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Beleagured AT&T not a fanboi favorite
Results from a small-scale survey rating satisfaction among iPhone 4 owners were released Wednesday. The verdict? Mixed.…
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(Source The Register)
Posts Tagged “iphone 3gs”
After Samsung’s disappointing Bada-powered Wave, this high-spec Android smartphone pushes all the right buttons What is it? Samsung Galaxy S GT-19000, running Android 2.1 operating system Category: Hardware Hardware and software You’d use it in the… Home and office First impressions: what is it like to look at, to hold, to use? OK, so it’s visually 7mm away from being an Apple iPhone 3GS, but don’t let that distract from the Galaxy S’s sleek exterior. At 118g, the Galaxy S is slightly lighter than the iPhone 4 but not noticeably so. It’s also thinner but slightly taller than the iPhone. Thankfully Samsung opted for Google’s Android (2.1) operating system for the touchscreen Galaxy S, making the phone much more flexible and intuitive than the Wave, Samsung’s first Bada-powered device. With a 1GHz processor and a fair bit of memory available (8GB or 16GB, with capacity for an additional 32GB MicroSD card), completing tasks is zippy for the most part. What does it really do well? Some nice additional features (vintage layers, for example) complement the device’s 5MP camera, which also allows quick and easy sharing by MMS, email or social networks. YouTube video playback is sharp, thanks to the Super AMOLED screen, but the app can be sluggish to load, even on a strong Wi-Fi connection. Most of all, it’s a quick-response phone – allowing you to switch between apps and functions relatively painlessly. Web browsing suits the not-insubstantial screen well, despite the lack of Flash support – though the Bada-inspired font used on the Wave is easier on the eye than the Galaxy S choice. What’s the cost? Available for free on a £35 per month 24-month contract or around £400 sim-free. Not hugely expensive for an iPhone-rivalling smartphone. What’s it up against? The price and device specifications put the Galaxy S right among the best smartphones currently on the market. It’s less expensive than the iPhone 4; you’re getting a fair amount of bang for your buck. Blind us with the tech specs, then: A Super AMOLED screen (embeds touch sensors into display rather than layering over the top); Weight: 118g; Dimension: 64.2 x 122.4 x 9.9mm; 5MP camera; front-facing VGA camera for video calling; 720p video recording; on-board FM radio; 8GB or 16GB memory, with potential for 32GB MicroSD card upload; 1GHz processor; Android 2.1 operating system. What’s it good for? Very nice for taking and sharing decent-quality photos quickly. With the Android operating system, the Galaxy S has all the potential – as opposed to the Wave which is mostly inhibited by running Bada. Of course, all this depends on how often Google updates the firmware and how quickly (or not, as seems to be the case) the various operators can push them out. One in 10 contract devices sold in the UK is now reportedly running Android, a software that suits Samsung’s well-made hardware. What are its failings? I’d advise away from the Android Aldiko ebook reader, which was infuriating to use: slow to load, slow to respond to interaction and only able to fit 17 lines on the 4-inch screen. A weird stilted zooming inhibits an otherwise good browsing experience. And the browser address bar is unjustifiably big. Annoyingly, even when the cursor is blinking in text boxes the touchscreen keyboard requires another (needless) selection before allowing any text input. How big a pocket will I need (portable devices only)? Only 7mm taller than the iPhone 4, a normal pocket will suffice for the Galaxy S. How long is the battery life? On paper: talk time stands at 803 minutes (2G), 393 minutes (3G), standby mode at 750 hours (2G), 576 hours (3G). What’s its USP? The big all-encompassing screen and its speed. The feature-rich relatively high quality camera also sets the Galaxy S apart as an excellent device, up there with the best of currently-available smartphones. Rating out of 10: 8 Finally, is it worth it – yes or no? Yes. Rating: 4/5
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• iPhone 4 slowdown, post-Antennagate? Apple chief operting officer Tim Cook: “Let me be very clear on this – we are selling every unit we can make currently.” Any increase in returns? “My phone is ringing off the hook with people that want more supply. It’s hard to test the real question you’re asking because we’re selling every one we can make. The returns that we’ve seen on iPhone 4 are less than iPhone 3GS, the ones for this specific issue are extremely small.” • Supply and demand: “High demand is never a problem. We are quoting longer lead times that we would like. In the scheme of things, it’s a good problem to have.” Oppenheimer: “We do not create a shortage for buzz. I don’t know where that’s come from. That’s not our objective – we would like to fill every customer’s order as quickly as we can. The demand for iPhone 4 is absolutely stunning. We are working very hard to catch up with demand. I can’t predict when that will occur.” When will the iPad supply issues ease? Cook: “We honestly don’t know… [iPad] is not following a typical early adopter curve and then taking a long time to cross in the mainstream. Our guts tell us that this market is very big. For us, it’s a jawdropper.” Apple has no idea how many people want to buy its products. Asked by an analyst if iPad shortfall was “a couple of million” and iPhone 4 “half a million”, Cook said: “I don’t know – that question is very difficult to answer.” Historically, he said demand was an indicator of how much supply was necessary, but: “I truly don’t know … we have taken bets internally.” • Cannibalisation? Cook: “Internally, we focus on exactly the opposite – the synergy between … the Mac share is still low – so there’s still an enormous opportunity for the Mac to grow. The more customers we can introduce to Mac through iPhone, iPad and iPod touch – you would think there’d be some synergy with the Mac there.” • And more… On AT&T (NYSE: T) – Cook: “They have been a first-class partner and have pioneered the smartphone [market] from a network point of view in the US – that’s all I have to say about that.” A data center Apple has been building in North Carolina is on schedule to be completed by end of this calendar year. Sounds like an iTunes Store initiative. Cook flat-out refused to answer a question about how Apple intends to make good on its promise to open up FaceTime.
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Firm offers free covers to owners and new buyers after signal problems sparked demands for recall Apple’s iPhone 4 conference – as it happened Apple is offering a free rubber “bumper” to owners of the iPhone 4 to head off criticism over problems with its signal reception but dismissed suggestions that the device should be recalled. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said the problems had affected only “a small batch” of phones, and that it was due to an “inherent problem” with smartphones. “We’re not perfect,” he said at a press conference at Apple’s HQ in Cupertino, California. “We haven’t figured out a way around the laws of physics yet.” Nevertheless Apple will offer the “bumpers”, which cover the sides of the phone, around the exposed metal antenna which receives the mobile signal. When users have held the phones by the bottom and left sides it has led to a loss of signal. People who have already bought a case are entitled to a free cash refund. Jobs headed off the suggestion that Apple would have to recall the phone, following a media storm which had seen some compare the problems to those faced by Toyota, whose cars suffered problems with the accelerators and brakes. However the iPhone has not met any of the usual criteria for a product recall, such as spontaneously combusting or causing harm through heat or emission. Jobs revealed that Apple has sold 3m of the iPhone 4 since its launch on 24 June. That indicates that the rate of sales has slowed dramatically, after 1.7m were sold in the first three days. But he insisted customer satisfaction was higher than with previous versions: the return rate was just 1.7%, he said, compared to 6% for the previous model, the iPhone 3GS released last summer. The company said it cannot make enough bumpers to satisfy demand, but will keep the offer of the free case open until September. Jobs admitted that there had been complaints about the phone losing signal when held by the left and bottom sides – but said that they were natural for any phone. He acknowledged they were not perfect but insisted that every phone manufacturer had problems with antenna design and interaction with the body’s tendency to absorb the phone signal. Apple’s stock rebounded as Jobs began speaking at 6pm UK time last night. Apple’s share price fell by 4% overnight on Tuesday, knocking $9.9bn (£6.5bn) off the company’s $230bn value, as speculation grew that the phone might have to be recalled. Since the iPhone 4′s launch, there have been many complaints about the way that the signal appears to drop off dramatically when it is held with a hand wrapped around its left and bottom sides (a problem dubbed the “iPhone Death Grip”). Apple this week said that it had made a “simple and surprising” error in the software that displayed the strength of the signal, and on Thursday night issued a software update which changes how many bars are displayed when the signal becomes weaker. The iPhone problems now feature in dozens of jokes. Earlier this week Kevin Turner, the chief operating officer of Microsoft, spoke at a conference about its Windows Phone 7 software. “One of the things that I want to make sure that you know today,” he said, “is that you’re going to be able to use the Windows Phone 7 and not have to worry about how you’re holding it to make a call.”
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It’s crunch day for Apple and iPhone 4 – what can we expect? Stay with us for coverage throughout the day
11.45am: BBC News: users are reporting new issues with 3GS devices. As the iOS 4.0.1 update has fixed the methods of displaying signal strength in some iPhone 4 devices, it appears that a past update is causing older models to drop calls mysteriously: “At the same time some owners of the iPhone 3GS are reporting that an earlier update to the handset’s operating system made their phone far more likely to drop calls. The dropped calls occur when the phone suddenly reboots during a conversation”. The report doesn’t make clear which software update caused this problem or whether it affects 3G or 4 devices. Plugging one hole as another appears? Have you updated? Let us know below…
11.30am: The clamour for a bigger software update/’iDuct’ tape/anything just cranked up a notch: US Democratic senator Charles E. Schumer has written an open letter to Apple chief Steve Jobs, saying: “I write to express concern regarding the reception problem with the Apple iPhone 4. While I commend Apple’s innovative approach to mobile technology and appreciate its service to millions of iPhone users nationwide, I believe it is incumbent upon Apple to address this flaw in a transparent manner. “[...] The solutions offered to date by Apple for dealing with the so-called ‘death grip’ malfunction—such as holding the device differently, or buying a cover for it—seem to be insufficient. These proposed solutions would unfairly place the burden on consumers for resolving a problem they were not aware of when they purchased their phones. “I also encourage Apple to keep its promise to provide free software updates so that bars displayed accurately reflect signal strength; I further urge Apple to issue a written explanation of the formula it uses to calculate bar strength, so that consumers can once again trust the product that they have invested in.” Who’s your UK political tip for jumping in? Tom Watson MP? Peter Mandelson?
11.20am: So we had a smart pre-emptive move from Apple late last night with the quiet release of the iOS4.0.1 software upgrade. But did it do the trick for you? For some, it appears to have solved the fundamental signalling problem:
But for others, the problem remains:
10.48am: It must have been quite the week at Apple’s Cupertino, California base. iPhone 4 woes have continued, the technology company set to explain all at today’s crunch press conference. The much-maligned device has suffered fundamental problems with its mobile reception – growing uncertainty surrounding a potential recall leading to a dip in Apple’s share price and prompting more speculation over the future of the device. While experts look for a recall of devices, customers clamour for a simple fix. We expect to see one or the other at today’s impromptu press conference. Seeking to gain the initiative, Apple last night released iOS 4.0.1 – a simple fix we’ve all being waiting for? All this and more remains to be seen. Stay with us for comprehensive coverage throughout the day ahead of the embattled technology company’s 6pm summit. Got news? Tip us off.
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Growing speculation on the future of Apple’s iPhone 4 has hit the company where it hurts – and its reputation is also on the line Apple shares dived by 4% last night, cutting $9.9bn (£6.5bn) off its $230bn value after speculation grew that the company would have to recall or issue hardware fixes for the new iPhone 4. The fall follows a report by the independent American testing organisation Consumer Reports which said reception problems meant it could not recommend the device. Apple was accused of censorship by removing discussions about the negative Consumer Reports evaluation from its official message boards over the weekend, though it seems now to have relented. A number of PR experts contacted by Cult of Mac blog yesterday said a recall of the iPhone 4 was “inevitable,” comparing the situation to Toyota’s global recall of its hybrid cars earlier this year. Yet others including Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr and Instapaper, say that a wholesale recall would be a step too far, but that Apple needs to “replace, redesign, or relocate the proximity sensor” – which tells the phone when it is close to the user’s head or hand and changes its radio output and screen brightness accordingly. UK consumer watchdog Which? told the Guardian that although it had done initial tests on the iPhone 4 proximity sensor – finding that the screen is “disabled” the closer to your head the phone is held – it would carry out a “more comprehensive” review of the device in the near future. Others have suggested that Apple should give owners free rubber “bumpers” – sold for $29 (£25 in the UK) – which fit around the edge of the phone, ostensibly to protect it from damage, but which also cut the signal loss that is at the core of the dispute. But for Apple to do that would be tantamount to admitting that the device has a design problem, which could open it up to class action lawsuits from aggrieved buyers. Apple has tended to decline recalling products that have had design issues, preferring to deal on a limited basis where people complain. Earlier this week it quietly announced that it would replace faulty versions of its Time Capsule backup product, after thousands of them failed after just 18 months. When a number of its iBook computers were found to have faulty soldering in 2007 by a Danish consumer investigation, it did not issue a recall. Apple UK had no comment this morning on whether it will be making any announcements about the iPhone. UK Consumers’ Association magazine Which? said that it intended to test the phone “soon”. Despite the fall in the technology company’s share price, it remains the largest on the US stock market, ahead of long-term rival Microsoft. And although Consumer Reports did not “recommend” the iPhone 4, other commentators have pointed out that it still ranks it highest among the smartphones it has tested – and that its second-ranked smartphone is the iPhone 3GS, the predecessor to the latest version. Even with a growing clamour from users and testers who have discovered that the phone’s reception seems to drop off abruptly when they position their hand around the left side, the company has remained almost silent – except for a statement on Friday 2 July, when it put out a “letter” a week after the phone’s release in which it said that the dropoff in reception was due to a “simple and surprising” mistake in every iPhone’s software which meant that it overstated signal strength in weak reception. Although the launch on 28 June saw 1.7m iPhone 4s sold in the first three days, the most successful yet of the annual refreshments to the model, it has proved to be a continual headache for Apple. But the major woe for consumers has been the signal issues. Testers at Consumer Reports said that holding the iPhone at the bottom left-hand corner causes the signal to decay significantly. Despite Apple’s low-key suggestion that there is nothing wrong with the phone, it is understood that staff on its warranty service AppleCare have been advising customers to buy a case or hold the phone in a different way. Consumer Reports has held off recommending the iPhone 4, despite it gaining a higher rating than all other smart phones they have evaluated.
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Chief executive Steve Jobs hails ‘most successful launch in Apple’s history’ despite reported problems over phone reception Apple says it sold 1.7m iPhone 4s in its first three days, a record for the newest version of its top-selling product, and the company could have sold more but for production constraints. The latest model features video calling and an updated body, although some users have reported problems with reception, apparently due to a design flaw. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, called the iPhone 4′s launch “the most successful in Apple’s history” but added: “We apologise to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.” Research in the US by the analysts Piper Jaffray and in the UK by AQA suggests that 77% of iPhone 4 buyers queueing outside stores on the first days were upgrading from previous models – implying that 23% of buyers were new to the platform. The record sales have come despite shortages of the smaller-capacity 16-gigabyte version of the iPhone, which is coloured white. Apple apologised last week and said it would be unable to fulfil early demand for them. By comparison, the previous iPhone 3GS model, launched a year ago, sold 1m in its first weekend. Apple is competing for market share in the smartphone arena with RIM, maker of the BlackBerry brand; Google’s Android software, which is used by multiple handset makers; and Nokia, which has the lion’s share of the smartphone market but which has seen its share and profitability shrink since Apple and Google entered the market in 2007. Analysts reckon Apple will be able to sell plenty more of the devices: Colin Gillis of BGC Partners in New York and Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon, project that Apple will have sold 2m to June 26, the end of the company’s fiscal quarter. Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, had previously estimated 1m to 1.5m. Apple had a difficult time getting enough touch screens to meet demand for the device, said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw in New York, so the early sales figures may not be an accurate reflection of demand. “It’s too early to say if this is negative,” said Kumar. While Apple has some production constraints, the company “has a captive audience”, he said. “Demand for the iPhone 4 is not yet satiated so it just gets pushed out into subsequent quarters.” The iPhone sales results follow Apple’s statement last week that it sold more than 3m of its iPad tablet computing device in the first 80 days. With the iPad, introduced April 3, and the three-year-old iPhone, Apple has widened its business beyond the Macintosh computer and iPod media player. Sales of the iPhone accounted for 40% of Apple’s revenue last quarter. The device has shown an upward trend in sales: the first sold 700,000 on its first weekend in June 2007, despite a high price that was later cut. In 2008, the iPhone 3G sold 1m in its first week. Apple’s share price has more than doubled since the original iPhone’s release on 29 June 2007, and it passed Microsoft as the largest technology company by market value late in May. Some iPhone 4 customers have reported trouble with the new antenna design, which uses a stainless steel band on the outside of the casing. The phone signal drops when users cover the bottom left corner of the device with their palm. Apple responded by recommending holding the phone differently or using a case to solve the problem. Customers in the five countries began lining up days in advance to buy the device. Apple said the iPhone will be available in 88 countries by the end of September.
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Owners of Apple’s latest phone are resorting to a bit of duct tape or a dab of nail polish to solve its reception problems Want to know the must-have item for owners of the new iPhone 4? A bit of duct tape – or a dab of nail polish. The reason: despite Steve Jobs’s describing the positioning of the antennae which pick up the mobile signal on the outside of the phone, rather than the inside, as “brilliant engineering”, a number of users have discovered that if it is held from the bottom, the signal strength drops off dramatically – because their skin changes the electrical properties of the antennae. Now, Jobs has informally – and Apple formally – acknowledged the issue: in email replies to owners of the new phones complaining about the problem, Jobs gave a simple response. “Don’t hold it that way,” he told one. Apple’s slightly longer statement notes that: “Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than others … this is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.” Some users have found tape or nail polish on the corner is a solution. With the iPhone 4 having been a sellout in many stores – and Vodafone emailing customers whom it promised supplies to tell them that it cannot satisfy them – the problems are an embarrassment for Apple, which had to overcome early problems with wireless reception on its tablet-style computer, the iPad, when that was launched in May. Dozens of people have posted videos on YouTube showing how the signal reception for 3G voice and data networks falls off when it is held so that the hand touches the antenna parts on the bottom of the phone. Companies selling silicone casing for the iPhone 4 report that they have already been busier, as word of the problem has spread, than they were for last year’s release of the iPhone 3GS. Professor Joe McGeehan, head of the Centre for Communications Research at the University of Bristol, and an expert in mobile antenna technology, said: “The hand does have a de-tuning effect on the antenna of any mobile phone: it changes the frequency that it responds to due to capacitative effects. How much it affects it depends on the materials surrounding it. If previous iPhones didn’t have this problem, then you have to ask: what’s changed, and might that be causing it?” Antenna expert Spencer Webb said all mobile phones house the antenna in the bottom of the phone, to minimise the radio output near the head so that the phone will pass safety testing by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). “The iPhone 4 has two symmetrical slots in the stainless frame,” Webb wrote. “If you short these slots, or cover them with your hand, the antenna performance will suffer. There is no way around this, it’s a design compromise that is forced by the requirements of the FCC, AT&T, Apple’s marketing department and Apple’s industrial designers, to name a few.” He said he had upgraded to the new iPhone, despite the concerns. “I voted with my dollars,” he said. “Sometimes an antenna that’s not great, but good enough, is good enough.” Apple offers a solution: “bumpers” which fits around the edge of the phone. But at £29, they are too pricey for many to consider – and have not pleased people who think their phone should work correctly out of the box.
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Jun
24
2010
 
Apple iPhone 4: an object of rare beauty that leapfrogs the competitionPosted by in Mobile News
Jonathan Ive has designed his masterpiece, says Stephen Fry. And there’s video-calling and the crispest display ever Just as the frenzy of the iPad launch subsides, it is time for anti-Apple frothers to have a new device waved in their angry faces and for pro-Apple droolers to get verbally bitch-slapped in the blogosphere for falling once more for Steve Jobs’s huckstering blandishments. A year ago, iPhone 3GS was released with a new operating system and now iPhone 4 arrives with iOS 4.0, offering an array of long-awaited functions. Since that 2009 3GS launch, the Taiwanese manufacturer HTC in particular has upped its game and risen to Apple’s challenge, producing handsets for the Android OS that offer slews of features, including free turn-by-turn navigation, multi-tasking, removable batteries and highly customisable interfaces. What can Apple do to wrench back the crown? The iPhone 4 is an object of rare beauty. Noticeably slimmer but a trifle heavier than predecessors, its new heft only adds to the profound feeling of quality and precision that the device exudes. Sharper edged, it is girt by a stainless steel band which cleverly houses all the antennae required by a modern smartphone. Jobs himself made a comparison between iPhone 4 and a classic Leica. With this device in my hand, I feel that I am holding its designer Jonathan Ive’s personal prototype, hand-machined as a proof-of-concept model. Ive is surely one of the most influential and gifted designers Britain has ever produced and the iPhone 4 may well be his masterpiece. The phone is available unlocked in the UK. Mine came with a Vodafone mini-SIM which I swapped for an Orange, the network change working perfectly straight away. On the front can be discerned the lineaments of a forward-facing camera and, in the glorious glass obverse (which leads one to speculate that future models might allow solar charging), an extra eye reveals that LED flash has finally arrived. The existence of the front-facing camera allows video calling: Apple’s new open standard for this, called FaceTime, neatly and transparently turns an initial mobile phone call into WiFi video chat, saving data charges. Once I had located someone else with an iPhone 4 (not easy the week before launch), I found FaceTime worked with astounding ease and in very impressive resolution. The main camera has been upgraded to 5 megapixels (crucially, without diminution of pixel size) and produces stunning images that might be, for many, reason enough to upgrade, especially when you consider the iPhone 4′s remarkable new Retina display. Retina delivers the crispest images I have ever seen on a smartphone. I found myself staring at onscreen text in disbelief. Apple has produced, and third parties will doubtless emulate and improve, rubberised wraparound belts for iPhone 4 called Bumpers. They come in all kinds of colours and give the device great resilience. (I saw an Apple executive gleefully hurling his bumpered iPhone 4 across a room). With 720p HD video, a full-featured iMovie editing app, sweet multi-tasking, better mail, spellcheck, a bigger battery, inbuilt 3-axis gyroscope (wait for the gaming implications of that alone), extra pep and polish and that droolworthy form factor, Apple has once more leapfrogged the competition. HTC Android handsets still impress and offer a viable alternative for many, but iPhone 4′s star quality is irresistible.
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T-Mobile and 3 have yet to reveal their pricing and we’ve heard from a reliable source that there could be some cheaper options for business users and self-employed within the next couple of weeks. But for now, let’s take a look at the initial offers from Vodafone and Orange, which will be available to buy online tomorrow, and O2’s deals which will only be available to buy in-store. iPhone 4 16GB – To buy the handset for just £29 all three networks are offering 1200 minutes for £45pm on a 24-month contract. Here the similarities end though with Vodafone offering 1GB of Internet/Web mail per month, 1GB of Wi-Fi usage with BT Openzone and 5MB of European roaming data usage per day. Orange has offered ‘unlimited’ mobile Internet and Wi-Fi with BT Openzone with a fair usage policy of 750MB per month. Unlimited access to The Cloud and BT Openzone Wi-Fi (fair usage policy in force) is provided by O2 along with 750MB of data usage. For those wishing to keep the monthly line rental to a minimum, O2 and Vodafone offer £25pm rentals with the iPhone available at £279/£219 respectively and Orange offer a rental at £30pm with a fantastic price of only £169 for the handset. The same data offers apply as above but with O2 lowering their data usage 500MB per month and Vodafone removing their free European roaming data. iPhone 4 32GB – Things get a little shaken up here so those who desire the high-end memory iPhone 4 can really take advantage of the networks different takes on what the user may want. Vodafone and Orange tempt those who want a low handset cost with Orange pricing the iPhone at £29 with unlimited minutes, data and Wi-Fi for £75pm whilst Vodafone costs the handset at £59 with 3000 minutes, 1GB of data, 1GB of Wi-Fi and include their 5MB daily European roaming promotion. Lower monthly line rentals see the handset costs ballooning up to £300+ but O2 provide some nice middle ground. Its £45pm/1200 free minutes and 750MB of data plan have the iPhone priced at £129 with unlimited access to The Cloud and BT Openzone. iPhone 3GS 8GB – The release of the iPhone 4 opens up an attractive set of offers here for the new 8GB release of the iPhone 3GS. Provided free of charge across all three networks with 600 free minutes at £35pm the iPhone 3GS becomes a tempting, low cost offer. Various amounts of data and Wi-Fi usage are on offer to ensure the best of the iPhones features can be enjoyed without the threat of large bills arriving through the letter box. A full set of 18 month contracts are also available with Vodafone providing the handsets at the same cost but with an additional £5pm added to the rental. Orange has taken the opposite route with the line rental remaining the same but with a significant increase in the iPhones cost. We think the networks should be praised for being brave enough to take a range of different approaches to the device and line rental costs as this has ensured that you, the user, can get the very best deal tailored to your own needs.
Compare iPhone 4 16GB deals
Tags: 12, 3, 3gs, all, best, cheaper, compare, contract, deal, Deals, free, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, latest deal, line, mobile, networks, new, new mobile, o2, orange, phone, phones, rental, roaming, sam, sim, t-mobile, tariff, tariffs, test, three, vodafone |
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Folders? Fine. Multitasking? Meh
First Look Apple’s much-vaunted iOS 4 arrived Monday morning a few minutes after 10am Pacific time, and nearly an hour and a half later, we were finally able to complete downloading and installing Cupertino’s latest and greatest mobile OS onto our iPhone 3GS.…
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(Source The Register)
Jun
16
2010
Demand for Apple’s iPhone 4 crashes ordering websites in US and UK
Posted by in Mobile News |
Apple sees sales of 600,000 units on Tuesday, with demand in Germany 10 times ahead of that for last year’s model
Apple has reported overwhelming demand for its new iPhone 4 model, selling more than 600,000 in a single day on Tuesday which saw ordering websites crash in the US and UK.
In Germany, demand for the new model, which was only unveiled by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs at the start of the month, is running 10 times ahead of that for last year’s model, the iPhone 3GS, reported Deutsche Telekom.
By comparison, when the iPhone 3GS went on sale last year, 1m were sold in its first three days. But that debuted in eight countries, whereas the iPhone 4 has gone on sale only in five.
Apple has apologised to people who tried to order the phone and gave up in frustration, saying demand was far higher than it expected. “We hope that they will try again.. once the iPhone 4 is in stock.”
Since its debut in June 2007, Apple’s smartphone has taken a huge chunk of the smartphone market and forced companies such as RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, and Nokia, which has the lion’s share of smartphone sales, to play catchup. Nokia issued another profits warning on Wednesday, and its share of the smartphone market is falling every quarter.
In the UK, where Apple is offering the phone without a contract through its online store, Apple’s website crashed as people tried to order it. And in the US, where it is only available with a contract from AT&T, the telephone company’s website froze as it tried to cope with an avalanche of orders each of which had to be verified on its own servers. That also led to problems in which some customers saw details of other peoples’ accounts – a reminder of the flaw exposed by a security group last week in which hundreds of thousands of Apple iPad users’ emails were stolen via weak security on AT&T’s site.
As a result of the heavy demand Apple has had to push back the delivery date for phones ordered online, and on Wednesday AT&T suspended orders, citing “unexpectedly high demand”.
Apple said “it was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions.”
Last year in the UK O2 had exclusive rights to sell the new iPhone, and said then that more of those handsets were sold in the first two hours of trading than all handsets in an average day.
This year Apple is selling the iPhone 4 without a contract – at £499 for the cheapest version – and O2, Vodafone, Orange and 3 are competing to offer it on contract terms. However neither O2 or 3 have yet announced prices, or allowed customers to pre-order the phone.
However the new contracts being offered for the phones have sparked anger among web users, who say that the carriers’ use of the word “unlimited” for the amount of data that can be downloaded through the smartphone is misleading. The companies impose a “fair use” cap, while describing the service as “unlimited”.
Now, a formal review by the advertising regulator could be about to put a cap on the practice.
This could mean that fixed-line and mobile operators will not be able to use the term “unlimited broadband” unless they are offering a genuinely unlimited service – and that means nothing in the small print that lets the provider send warnings to customers if they reach a certain threshold.
The review is being led by the Advertising Standards Authority, reports New Media Age, which will work with two ad industry bodies to make a comprehensive assessment of industry claims and consumer complaints on both broadband speeds and “unlimited” tariff penalties.
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(Source The Guardian)
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It’s the fourth iPhone launch in three years, and this one comes with the added bonus of all that juicy stolen-phone leakage back in April. So unusually, we know what this phone looks like before Steve’s Big Reveal at 6pm tonight.
If you’re too busy for the full colour prelude to Apple’s announcements, here’s the condensed guide to what you can probably expect.
• It looks like this:
• Though the working title, at least for the press, has been iPhone 4G (as in fourth generation) this will probably be called iPhone HD.
• A smaller, lighter, slimmer handset.
• A five-megapixel camera with flash.
• A glass back that improves reception.
• Micro-Sim cards, like iPad.
• The same A4 processor as the iPad (that means a much faster phone).
• A larger, sharper screen at 960 x 640 pixels – increasing screen resolution by four times.
• Improved battery life.
• iChat software will enable video chat with other iPhones and desktop Macs.
• Two models: 32GB and 64GB.
• Available through the existing retailers: Orange, Vodafone and O2.
• iPhone HD will become as the premium phone in what will become a range of iPhones with iPhone 3GS repackaged as a cheaper, less featured handset with 8GB of memory.
• Other rumours for tonight’s announcement at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference include an anticipated cloud-based music streaming service for iTunes, a new and improved Apple TV (that would be one with a clearer, more sellable consumer proposition), new version of Mac’s operating system Mac OS X 10.7 (OS X Lion, perhaps?)
The latest iPhone 4.0 operating system – a reminder
iPhone 4.0 was announced in April and released in beta format for developers. Here’s the quick guide to the new features:
• Multitasking: the oft-requested feature has finally been added after Apple worked on how to balance multi-tasking without sucking battery life or performance. Multitasking has been organised through seven types of service, so music apps would be able to play while you make a VOIP call, for example.
• Folders: Something similar to that pretty stacking feature for folders on the latest OS for desktop Macs will be added, which will make it easier for those of us with loads of apps to organise them in folders.
• iBooks: The feature launched with the iPad will now work across iPhones an iPod Touch too.
• iAd: Apple’s fledgling mobile ads system is designed to deliver ads without taking the user away from the app or game they are using, and will give developers a 60% revenue share.
• Mail: Apple’s email client gets a unified inbox, so anyone with multiple accounts can see all the main in one view. Messages will be organised by thread and attachments open in third-party apps.
• Business: Apple has added email encryption and encryption for other apps to increase support for enterprise users, as well as improving mobile device management features, support for SSL VPN and wireless app distribution.
• Gaming: A major step-up in Apple’s competition to portable games consoles, like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, Apple is adding a layer that unifies players’ social profiles across all games.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
|
It’s the fourth iPhone launch in three years, and this one comes with the added bonus of all that juicy stolen-phone leakage back in April. So unusually, we know what this phone looks like before Steve’s Big Reveal at 6pm tonight.
If you’re too busy for the full colour prelude to Apple’s announcements, here’s the condensed guide to what you can probably expect.
• It looks like this:
• Though the working title, at least for the press, has been iPhone 4G (as in fourth generation) this will probably be called iPhone HD.
• A smaller, lighter, slimmer handset.
• A five-megapixel camera with flash.
• A glass back that improves reception.
• Micro-Sim cards, like iPad.
• The same A4 processor as the iPad (that means a much faster phone).
• A larger, sharper screen at 960 x 640 pixels – increasing screen resolution by four times.
• Improved battery life.
• iChat software will enable video chat with other iPhones and desktop Macs.
• Two models: 32GB and 64GB.
• Available through the existing retailers: Orange, Vodafone and O2.
• iPhone HD will become as the premium phone in what will become a range of iPhones with iPhone 3GS repackaged as a cheaper, less featured handset with 8GB of memory.
• Other rumours for tonight’s announcement at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference include an anticipated cloud-based music streaming service for iTunes, a new and improved Apple TV (that would be one with a clearer, more sellable consumer proposition), new version of Mac’s operating system Mac OS X 10.7 (OS X Lion, perhaps?)
The latest iPhone 4.0 operating system – a reminder
iPhone 4.0 was announced in April and released in beta format for developers. Here’s the quick guide to the new features:
• Multitasking: the oft-requested feature has finally been added after Apple worked on how to balance multi-tasking without sucking battery life or performance. Multitasking has been organised through seven types of service, so music apps would be able to play while you make a VOIP call, for example.
• Folders: Something similar to that pretty stacking feature for folders on the latest OS for desktop Macs will be added, which will make it easier for those of us with loads of apps to organise them in folders.
• iBooks: The feature launched with the iPad will now work across iPhones an iPod Touch too.
• iAd: Apple’s fledgling mobile ads system is designed to deliver ads without taking the user away from the app or game they are using, and will give developers a 60% revenue share.
• Mail: Apple’s email client gets a unified inbox, so anyone with multiple accounts can see all the main in one view. Messages will be organised by thread and attachments open in third-party apps.
• Business: Apple has added email encryption and encryption for other apps to increase support for enterprise users, as well as improving mobile device management features, support for SSL VPN and wireless app distribution.
• Gaming: A major step-up in Apple’s competition to portable games consoles, like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, Apple is adding a layer that unifies players’ social profiles across all games.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Jun
06
2010
The new iPhone is coming. But it’s the old one that rivals should fear
Posted by in Mobile News |
Apple’s ’4G’ device is out this month. Will Steve Jobs also cut the price of the current model and challenge Nokia head-on?
Steve Jobs will appear before the Apple faithful tomorrow to reveal the latest version of the Californian technology group’s mobile phone. Nicknamed the iPhone “4G” – on the basis that the last one was the 3GS, with the “S” standing for speed – it will be the summer’s must-have gadget, hitting the UK this month. But it is also seen as being in the vanguard of an all-out assault on the mobile market.
In the three years since it launched its first handset, Apple has grabbed the headlines and, more importantly, snatched a lucrative share of the more mature mobile phone markets of the US and Europe, where consumers are willing to pay upwards of £30 a month to get an iPhone. Now, speculation is rising that the company is approaching a so-called “iPod moment” in mobiles: the point at which it will decide that it can capture a much larger slice of the market by producing more than one device.
The success of the App Store, which has seen iPhone users download billions of applications, coupled with the pressure to have a wide market to attract advertisers to its embryonic iAd platform, is pushing Apple towards diversifying, just as it did with the iPod six years ago when it introduced the iPod mini. There is also increasing competition from Google’s Android platform. After two and a half years, handset manufacturers are finally producing compelling Android phones – such as the HTC Desire – and more are slated for release this year, including the mass-market HTC Wildfire.
But rather than unveil a new, cheaper version of the iPhone, Apple is expected to position the iPhone 4G at the top of the smartphone market and reorganise the existing range. The company is likely to halt production of the iPhone 3G – which cannot cope with Apple’s new multi-tasking software – and scrap both existing versions of the iPhone 3GS, which have 16GB and 32GB of memory. It will replace them with a new 8GB version of the 3GS, which is expected to be aimed at the wider market.
The iPhone 4G – according to mobile industry insiders who have seen one and confirmed widespread web leaks – will be available in two versions: 32GB and 64GB. These will put “clear blue water” between it and the mass-market 3GS, as one industry executive puts it. The 4G is slightly smaller and slimmer than the current 3GS. It has an improved 5-megapixel camera with flash and uses micro-sim cards, as seen in the iPad. It also has a glass back, which greatly assists phone reception. In the UK, it is expected to be sold by the same mobile phone networks that have the current iPhone: O2, Orange and Vodafone. It is unclear whether Tesco Mobile will have the 4G when it is launched in the last week of this month.
The parallels between Apple’s current position in the mobile phone market and the place it held in the digital music market when it introduced the iPod mini are revealing. The first iPod appeared in late 2001, but it was not until 2003 that Apple launched the iTunes store. One million tracks were sold in the first five days and 70m in the first year. That showed Apple there was a real mass market for digital music and was a spur for the creation of the first variant of the iPod line, the iPod mini, the following year.
At the time, Apple was lodged firmly in the high end of the market for digital music players. The iPod was the benchmark by which all others were measured and Apple had a share of about 30%. The iPod mini – replaced at the end of 2005 by the Nano – was designed to grab a large part of the next third down. In similar fashion, the iPhone has become the handset by which other mobiles are measured, and in markets including the UK it has made Apple the third-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Nokia and Samsung. It is now a question of how much of the rest of the market – chock full of me-too touchscreen devices from the likes of Nokia, LG and Samsung – Apple wants.
“I would argue that they may already have reached the tipping point,” Ben Wood at CCS Insight – a long-time follower of the mobile market – says. “The iPhone has become a ubiquitous product in the markets where its pricing is acceptable.”
He believes that a real driver behind Apple’s growth will be the iAd platform, which Jobs announced this year alongside the new version of the iPhone software – which is also in the iPad. The new mobile advertising platform is designed to allow iPhone app developers to create in-app advertising. Currently, anyone who clicks on an advert in a downloadable app is bounced out of it and on to the advertiser’s webpage. As a result, many users are put off clicking on adverts. In contrast, iAd will allow full-screen video and interactive advertising content to be served within an application. Crucially, Apple will sell and serve the adverts, and developers will receive 60% of their iAd revenue.
“With iAd, which could be as significant to Apple as the iPod franchise itself, Apple has a tremendous opportunity. It will provide a further chance to lock in their leading position in application development,” Wood says. “If iAd becomes the kind of phenomenon that Apple appears to be able to create, and becomes as big as it could, then potentially Apple could really disrupt the market by subsidising the iPhone from their iAd revenues.”
But whether iAd means that Apple needs to go all the way into the low end of the market is doubtful.
“IPhone users are a segment of the population that has affinity with technology and disposable income, and that is a marketeer’s dream already,” Wood says.
And Carolina Milanesi, research vice-president at rival analysts Gartner, is not convinced that this is the right time for Apple to go mass market, citing price constraints on the iPhone’s most important feature – its large touchscreen.
“On the iPod touch and the iPhone, the screen is very important,” she says. “Music is easier [to do in a mass-market device] because it is just [data] storage, and with the price of storage coming down you can experiment with design. But when you have applications running on the device, how much dumber can your device become before it is useless? And that is where they are going to struggle. What else do you cut?”
Apple could cut its own profits, but it has shown little desire to do that in the past: the switch from the 3G to the 3GS actually reduced the manufacturing cost of the phone, analysts reckon.
“Yes, of course, they can expand their addressable market so much quicker, but do they want that?” says Milanesi. “Just as Jobs says Apple does not want to be the Dell of the PC market, [so] Apple does not want to be the Nokia of the mobile market.” How true that is will be revealed tomorrow.
Focus on Apple’s factory
While Apple fans will drool over the new iPhone this week, tragic events in China have thrown a spotlight on the human cost of the west’s obsession with shiny toys. A spate of suicides at the massive Chinese plant run by Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn has called into question working conditions at one of Apple’s largest suppliers.
The Californian company has dispatched a team of investigators to discover why 10 people have killed themselves so far this year. Management at the Shenzhen facility, which stretches across three square kilometers and employs more than 250,000 people, are trying to solve the problem by hiring counsellors, playing soothing music on production lines, increasing wages and asking new recruits to sign a ‘”no-suicide” contract. They are also taking more direct action, installing netting around outdoor stairwells of the dormitory buildings, where workers sleep eight to a room.
Speaking last week, Steve Jobs said Apple was “diligent” when it came to understanding the working conditions in the supply chain, auditing its direct suppliers as well as tertiary suppliers.
“We are over there trying to understand what is happening and more importantly trying to understand how we can help because it is a difficult situation,” he told the D8 conference organised by All Things Digital. He said many young workers came from poor rural areas and were away from home for the first time.
“They are probably less prepared to leave home than your typical High School student going to college in this country. I think there are some real issues there,” he said.
But he stressed: “Foxconn is not a sweatshop. They have got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it is a pretty nice factory.”
Some of Foxconn’s workers disagree, complaining the monotonous workload causes depression. “I do the same thing every day,” Xiao Qi, a college graduate who works at Foxconn in product development told Bloomberg Businessweek. “I have no future.”
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
|
As Wal-Mart slashes 3GS price
June 7 is now a near-certainty to be the launch date for the latest iPhone, with Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicking off the firm’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference on that day (and with US retailer Wal-Mart halving the prices of the current iPhone 3GS in readiness). That would suggest that the new handset would hit the shelves in early July.…
Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)
New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
Time to get excited? Well maybe if the rumours of specifications and pictures of the new 2010, Apple iPhone are correct. The latest engineering marvel from Apple appears to have a high-resolution touch-screen display (640×960 pixels) that indicates a possible name change to the iPhone HD. The camera has been upgraded and a much-needed flash has been included. The front face of the handset also includes a camera to support video calling.
The call quality should be excellent with the addition of a second mic and longer use between charges can be achieved with the new battery that is 18% larger than the previous model. The new iPhone also utilises the latest technology by using a MicroSIM card and with SIM card readers available or by using wireless Bluetooth, transferring information from an old SIM card shouldn’t cause too much of a problem.
Having taken a detailed look at the pictures it is apparent that the iPhone 4 commands a high quality finish. With no sharp edges the metal frame and ceramic or glass fascias blend seamlessly together. The slimmer frame includes a power button and audio jack on the top and volume keys on the side.
A full news release is expected from Apple on the 22nd June to confirm full specifications.
Compare all iPhone 3GS deals
Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, apple, apple iphone, card, charges, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, HD, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, phone, sim, Sim Card, sol, test, TouchNew Mobile & Latest Deal News!
The new iPhone OS v4.0 is set for release in the summer and offers over 100 new features for iPhone owners. Important additions include homescreen wallpapers, spell checker, tap to focus on video, playlist creation, geo-tagging of photos, Bluetooth keyboard compatibility and gift apps, a great new way to give gifts to friends and family. Apple has cleverly developed the operating system to handle the latest apps in an intelligent manner to provide a performance far above the rest. The new developments fall into 7 categories and the highlights of each are discussed below.
Multitasking: By far the most important development that has been available on other operating systems but Apple have added their own unique perspective and engineered a service that doesn’t drain battery life or slow down the system. Users can for example listen to the Pandora Internet radio whilst playing games or using Tom Tom for turn-by-turn navigation. Voice over IP services can be used whilst multitasking and Skype whom connect 1 in 9 of all International calls in the World can now be left silently running in the background to ensure calls are never missed. Apps that take time to complete tasks like uploading photos to Flickr can also be left running in the background freeing the user to continue using other services.
Folders: Applications can now be moved into folders via drag and drop to simplify the 11 page menu screens. Additionally restrictions to only 180 apps have been hugely increased with the aid of folders to a massive 2160 apps.
Mail: A unified inbox now handles all email accounts in one location. Streamlining the service further, ongoing messaging can be organised into threads and if desired fast inbox switching can be used to return to a specific email account.
iBooks: With tens of thousands of books available from the iBookstore, many of which are free, making this a great addition. Books can be searched for by author, title or genre and displayed on a virtual bookshelf. Sample pages can also be viewed for many of the books available for purchase.
Enterprise: With a growing number of companies using iPhones, security has been enhanced. Lots of useful features have been developed including wireless application distribution.
Game Centre: Access is provided to over 50,000 games and entertainment titles that now have enhanced features. Social gaming networks allow the user to challenge friends and view leaderboards. The matchmaking service will also connect similar users together for multiplayer games.
iAd: Mobile advertising is not to be shied away from here as the App Store (now boasting over 185,000 apps) can bring more free apps by utilising ad revenues. The true power of interactive ads was nicely displayed at the iPhone OS 4 launch using Toy Story 3 as a demonstration model. Banners at the base of the apps store can be clicked, and instead of being guided away from the app the interactive ad services run from within it where access to free games, game downloads, video clips, wallpapers, character info and cinema locations are provided.
The new iPhone OS will be available on the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS (new services are model dependant) from summer and on the iPad from autumn.
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Tags: 10, 3, 3gs, all, App Store, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, email, free, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, networks, new, new mobile, o sim, phone, phones, sam, service, sim, sol, test, world
Apr
08
2010
Apple turns iPhone into multi-tasking ads platform with OS 4 launch
Posted by in Mobile News |
Apple’s software refresh brings multi-tasking to the iPhone 3GS and newer iPod Touch while Steve Jobs takes aim at Google with iAd platform
Apple is taking on the might of Google in the digital advertising industry, hoping to see-off the search engine giant’s attempts to build a powerful position in the burgeoning mobile advertising market.
The move, however, is unlikely to thrill Apple’s mobile phone network partners, such as O2, Orange and Vodafone in the UK, as it looks set to undermine their own embryonic attempts to try and grab a slice of the mobile ad pie.
Unveiling the latest version – OS 4 – of the software for its highly successful iPhone, which finally brings multi-tasking to the device, Apple boss Steve Jobs also announced the launch of iAd.
The new mobile advertising platform is designed to allow iPhone app developers to create in-app advertising. Currently anyone who clicks on an advert in a downloadable app is bounced out of it and onto the advertiser’s webpage. As a result, Apple reckons many users are put off clicking on adverts. In contrast, iAd will allow full-screen video and interactive advertising content to be served within an application. The adverts are dynamically and wirelessly delivered to the device. Crucially, Apple will sell and serve the adverts and developers will receive 60% of their iAd revenue. The videos, by the way, are of course in HTML5 and not Adobe’s Flash which Apple is still waging war against.
The move comes after Apple was beaten by Google in the race to buy mobile advertising group AdMob last year. That deal is being investigated by the US authorities. In January, Apple acquired rival Quattro Wireless, experts at embedding adverts in applications, for $275m (£180m).
To date, mobile advertising has been all about making existing online advertising more relevant for mobile users when it appears on a handset’s small screen. Some of the world’s largest mobile phone companies have already bandied together to offer advertisers more information about what their customers are doing while browsing the mobile web. Existing online players such as Google, meanwhile, reckon the future lies in linking search results with mobile-specific information such as location.
Apple, however, seems to reckon mobile advertising and online advertising are two distinct things. Jobs reckons the iPhone has created a new advertising category through the 185,000 apps that are available to download from its store.
“These 185,000 apps don’t exist on computers,” he said. “This is a new phenomenon, this is the first time this kind of thing has ever existed. We never had that on the desktop, so search was the only way to find a lot of things.”
The fact that Apple will host the ads also suggests that the Cupertino-based powerhouse will exert some quality control over them, just as it does for apps.
“I think there will need to be some boundaries. Like, you can’t run just ANY ad on ABC. There are some ads you can’t run. But these advertisers are paying to run ads… I’m hoping there won’t be anything other than a light touch,” he said.
Jobs described iAd as one of the seven “tentpole features” of iPhone OS 4 – incidentally did he deliberately mean to go after the Biblical allusion? It is perilously close to the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a phrase made famous by TE Lawrence (of Arabia)’s autobiography which comes from the Book of Proverbs “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars”.
The other ‘pillars’ are multi-tasking, the ability to organise apps into folders – useful as iPhone users have now downloaded four billion apps – enhanced mail, iBooks for the iPhone, some new features to keep business users happy, and a new game center.
Many iPhone users and even more developers have been pushing for the iPhone to be able to multi-task (“if it can carry on playing music through the iPod feature when doing other things such as browsing the web why can’t it run my app in the background”, they have asked, not unreasonably.)
But in order to preserve battery life, Apple has picked seven services which can be run by applications while the phone is running something else. They are background audio (so apps like Pandora can be used while doing other tasks), voice over IP (so users can receive Skype calls even when they do not have the app running or the phone is asleep), background location, push notifications (so you can get your Twitter alerts while accessing other apps), local notifications, task completion (so you can jump to something else while a web page loads or video downloads to a news app), and what Apple calls ‘fast app switching’ – essentially it keeps all the data about where you were in the app so it can easily jump back to it.
These features will appear this summer on the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3G (that’s the one from late last year).
Bad news is that iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G devices will not support multi-tasking.
The iPad, meanwhile, will get OS 4 in the autumn. Oh and Jobs said Apple has sold 450,000 of them so far and stil intends to be in international markets “later in April”.
The team at CCS Insight summed up iPhone OS 4 in their customary succinct manner:
Apple previews iPhone 4 software shipping mid-year. States 450k iPads sold to date. 7 key areas: multitasking, folders (multiple apps on one icon), enhanced email (unified inbox), iBooks, enterprise features, social games platform and iAd. Analysis: iAd platform (60/40 share) will be cornerstone to continued iPhone success monetising free apps and furthering developer appeal. Offers Apple lead over Google in mobile advertising. iPhone’s dominant position in mobile games extended with social elements. Multitasking limited to key use cases but a step forward.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
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Netbooks taking off, 2 million people with dongles, an iPhone upgrade in autumn and the demise of Vonage … where was I right and wrong about the year just gone?
Now we can get 2009 into perspective, and the hangovers have worn off (less so the credit card bills, perhaps), let’s see how my tech predictions for 2009 went. Time to tot up …
Prediction 1: At least three companies will withdraw from the PC manufacturing business.
They didn’t. Did they? That’s 0/1
Matthew Wheeler points out that MPC did. MPC? “Edge PC owned by Micron Tech, then MicronPC, sold to Gores Tech, changed to MPC, sold to Hyperspace of Utah, then Chap.11,” he explained. And of course there’s Psystar, which thought it could put Mac OS X onto generic boxes, and got told by a judge it couldn’t. (These are hardly the big names I was originally thinking of, though.) And Psystar is still offering T-shirts, according to The Register.
In fact, companies didn’t withraw from the PC-making business; instead, seeing how desktops and even standard laptops weren’t making money, they shifted to netbooks, which saw explosive growth. Lesson: manufacturers like making things. The shift to making netbooks was a sort of evolutionary episode in the punctuated equilibrium of the computer business.
Prediction 2: There will be more “netbooks” – aka ultraportables, aka liliputers, like the Asus Eee PC – than ever, and their sales growth will far outpace that of the PC market.
Bullseye. PC market growth: 1.3% (or -7%, depending whose numbers you like). Netbook market growth: almost 100% (by revenue). 1/2
Prediction 3: Sun Microsystems won’t have a near-death experience, but it’s going to keep shrinking.
True. Being the subject of a (wished-for) takeover by Oracle hasn’t made it grow. 2/3
Prediction 4: Vonage will die. I’m sorry, guys, but your income statement shows you have debts of $276m, cash of $112m, and are paying “interest” (on the debt) of $5m per quarter, which means losses of $7m per quarter. That’s just not sustainable, and debt isn’t going to get cheaper to service, either.
Completely wrong. Vonage is still going. I have no idea how. 2/4
Prediction 5: Palm will come close to death, but advance sales of its Pre webphone, plus a little more money from its venture capitalist backers, will save it.
Its latest figures show that it didn’t do well, and the Pre hasn’t actually been fabulous. But the money from the venture capitalists has certainly helped. 3/5
Prediction 6: Twitter will find a way to charge for its service, from at least some users, and so move towards at least revenue, if not yet profit. Its growth will become explosive.
Tricky, this. Twitter’s growth did become explosive, helped along by Oprah, and Iranian election, and so on. Is it charging you or me to use it? No. Is it, however, charging Microsoft and Google to use its database for their “real-time” search engines, putting it squarely into revenue and, arguably, profit? Yes. Can we call Microsoft and Google “Twitter users”? I don’t see why not – I’ve previously argued that it should charge for use of its API, and charging those two giants for that is good enough.
So, 4/6
Prediction 7: Many – as in thousands – of IT jobs will be lost. Lots will go in finance as that industry shrinks; but there’s a general trend now where small companies are beginning to rely on cloud services from companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Those don’t need a lot of people. (Ever seen a job advert to work on a cloud service?).
(The point about this was that the jobs were being lost in developed countries, of course, rather than in total all over the world.) Has there been a dramatic uptick in the number of IT jobs? Not thinking so. 5/7
Prediction 8: IT will more and more resemble the building business. Either you specialise, or you’re coordinating the project, or you’re doing simple, low-paid work that someone from another country can and will do for less.
This ties in with the one above. Cloud-based services mean that setting up a business that relies on downloads, for example, is simple. (Twitter caches your pictures on Amazon’s S3 service, for example.) Are IT people becoming multi-specialists? Or finding it harder to get general work? We’re still hearing that there’s a skills shortage in IT – but the shortage is at the top end, in the project coordination side, or in getting the services set up. There’s less demand for bodies. These days, you either specialise, or get out. Though I realise that this could be described as my biased view, without data. So let’s call it a half. (Data either way to prove or disprove very welcome.)
5.5/8
And now we come to that ever-popular subject, Microsoft.
Prediction 9: Windows 7 will be pushed out of the door in time for the end of the year, and particularly for Christmas sales. It won’t be perfect, but it will get corporates interested in an upgrade from XP, which Vista didn’t.
It certainly was pushed out for the end of the year; October 22 is good enough. While you could argue that it’s not perfect, it’s considered by lots of people to be very, very good. And it certainly has corporate customers very interested in an upgrade. Come on, that’s solid.
6.5/9
Prediction 10: Microsoft will buy chunks of Yahoo (after being forced to overbid by challenges from Google), which will raise yowls of pain from all over the web. And then in six months people will have forgotten all about it.
Microsoft did buy chunks of Yahoo – well, sort of. Specifically, it bought the right to put its ads against search, which it would do. Google didn’t challenge it at all. Though this one sounds right, when you examine the detail, it’s wrong.
6.5/10
Prediction 11: XP will finally be declared dead once Windows 7 is released, because a version of Windows 7 will be made to run on netbooks.
Yes, Windows 7 is made to run on netbooks. XP hasn’t formally been declared dead (apart from the fact that it’s been declared dead ages ago) but it’s vanishing.
7.5/11
Prediction 12: Internet Explorer will continue to lose share to Firefox, Apple’s Safari and especially Google’s Chrome.
Oh, yes, that did keep happening. Firefox has reached historical highs. And Internet Explorer (all versions, cumulative) keeps slipping.
8.5/12
Prediction 13: No Zune phone, and no Zune in Europe either.
Can I claim two? No? Damn. There was a moment in November where I worried – er, hoped – no, worried that there might be a Zune in Europe. But it turned out that Microsoft was just using the name, a bit, for its online video marketplace in Europe. Microsoft hasn’t launched a Zune Phone (it’s doing badly enough with Windows Mobile without trying to make its struggling music player mimic the iPod’s transition into the iPhone) and the Zune remains an idea that has yet to make sense in the US, let alone Europe.
9.5/13
Ubiquity
Prediction 14: Dongles will fall in price, and data charges will too as the phone networks realise that it’s a great way to tie people to lucrative contracts without having to subsidise them with mobile phones. So they’ll become pervasive. Let’s put a number on it: 3 million users, PAYG or contract, by the end of the year.
Result: true, and data charges have as well. There are actually about 13 million mobile data users in the UK. How many dongles? At least 3m of them, surely.
10.5/14
Prediction 15: Being able to transfer sound and, increasingly, video around your home between different devices will become more important, and more and more products will appear built around the DLNA standard to assist it.
It’s an enduring mystery why this hasn’t been more visible. But in fact more and more people are moving video around the home. What do you think the iPlayer is all about? Except, of course, they don’t tend to link it to their TV. The Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii though are changing this, by offering iPlayer (PS3, Wii) and film (PS3, Xbox) streams. That’s not, though, what I’d imagined, which is people actually storing data centrally in their home and shifting it. Though “more” DLNA products have appeared (I loved the LaCie 1TB NAS drive, for example, which has DLNA compatibility). My feeling though is that this hasn’t happened.
10.5/15
Prediction 16: Femtocells – which improve mobile reception inside homes and businesses by providing a mini-cell, and pushing the data over your broadband connection – will struggle because the mobile companies will price them wrong, thinking they should be a niche, and hence expensive, product.
I also said during the year that femtocells weren’t going to make it, which brought lots of plangent cries from femtocell companies saying that no, really, 2010 was the year they were aiming at. I was sent a femtocell to try. (Thank you, Vodafone. Afraid I made little progress.) Have you seen a femtocell anywhere? Anywhere at all? (Mobile phone company employees and femtocell manufacturers excluded.) I think this can’t be anything but correct.
11.5/16
Prediction 17: Mobile networks will tout phones on the basis that they let you contact your friends on Twitter – rather than last year’s favourite, Facebook – via the data connection. (SMS will remain too expensive for Twitter to use outside the US.)
Facebook remained the powerful force and the reason people wanted to connect: plenty of phones were marketed on the basis that you’d be able to check Facebook; none that I saw on the basis on twittering. (A classic case of early adopter over-optimism about Twitter’s penetration on my part – though it has completely entered the language, having been used in a scene in Gavin and Stacey.) And Twitter re-introduced SMS updates outside the US. So wrong on both counts.
11.5/17
Linux
Prediction 18: Advocates will declare that 2010 is going to be “the year of desktop Linux” while the bugs are ironed out this year.
This was bound to fail. Linux advocates always say that this year is the one when desktop Linux is going to take off. Ubuntu got plenty of fans, especially for version 9.04 in April.
11.5/18
Prediction 19: But in fact the sales of netbooks running Linux will mean that it’s best-selling year for desktop Linux ever.
Then again, this one was bound to succeed. Desktop Linux has had so few avenues for sale that it wasn’t going to fail to have its best-ever year once a few machines with it were sold. Of course, I overlooked the popularity of Android, Google’s mobile phone operating system, which is Linux. Had I forecast that mobile Linux would have a standout year, that would have been a really worthwhile prediction. Still:
12.5/19
Apple
Prediction 20: Let’s start with a banker. No self-replicating worm for Mac OSX or the iPhone’s OSX by the end of the year.
Correct. It always is, year after year.
13.5/20
Prediction 21: Snow Leopard will be released for sale in May 2009 … this date means it will have been slightly more than the average delay for OSX releases since Leopard’s release in October 2007 – which leaves time for an announcement and release schedule.
Wrong. Wrongy, wrongy, wrongy wrong wrong. Snow Leopard was released in August 2009.
13.5/21
Prediction 22: Snow Leopard squashes down application sizes, and uses the graphics processing unit (GPU) to help processing. But why would you want to do that? It feels oddly as though Apple is imagining a Flash drive-based machine able to run Snow Leopard, with a comparatively weak processor that uses the GPU to hide the fact. Plus it owns a chip design company. Even so, I don’t think it will offer a tablet computer. Or a netbook. Neither fits with its strategy – which is all about the iPhone, and pricey computers.
Apple turned up its nose at the idea of a netbook. (Even if I did suggest that it should. Yes, accuse me of wanting it all ways.) It also didn’t announce a tablet computer in 2009. (2010, ah, perhaps different.)
14.5/22
Prediction 23: Apple will charge for the Snow Leopard upgrade – just as much as it has for previous upgrades.
Yes, it did charge – but not as much as for previous upgrades. That’s a miss.
14.5/23
Prediction 24: ZFS won’t be built into the kernel for Snow Leopard; it’ll be an optional install, for server honchos.
In fact, ZFS has disappeared from Apple builds. The cause seems to be intellectual property problems. Ah well. It would have been a nightmare.
15.5/24
Prediction 25: Steve Jobs will remain chief executive through the year. That might sound like an obvious prediction. It isn’t.
Hmm – technically, he was the chief executive, but he stepped aside to have a liver transplant and recuperate for six months. This prediction was made amid all the rumours of Jobs’s illness at the tail-end of 2008. The rumours were that he would have to step down because of the condition (at that time, still a secret). My feeling was that it wasn’t such a big thing. Turns out it was a Big Thing. I think this is half-right – no more.
16/25
Prediction 26: The iPhone hardware won’t be updated before the autumn.
The iPhone 3GS was released in June, and Stephen Fry reviewed it in the same month. June is not autumn, not even in the southern hemisphere.
16/26
Prediction 27: The iPhone software will be updated to 3.x, which will bring copy-and-paste and photo messaging. About time.
It was, and it did. Finally.
17/27
Environment
Prediction 28: Oil prices are diving, but electricity is still not getting cheaper. Expect more companies – even quite big ones – to reduce their in-house server usage in favour of outsourced pay-per-process services offered by Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
This is the move to cloud computing, and it’s one-way traffic at present. Do you know of anyone who has brought their computing back in-house from the cloud?
18/28
Free Our Data
Prediction 29: The government will take a deep breath and acknowledge that it must make a significant part of Ordnance Survey’s data available for free unfettered reuse – and will do it.
I was there at 10 Downing Street when Gordon Brown, flanked by Tim Berners-Lee (he invented the web, you know) and Martha Lane-Fox, announced precisely that. Actually, I’d have traded all the other predictions for this one – but this one is a great one, a huge year-end bonus to the Free Our Data campaign and to everyone who is going to benefit from it.
19/29
Processing
Prediction 30: In 1992 I wrote a feature based on some analysts’ predictions about how in five years we’d all be using speech-to-text input for our computers. We didn’t. … [but] by the end of the year, we should see programs able to turn the ad-hoc spoken to the written almost faultlessly.
Er, we didn’t. From the revelation of the people behind the curtain at Spinvox, to the nearly-good-enough-but-not-perfectness of Dragon Dictate on the iPhone, we’re still some way off perfect trasncription. (Believe me, we’re always looking for one so we can turn our Tech Weekly podcast back into words for the hard-of-listening.)
19/30
So that’s 19/30, or 63%. For comparison, in 2008, my predictions hit 20.5/30, or 68%. Look, what’s a mark and a half between friends? Certainly not statistically significant. Basically, what I think we’re seeing is that you can rely on me to be wrong about one-third of the time. You can decide whether that’s better or worse than a weather forecaster. (The Met Office suggested there was a 1-in-7 chance this would be a cold winter in its long-range forecast.)
And what about the things I missed? The biggest was Google – the rise of Android, and the announcement of its Chrome OS for netbooks. That’s going to be huge this year, I think – so come back for my predictions for 2010 next week. Oh, and tell me what other important events of 2009 I missed.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
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