Feb

28

Well to date we have seen iPhone skins for almost every smartphone on the market. Well this is little more than just a skin. While the icons are just short cuts to crummy Pocket PC applications, this hacker demos some one finger scrolling.

Apple legal department is currently at work on this as you are watching :)

iPhonePlanet

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Feb

27

apple-logo.pngApple Inc.’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, told conference-goers Tuesday that the iPhone is on track to release in June.

Cupertino-based Apple expects to sell 10 million of the long-awaited mobile-phone devices in 2008, Cook told attendees at the Goldman Sachs 2007 Technology Investment Symposium Conference.

Addressing questions about whether the phone would cut into the iPod territory, Cook said that iPod “is being sold for a wide variety of uses. We’ll see what happens.”

He added that Apple has sold 90 million iPods since October 2001.

iPhonePlanet

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Feb

27

bt_head.jpgFirst announced at Macworld expo in January, a remarkably compact Bluetooth headset that automatically pairs with iPhone. It’s now listed in the description on Apple’s iPhone High Technology page. Apple confirms the new headset will support Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR.

The company’s original press release detailing the iPhone describes the Bluetooth headset briefly: “Several iPhone accessories will also be available in June.

iPhonePlanet

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Feb

26

apple-logo.pngQuantum Research Group Ltd., a developer of capacitive sensors for user interfaces, has denied it is preparing a legal suit against Apple regarding Apple’s iPhone.
“Quantum has no knowledge of any infringement by Apple of Quantum’s patents in regard to the iPhone or any other product other than those products alleged to be infringing in our 2005 lawsuit against Apple and Cypress Semiconductor, specifically the Powerbook trackpad, Mighty Mouse, and iPod Nano scroll wheel,” Quantum said in a statement.

“Until the iPhone product is made available for public sale, we have to make the operating assumption that no Quantum patents have been violated,” the statement added.

iPhonePlanet

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Feb

25

Sunday evening during the first minutes of the Academy Awards. Featuring a host of stars with the one line “Hello” reminiscent of the Mac in 1984.

iPhonePlanet

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Feb

23

actv_hiddeniphonedetails.jpgFour things about the iPhone that you probably overlooked from Steve Job’s MacWorld keynote. They include what the calendar application looks like, how you’ll view traffic in Google Maps, another way to scroll through long lists and how ringtones may ultimately work.

iPhonePlanet

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Feb

23

sprint_000.gifSteve Jobs knows how to sell music, but success in the cell phone business is likely to be a far greater challenge, a Sprint Nextel Corp. executive said Thursday.

Jobs, chief executive of Apple, is partnering with Cingular Wireless to offer the much anticipated iPhone, a music-playing wireless phone.

“We welcome the competition,” Oliver Valente, Sprint’s senior vice president of product management and development, said during the Pacific Crest Digital Media and Entertainment Forum in New York City. “We look forward to competing with Apple in the music space.”

Sprint executives consider themselves pioneers in offering music through their wireless service. Selling songs, ringtones, video and other data services has become an important part of Sprint’s sales mix. Since Sprint introduced its $2.50-per-song, over-the-air service, consumers have downloaded 13 million songs.

But starting in June, the iPhone will be available for $499 or $599.

Apple has emerged as a dominant force in the music business with its millions of iPod digital audio players and iTunes, an online store offering an easy way to fill those players with music, podcasts and videos. Apple said last month that more than 2 billion songs and 50 million television episodes have been sold and downloaded through iTunes.

When he introduced the device last month, Jobs touted the iPhone as a “revolutionary and magical” product. The device has been designed as a version of an iPod, with a 3.5-inch-wide screen and a variety of new calling and media features.

Duplicating the iPod’s success with the iPhone is not a sure bet, Valente said during Thursday’s presentation.

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iPhonePlanet Funny, I’m sure Sprint would love to be first with the iPhone. They already have several $500 + phones.

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Feb

21

steve.jpgCisco, Apple Settle High-Stakes iPhone Trademark-Infringement Lawsuit

Cisco Systems Inc. and Apple Inc. said Wednesday they have settled the trademark-infringement lawsuit that threatened to derail Apple’s use of the “iPhone” name for its much-hyped new iPod-cellular phone gadget.

The companies said Apple will be allowed to use the name for its sleek new multimedia device in exchange for exploring wide-ranging “interoperability” between the companies’ products in the areas of security, consumer and business communications.

No other details of the agreement were released, and representatives from both companies declined to comment beyond their short joint statement.

The companies both said they would dismiss any pending legal actions regarding the trademark.

The showdown between the Silicon Valley tech heavyweights erupted last month when Cisco sued Apple in San Francisco federal court claiming that Apple’s use of the iPhone name constituted a “willful and malicious” violation of a trademark that Cisco has owned since 2000.

Cisco’s Linksys division has been using the trademark since last spring on a line of phones that make free long-distance calls over the Internet using a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

The lawsuit was filed a day after Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled his own company’s iPhone, a multimedia device that operates over the cellular network instead of the Internet.

Apple initially called the lawsuit “silly” and argued that it was entitled to use the name because the phones operate over different networks and would not compete with each other.

Cisco maintained that in an era of “convergence” — where increasingly intelligent networks and devices can handle a variety of different types of voice, video, data and other transmissions — the two companies’ phones could eventually take on different features and wind up competing head-to-head.

The result would be “confusion, mistake and deception among consumers,” according to the lawsuit.

Negotiations between the companies broke down just hours before Jobs’ dramatic unveiling of the product Jan. 9 in San Francisco.

The sticking point apparently was Cisco’s demand that in order to use the iPhone name, Apple would have to open up its famously closed products to communicate with some of Cisco’s offerings.

Neither company would discuss what future products might come from the collaboration. But analysts said the deal could help both companies strengthen their positions in the increasingly fierce battle to deliver video and other applications through the network directly to consumers’ homes.

Zeus Kerravala, a network infrastructure analyst with Yankee Group, said there are ample opportunities for the companies to dream up collaborative projects to win over consumers.

One possibility, he said, could be the creation of a Linksys device that users call into to record podcasts that are then automatically uploaded to iTunes, which would make the creation and dissemination of such broadcasts easier.

However, he cautioned that both companies need to be willing to share in order to make the partnership work.

“If the two actually can work together, then the combination of the two is obviously more powerful than the two butting heads,” he said. “There’s no company out there that understands network service like Cisco. And you could argue no other company understands user experience like Apple.”

The dispute highlights the shifting business strategies for both companies.

Cisco, which is Silicon Valley’s most richly valued company with a market capitalization of $166 billion, makes most of its money by selling the routers and switches that direct data traffic over computer networks.

However, the San Jose-based company is also making an aggressive push into the consumer market and toward products that help deliver content, such as cable set-top boxes, wireless broadband routers for the home, and equipment for playing digital music.

Cupertino-based Apple is also expanding its business range from beyond primarily a Macintosh computer and software maker as it capitalizes on the demand for digital music and the soaring popularity of its iTunes and iPod products.

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Feb

21

apple-logo.pngFollowing a meeting with members of Apple’s leadership, Prudential Equity Group said Monday that the company expects the majority of iPhone sales to occur at its own retail chain and that it will not tread on any new product categories for some time.

Present at the meeting, which took place in Cupertino last week, were Prudential analyst Jesse Tortora, Apple CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, Apple Sr. VP of Retail, Ron Johnson, and Apple Sr. Director of Mac Product Marketing, Tom Bogart.

“Apple said that the iPhone will be sold exclusively through its own stores, its website, and Cingular stores,” Tortora wrote in a research note following the get-together. “Management expects the majority of the iPhone sales to occur in Apple stores, given that consumers will likely look to Apple to demonstrate the device’s features.”

Apple told the analyst that once iPhone is thrown into the product mix, it expects to achieve similar per store sales levels as leading U.S. electronics retailer, Best Buy, despite having only about one-tenth the floor space. Tortora approximates this figure at about $30 million per store, or over $5 billion in total for the company’s retail segment over the fiscal year.

In the meantime, Apple said it “doesn’t expect to broadly proliferate into any new categories for a while,” and will instead focus on its four existing product categories in Macs, iPods, iPhone and Apple TV.

Regarding Macs, the company noted that its education segment has been growing faster than its consumer segment in recent quarters. “[Apple] believes that Adobe’s launch of Creative Suite 3 in Q2 will help its Consumer segment, spurring higher sales of both Mac Pro and MacBook Pro,” Tortora wrote.

Apple also told the Prudential analyst that it is comfortable with current iPod channel inventory of 4 to 6 weeks, and that its existing NAND flash contracts are structured in such a way that the company will be able to participate in the full extent of ongoing price declines affecting the solid-state memory.

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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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