Apr

30

lemon-slice.jpgThe Illinois House passed a cellphone lemon law, a measure that would allow consumers with defective handsets to break wireless service contracts without penalty. Under the bill, subscribers whose cellphones must be repaired or replaced as a result of mechanical or manufacturing defects three times or more can cancel their service contracts without having to pay an early termination fees. Such charges range between $150 and $200 per line. The House bill, approved by a 72-to-43 margin Thursday, now heads to the Senate for consideration.

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Apr

25

steve.jpg“We are taking this bold step to leverage what we do best,” chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer said during a conference call with analysts and members of the media. He added that some of the new iPhone applications will be “entirely new applications.”

Oppenheimer offered few additional details on the two-pronged initiative, but implied that the new features and applications would be made available through automatic software updates to both iPhone and Apple TV.

In order to account for the new features, Apple said it will document iPhone and Apple TV income through a subscription based accounting model, in which income will be distributed over a 24-month period. Payments from AT&T/Cingular will be reported on a quarterly basis.

During the call, executives for the Cupertino-based company also revealed that Apple retail store personnel are “putting a lot of energy into preparing for the launch” of iPhone and how to best market the revolutionary device to customers.

Although Apple has yet to begin taking iPhone orders through retail or its online store, it said to expect an announcement at a later date.

The company remains on track to introduce the device in Europe during the fourth calendar quarter (Oct. - Dec.) and Asia in 2008. In the United States, iPhones will be sold via Apple.com, Cingular.com, Apple retail stores, and Cingular/AT&T retail stores. They will not be sold through Cingular/AT&T partner stores such as Best Buy.

Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook would not comment on initial iPhone supply, explaining that the company had not yet begun manufacturing ramp of the device.

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Apr

23

att_cingular_logo.jpgCingular, which acquired AT&T Wireless, recently decided that the iPhone will appeal to business users and the operator is now working hard to ensure that its back-end enterprise billing and support systems will accommodate the device when it ships, said a source familiar with the company’s plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

An AT&T spokesman said he couldn’t comment on the iPhone beyond when it will become available and its price. The phone is expected to become available in June. It will cost $499 or $599 depending on the memory size. Initially, AT&T will be the exclusive provider of the iPhone, although other service providers are expected to eventually start selling it as well.

The idea of marketing the iPhone as an enterprise product baffles some analysts.

If AT&T announces that it will be marketing the phone to enterprise customers, “we’d be against it,” said Ken Dulaney, an analyst with Gartner, who said he hasn’t heard of such a plan from the operator. “We’d immediately tell our customers that’d be a very serious mistake.”

No matter what kind of reputation a vendor has, if it’s making its first phone, Dulaney would be unlikely to recommend it. “Building a phone is one of the most difficult things to do,” he said.

Also, the iPhone is expected to have a number of shortcomings for business users, he said. For example, it doesn’t have a removable battery. “You’d be crazy to buy without that,” Dulaney said. The phone has multiple processors, which consumes more battery life than single processors, he said.

It also comes with a touch screen and no buttons, making it difficult for users to dial while driving, he noted.

He suspects that enterprises will likely decide against the iPhone for similar reasons that many decide not to standardize on Mac computers. Even if the iPhone is attractive, like the Mac, they’ll choose BlackBerry or Windows Mobile devices because those have more software application options, he said.

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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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Apr

19

It’s been an exciting and unpredictable couple weeks for Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry. The company on April 11 announced fourth-quarter earnings were up and its subscriber base has hit 8 million users. But the latest talk has been about an overnight outage Tuesday that affected its 5 million North American users.

Mike Lazaridis, co-ceo at RIM, stopped by for a visit and we talked about a number of issues starting with the outage. He said the company’s still working out the cause of the problem.

“Our first priority was to get people back up and running and we did that. We worked all night and were up by the morning,” said Lazaridis. “Next, we’re doing forensics to see what happened to a doubly redundant system.”

Lazaridis said he’s confident BlackBerry users will not see a reoccurrence anytime soon. He added that the BlackBerry system has consistently been more reliable than competitors. “What’s important is look at when the last time this happened and how reliable we’ve been compared to anything else,” he said.

Lazaridis also weighed in on Apple’s iPhone, which will debut in late June. He said Apple’s move into the smart phone space has been a boon for the industry, creating hype around a category that has so far been a niche in the larger cell phone market.

“What the iPhone does is make smart phones mainstream. It’s raising all the boats in the harbor. People are now saying smart phones are the wave of the future. BlackBerrys are at the core of that,” he said.

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Apr

19

“It’s a great music phone, and I’m sure it will be fantastic and have an interesting user interface,” Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific head of smartphone strategy Chris Sorenson told press during a recent visit to Australia.
“However, it’s a closed device that you cannot install applications on, and there’s no support for Office documents. If you’re an enterprise and want to roll out line of business applications, it’s just not an option. Even using it as a heavy messaging device will be a challenge,” the executive added.
One hundred and forty phone models already run Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system, while Apple’s new device is not expected to hit the US market until June, and Australia in 2008. The Windows mobile devices have picked up a significant portion of the converged device market, although they are up against the dominance of Nokia and its Symbian OS, Research in Motion and its BlackBerry OS, and decreasingly, Palm.
While the entry of the iPhone (with its cut-down version of Mac OS X) into this market offers new options for consumers, Sorenson believes user familiarity with the Windows Mobile interface — and the ease with which companies can buy and develop applications for the platform — will sustain its increasing popularity and help keep the iPhone out of the lucrative corporate market.
Windows Mobile was released in May 2005, but it wasn’t until early 2006 that devices based on the operating system had become widely available to Australian buyers. By contrast, devices running the latest version 6 of Windows Mobile (WM6) will be on the Australian market before the end of the month — beating Microsoft’s own projections that the platform would ship in the third calendar quarter.
While the iPhone will focus on integrating phone, Internet browsing and iPod features, WM6 adds enterprise-targeted features such as better synchronisation of data between mobile devices and office servers.
“The market in Australia is demanding the newest and greatest mobile technology.”

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Apr

14

It’s beginning to look like Apple will miss the boat on its deadline for the iPhone. So, why do I think the iPhone will be delayed?

First, we learned this week that Apple is being forced to shift engineers from its much-anticipated Leopard OS to make sure the iPhone actually makes its schedule.

Then rumors broke that Apple shifted the launch date from the week of June 11 to the end of June. Some Mac fans claimed that this move was a bait & switch — i.e. deny that Jobs will launch the iPhone at the WWDC then launch the iPhone at the WWDC. But what if Apple is really struggling just to get the iPhone out sometime in the month of June to save face?

Still not enough evidence that the iPhone’s product development cycle might not be on schedule? Let’s not forget the rumor that broke last week that the iPhone’s battery life is horrible. Or that some mole at Cingular, the same source for the battery life rumor, claimed there are “lots of issues” with the device.

And there is the ever-present skepticism from bloggers like John Dvorak and wireless industry insiders, both of whom claim that the iPhone will be copied by cut-rate, cheaper clones within weeks of its release.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Building cell phones is tough work and many a first-time company has been humbled by the experience. Many wireless industry insiders have claimed since January that Apple would find building a cell phone much harder than they initially planned. I think these rumors that have been breaking for the last few weeks are possible signs that things aren’t going as well for the iPhone as everyone had hoped.

Then again, maybe I am wrong. Do you think that the iPhone will ship on time in June? Or will Apple be forced to eat some humble pie by delaying the release? And even if it ships, will the iPhone be a flop, as some predict?

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Apr

12

apple-logo.pngApple Statement

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones.

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Apr

11

1176211692.gifMore as it develops, but the big story so far from Palm’s Investor Day today is that Palm has been working on a new version of the PalmOS that is based on a Linux kernel. Details are still very scant, but so far we know the following:

palm.jpgPalmOS 5 devices (currently the latest version) will still be released later this year
Devices based on the Linux kernel should be released by the end of the year.
The OS is separate from the Access Linux Platform, it is Palm’s own homegrown OS.
Palm will not license the OS to other manufacturers
It is highly likely that the new OS will use Opera as its default browser, given the recent agreement between Palm and Opera.
As can be seen by the graphic below, Palm seems to intend that the Linux-based PalmOS will maintain some backward compatibility (i.e. “Commitment to the Palm OS Commmunity”). It seems clear that Palm has no desire to license Access’s mobile OS, but prefers to develop their own to leverage the long experience in creating software with great usability. This PalmOS will be separate from Access’ OS. Furthermore, Colligan made it clear that Palm has no intention of licensing the new OS to other hardware manufacturers.

Colligan also pointed out that Palm recently acquired Chatteremail, a great PalmOS email client. Also of note is that Palm has recently entered into an agreement with Opera to use their browser on “future Palm products.” In other words, it seems likely that Palm will not even be using Access’s browser, Netfront, which has been the basis for Blazer.

Read Full Story at Treo Central

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Apr

10

nav_logo_on.gifAward winning accessories for the Apple iPhone. From Engadget to Gizmodo, Handheld Magazine to PC Today, BoxWave continues to win industry awards and international attention by producing innovative, elegantly simple accessories with proven reliability.

BoxWave’s list of award winning accessories include: multi-magazine honored ClearTouch screen protectors, all in one VersaCharger PRO, premium Designio leather cases, ultra portable miniSync cable, and more.

Boxwave

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