busy People
Avoid the VoIP Value Trap
Palm is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor selection. To find out which other stocks are currently making the cut with Fool founders Tom and Dave Gardner, check out an all-access 30-day free trial today.
Fool contributor Dave Mock is betting the iPhone will top Tickle Me Elmo as the "must have" item this year. He owns shares of Motorola. Dave is the author of The Qualcomm Equation. The Fool's disclosure policy thinks you're a winner no matter what.
iPhone's rivals: Do they measure up?
Must you wait for Apple Inc.'s iPhone (and shell out $500) to get a device that truly combines communication and music?
Other manufacturers say no.
I decided to see for myself by asking phone makers to send me the best music player they make for each big cellular carrier.
Samsung rose to the challenge first by shipping me three new models: the SCH-u540 from Verizon Wireless, the Synch from AT&T, and the UpStage from Sprint Nextel. (Music phones from other companies will be reviewed in future columns.)
All three phones do much more than play music, of course. Each has a built-in camera, a Web browser, a video player and a Bluetooth receiver. The models from Verizon and Sprint also have GPS transmitters, which allow them to provide driving directions and local search.
That said, I mostly ignored these features and focused on music. My only real concern was whether these devices could realistically replace an iPod.
For Mac users who cannot run Windows on their machines, the answer is certainly not. None of the phones can take songs in any format directly from a Mac.
For PC users, the answer is probably not. An 8GB iPod shuffle sounds good, holds 2,000 songs and plays for 24 hours straight. None of these three models sounds as good, holds more than 20 songs or plays as long.
Still, if you don't need high-fidelity music for days straight, current options may suffice. Memory chips add enough room for up to 500 songs, and streaming music services can further expand variety. Users who want to listen beyond their own collections may enjoy the trade-off.
SCH-u540 (Verizon)
This midsize clamshell model costs $120 in stores or $70 at the Verizon Wireless Web site. Most users will need to spend an extra $100 or so on a headset, a memory chip and a USB cable that will connect the phone to a computer.
The phone supports Bluetooth headsets but, alas, not stereo models.
Verizon's system makes it easy to transfer music from PC to phone – if music is stored on Windows Media Player. Attach a cable to both devices, press the "Synch" option on the phone's "Music & Tones" menu and then select the "Synch" tab on WMP.
Even iTunes users can transfer songs from computer to phone.
To do this, they must download WMP, which is free from Microsoft, and then convert any songs they have in AAC to the MP3 format. (To convert one song in iTunes, right click on that song and select the conversion option. To convert a bunch of songs, check the box next to each song and select the conversion option from the "Advanced" menu.) Once a song is in the MP3 format, WMP will automatically recognize and display it.
Songs purchased through the iTunes store cannot legally be converted for use on Windows Media Player, but songs uploaded from CD are fair game.
Users can download new songs to their phones or their WMP libraries from the VCast Music Store, which charges $1.99 a song, $1 more than iTunes.
That price, along with the limited storage, seems like a deal-breaker to me.
Synch (AT&T)
This model, another midsize clamshell, costs $25 with contract and mail-in rebate. Again, most users will need to spend another $100 or so on headsets, memory chips and USB cables.
The Synch works with stereo Bluetooth headsets, but it's otherwise quite similar to the SCH-u540. Windows Media Player users will have no problems transferring songs to their phones. Users of iTunes should see the WMP conversion instructions above.
The difference between the two phones lies mostly in the services provided by Verizon and AT&T. Verizon gives one purchase option: the company store. AT&T offers several music sources.
AT&T customers can download songs from Napster for 99 cents each or subscribe for $15 a month to Napster to Go, a music service that lets users "rent" any of Napster's 2 million songs. (AT&T actually lets users try Napster free for 60 days.) AT&T also offers Yahoo Music Unlimited, another subscription rental service, which costs $12 a month, and 25 stations of commercial-free music from XM Satellite Radio, which costs $9 a month.
These services provide an enormous amount of variety, but there's currently a big catch. Aside from XM, which streams directly to phones, users must download music onto their computers and then transfer it to their phones.
AT&T promises direct downloads soon, which would make the Synch a decent option.
UpStage (Sprint)
Unlike its two conventional counterparts, the UpStage looks fresh. The slim, black rectangle has a cellphone on one side and a music player on the other. It costs $99 with contract after rebate, but yes, users will have to spend extra on memory chips and headphones. (A USB cable comes with the phone.)
The tiny package uses every square millimeter of surface space to pack in nearly as many features as its larger competitors, but the form creates drawbacks. UpStage's tiny battery supports only 2.5 hours of talk time per charge.
Users who wish to synchronize a computer music library with the UpStage must first install Sprint's music software. Then, they must transfer songs from Windows Media Player or iTunes to the Sprint software before moving music systematically to their phones.
Sprint, like Verizon, operates its own music store, but it charges only 99 cents a song. The company's $15-a-month data package comes with 10 commercial-free music channels. The company's $20 package provides 50 music channels plus one TV channel of music videos and news.
Next month, Sprint will add a further wrinkle to the mix, an Internet music service called Pandora that creates personal music channels for users. The Pandora service, which predicts what songs you will like based upon how you rate songs you have heard, will become available by the end of next month and cost $3 a month.
The UpStage looks pretty cool, but I couldn't recommend it without Pandora. If Pandora fits the system, though, the UpStage could be a contender.
Other manufacturers say no.
I decided to see for myself by asking phone makers to send me the best music player they make for each big cellular carrier.
Samsung rose to the challenge first by shipping me three new models: the SCH-u540 from Verizon Wireless, the Synch from AT&T, and the UpStage from Sprint Nextel. (Music phones from other companies will be reviewed in future columns.)
All three phones do much more than play music, of course. Each has a built-in camera, a Web browser, a video player and a Bluetooth receiver. The models from Verizon and Sprint also have GPS transmitters, which allow them to provide driving directions and local search.
That said, I mostly ignored these features and focused on music. My only real concern was whether these devices could realistically replace an iPod.
For Mac users who cannot run Windows on their machines, the answer is certainly not. None of the phones can take songs in any format directly from a Mac.
For PC users, the answer is probably not. An 8GB iPod shuffle sounds good, holds 2,000 songs and plays for 24 hours straight. None of these three models sounds as good, holds more than 20 songs or plays as long.
Still, if you don't need high-fidelity music for days straight, current options may suffice. Memory chips add enough room for up to 500 songs, and streaming music services can further expand variety. Users who want to listen beyond their own collections may enjoy the trade-off.
SCH-u540 (Verizon)
This midsize clamshell model costs $120 in stores or $70 at the Verizon Wireless Web site. Most users will need to spend an extra $100 or so on a headset, a memory chip and a USB cable that will connect the phone to a computer.
The phone supports Bluetooth headsets but, alas, not stereo models.
Verizon's system makes it easy to transfer music from PC to phone – if music is stored on Windows Media Player. Attach a cable to both devices, press the "Synch" option on the phone's "Music & Tones" menu and then select the "Synch" tab on WMP.
Even iTunes users can transfer songs from computer to phone.
To do this, they must download WMP, which is free from Microsoft, and then convert any songs they have in AAC to the MP3 format. (To convert one song in iTunes, right click on that song and select the conversion option. To convert a bunch of songs, check the box next to each song and select the conversion option from the "Advanced" menu.) Once a song is in the MP3 format, WMP will automatically recognize and display it.
Songs purchased through the iTunes store cannot legally be converted for use on Windows Media Player, but songs uploaded from CD are fair game.
Users can download new songs to their phones or their WMP libraries from the VCast Music Store, which charges $1.99 a song, $1 more than iTunes.
That price, along with the limited storage, seems like a deal-breaker to me.
Synch (AT&T)
This model, another midsize clamshell, costs $25 with contract and mail-in rebate. Again, most users will need to spend another $100 or so on headsets, memory chips and USB cables.
The Synch works with stereo Bluetooth headsets, but it's otherwise quite similar to the SCH-u540. Windows Media Player users will have no problems transferring songs to their phones. Users of iTunes should see the WMP conversion instructions above.
The difference between the two phones lies mostly in the services provided by Verizon and AT&T. Verizon gives one purchase option: the company store. AT&T offers several music sources.
AT&T customers can download songs from Napster for 99 cents each or subscribe for $15 a month to Napster to Go, a music service that lets users "rent" any of Napster's 2 million songs. (AT&T actually lets users try Napster free for 60 days.) AT&T also offers Yahoo Music Unlimited, another subscription rental service, which costs $12 a month, and 25 stations of commercial-free music from XM Satellite Radio, which costs $9 a month.
These services provide an enormous amount of variety, but there's currently a big catch. Aside from XM, which streams directly to phones, users must download music onto their computers and then transfer it to their phones.
AT&T promises direct downloads soon, which would make the Synch a decent option.
UpStage (Sprint)
Unlike its two conventional counterparts, the UpStage looks fresh. The slim, black rectangle has a cellphone on one side and a music player on the other. It costs $99 with contract after rebate, but yes, users will have to spend extra on memory chips and headphones. (A USB cable comes with the phone.)
The tiny package uses every square millimeter of surface space to pack in nearly as many features as its larger competitors, but the form creates drawbacks. UpStage's tiny battery supports only 2.5 hours of talk time per charge.
Users who wish to synchronize a computer music library with the UpStage must first install Sprint's music software. Then, they must transfer songs from Windows Media Player or iTunes to the Sprint software before moving music systematically to their phones.
Sprint, like Verizon, operates its own music store, but it charges only 99 cents a song. The company's $15-a-month data package comes with 10 commercial-free music channels. The company's $20 package provides 50 music channels plus one TV channel of music videos and news.
Next month, Sprint will add a further wrinkle to the mix, an Internet music service called Pandora that creates personal music channels for users. The Pandora service, which predicts what songs you will like based upon how you rate songs you have heard, will become available by the end of next month and cost $3 a month.
The UpStage looks pretty cool, but I couldn't recommend it without Pandora. If Pandora fits the system, though, the UpStage could be a contender.
Apple CEO confirms late June iPhone debut
Steve Jobs pulled an iPhone out of his pocket yesterday during a staged Q&A at the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference, but quickly tucked it away. His comments about Apple Inc.'s dive into the cell phone market were almost as fleeting, but the company's CEO did offer up some new tidbits to eager buyers.Early in the conversation with Walt Mossberg, the Journal's personal technology columnist, Jobs confirmed that the iPhone will be available in late June."Like the last day of June?" Mossberg asked."Uh, yeah ..." Jobs replied.But will there be enough in the pipeline to satisfy demand?"I don't know, I hope not," Jobs said.On another issue that's been the focus of a heated argument (whether the iPhone will be open to third-party developers) Jobs hedged, citing security as the reason why it will be closed -- for now -- but holding out hope to software makers that they will be able to sell ad-on wares."This is an important trade-off between security and openness," said Jobs according to an Engadget transcript of the Q&A. "We want both. We're working through a way, we'll find a way to let third parties write apps and still preserve security on the iPhone. But until we find that way, we can't compromise the security of the phone."I've used third-party apps. The more you add, the more your phone crashes. No one's perfect, and we'd sure like our phone not to crash once a day. If you can just be a little more patient with us, I think everyone can get what they want."Jobs also confirmed that the iPhone is powered by Mac OS X, not a miniaturized version or a completely different operating system, as some had theorized earlier this year."Take out the data [from Mac OS X], every desktop pattern, sound sample. If you look at Safari, it's not that big. It's real Safari, real OS X," Jobs said. That may explain the controversial decision last month when Apple announced it would delay Mac OS X 10.5, known as Leopard, at least four months to free up enough developers to wrap up the iPhone by June.But just because the iPhone runs Mac OS X doesn't mean Mac developers should start salivating at the prospect of taking their applications to the new device. "We don't think that's a good idea," Jobs said. "We don't have a mouse, we don't have pull-down menus. We have a very different user interface on the phone."Some habits, however, never change. Jobs, famous for his "one last thing" moments at Apple get-togethers such as MacWorld, during which he delivers at least one major previously unannounced product or feature, wouldn't take the bait offered by Mossberg."Any features on the iPhone that you haven't announced that you would like to share with us here today?" Mossberg asked."Uh ... no," Jobs said. "Sorry."Wall Street reacted to the increased buzz of the iPhone by pushing Apple shares up $2.66 by 2:45 p.m. EDT to an all-time high of $121.43, an increase of 2.2%. Today, Lehman Brothers Inc. raised its price target for Apple, following similar moves yesterday by other investment firms. In a research note to clients, Lehman analyst Harry Blount cited the iPhone as the reason for the new target. "We believe that the iPhone launch may be a game-changing event for Apple," Blount was quoted as saying in today's issue of the Journal.
2007年5月31日星期四
iPhone is open to 3rd party apps, says Jobs
During the interview with Walt Mossberg at the D Conference, Steve Jobs apparently let slip (according to the transcript from Gizmodo and Engadget), that even though the Apple iPhone won't start out the gate with support for third-party applications, Apple is open to it and is working on making that possible later this year. Both transcripts imply that Jobs was concerned about security issues, which is what presumably was holding up the process. The lack of third party support was one of the biggest complaints about the iPhone when it was first announced earlier this year, so if Apple actually makes this happen, it'll make a lot of people happy (And one of them is me). Now if only they'll work on 3G support as well...
AT&T exec calls iPhone 'game changer'
The incoming CEO of AT&T said Wednesday that expectations are "too low" for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, which his company will start selling next month. "The iPhone is going to be a game changer," Randall Stephenson said at an investor conference in New York. "I don't know what your expectations are for the iPhone, but I would tell you they're probably too low at this point." The iPhone, which blends a mobile phone with the iPod music player, has attracted interest from more than 1 million customers, he said. Apple expects to sell 10 million iPhones next year, and AT&T won exclusive rights to distribute the product in the U.S. AT&T's cell phone unit, formerly known as Cingular Wireless, plans to use the iPhone to recruit subscribers. San Antonio-based AT&T has 62.2 million wireless customers, the most in the nation. Stephenson, chief operating officer of AT&T, will replace Edward Whitacre on Sunday as CEO. Verizon Wireless reportedly plans to introduce a device this summer to compete with the iPhone. Last month Sprint did the same when it introduced its Upstage.
Jobs wants to put the 'baby Internet' to bed
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Since Apple Inc. unveiled the iPhone four months ago, there has been much speculation about whether it will be more of an iPod or a cell phone.
But to hear Steve Jobs tell it, the device's strongest selling point may be neither.
As he touted the product to a gathering of tech industry executives this week [on Wednesday], Apple's (AAPL :
Apple Inc
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AAPL118.77, +4.42, +3.9%) chief executive sounded most excited about the iPhone's Internet pedigree -- especially it's ability to download and play videos.
The iPhone comes equipped with "real versions" of the company's operating system and the Safari Web browser, Jobs said, which will allow Apple to deliver to consumers an experience that others have mostly failed to. "It's the Internet in your pocket," he said.
Even though cell-phone providers have spent billions to build out sophisticated networks to let handsets access the Web, "you can't do a lot with them," according to Jobs. "You get the 'baby Internet,'" he said. "People want to get the 'real Internet' on their phone," Jobs said.
If Jobs is right, Apple's move into the handset market may not hinge on how well the product can navigate the straits between two markets -- cell phones and portable media players -- that within a few years will likely become one.
That challenge is one reason many Apple watchers feel that the company's move into the cell phone market is fraught with risk.
At nearly $500, no one is going to buy the iPhone just for its handset capabilities.
If the iPod merely cannibalizes sales of high-end iPods, it may open the door to rivals like Nokia Corp. (NOK :
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NOK27.16, +0.69, +2.6%) and Sony Ericsson to slow iPod growth or even take market share. Both companies have added music players to their phones.
But if Jobs can change why people buy cell phones with the iPhone, just as he changed how people buy music with the iPod, he might take enough of the handset market share to keep iPod sales surging.
Jobs can spin with the best of them, so his touting of the iPhone's video download may be little more than shrewd product positioning.
During his presentation at the "D" - All Thing Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., Jobs managed to turn on its head the most common argument against the iPhone -- that it's lack of a keyboard will be a huge negative for consumers used to texting on smart phones like the Research in Motion Ltd. (RIMM :
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RIMM164.66, -0.67, -0.4%) BlackBerry and the Palm Inc. Treo.
Jobs acknowledged that the iPhone's touch screen will take some getting used to.
"It takes about a week; you have to learn how to trust it," he said.
But the feature will provide the device with "incredible versatility," because it allows the device to offer users different interfaces for its different applications.
To be sure, it's not that Jobs downplayed the product's music player capabilities.
The iPhone "has the best iPod we've ever made," he said.
Still, he acknowledged that Cingular Wireless, which will be the only carrier to sell the product when it begins shipping next month, took a chance by agreeing to carry the product before Apple even showed it to them.
"They took a gamble on us," because Apple has never made its own handset, "just as we took a gamble on them," Jobs said.
So why would Cingular, now a unit of AT&T Inc. (T :
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T40.98, +0.49, +1.2%) , do it?
Because "music hasn't been good on the phone," he said, and the company felt that partnering with Apple was their best chance of improving that experience.
If consumers agree, Apple's sales and stock price may continue to rise, and Jobs may once again look like a genius.
But to hear Steve Jobs tell it, the device's strongest selling point may be neither.
As he touted the product to a gathering of tech industry executives this week [on Wednesday], Apple's (AAPL :
Apple Inc
News , chart , profile , more
Last: 118.77+4.42+3.87%6:02am 05/31/2007Delayed quote data
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InsiderDiscussFinancials
Sponsored by:
AAPL118.77, +4.42, +3.9%) chief executive sounded most excited about the iPhone's Internet pedigree -- especially it's ability to download and play videos.
The iPhone comes equipped with "real versions" of the company's operating system and the Safari Web browser, Jobs said, which will allow Apple to deliver to consumers an experience that others have mostly failed to. "It's the Internet in your pocket," he said.
Even though cell-phone providers have spent billions to build out sophisticated networks to let handsets access the Web, "you can't do a lot with them," according to Jobs. "You get the 'baby Internet,'" he said. "People want to get the 'real Internet' on their phone," Jobs said.
If Jobs is right, Apple's move into the handset market may not hinge on how well the product can navigate the straits between two markets -- cell phones and portable media players -- that within a few years will likely become one.
That challenge is one reason many Apple watchers feel that the company's move into the cell phone market is fraught with risk.
At nearly $500, no one is going to buy the iPhone just for its handset capabilities.
If the iPod merely cannibalizes sales of high-end iPods, it may open the door to rivals like Nokia Corp. (NOK :
Nokia Corp
News , chart , profile , more
Last: 27.16+0.69+2.61%6:01am 05/31/2007Delayed quote data
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Sponsored by:
NOK27.16, +0.69, +2.6%) and Sony Ericsson to slow iPod growth or even take market share. Both companies have added music players to their phones.
But if Jobs can change why people buy cell phones with the iPhone, just as he changed how people buy music with the iPod, he might take enough of the handset market share to keep iPod sales surging.
Jobs can spin with the best of them, so his touting of the iPhone's video download may be little more than shrewd product positioning.
During his presentation at the "D" - All Thing Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., Jobs managed to turn on its head the most common argument against the iPhone -- that it's lack of a keyboard will be a huge negative for consumers used to texting on smart phones like the Research in Motion Ltd. (RIMM :
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Jobs acknowledged that the iPhone's touch screen will take some getting used to.
"It takes about a week; you have to learn how to trust it," he said.
But the feature will provide the device with "incredible versatility," because it allows the device to offer users different interfaces for its different applications.
To be sure, it's not that Jobs downplayed the product's music player capabilities.
The iPhone "has the best iPod we've ever made," he said.
Still, he acknowledged that Cingular Wireless, which will be the only carrier to sell the product when it begins shipping next month, took a chance by agreeing to carry the product before Apple even showed it to them.
"They took a gamble on us," because Apple has never made its own handset, "just as we took a gamble on them," Jobs said.
So why would Cingular, now a unit of AT&T Inc. (T :
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Because "music hasn't been good on the phone," he said, and the company felt that partnering with Apple was their best chance of improving that experience.
If consumers agree, Apple's sales and stock price may continue to rise, and Jobs may once again look like a genius.
2007年5月28日星期一
Leading the charge on iPhone
Brace yourself for another tsunami of hype.
May's craze was "American Idol." June's will be the Apple iPhone, which is going on sale in a few weeks. As with "Idol," the iPhone show has lots of Seattle connections.
The season begins Wednesday when Apple boss Steve Jobs is expected to talk up the device at a Wall Street Journal tech conference in California.
Playing the foil on stage with Jobs will be the Simon Cowell of the software world, Bill Gates.
Behind the scenes, AT&T engineers in Redmond are busy working with the iPhone to be sure it works well on the wireless network. The team is a vestige of the company's roots as Cingular Wireless, AT&T Wireless and, before that, McCaw Cellular Communications.
But the biggest local player may be Glenn Lurie, AT&T's point man on the iPhone project.
Lurie, 41, grew up in Portland, graduated from Seattle Pacific University in 1987 and married into a Bellingham family.
His first job out of college was selling tickets and suites for the Sonics, but after six weeks he was recruited to play pro soccer.
In 1990, he was back in Portland, trying to decide whether to coach at soccer camps. Instead he became a sales rep for McCaw's Cellular One.
As the company surged and merged, Lurie charged up the corporate ladder. Within a few years, he was head of marketing to suburban Oregon. Then he was tapped to lead McCaw's Arizona debut.
"One of the beautiful things about the wireless business is that if you performed, the business grew so fast, you could grow with it," he said last week in Seattle.
After McCaw sold to AT&T and became AT&T Wireless, Lurie transferred to Los Angeles and later became regional president for the West.
(AT&T Wireless was acquired by Cingular, which recently changed its name to AT&T.)
Now Lurie is president of national distribution, based in Atlanta.
The job put him in the room with the chief executive and chief operating officer during their first meeting with Jobs. Then he worked on contracts leading to an exclusive, five-year iPhone partnership.
They knew it was a big chance, but they didn't realize how big, Lurie said.
"The anticipation that we're seeing, the buzz we're seeing, at least for me, has far exceeded our expectations of how important this would be to the business and us," he said.
Lurie is using an iPhone, but he wouldn't take it out for a photo last week. "Can't do that," he said.
He was more than happy to show off the Samsung BlackJack on his hip, though. AT&T is selling the Microsoft-powered phone for less than $100. That's about a fifth the price of an iPhone, which is being priced $499 for a 4-gigabyte model and $599 for 8 gigabytes.
That price gap is why I've been skeptical about the iPhone's prospects.
The device will undoubtedly push phone makers to improve their software and add features. It may force wireless companies to let more users have full browsers and PC-like music players on their phones.
But how many people are going to pay nearly $600 for a phone?
That's partly why I wanted to meet Lurie and to get a better idea of what to expect from America's next diversion.
Here's an edited version of our chat:
Q: One point of skepticism is the price. That BlackJack is pretty nice, and it costs $500 less than an iPhone ...
A: Here's how I'd explain it. The most popular iPod, a 4-gigabyte Nano, costs $200. If you've got a RIM BlackBerry or Palm Treo, you probably paid $200 minimum. Then you've got a phone that you got for free or paid maybe $50.
You're at $450 or $500. The question you've got to be able to ask yourself is, is this device going to be able to replace those three, so you carry one? That's the question.
I think when people get their hands on it and really experience it — the touch screen is phenomenal, this touch screen is like nothing you've ever used — to experience that, the skepticism, I think, around some of those things will go away.
There are other things — you have the widgets, some of the Google applications that are coming — there are just so many things here that the price will not be an issue.
Q: So you don't think you'll have to subsidize the phone's price?
A: We're not talking about that.
Q: What's your impression of Apple?
A: It's a great company. I know there are lots of interesting thoughts out there about how Steve and his team have done so many things, but they have been such innovators. If you look at the music side, it's hard to argue that they aren't driving a lot of things.
Q: What's your favorite iPhone feature?
A: I don't know if I can answer that. It's a pretty incredible browsing environment. That's the first part that I think will blow people away. It's the first widescreen iPod they've ever done; it is very, very good, works extremely well.
I think the other thing people haven't really thought through is that Apple's so good at simplifying things. That's just what they're known for; they've really simplified the phone. The standard phone applications are really intuitive, whether it's receiving a phone call, putting that person on hold, adding another party and bringing a conference call together.
Q: Won't the full-powered browser hurt AT&T? People won't need to use its services as much — they'll just pull things from the Web, instead of calling directory assistance, for example.
A: No, actually it won't. I think it will be great for us, and here's why. One of the things with this device — people are going to be asked to have an unlimited package — people are going to have to have a package with us to browse. That's one good thing for everybody.
I think this is going to create a new way people use handheld devices because the browsing experience is as good as the PC browsing experience. So I think it's not going to hurt us at all. I'm excited about what it will do for the industry in terms of how people view mobile browsing.
Q: What's the risk in your deal with Apple? Are there downsides or concerns?
A: Not that I can see. The thing I get asked about a lot is, obviously, that our companies are different cultures. But they have been incredible to work with.
The one thing we found as commonality is our pursuit of customer experience. Whenever we got into discussions, the thing we kept coming back to was this unwavering "what's the customer experience going to be?" That's gotten us over the hump every single time.
Q: What do you think of Jobs?
A: He's a great guy. I've been dealing with Steve a lot. I think my prior comments fit: He is all about the customer, the customer experience, making sure that what customers get meets expectations. That's what my mesh has been.
May's craze was "American Idol." June's will be the Apple iPhone, which is going on sale in a few weeks. As with "Idol," the iPhone show has lots of Seattle connections.
The season begins Wednesday when Apple boss Steve Jobs is expected to talk up the device at a Wall Street Journal tech conference in California.
Playing the foil on stage with Jobs will be the Simon Cowell of the software world, Bill Gates.
Behind the scenes, AT&T engineers in Redmond are busy working with the iPhone to be sure it works well on the wireless network. The team is a vestige of the company's roots as Cingular Wireless, AT&T Wireless and, before that, McCaw Cellular Communications.
But the biggest local player may be Glenn Lurie, AT&T's point man on the iPhone project.
Lurie, 41, grew up in Portland, graduated from Seattle Pacific University in 1987 and married into a Bellingham family.
His first job out of college was selling tickets and suites for the Sonics, but after six weeks he was recruited to play pro soccer.
In 1990, he was back in Portland, trying to decide whether to coach at soccer camps. Instead he became a sales rep for McCaw's Cellular One.
As the company surged and merged, Lurie charged up the corporate ladder. Within a few years, he was head of marketing to suburban Oregon. Then he was tapped to lead McCaw's Arizona debut.
"One of the beautiful things about the wireless business is that if you performed, the business grew so fast, you could grow with it," he said last week in Seattle.
After McCaw sold to AT&T and became AT&T Wireless, Lurie transferred to Los Angeles and later became regional president for the West.
(AT&T Wireless was acquired by Cingular, which recently changed its name to AT&T.)
Now Lurie is president of national distribution, based in Atlanta.
The job put him in the room with the chief executive and chief operating officer during their first meeting with Jobs. Then he worked on contracts leading to an exclusive, five-year iPhone partnership.
They knew it was a big chance, but they didn't realize how big, Lurie said.
"The anticipation that we're seeing, the buzz we're seeing, at least for me, has far exceeded our expectations of how important this would be to the business and us," he said.
Lurie is using an iPhone, but he wouldn't take it out for a photo last week. "Can't do that," he said.
He was more than happy to show off the Samsung BlackJack on his hip, though. AT&T is selling the Microsoft-powered phone for less than $100. That's about a fifth the price of an iPhone, which is being priced $499 for a 4-gigabyte model and $599 for 8 gigabytes.
That price gap is why I've been skeptical about the iPhone's prospects.
The device will undoubtedly push phone makers to improve their software and add features. It may force wireless companies to let more users have full browsers and PC-like music players on their phones.
But how many people are going to pay nearly $600 for a phone?
That's partly why I wanted to meet Lurie and to get a better idea of what to expect from America's next diversion.
Here's an edited version of our chat:
Q: One point of skepticism is the price. That BlackJack is pretty nice, and it costs $500 less than an iPhone ...
A: Here's how I'd explain it. The most popular iPod, a 4-gigabyte Nano, costs $200. If you've got a RIM BlackBerry or Palm Treo, you probably paid $200 minimum. Then you've got a phone that you got for free or paid maybe $50.
You're at $450 or $500. The question you've got to be able to ask yourself is, is this device going to be able to replace those three, so you carry one? That's the question.
I think when people get their hands on it and really experience it — the touch screen is phenomenal, this touch screen is like nothing you've ever used — to experience that, the skepticism, I think, around some of those things will go away.
There are other things — you have the widgets, some of the Google applications that are coming — there are just so many things here that the price will not be an issue.
Q: So you don't think you'll have to subsidize the phone's price?
A: We're not talking about that.
Q: What's your impression of Apple?
A: It's a great company. I know there are lots of interesting thoughts out there about how Steve and his team have done so many things, but they have been such innovators. If you look at the music side, it's hard to argue that they aren't driving a lot of things.
Q: What's your favorite iPhone feature?
A: I don't know if I can answer that. It's a pretty incredible browsing environment. That's the first part that I think will blow people away. It's the first widescreen iPod they've ever done; it is very, very good, works extremely well.
I think the other thing people haven't really thought through is that Apple's so good at simplifying things. That's just what they're known for; they've really simplified the phone. The standard phone applications are really intuitive, whether it's receiving a phone call, putting that person on hold, adding another party and bringing a conference call together.
Q: Won't the full-powered browser hurt AT&T? People won't need to use its services as much — they'll just pull things from the Web, instead of calling directory assistance, for example.
A: No, actually it won't. I think it will be great for us, and here's why. One of the things with this device — people are going to be asked to have an unlimited package — people are going to have to have a package with us to browse. That's one good thing for everybody.
I think this is going to create a new way people use handheld devices because the browsing experience is as good as the PC browsing experience. So I think it's not going to hurt us at all. I'm excited about what it will do for the industry in terms of how people view mobile browsing.
Q: What's the risk in your deal with Apple? Are there downsides or concerns?
A: Not that I can see. The thing I get asked about a lot is, obviously, that our companies are different cultures. But they have been incredible to work with.
The one thing we found as commonality is our pursuit of customer experience. Whenever we got into discussions, the thing we kept coming back to was this unwavering "what's the customer experience going to be?" That's gotten us over the hump every single time.
Q: What do you think of Jobs?
A: He's a great guy. I've been dealing with Steve a lot. I think my prior comments fit: He is all about the customer, the customer experience, making sure that what customers get meets expectations. That's what my mesh has been.
More iPhone apps confirmed
AT&T’s main man says extra applications from Google will be on the iPhone. Click to enlarge 1 of 1 Apple's got more apps to fill that menu, specifically, from Google... [more images]We’ve been wondering about the iPhone’s applications for a while, but now it’s been confirmed – the handset will come with more than we’ve seen so far.
AT&T, the iPhone’s sole provider in the US, has gone on record saying more Google apps in particular will be present on the handset.
We’ve already seen Google Maps, and very swish it is too, but now AT&T’s president of national distribution Glenn Lurie says they’ll be accompanied by others from the house of Google.
Exactly what they are, he’s not saying. Our money is on Google News or Google Reader, for staying up to date on the move. Maybe there’s an iPhone version of Blogger in the works, potentially woven into a mobile iWeb. Perhaps Google Calendar will integrate fully with the handset’s iCal support. The potential is endless.
Speaking to the Seattle Times Laurie said the handset’s touchscreen would also surprise people. “I think when people get their hands on it and really experience it — the touch screen is phenomenal,” he said.
“This touch screen is like nothing you've ever used — to experience that, the scepticism, I think… will go away.”
T3 got some hands-on time with iPhone just after it was announced, and we can confirm the touchscreen is indeed phenomenal. Check out our hands-on report here.
In the meantime, we’re waiting like everyone else for news on the iPhone’s UK release. Updates right here as soon as we hear them.
AT&T, the iPhone’s sole provider in the US, has gone on record saying more Google apps in particular will be present on the handset.
We’ve already seen Google Maps, and very swish it is too, but now AT&T’s president of national distribution Glenn Lurie says they’ll be accompanied by others from the house of Google.
Exactly what they are, he’s not saying. Our money is on Google News or Google Reader, for staying up to date on the move. Maybe there’s an iPhone version of Blogger in the works, potentially woven into a mobile iWeb. Perhaps Google Calendar will integrate fully with the handset’s iCal support. The potential is endless.
Speaking to the Seattle Times Laurie said the handset’s touchscreen would also surprise people. “I think when people get their hands on it and really experience it — the touch screen is phenomenal,” he said.
“This touch screen is like nothing you've ever used — to experience that, the scepticism, I think… will go away.”
T3 got some hands-on time with iPhone just after it was announced, and we can confirm the touchscreen is indeed phenomenal. Check out our hands-on report here.
In the meantime, we’re waiting like everyone else for news on the iPhone’s UK release. Updates right here as soon as we hear them.
Verizon to Challenge iPhone with LG Prada
Even though Verizon opted out of carrying the iPhone, it's not like the checkmark of a mobile service provider has no interest in the touchscreen cell phone market whatsoever. Quite the contrary, in fact, because Verizon will reportedly pick up the iPhone's closest competitor -- the LG Prada -- to face off against AT&T in a battle for key-less supremacy.According to The Street's Scott Moritz, Verizon has inked a deal with LG to bring the touch-sensitive cell phone to Americans, though it's unclear whether it will be the "Prada" or some other, possibly less expensive variant. It seems like the latter is more likely, because Verizon is probably interested in keeping the price down to a more reasonable level.2007年5月27日星期日
Reports: Verizon Planning iPhone Killer
Reports: Verizon Planning iPhone Killer
Verizon Wireless is plotting a response to AT&T's widely-anticipated Apple iPhone offering.Part 1 of a special five-part series. -->
Jim Duffy, Network World
Verizon Wireless is plotting a response to AT&T's widely-anticipated Apple iPhone offering, according to published reports.
Apple unveiled iPhone at the Macworld conference in January. It features a 3.5-inch, 160 dot-per-inch color screen, a 2 megapixel digital camera and a touchscreen Apple calls "Multitouch," which is designed to enhance accuracy by ignoring unintended touches.
IPhone is 11.6 millimeters thick -- thinner than typical smartphones, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
AT&T has exclusive rights to offer iPhone for five years. It will be available from the carrier next month.
Verizon Wireless' counter is the LG Prada, or KE850, according to TheStreet.com. Prada is a sleek handset similar in look to the iPhone, the Web site reports. It includes a camera, and can play music and videos and allow for document viewing.
IPhone will cost US$500 while Prada is expected to retail for around $600. The offering is seen as key for Verizon Wireless to attempt to stem the tide of customers to iPhone and AT&T.
Verizon Wireless was not immediately available for comment. USA Today recently quoted Verizon COO Denny Strigl stating that the carrier will have a response to iPhone by late summer.
For more information about enterprise networking, go to NetworkWorld. Story copyright 2007 Network World Inc. All rights reserved.
Verizon Wireless is plotting a response to AT&T's widely-anticipated Apple iPhone offering.Part 1 of a special five-part series. -->
Jim Duffy, Network World
Verizon Wireless is plotting a response to AT&T's widely-anticipated Apple iPhone offering, according to published reports.
Apple unveiled iPhone at the Macworld conference in January. It features a 3.5-inch, 160 dot-per-inch color screen, a 2 megapixel digital camera and a touchscreen Apple calls "Multitouch," which is designed to enhance accuracy by ignoring unintended touches.
IPhone is 11.6 millimeters thick -- thinner than typical smartphones, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
AT&T has exclusive rights to offer iPhone for five years. It will be available from the carrier next month.
Verizon Wireless' counter is the LG Prada, or KE850, according to TheStreet.com. Prada is a sleek handset similar in look to the iPhone, the Web site reports. It includes a camera, and can play music and videos and allow for document viewing.
IPhone will cost US$500 while Prada is expected to retail for around $600. The offering is seen as key for Verizon Wireless to attempt to stem the tide of customers to iPhone and AT&T.
Verizon Wireless was not immediately available for comment. USA Today recently quoted Verizon COO Denny Strigl stating that the carrier will have a response to iPhone by late summer.
For more information about enterprise networking, go to NetworkWorld. Story copyright 2007 Network World Inc. All rights reserved.
Rivals Gear Up for iPhone Debut
SAN FRANCISCO With Apple's iPhone due to debut in a month, the wireless wars heated up last week among AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive U.S. service provider, accelerated the process of rebranding its former Cingular stores on May 21-22 to get the maximum benefit from the growing buzz surrounding the new product.
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During the same period, T-Mobile unveiled its own version of the iPhone, called the Wing. The Internet-enabled, WiFi equipped device retails for $299 with rebates. Not to be outdone, Verizon executives said in published reports that they would unveil a new WiFi mobile phone in late summer.Apple's iPhone is billed as a well designed, easy-to-use wireless phone, music player and Web-access product. Apple's lead agency, Omnicom Group's TBWA\Chiat\Day in Playa del Rey, Calif., is handling the iPhone's intro.Critics maintain its hefty starting price of $499 will limit its overall appeal."The introduction of the iPhone will have a big impact on the mobile market globally," counters Daniel Rosen, director of AKQA Mobile.Aside from the popularity of its design and simplicity, iPhone poses another threat to carriers: "It is similar to the iPod in that users download music from their computers" in order to put it on their phone, he said.That's bad news for carriers "who prefer that phone users pay to download music using the phone networks that they have been spending millions of dollars to build in the last few years." he said.AT&T agreed to ignore the problem because "they recognize that this phone will be a must-have item for so many millions of iPod fans. AT&T will most likely win significant market share from competitors [whose customers] will want to have an iPhone more than they want to stay on their existing mobile-phone contract," Rosen said.Some analysts said the low-tech approach of the iPhone could help the mobile phone industry overall by raising the awareness of new services and content, pointing to the effect the iPod had on digital music. (A 2006 report by Jupiter Research said the emergence of the iPod drove acceptance of all digital music products.)Executives at shops that handle phone-carrier accounts generally downplay the iPhone's potential impact, treating it as another new product launch, rather than a category changer.However, Bob Moore, CCO of Publicis USA, who oversees T-Mobile, said significant new advertising and nontraditional marketing for the T-mobile brand will begin in the third quarter, right after the iPhone launch. "The next 12 months are going to be an exciting time in the industry," he said.
CM8ShowAd("Middle");
During the same period, T-Mobile unveiled its own version of the iPhone, called the Wing. The Internet-enabled, WiFi equipped device retails for $299 with rebates. Not to be outdone, Verizon executives said in published reports that they would unveil a new WiFi mobile phone in late summer.Apple's iPhone is billed as a well designed, easy-to-use wireless phone, music player and Web-access product. Apple's lead agency, Omnicom Group's TBWA\Chiat\Day in Playa del Rey, Calif., is handling the iPhone's intro.Critics maintain its hefty starting price of $499 will limit its overall appeal."The introduction of the iPhone will have a big impact on the mobile market globally," counters Daniel Rosen, director of AKQA Mobile.Aside from the popularity of its design and simplicity, iPhone poses another threat to carriers: "It is similar to the iPod in that users download music from their computers" in order to put it on their phone, he said.That's bad news for carriers "who prefer that phone users pay to download music using the phone networks that they have been spending millions of dollars to build in the last few years." he said.AT&T agreed to ignore the problem because "they recognize that this phone will be a must-have item for so many millions of iPod fans. AT&T will most likely win significant market share from competitors [whose customers] will want to have an iPhone more than they want to stay on their existing mobile-phone contract," Rosen said.Some analysts said the low-tech approach of the iPhone could help the mobile phone industry overall by raising the awareness of new services and content, pointing to the effect the iPod had on digital music. (A 2006 report by Jupiter Research said the emergence of the iPod drove acceptance of all digital music products.)Executives at shops that handle phone-carrier accounts generally downplay the iPhone's potential impact, treating it as another new product launch, rather than a category changer.However, Bob Moore, CCO of Publicis USA, who oversees T-Mobile, said significant new advertising and nontraditional marketing for the T-mobile brand will begin in the third quarter, right after the iPhone launch. "The next 12 months are going to be an exciting time in the industry," he said.
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