Posts Tagged “iphone 3gs”
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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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
Vodafone’s announcement that it will offer the iPhone 3G, 3GS and variants on its network from 14 January continues the inexorable drive towards ubiquitous UK availability for Apple’s flagship handset.
After exactly two years of iPhone exclusivity enjoyed by 02, Orange stepped up in November 2009. Now Vodafone has joined the fray – Tesco also put in an appearance in December – with pricing plans for the iPhone 3G 8GB, the iPhone 3GS 16GB and the iPhone 3GS 32GB, with the phones free as part of selected contracts.
Customer who pre-order will enjoy free Vodafone to Vodafone calls for the duration of their contract – we’re looking at two years at £45 per month for a 16GB 3GS, for example, or £35 per month for an iPhone 3G 8GB. You can also expect 1GB of free mobile internet on one of the UK’s largest Wi-Fi networks, BT Openzone, ostensibly providing high-speed internet access at premium locations across the UK.
The iPhone 3GS, of course, improves on performance from the iPhone 3G – it can be up to twice as fast, plus a longer battery life, a 3 megapixel autofocus camera, video recording and hands-free voice control. Vodafone has also introduced a charge for customers wishing to use their iPhone as a modem – tethering charges start at £5 for 500MB.
The iPhone is a true phenomenon of the decade just ending: it is available in over 80 countries worldwide, with the promise of more developments to come. The App Store broke new ground, too, providing access to more than 100,000 applications (from games and social networking to financial planning and health management) and has already generated over two billion downloads to date.
With its network of 20 dealers (some 400 outlets) in the UK, indirect partners such as The Carphone Warehouse and Phones4u, plus Apple’s own retail outlets, Vodafone is confident it can deliver something extra – presumably in term of speed and reliability – to its iPhone customers. Guy Laurence, CEO of Vodafone UK commented: ‘We started preparing our network over a year ago so that iPhone customers will really feel the advantage of being with Vodafone.’
We await to see how Vodafone’s network, along with the competition, copes as consumers get used to relying on internet-enabled smartphones and mobile dongles for broadband data.
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• Sales of Palm Pre at Carphone Warehouse fall short
• Orange sold 90,000 iPhones in the first month of offering
Carphone Warehouse is giving away two free airline tickets to anyone who buys a Palm Pre before the end of January as speculation increases that sales of the mobile phone, seen as the closest competitor to Apple’s iPhone have fallen far short of expectations.
Mobile phone network O2, which offers the Palm Pre under an exclusive deal in the UK, is believed to have mountains of unsold phones.
News of the Carphone Warehouse offer comes amid rumours that the iPhone itself is not doing very well for one of its new network partners, Orange. Sources in the retail channel maintain that Orange sold a very creditable 90,000 devices in the first month of offering the handset, but roughly nine in ten of those handsets went to people who were already Orange customers, making the iPhone effectively an upgrade for them. Orange was unavailable for comment.
Orange started selling the iPhone on 10 November, ending O2’s two-year exclusive grip on the handset, and announced it had sold more than 30,000 iPhones within hours of it going on sale. Since then, however, Tesco has started selling the device while Vodafone will start to provide the iPhone to its customers from 14 January. The fact that the device is now available on four networks in the UK, however, has not led to a price war, partly because Apple is understood to demand a say in any pricing tariffs to maintain the cachet of iPhone’s “premium” image.
The iPhone is available across O2, Orange, Tesco and Vodafone starting at about £30 a month for customers willing to pay up-front for the device. The basic iPhone 3G is available free from £35 a month but most customers want the more powerful iPhone 3GS which is free on contracts from about £45 a month.
That is the same price at which O2 makes the Palm Pre free for customers. The device was launched in the US in June and in the UK on 16 October and was supposed to resurrect the fortunes of its Californian developer. Previously, Palm created the market for so-called personal digital assistants (PDAs) with its range of handheld organisers, and dominated the smartphone market before it was eclipsed first by Nokia and then by Apple.
But while the Palm Pre has been a critical success, with reviewers saying it runs the iPhone a close second in terms of functionality, the handset has been a poor seller.In the three months to the end of November, Palm shipped 783,000 smartphones, representing a 5% decrease from the three months to August, although it does mark a year-on-year increase of 41%. Carphone Warehouse is offering anyone who buys the phone before 31 January, two free return flights to one of 15 European destinations.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
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• Basic iPhone 3G offered at £35 a month on a two-year contract
• Vodafone hoping to attract consumers with network reliability
Vodafone will start selling the iPhone in Britain next month, offering customers a free handset for £35 a month on a two-year contract, disappointing consumers hoping for a high-street price war over the device.
The pricing plan comes as a surprise because it does not give Britain’s biggest mobile phone company a competitive advantage, especially on an 18-month deal, where it is more expensive than its rivals.
“I don’t think this is about a price war – I think this is a network quality war,” said Vodafone UK’s chief executive, Guy Laurence. “At the end of the day, customers will seek out the best deal and I believe we are competitive, but it is about the quality of the network it runs on. We have spent a year optimising the network for the iPhone.
“It’s very simple: now you can get the iPhone on a network you can rely on.”
The arrival of the iPhone on Vodafone brings the number of mobile phone companies supplying the device in Britain to four. Vodafone customers who register interest before it goes on sale on 14 January will get a small thank you for not defecting to rivals that already have the handset, in the form of free calls to other Vodafone users for the life of their initial contract.
Orange started selling the iPhone last month, ending O2’s two-year exclusive grip on the handset, then Tesco arrived this month, complicating matters by opting for 12-month contracts and demanding consumers shell out several hundred pounds for the device itself.
Vodafone’s “entry-level” prices for the iPhone over 18 months are almost £100 more expensive than Orange and O2, while Tesco does not offer an 18-month contract. Vodafone’s entry-level prices over two years are about £40 cheaper than O2 but almost £75 more expensive than Orange.
Different handsets, however, have been pitched by different networks at different price points and with different bundles of texts and minutes.
The basic iPhone 3G is cheapest with Orange over 18 months, at £624.98, and with Tesco over two years – provided consumers renew their 12-month contract – at £702.
But most consumers are likely to want the 16GB version of the faster iPhone 3GS. That is cheapest with Tesco, where it costs £800 over two years for consumers who renew their 12-month contract. The 16GB iPhone works out at £829.64 for Orange customers, £869 on Vodafone and £909.35 on O2.
Variety of packages
But the packages on offer are very different. For that price, Tesco offers £60 of calls and texts a month – which works out at about 600 minutes or 1,200 texts – while Vodafone offers 300 minutes and unlimited texts per month and O2 gives customers 600 minutes and 500 texts. In stark contrast, Orange offers just 150 minutes and 250 texts.
On the face of it, Tesco and Vodafone offer better “value” than Orange or O2 on the iPhone 3GS 16GB over two years. Some people have been put off Tesco Mobile, however, by the fact that it uses O2’s network to run its service and the company has been suffering network capacity issues in recent months, especially in London.
With Britain’s newest network, 3, unlikely to get it for several months and with T-Mobile having counted itself out of the race for the foreseeable future, the arrival of Vodafone completes the range of choices for UK consumers.
Vodafone is offering all three versions of the iPhone on 18-month and 24-month contracts, the same as Orange and O2. The 18-month tariff starts at £40, for which customers will get the basic iPhone 3G – which has 8GB of memory and a 2 megapixel camera – free, but have to pay £89 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS – which has a 3 megapixel camera and a faster processor – and £179 for the top-of-the-range 32GB iPhone 3GS, which has more memory capacity. Over the length of that 18-month contract, therefore, Vodafone consumers will pay £720 for the iPhone 3G, £809 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS and £899 for the iPhone 3GS 32GB.
The equivalent 18-month entry-level prices on O2 are £625.73, £713.82 and £803.07. For Orange the equivalent prices are £624.98, £712.98 and £802.48.
Vodafone is also offering all three devices on 24-month contracts. At the basic £30-a-month contract the iPhone 3G will cost consumers £59, the iPhone 3GS 16GB £149 and the iPhone 3GS 32GB £239. Over the two-year period, therefore, consumers will pay a total of £779 for the iPhone 3G, £869 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS and £959 for the iPhone 3GS 32GB.
The equivalent prices for O2 are £822.24, £909.35 and £997.43 and for Orange they are £704.64, £829.64 and £929.64.
Tesco started selling the device last week and while it grabbed headlines by being the first operator to make the phone available on a contract at £20 a month and lasting just a year, consumers have to pay £222 to buy the basic 3G handset or £320 for the 16GB version of the faster 3GS handset and £407 for the 32GB version of the device.
Over the life of an annual contract, therefore, the 3G phone on Tesco costs £462, the 16GB 3GS £560 and the 32GB version 3GS £647.
Expanding the price over 18 months in order to compare the Tesco deals with O2 and Orange, the iPhone 3G on Tesco costs at total of £582 over a year and a half, the 16GB 3GS costs £680 and the 32GB 3GS costs £767. All these prices are lower than the equivalent prices from O2 and Orange, but only by £35 to £40 over 18 months. Compared with Vodafone’s 18 month prices, Tesco is about £130 cheaper.
It is not possible, however, to get an 18-month contract with Tesco so either customers would have to renew their 12-month contract or opt for Tesco’s more expensive 24-month contract from the outset.
Doubling-up the 12-month contract leaves the 3G costing £702, the 16GB 3GS £800 and the 32GB £887 over two years.
Anyone signing up to Tesco’s 24-month contract, at £60 a month, in contrast, will get the iPhone 3G and the 16GB 3GS for free – rather begging the question why anyone would want the basic 3G phone – while the 32GB version costs £50. Over 24 months, therefore the cost to a consumer of the 3G and 3GS 16GB devices would be £1440 and the 32GB £1490.
O2 sells the basic iPhone 3G for £96.89 on an 18-month contract at £29.38. The 16GB version of the iPhone 3GS is £184.98 on the same contract and the largest 32GB version £274.23. Over the year-and-a-half of the contract, therefore, the devices cost £625.73, £713.82 and £803.07.
O2 gives the iPhone 3G away for free on a 24-month contract at £34.26 a month while the 16GB iPhone costs £87.11 and the 32GB version £175.19. Over the two years, therefore, the prices for O2 are £822.24, £909.35 and £997.43.
Orange sells the basic 3G iPhone for £96.50 on an 18-month contract costing £29.36 a month; the 16GB 3GS costs £184.50 and the 32GB version £274. Over the lifetime of the contract, therefore, the three versions on Orange cost £624.98, £712.98 and £802.48. Or a mere 75p, 84p and 59p cheaper than O2.
Orange gives the iPhone 3G away free on a 24-month contract at £29.36, while the 16GB version of the 3GS costs £125 and the 32GB costs £225. Over the two years, therefore, the prices for Orange are £704.64, £829.64 and £929.64.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
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• Basic iPhone 3G offered at £35 a month on a two-year contract
• Vodafone hoping to attract consumers with network reliability
Vodafone will start selling the iPhone in Britain next month, offering customers a free handset for £35 a month on a two-year contract, disappointing consumers hoping for a high-street price war over the device.
The pricing plan comes as a surprise because it does not give Britain’s biggest mobile phone company a competitive advantage, especially on an 18-month deal, where it is more expensive than its rivals.
“I don’t think this is about a price war – I think this is a network quality war,” said Vodafone UK’s chief executive, Guy Laurence. “At the end of the day, customers will seek out the best deal and I believe we are competitive, but it is about the quality of the network it runs on. We have spent a year optimising the network for the iPhone.
“It’s very simple: now you can get the iPhone on a network you can rely on.”
The arrival of the iPhone on Vodafone brings the number of mobile phone companies supplying the device in Britain to four. Vodafone customers who register interest before it goes on sale on 14 January will get a small thank you for not defecting to rivals that already have the handset, in the form of free calls to other Vodafone users for the life of their initial contract.
Orange started selling the iPhone last month, ending O2’s two-year exclusive grip on the handset, then Tesco arrived this month, complicating matters by opting for 12-month contracts and demanding consumers shell out several hundred pounds for the device itself.
Vodafone’s “entry-level” prices for the iPhone over 18 months are almost £100 more expensive than Orange and O2, while Tesco does not offer an 18-month contract. Vodafone’s entry-level prices over two years are about £40 cheaper than O2 but almost £75 more expensive than Orange.
Different handsets, however, have been pitched by different networks at different price points and with different bundles of texts and minutes.
The basic iPhone 3G is cheapest with Orange over 18 months, at £624.98, and with Tesco over two years – provided consumers renew their 12-month contract – at £702.
But most consumers are likely to want the 16GB version of the faster iPhone 3GS. That is cheapest with Tesco, where it costs £800 over two years for consumers who renew their 12-month contract. The 16GB iPhone works out at £829.64 for Orange customers, £869 on Vodafone and £909.35 on O2.
Variety of packages
But the packages on offer are very different. For that price, Tesco offers £60 of calls and texts a month – which works out at about 600 minutes or 1,200 texts – while Vodafone offers 300 minutes and unlimited texts per month and O2 gives customers 600 minutes and 500 texts. In stark contrast, Orange offers just 150 minutes and 250 texts.
On the face of it, Tesco and Vodafone offer better “value” than Orange or O2 on the iPhone 3GS 16GB over two years. Some people have been put off Tesco Mobile, however, by the fact that it uses O2’s network to run its service and the company has been suffering network capacity issues in recent months, especially in London.
With Britain’s newest network, 3, unlikely to get it for several months and with T-Mobile having counted itself out of the race for the foreseeable future, the arrival of Vodafone completes the range of choices for UK consumers.
Vodafone is offering all three versions of the iPhone on 18-month and 24-month contracts, the same as Orange and O2. The 18-month tariff starts at £40, for which customers will get the basic iPhone 3G – which has 8GB of memory and a 2 megapixel camera – free, but have to pay £89 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS – which has a 3 megapixel camera and a faster processor – and £179 for the top-of-the-range 32GB iPhone 3GS, which has more memory capacity. Over the length of that 18-month contract, therefore, Vodafone consumers will pay £720 for the iPhone 3G, £809 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS and £899 for the iPhone 3GS 32GB.
The equivalent 18-month entry-level prices on O2 are £625.73, £713.82 and £803.07. For Orange the equivalent prices are £624.98, £712.98 and £802.48.
Vodafone is also offering all three devices on 24-month contracts. At the basic £30-a-month contract the iPhone 3G will cost consumers £59, the iPhone 3GS 16GB £149 and the iPhone 3GS 32GB £239. Over the two-year period, therefore, consumers will pay a total of £779 for the iPhone 3G, £869 for the 16GB iPhone 3GS and £959 for the iPhone 3GS 32GB.
The equivalent prices for O2 are £822.24, £909.35 and £997.43 and for Orange they are £704.64, £829.64 and £929.64.
Tesco started selling the device last week and while it grabbed headlines by being the first operator to make the phone available on a contract at £20 a month and lasting just a year, consumers have to pay £222 to buy the basic 3G handset or £320 for the 16GB version of the faster 3GS handset and £407 for the 32GB version of the device.
Over the life of an annual contract, therefore, the 3G phone on Tesco costs £462, the 16GB 3GS £560 and the 32GB version 3GS £647.
Expanding the price over 18 months in order to compare the Tesco deals with O2 and Orange, the iPhone 3G on Tesco costs at total of £582 over a year and a half, the 16GB 3GS costs £680 and the 32GB 3GS costs £767. All these prices are lower than the equivalent prices from O2 and Orange, but only by £35 to £40 over 18 months. Compared with Vodafone’s 18 month prices, Tesco is about £130 cheaper.
It is not possible, however, to get an 18-month contract with Tesco so either customers would have to renew their 12-month contract or opt for Tesco’s more expensive 24-month contract from the outset.
Doubling-up the 12-month contract leaves the 3G costing £702, the 16GB 3GS £800 and the 32GB £887 over two years.
Anyone signing up to Tesco’s 24-month contract, at £60 a month, in contrast, will get the iPhone 3G and the 16GB 3GS for free – rather begging the question why anyone would want the basic 3G phone – while the 32GB version costs £50. Over 24 months, therefore the cost to a consumer of the 3G and 3GS 16GB devices would be £1440 and the 32GB £1490.
O2 sells the basic iPhone 3G for £96.89 on an 18-month contract at £29.38. The 16GB version of the iPhone 3GS is £184.98 on the same contract and the largest 32GB version £274.23. Over the year-and-a-half of the contract, therefore, the devices cost £625.73, £713.82 and £803.07.
O2 gives the iPhone 3G away for free on a 24-month contract at £34.26 a month while the 16GB iPhone costs £87.11 and the 32GB version £175.19. Over the two years, therefore, the prices for O2 are £822.24, £909.35 and £997.43.
Orange sells the basic 3G iPhone for £96.50 on an 18-month contract costing £29.36 a month; the 16GB 3GS costs £184.50 and the 32GB version £274. Over the lifetime of the contract, therefore, the three versions on Orange cost £624.98, £712.98 and £802.48. Or a mere 75p, 84p and 59p cheaper than O2.
Orange gives the iPhone 3G away free on a 24-month contract at £29.36, while the 16GB version of the 3GS costs £125 and the 32GB costs £225. Over the two years, therefore, the prices for Orange are £704.64, £829.64 and £929.64.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, apple, best, cheaper, cheapest, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, free, iphone, iphone 3gs, largest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sam, service, sim, sol, t-mobile, tariff, three, uk, vodafone
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ComScore has highlighted Android’s success in the US market while ignoring the finding that more than half its prospective smartphone buyers actually want a BlackBerry
ComScore has released the results of a survey of the US market under the headline: Android: Crashing the Smartphone Party. It says:
Among the report’s key findings is that consumer awareness of Google’s Android is growing rapidly, due in large part to the Verizon Droid ad campaign. Further, of those American consumers in the market for a smartphone, 17% are considering the purchase of an android-supported device in next three months, compared to 20% indicating they plan to purchase an iPhone.
What ComScore’s press release fails to mention, strangely, is that three of the top four mobile phones in its table of “Intended Smartphone Purchasers” are all from Research in Motion (RIM). The BlackBerry Pearl (18%) is beating the Apple iPhone 3GS (14%) while the BlackBerry Storm (13%) and Curve (11%) are not far behind.
With the BlackBerry Bold (4%) and Tour (3%) also making the Top 10, RIM’s BlackBerry system is the choice of more than half (51%) of those planning a purchase in the next three months. This is more than iPhone (20%) and Android (17%) added together.
RIM’s improved performance is supported by its latest financial results. As my colleague Richard Wray reported earlier this afternoon, profits in the three months to the end of November were $628.4m compared with $396.3m in the same quarter last year, a 59% increase. Rick’s story says:
RIM shipped a record-breaking 10 million smartphones, better than investors had expected, and said it expected to shift even more in the last three months of its financial year as its push into the consumer market continues to pay off.
To be specific, it expects to ship between 10.6 and 11.2 million mobiles at an ASP (average selling price) of $320.
The BlackBerry has long been popular for business email and among celebrities but it’s now attracting consumers, including teens who use it for instant messaging.
There’s still plenty of room for all the companies in the smartphone market to grow, for two reasons. First, the major handsets are still not available across the globe. In RIM’s case, only 35% of its subscribers are overseas, but this could change rapidly now RIM has signed deals with China Mobile and Digital China Holdings Ltd. Second, there’s a shift from ordinary mobiles to smartphones, which means that smartphone sales can continue to grow as existing phone users upgrade.
There are reasons for thinking that Android will do particularly well, because it can easily be adopted by local suppliers and networks: there’s no need to wait for Apple or RIM to design new handsets or set up operations in hundreds of different countries. Microsoft Windows enjoyed a similar advantage over the Mac. This time, however, it looks as though it will be Android that benefits, rather than Windows Mobile.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, android, apple, apple iphone, apple iphone 3gs, Blackberry, blog, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, consumer, deal, Deals, email, google, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, networks, new, palm, phone, phones, released, room, sam, sim, sol, storm, survey, test, three, uk
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iPhone will be available on a 12-month contract for £20 a month, but will cost £222 upfront
Tesco today announced its iPhone tariff and revealed it will become the first company to offer the phone to customers on a 12-month contract.
The iPhone is already available on O2 and Orange, but until now buyers either had to sign up for an 18-month contract or pay the full price for the phone and opt for a pay-as-you-go plan.
Last month, the supermarket giant announced it was in talks with Apple to start selling the iPhone. It had promised to bring a bit of “Tesco value” to the must-have phone of the past two years.
This morning, the retailer said that from 14 December the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS would be available from just £20 a month, the lowest monthly contract price in the UK market – although they come with a hefty price tag.
The 3G phone will cost £222 to buy alongside the 12-month contract. Buyers wanting the more upmarket 3GS phone will have to pay £320. The £20-a-month contract includes £60 of calls and texts.
Tesco Mobile will also offer the iPhone 3GS for free with unlimited calls, texts and browsing on a two-year contract, but it will cost £60 a month.
The 12-month deal is expected to appeal to customers who want a short contract. Until now the only affordable way to get an iPhone has been to sign a contract for 18-months. O2 and Orange, the only companies currently selling the phone, charge an up front fee of £87 and £35 a month for 18 months.
Tesco is also offering the iPhone 3G and 3GS on its Triple credit pay-as-you-go price plan. All Tesco iPhone customers will have at least 12 months free unlimited data and access to the BT OpenZone Wi-Fi (UK) service.
Lance Batchelor, chief executive officer of Tesco Mobile and Tesco Telecoms, said: “iPhone is now available and affordable for all, with the best deals in the UK market.
“This is a fantastic announcement for us and we’re delighted to make iPhone available to our customers. It shows what a serious player in the mobile market Tesco Mobile has become.”
Vodafone is to start selling the iPhone in January.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 12 months, 3, 3gs, all, apple, best, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, Deals, free, iphone, iphone 3gs, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, service, sim, sol, talks, tariff, test, uk, vodafone
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The supermarket has not revealed its prices but a promise to bring ‘value’ to the mobile phone market could see customers offered a better deal than with current suppliers O2 and Orange
Tesco plans to have the iPhone in stores in time for Christmas and promised to bring a bit of “value” to the mobile phone market. Although the supermarket group declined today to say exactly what it would charge, its value promise raises the prospect of consumers being offered a better deal than with current suppliers O2 and Orange.
Britain’s biggest retailer, which already has 2m mobile phone customers, will be selling the Apple device through its network of 100 in-store phone shops and on its website. It will be selling the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS to both pay-as-you-go customers and people willing to take out a long-term contract.
A spokeswoman for Tesco said: “We really want to bring a bit of Tesco value to the iPhone. We are not just going to copy what’s already out there.”
Earlier this month, Orange started selling the iPhone, ending O2’s two-year long exclusive grip on the handset, but its pricing is barely distinguishable from the tariffs already on offer, with both networks pricing the basic phone from £34 a month over two years.
In contrast, Tesco currently has a Sim-only contract which offers customers unlimited calls, texts and mobile internet browsing for £30 a month. A spokeswoman for Tesco, which takes one in every seven pounds spent on the British high street, refused to say whether this would be the basis for its iPhone tariff.
Vodafone, meanwhile, will not be able to start selling the iPhone to its customers until the second week of January. The smallest of the UK’s five networks, 3, is also hoping to start selling the iPhone some time next year.
O2 sells the basic iPhone 3G – which has 8GB of memory and a 2 megapixel camera – starting at £34.26 a month for two years. The price includes 600 minutes of call time and 500 texts.
The 16GB version of the iPhone 3GS – which has a 3 megapixel camera and a faster processor – is free on O2 at £44.05 a month for two years, with 1,200 minutes and 500 texts, and the largest 32GB version is free at £73.41 a month for two years with 3,000 minutes and 500 texts.
Orange, in contrast, offers the basic 3G phone for free under a two-year contract at £29.36 a month, but that comes with just 150 minutes and 250 texts. On the same tariff plan as O2 – 600 minutes and 500 texts – the 3G phone is free at £34.26 a month over two years.
On a comparable call plan, therefore, there is no difference between the price of the iPhone 3G on Orange and O2.
Orange makes the 16GB version of the iPhone 3GS free at £44.04 a month for two years. That includes 1,200 minutes and 500 texts, exactly the same call plan as O2. So the difference in price between O2 and Orange on the 16GB version of the iPhone 3GS is a mere 24p over two years.
Orange is giving the iPhone 3GS 32GB away free to customers willing to sign up for a two-year contract at £73.40 a month. That comes with 3,000 minutes and 500 texts, again exactly the same call plan as O2. So the difference in price between O2 and Orange on the 32GB version of the iPhone 3GS is, again 24p over two years.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, contract, deal, free, iphone, iphone 3gs, largest, line, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, prices, sam, sim, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk, vodafone
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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!
You can now buy an iPhone with a choice of networks, Orange or O2.
The new iPhone 3GS looks exactly the same as the original iPhone 3G but adds some nice extras. The camera has been upgraded to a 3 megapixel unit with auto focus, touch focus and support for video recording at 30 frames per second. There is also a built-in compass which neatly integrates with Google Maps, rotating the map as the iPhone faces a different direction.
The latest iPhone OS 3.0 is installed, which adds a long list of new features and software improvements such as copy & paste, shake to undo, MMS, stereo Bluetooth, landscape keyboard, system-wide search, Wi-Fi auto-login, support for YouTube accounts and more. The battery on the 3GS has also been improved. It was already very good, but it now has up to 12 hours talk time, 30 hours audio playback or 10 hours video playback.
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, google, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, networks, new, new mobile, o2, orange, phone, sam, sol, test, Touch
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Compare the prices all you like: you won’t find even a pound of difference over two years between Orange and O2’s iPhone contracts. Why not?
If you wanted to know just how incredibly closely related the pricing on the iPhone from O2 and from Orange is, then take a look at the spreadsheet below, which compares the contract prices between the two networks for the different models of phones, at the different tariffs.
Basically, the “best” – as in biggest money-saving – deal, which shows Orange to have really undercut those O2 people, offers you a whopping saving of 84 pence on an 18-month contract for the iPhone 3GS 16GB model. You can also get the same saving – though over 24 months – on the same model but with the £34.26 per month contract. Though hey, you make the saving upfront. Oh, and Orange does offer twice as many minutes and texts on the low-end 18-month £29.38 contract.
Though what is this “saving” we’re talking about? There’s nothing, nothing between these two sets of contracts. They could not be closer.
Now you can argue that this is because Apple charges particular prices for the iPhone. Or you could argue that it’s because of the horrendous cost of the data downloads that all those iPhone users demand.
The latter argument doesn’t hold up, though. Since O2 set its contract prices, the cost of moving data around has fallen – perhaps not a lot, but some. Enough for the prices on an 18-month or 24-month (the latter particularly) to be somewhat lower, given that the cost of data will fall over that period and you’ll still be a money-maker to the network.
It might be Apple charging huge bucks for the iPhone, of course, That’s a possibility. Or there’s another one: that Orange looked at the prices that O2 charges, looked at the level of demand there seemed to be for the iPhone (200,000 people registering interest in the first few days of its announcement), and decided that, well, perhaps people don’t mind spending that much.
It will be interesting to see how that goes. I’ll admit, my own interest in an iPhone contract with Orange rather diminished on doing that comparison. And I’ll admit too that I was one of the people who registered interest.
So – is the 84 pence sufficient incentive for you? Or were you hoping for something else?
Note: I haven’t looked at the PAYG options. Perhaps in a later post…
PS: yes, I know the table spills over horribly. Sorry.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, apple, best, blog, charges, compare, comparemobiles.com, comparison, contract, deal, iphone, iphone 3gs, maker, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, networks, new, o2, orange, payg, phone, phones, prices, sam, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk
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Orange appears to have decided not to get involved in an iPhone price war with O2
Orange has announced prices for the iPhone on its network – but shown little appetite for a price war with O2, which presently has the monopoly on iPhone sales in the UK.
The phone will go on sale from 10 November across Orange’s retail network, as well as Apple retail stores, Phones4U, Orange concessions in HMV stores and – as predicted in the Guardian last month – in Carphone Warehouse shops.
But the tariffs announced today offer little temptation for any O2 users to change, or for non-iPhone users to switch. Orange contract buyers can get a 16GB iPhone 3GS for £184.50 plus £29.36 per month on an 18-month contract; at O2, the same phone costs £184.98 plus £29.38 per month on an 18-month contract.
Both networks say that they offer “unlimited” data downloads over the phone network – though Orange adds a warning that its “fair usage” policy in fact limits it to 750MB per month. (The iPhone also has Wi-Fi, which can be used without limit.)
When Orange announced that it would sell the iPhone it put up a web page where people could register their interest. It says that more than 200,000 did so – though how many will maintain that interest now that they have seen the tariffs on offer is hard to determine.
The launch does threaten O2’s position as the UK’s largest mobile network. Reports of inconsistent data connections troubling iPhone users on its network may have put some people off switching; Orange, by contrast, has claimed to have the largest 3G network in the UK.
But it will come under sustained pressure once it launches the iPhone, which is famous among network operators for using comparatively large amounts of bandwidth for emails and web browsing, compared to most smartphones – and especially standard mobile phones – which use little data, and where users are given strict data rations. Apple’s ability to negotiate O2 and other mobile networks around the world into giving iPhone users “unlimited” data downloads over the phone networks has made the device enormously attractive to a new generation of mobile workers, but squeezed operators’ margins to the limits.
Orange will offer Apple’s hot-selling internet device on a business plan, where a 16GB iPhone 3GS costs £87 on a 24-month £30 per month contract – significantly cheaper than the personal contract.
In addition, Orange will offer the iPhone on pay-as-you-go contracts – £440 for a 16GB iPhone 3GS.
The announcement of the prices intensifies the competition for customers between the networks, though with Vodafone ready to start selling the iPhone early next year, there may be the chance of some price pressure.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, apple, cheaper, compare, compared, comparemobiles.com, connections, consumer, contract, email, iphone, iphone 3gs, largest, launches, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, networks, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, phones4u, prices, sam, sol, tariff, tariffs, uk, vodafone, world
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This week the iPhone again dominated the top ten, with the news that Apple
has reportedly added additional security protections to its iPhone 3GS handsets,
in a bid to discourage ‘jailbreaking’.
Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, iphone 3gs, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, sol, uk
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Apple has reportedly added additional security protections to its iPhone 3GS
handsets designed to prevent user modifications.
Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, iphone 3gs, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, sol, uk
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Apple has reportedly added additional security protections to its iPhone 3GS
handsets designed to prevent user modifications.
Read Full Story…
(Source Yahoo UK News)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, iphone 3gs, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, sol, uk
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Memo from Orange UK chief says exact launch date and cost of iPhone are under wraps, ‘but all will be revealed soon’
The Orange UK chief executive, Tom Alexander, has heralded as “a fantastic endorsement” his company’s success in wresting the iPhone from the clutches of O2.
In an internal memo to staff, Alexander added that the company, which recently announced a merger with rival T-Mobile, will have the device in stores in time for Christmas.
But in his memo, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, Alexander keeps his own staff guessing about the price which customers will have to pay to get hold of the Apple handset.
The memo says:
Great news. We’ve got the iPhone.
It’s one of the most sought-after phones by our customers, and is widely acknowledged as one of the best devices ever made in the history of mobile. And now it’s on Orange.
This is a fantastic endorsement of our company, our brand and you – the people who make it all happen.
We’ll be stocking the iPhone 3GS – that’s the latest version of the iPhone – before Christmas. It’ll be available in all of our Orange shops, online, and will also be available through some of our specially selected partner stores.
That means our customers will be able to get their hands on one of the most exciting and sought-after devices around, on the number one network for 3G coverage – Orange.
It means that our company will benefit from offering one of the best products around.
And it means that we, as employees of Orange, will also soon be able to get our hands on this absolutely stunning device. As you’d expect, there’s going to be huge demand from our customers, and we need to prioritise that, but we’ll do our very best to get the device out to you as part of Orange offers as soon as we can.
We’re keeping the exact customer launch date and pricing a secret for now, but all will be revealed soon.
I hope you’re as excited as I am about today’s news – it’s another big day for Orange, and another big step toward fulfilling the plans we laid out in the agenda last summer.
But things like this don’t just happen overnight. It follows months of hard work and dogged determination from a small group of people who made it happen. So thank you to all of those people involved, and congratulations – you’ve pulled off something very special.
And to everyone else who keeps this great company ticking over day in day out to make sure that each day is a special day for our customers – thank you. You are what makes Orange special. Let’s keep it up as we head towards Christmas…
… and bring on the iPhone from Orange.
Cheers,
Tom
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 3, 3gs, all, apple, best, compare, comparemobiles.com, consumer, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, line, merger, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, o2, orange, phone, phones, sol, t-mobile, test, tmobile, uk
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Soggy summer predicted
Sales of Palm’s Pré are slumping, a US financial analyst has claimed, but the good news is that may make the smartphone cheaper to buy.…
Offloading malware protection to the cloud
Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)
Tags: 3, 3gs, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, iphone 3gs, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, palm, phone, sol, source the register, uk
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Soggy summer predicted
Sales of Palm’s Pré are slumping, a US financial analyst has claimed, but the good news is that may make the smartphone cheaper to buy.…
Offloading malware protection to the cloud
Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)
Tags: 3, 3gs, cheaper, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, iphone 3gs, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, palm, phone, sol, source the register, uk
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Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is joined in the MediaGuardian 100 by design guru Jonathan Ive as the iPhone goes mainstream
Job: co-founder, chairman, chief executive, Apple (Jobs); senior vice-president of industrial design, Apple (Ive)
Industry: digital media
Age: 54 (Jobs); 42 (Ive)
Turnover: $32.48bn (2008)
Staff: 35,100
2008 ranking: 6 (Jobs); new entry (Ive)
How to reflect the extraordinary impact of Apple’s iPhone? Our panel was split between Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive who took six months off work this year after a liver transplant, and Jonathan Ive, the creative genius who designed it, along with the iMac, the iBook and the iPod. So in the end they included them both.
Nothing short of a phenemenon, the iPhone blazed a trail in the hugely competitive mobile phone market with rival manufacturers struggling to catch up. “It has completely changed the face of mobile technology,” said our panel. “You can have your whole life on a little glass screen in front of you. Everyone is talking about the iPhone.”
With global sales of more than 21m by the end of March this year, given a further boost in June with the launch of the latest model, the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone not only secured Apple’s future as a manufacturer of high-end smartphones, it also created a burgeoning applications industry. More than 50,000 have been created so far – each one approved by Apple – encouraging take-up of mobile web-based services and providing a potentially lucrative and powerful platform for even the smallest development teams to reach a worldwide audience. The billionth application was downloaded from Apple’s App Store in April this year.
Jobs, whose health has been the source of speculation since 2004, returned to work last month after medical leave. He has been the driving force behind the company, which he founded in 1976 and returned to in 1997 after a 12-year absence, single-handedly rescuing it from the brink of disaster. In between he bought Pixar and helped turn it into the animation powerhouse it is today.
Essex-born Ive is Apple’s senior vice-president of industrial design and knows better than anyone what we are going to be holding in five years’ time. Beautiful to look at and simple to use, Ive’s Apple products have defined the look of a generation.
The graduate of Newcastle Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art set up his own design agency before working as a consultant for Apple and moving to San Francisco in 1992 to work for the company full time. Like his boss, he is said to favour jeans, trainers, T-shirt and a polo-neck sweater.
“The word design is everything and nothing,” Ive told the Independent last year. “We think of design as not just the product’s appearance, it’s what the product is, how it works. The design and the product itself are inseparable. My goal is simply to try to make products that really are meaningful to people. Ultimately there is something motivating and inspiring in seeing someone using an Apple product and enjoying an Apple product.”
But even with Jobs’s return to work, the reality is that the company will one day have to plan for a future without him, and Ive is hugely important to its long-term prosperity. Could he be a contender to succeed Jobs? Possibly. More likely is the company’s chief operating officer, and acting chief executive in Jobs’s absence, Tim Cook. But the question remains: can anyone do it like Jobs?
What a difference 12 months – and a price cut – makes. Last year’s MediaGuardian 100 said the iPhone had “so far struggled to live up to the hype … the Apple chief is not used to coming second”. He still isn’t.
Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)
Tags: 10, 12, 12 months, 3, 3gs, all, App Store, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, global, iphone, iphone 3gs, latest, mobile, Mobile News, mobile phone, mobile phones, mobiles, months, new, phone, phones, service, sim, test, uk, world
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Sepia screen for that old-timey look
Apple fans unwrapping their new iPhone 3GS are being disappointed by an eerie yellow on-screen tint that pushes some handsets beyond usability, though not every complainant has managed to get their handset replaced.…
The power of collaboration within unified communications
Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)
Tags: 3, 3gs, apple, compare, comparemobiles.com, iphone, iphone 3gs, mobile, Mobile News, mobiles, new, phone, source the register, uk
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The new 3GS version of Apple’s must-have phone is a triumph for a company already at the top of its game. One self-confessed fan is suitably smitten
A little under a year ago in this very newspaper I reviewed the Apple iPhone 3G and its new firmware release: “Now that the Applications store is up and running,” I wrote, “you will soon find it a very common sight indeed to see people crowded around each other’s iPhones showing off the latest impossible, breathtaking and ground-breaking application. ‘Ah, but mine can do this!’ will be heard in every cafe and bar. Satirical sketches will be written and performed on Channel 4 mocking the trend. Once again Apple has changed the rules and nothing will be ever be quite the same again.”
It is very rare for any prophetic utterance of mine to bear fruit, but in this case it seems I was bang on the money. On 11 July 2008 the Apple iTunes App Store opened its virtual doors and the world changed. The diversity, originality and imagination that has since gone into the authoring of apps has created, from the standingest of starts, a whole new business model, and one that benefits cottage industry amateurs quite as much as established software houses. With over 50,000 apps and more than 1bn downloads, it is hardly surprising that Blackberry, Nokia, Microsoft and Google have all now jumped on the app emporium bandwagon. Apple has shown that a mobile phone can be a pedometer, a restaurant guide (one which can make the reservation, direct you there and let you know which kinds of sustainable seafood you can order with a clear conscience), an ensemble of musical instruments that can be blown down, tapped and strummed, a library, a periodic table, a performer of magic tricks, a translator, a Skype phone, a Twitter client, a radio, a games platform and a device that can set your home satellite TV to record any programme you like wherever you are in the world. Not to mention a fart machine and perpetrator of other mad, pointless and preposterous one-time-use pranks, japes and wheezes. Now that the others are all playing catch-up, it is easy to forget what a risk Apple took in creating a market out of nowhere.
There were shortcomings with 2008’s iPhone 3G and its software. “No text manipulation (not even basic cut and paste),” I moaned last July, “no Flash plug-ins for the browser, no video recording, no voice memos.”
This week the 3.0 firmware was released. It runs on the new 3GS iPhone, last year’s 3G, the original 2G and the iPod Touch and has addressed many user demands, although not the provision of Flash, which Apple has its own reasons for disbarring from the iPhone: Flash provides a back door through which developers could smuggle in unauthorised apps and Apple (for good reasons and bad) is allergic to the word “unauthorised”. An excellently intuitive cut and paste functionality is at last present (with a cute and unheralded “shake to undo” feature), there are noticeably increased browser rendering speeds, global search, voice notes, better autocorrect glossary learning (non-editable however), tethering (allowing you to use your 3G or 3GS as a modem) and MMS. That’s right, MMS – Apple had never seemed very interested in Multimedia Messaging Service, dismissing it as a vestigial or “legacy” service. “Why pay to send pictures and video,” Apple’s chief, Steve Jobs, asked, “when you can send them for free by email?” Apple has relented and sweetly smooth MMS implementation is now available.
Whether current iPhone users choose to upgrade their phones or not, they should certainly upgrade their firmware – 3.0 makes a real difference in speed, function and performance. All of the above features and additions and more are possible on your original iPhone, but what about the new model – the 3GS? Well, the “S” stands for speed and plenty of extra zip is delivered courtesy of the ARM Cortex-A8 processor and PowerVR SGX GPU (rated seven times faster than the MBX Lite graphics processor found in previous models) as well as 256MB of DDR RAM. Apps open much faster, everything is smoother and sprightlier than ever before. Using a 3G and 3GS side by side the difference is very noticeable indeed. As with turning left on entering an aeroplane, the experience is spoilingly good.
Aside from the very welcome sight of “32GB” printed in silver on the back, the 3GS is identical in appearance, whether in black or white, to its progenitor. A relief that we won’t be having to fork out on a whole new raft of sleeves, covers and other accessories. A 3-megapixel camera with well integrated focus and exposure features allows for really excellent stills and good quality video recording. An intuitive trim tool will help with the uploading of video footage directly over the air to YouTube, MobileMe, email or MMS. The 3GS also contains a digital compass or magnetometer. Used in conjunction with GPS, Wi-Fi and cellular positioning your iPhone now knows exactly where it is and which way it is facing. This allows the fascinating possibility of tour guide uses (“you are now looking at the west door of St Paul’s Cathedral”) and other applications (fully featured turn-by-turn SatNav, for example) that will doubtless astonish us in the months to come.
Voice Control is as simple as can be imagined: “Play songs by The Incredible String Band” you say and sure enough it does. “Play more like this” you add, and an on-the-fly Genius list is assembled. “Call Steve Jobs, office” you demand, and it’s done. “What song is this?” you wonder and are told (in a slightly prunes and prism English accent) that it is “Rhinocratic Oaths by the Bonzo Dog Band” or whatever it might be. All this can be done straight into the device or by way of the new earphones that come with it.
Look out too for future peripheral devices that can control or be controlled by the iPhone, thanks to the now addressable dock connector API. Another less trumpeted but typically thoughtful innovation is the addition of an oleophobic coating to the touchscreen that repels greasy smeary fingermarks. Nice touch, Apple. Literally.
In short, the 3GS is triumphantly the product of a company at the absolute top of its game, their best device yet. If it were a BMW car it would be badged as the “M” version. Power and performance can be considered a luxury until you try them and realise how much more functionality, ease of use and productivity they can deliver. Cost is a whole other issue: if you already have an iPhone3G you may find an upgrade expensive. Could be worth waiting to see what deals emerge over the next month or so. The more people who do wait, the more pressure there will be on O2 to lower prices.
I know I can sound like an unquestioning Apple fanboy, but believe me when I say that I don’t want them to have it all their own way. I want to see real competition and biodiversity in the smartphone world. For the moment however, no one can deny that with the iPhone 3GS the gold standard has been set.
© Stephen Fry 2009
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(Source The Guardian)
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