Jan

16

Hello!?

January 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment

MacworldiPhoneWorld Expo in San Francisco is well underway.

This year’s exo is definitely the place to see and experience the latest in iPhone software, hardware, cases, solutions and more. And of course with the Aplle iPhone SDK on the way, many companies are demoing the upcoming slew of goodness.

We will be posting more and some specifics later on, so stay tuned!

iBug Out!!

:-{>

Jul

2

Jul

1

1st-night Sales: Tens — Perhaps Hundreds — of Thousands of iPhones

If the reports that Apple (AAPL) had 3 million iPhones stockpiled for opening night are anywhere close to the mark, there should be plenty left over for next week.

Apple and AT&T (T) are not releasing sales figures, but piecing together eye-witness accounts from stores around the country and doing some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, it’s clear that Apple sold tens of thousands of iPhones — and perhaps as many as 200,000 — the first night, not millions.

There are several reports of AT&T stores selling out their consignment of iPhones — 60 in one Wall Street store, 40 in another, 20 in a smaller store.

According to Apple’s iPhone availability website (here) there are iPhones in stock today at all 164 Apple Stores, including the big ones in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Roughly 300 people lined up to buy phones at each of the largest stores (we counted 335 when the doors finally opened at the Stockton Street outlet in San Francisco) and more buyers streamed in before the doors closed at midnight.

If you generously assume that 500 iPhones were sold at each of Apple’s 164 retail outlets (including the tiny mall stores), and that all AT&T stores sold out an average of 50 phones, that’s

500 * 164 = 82,000
50 * 1,800 = 90,000
TOTAL = 172,000

Not bad for one night’s work. Because that doesn’t include online sales, it’s roughly in line with earlier analysts’ estimates that Apple could sell 400,000 iPhones in the first few days.

Apple has not commented on the estimates. Steve Jobs has said he hopes to capture 1% of the worldwide cellphone market by 2008, which comes out to roughly 10 million iPhones over the next 18 months.

UPDATE: An AAPL watcher whose opinion I trust thinks this estimate for AT&T sales may be 25% to 35% too low. He believes the smaller AT&T stores had 60 to 70 phones and the larger ones 100 or more.

He also points out that many, if not most, customers at Apple stores bought two iPhones. If we assume that half did, the numbers come out somewhat differently:

500 * 164 * 1.5 = 123,000
50 * 1,800 = 90,000
TOTAL = 213,000

In which case the headline should have read:

Apple Sells Hundreds of Thousands of iPhones the First Night

Source

Apr

20

iphone_land.jpgThe iPhone is a revolutionary new product that has the potential to turn the technology world on its ear and with the anxiously awaited Apple® product expected to be available this June, Harris Interactive® recently took a quick pulse of American adults to determine how strong the buzz really is. Although iPhone is not yet a household word, 47 percent of respondents were aware of the product and a full 17 percent expressed interest in purchasing it, which makes for a pretty loud buzz from consumers for a product that isn’t yet available.

These are just some of the results of a new study conducted by the Harris Interactive Technology Practice, which were presented through the company’s latest webinar. Harris Interactive fields ongoing studies on a range of topical issues within the technology industry and presents the information quarterly. The studies are conducted online with consumers from a multimillion member panel created and maintained by Harris Interactive.

The Decision on When to Buy

Perhaps a more interesting question to ask is when U.S. adults would buy this product. Of those expressing interest to purchase, nine percent say they would buy at product launch and another eight percent would buy before their current wireless service contract expired. About 17 percent say they would wait for their current wireless contract to expire before purchasing and 25 percent would purchase it - when their existing wireless carrier offers the iPhone. Finally, a full 40 percent of buyers intend to wait for the price to come down.

So What Makes the iPhone so Attractive?

Survey results show the hottest iPhone feature was its large storage capacity (37%), begging the question — is this a better phone or a better iPod? This is followed by iPhone quad band worldwide capabilities (36%) and its easy to use/drop dead cool user interface (31%). Overall, high powered multi-functional mobile devices like the iPhone have strong appeal (or Apple-al) to about 31 percent of the marketplace. The remainder does not need, or care to pay for, all those bells and whistles and seek simpler solutions.

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Mar

28

Brother….John C Dvorak is at it again.

The hype over the unreleased iPhone has actually increased over the past month despite the fact that nobody has seen or used the device. This, if nothing else, proves the power of branding and especially the power of brand loyalty.dvorak.gif
It’s the loyalists who keep promoting this device as if it is going to be anything other than another phone is a crowded market. And it’s exactly the crowded market aspect of this which analysts seem to be ignoring.

Apple’s past successes have been in markets that were either emerging or moribund. Its biggest hit has been the iPod. But let’s examine what happened here.
First the MP3 player business was segmented and unfocused with numerous players making a lot of cheap junk and not doing much to market any of it.
Apple does what? Advertise. Gosh, what a concept.
Then there was the online music distribution business, again unfocused and out-of-control with little marketing and a lot of incompatible technologies. So Apple comes in with a reasonable solution, links it to the heavily promoted iPod and bingo. A winner.

It advertises on TV, on billboards and on the Internet. Within no time the company takes over the business which would probably still be languishing without Apple.
Thus Apple does what it does best. It produces a jazzy product and promotes it like any good business should do. And in the process manages to get a high margin.
This is nothing more than the fundamentals.

Now compare that effort and overlay the mobile handset business. This is not an emerging business. In fact it’s gone so far that it’s in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia and Motorola.
During this phase of a market margins are incredibly thin so that the small fry cannot compete without losing a lot of money.

As for advertising and expensive marketing this is nothing like Apple has ever stepped into. It’s a buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies
The problem here is that while Apple can play the fashion game as well as any company, there is no evidence that they can play it fast enough. These phones go in an out of style so fast that unless Apple has half a dozen variants in the pipeline, its phone, even if immediately successful, will be passé within 3 months.
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. Even in the business where it is a clear pioneer, the personal computer, it had to compete with Microsoft and can only sustain a 5% market share.

And its survival in the computer business relies on good margins. Those margins cannot exist in the mobile handset business for more than 15 minutes.

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Mar

24

cult-of-mac-cover.jpgApple will not release the iPhone until June, but Leander Kahney, the writer of “The Cult of Mac” blog, posited this week on Wired News that the new phone is already partly responsible for a major change in how the company is perceived (wired.com). After nearly three decades, Apple is finally being taken seriously not just by the true believers, but by just about everybody.

According to Mr. Kahney, this shift has taken place in the last few weeks, as both the iPhone and, more recently, Apple TV, have quickly become “must have” products. “A lot of people thought Apple got lucky with the iPod,” Mr. Kahney wrote. “It was a one-hit wonder, a fluke not likely to be repeated.” But the iPhone is already thought of as an “industry-changing smash hit,” and Apple TV, which at first drew shrugs, now may even eclipse the iPhone, according to the predictions of some (though by no means many) people (ipodnn.com).

Apple TV, which began shipping this week, stores up to 50 hours of video, which can be wirelessly beamed from a computer to a television set. Like several other competing products from the likes of Sony, Microsoft and TiVo, it aims to capitalize on the increasing availability of downloadable movies and TV shows.

Apple’s decision to move to Intel processors is another big reason for what Mr. Kahney says is “a cultural shift that’s changing the way people think about the company.” The Mac’s ability to run both Apple’s operating system and Microsoft’s Windows (by using BootCamp software, which is still in beta), means some organizations are able to save money by using more-expensive Macs. Wilkes University in Pennsylvania, for example, recently dumped all its Windows-only machines in favor of Macs because the university now can do just as much with fewer computers (computerworld.com).

The “dual boot” functionality also means that it is far easier to find needed software. “The old argument against Macs is moot,” Mr. Kahney writes. “New Intel Macs can run Windows software as well as any PC.” And technology managers like the Mac’s relative protection against computer viruses and security breaches.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Mr. Kahney points to Apple’s steadfastness in keeping its products proprietary as a main reason for its success. Apple for decades has weathered criticism that the reason it was marginalized by the likes of Microsoft was its refusal to allow third parties to develop related products. But “Apple’s traditional closed system,” Mr. Kahney writes, “is now a selling point.”

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Mar

1

iphone_keyboard.jpgWhile everyone loves their Apple iPod, they also love their cell phone equally as much. This is why more technology is being built into cell phones, and why the Blackberry is a hit for internet and email users. The Apple iPhone will incorporate the iPod MP3 music player, along with internet access with a large 3.5 inch touch screen.

The internet browsing software is Safari, and you can be reading a webpage while in the background you can be downloading your email. There is also quick access to maps, and widgets that will have stock quotes and weather reports.

The iPhone is controlled with a multi-touch screen interface and also with a full soft QWERTY keyboard. The touch screen is easy to navigate with your fingers and you can use the onscreen keyboard to type in messages. The iPhone will autocorrect typing so that it will be easier to work with the keyboard. It does look a little bit difficult to use a touch screen to type with and a regular keyboard would be great. Possibly a Bluetooth keyboard accessory for the iPhone will be released.

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iPhonePlanet

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Feb

20

appcing.jpg

Comes now a fuller account of the birth of the iPhone, and one thing is clear: Steve Jobs didn’t need to make friends among the telecom folks his company partnered with to produce the recently announced iTunes-friendly phone.

Slashdot picks up here on a piece in this morning’s Wall Street Journal Online, which details the secretive project in depth. Among its revelations: Apple CEO Steve Jobs played hardball in a way that wrested control from wireless carrier Cingular, now part of At&T, a move that has few precursors in the wireless industry.

Typically, the article says, the wireless carriers exert enormous control over the manufacturers who build their phones. The power relationship was reversed with Apple, which permitted only three Cingular executives to see the phone until shortly before its public viewing late last year.

Rich Tehrani at TMCNET.com says in his blog that the stakes are high for AT&T’s rivals, and predicts that if the Apple-AT&T collaboration is a success, carriers will cede more control over phone design in the future.

Tehrani’s piece, which doesn’t but should credit The Wall Street Journal, says Cingular’s decision to let Apple drive the development of the new phone marks a first for the industry. He says:

“For the first time a large carrier has understood and agreed that their ability to provide their customers with a device they want is lacking.”

Please Steve, next time, don’t hold anything back!

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Feb

18

February 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment

iphone_land.jpgSteve Jobs’ iPhone demo at Macworld Jan. 9 rocked the house, stopped the presses and upset the smart-phone status quo. Yes, Jobs changed the world. Again.

His keynote was so insanely great that five weeks later, we almost forget one important fact: The iPhone doesn’t exist — at least as a shipping product.

Neither you nor I has ever so much as touched an iPhone. Almost everything we know about the iPhone came from one big sales pitch. The iPhone could be the greatest device every manufactured. Or it could be a horrible flop like the Newton.

Jobs’ iPhone demo was so powerful that he actually made people believe that Apple invented a whole new user interface. In fact, Apple did something more important than that. The company took some of the best — hitherto obscure — UI research and put it into a product that you will be able to buy. It did the same thing with the original Apple computer, the Mac, and with the iPod.

This is how Apple changes the world. It takes awesome research out of other people’s labs, polishes and perfects it, and then ship it as warm-and-fuzzy consumer products everyone can buy.

Succeed or fail, the iPhone will be remembered as the first major step toward the third-generation PC user interface.

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Feb

16

Got Addiction?!

February 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Could you live without your mobile phone… even for a day? Because apparently 45% of us couldn’t!
unclesam-no-cell-phone-sign.jpg

Thanks to a network fault, I recently spent three (yes three!) whole days without my lump of wonderful plastic. I think we could call the process I went through ‘technological cold turkey’. I didn’t quite reach the point of cold sweats and sleepless nights but I did find I had become oh so dependant on the little fellow! At first I thought this mobile-less experience was going to be enlightening, maybe even pleasurable. A time where I would not be controlled and dictated to by something that friends and family could reach me every second of every day. Not only did I revel in that fact that I told myself I was most definitely going to survive without it, I wanted to enjoy the experience.

Not so… I found only a few hours into having my mobile inactive made me physically twitchy. It wasn’t due to the fact that I was missing any important phone calls or not being able to text a friend a mindless comment, is was more due to feeling cut off from the world. I stopped everything I was doing because I thought I heard it ring. I checked it frequently, when I knew full well that it wasn’t going to be working. I turned it on-off, off-on to see if that would fix my problem and even asked friends to call it, as if that would have made any difference!

I’m not alone in my despair however. “The idea of being out of touch, even just for a 90-minute movie, is enough to induce anxiety” says Lisa Merlo, a psychologist at the University of Florida. “Although cellular phones and personal digital assistants such as the BlackBerry were created to make modern life more convenient, they’re actually beginning to interfere in the lives of users who don’t know when to turn them off”

Mobile phone addiction is a real affliction these days, and even has a Wikipedia entry! Addicts “feel anxious without their cellphone” and often experience “a loss of control when confronted with special offers of the latest cellphone models”. They should check out our homepage! More worryingly a survey by Staffordshire University revealed that 7% of people said the use of a mobile phone had caused them to lose a relationship or a job!

For the majority of us they are the technological equivalent of a comfort blanket. According to a survey by Carphone Warehouse, 9 out of 10 adults said they couldn’t bear to be without one. And 15% would be “extremely upset” if they lost it.

Only 15%? I think they need to run that survey again, if indeed they ran it in the first place. A quick poll of the dialaphone marketing department has revealed that a more believable 100% of people would be “extremely upset” if they lost their phone.

The mobile phone unsurprisingly tops the list of gadgets that celebrities couldn’t live without, but a far more revealing debate appears on the pages of Newsround.co.uk. Twelve year old Jo from Swindon says “I NEED MY PHONE! I can talk to my mates at the weekend, take pics, and play games! I’m addicted!”. While crazy James (12) from Gt Yarmouth confessed “I could live without my mobile, but I’d probably go a bit bonkers!” And poor old Janni (13) from Motherwell says “When I leave my phone at home I panic!”

What on earth did we do when mobile phones weren’t part of our everyday life? I can barely remember the days when we didn’t have them. The days when I ventured into the smelly phone booths to make a phone call home or when I bought the then new but short lived invention called the Pager. Having never really understood the best use for a pager I devised a numerical coding system that I gave to all my friends e.g; 445620 converted into ‘what are you doing tonight?’ 6459 meant ‘I am home safe and sound’. This made communication with friends so much harder but on the other hand it was the start of my independence in mobile communications. Such a long way round things, but I did enjoy the freedom it enabled me to have and the control over such a new fad!

Technology is moving so rapidly now, will it get to the stage that we will become too reliant on our phones? Will we need in future to communicate with anyone in person anymore? Is it possible for us to let go of the hold they are increasingly having upon our lives? Let’s wait and see… must dash my phones ringing!

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