Business

Rumors have been swirling around what the next generation iPhone will include and often times personal wants get mixed in as well but a Canadian analyst is pointing out the obvious. A higher end iPhone will all the dream features we want won’t help Apple’s sales.

The iPhone 3G took off drastically thanks to its inclusion of 3G, wider availability and of course a massive price cut over the last generation. Lowering the price would help Apple sell more iPhones but introducing an “iPhone Pro” would add little to Apple’s revenue according to Mike Abramsky, a Royal Bank of Canada analyst. While he does think some kind of fuller featured iPhone will arrive eventually, he speculates it won’t receive the same kind of sales growth the iPhone 3G did. Despite the rumors though, Analysts are very positive about the iPhone’s sales outlook as Gene Muster predicts 4.4 million handsets will be sold in Q2 2009.

Via: Arstechnica

O2 recently introduced massive price cuts to the iPhone in the UK that should pique anyone’s interest but Play.com is offering a different kind of deal: an official contract free iPhone that will work on any GSM carrier.

This is different than AT&T’s contract free iPhone which is just that, a more expensive phone without any commitments but still tied to their network. Play.com however, is making the same version of the iPhone available without any carrier restrictions which means you can put in a SIM card from any GSM carrier and have service for your handset. While you may not get the luxury of Visual Voicemail, the freedom to hop from carriers using a prepaid plan more than makes up for it. The price however, may be a little unsettling. The 8GB version retails for £550 while the 16 GB version goes for £50 more.

Via: Arstechnica

The iPhone in China has been distributed through the black market since its US launch in 2007 much to Apple’s chagrin. Talks between carriers have fallen through numerous times over disagreements in licensing the device but now, it looks like the iPhone will be making its way to China the way Apple intended to.

Talks between major Chinese cellular carriers have failed numerous times with the details only be recently revealed over licensing issues such as revenue splitting in the App Store. Oddly, the iPhone has appeared on a website run by China Unicom’s Shanghai Branch as if in preparation for an imminent launch. A roughly translated version of the text from the Shanghai branch’s page:

The information, which listed smartphones supported by the 3G network China Unicom is building, appeared only on the Web site of the company’s Shanghai branch and did not say whether the products would be offered in China.

The site’s changes follow media reports that a China Unicom delegation visiting Apple last week made a breakthrough in talks over offering the iPhone 3G on its network.

While this is the most reliable evidence we’ve seen… more...

Google has recently blocked access to the Infinite SMS App after it used too much traffic.

The third party App tapped in to the Google Talk protocol allowing users to send text messages to any phone free of cost. After rising to popularity, Google noticed the intense rise in traffic, the service was blocked prompting this quote from the developer:

“Google has claimed no grievance with Infinite SMS other than its success. Their given reason for the block isn’t abuse or wrongdoing; it’s that we brought too many users (and thus too much cost) to an experimental service. We never could have guessed that the two of us would write an app too big for Google,”

Unfortunately, users who bought the App will find it no longer works and have lost $0.99. The decision to cut access to the service was quickly made without consideration for the App as the service acted as an API that third party developers could leverage.

Via: Macworld

One of the pivotal features of the App Store and SDK for iPhone developers was the inclusion of Apple’s Fairplay DRM wrapper which would have prevented App piracy. Unfortunately, crackers found a way around it and allowed Apps to be pirated just like any other kind of Software. The developer behind Full Screen Browser, an App that sticks to its name, isn’t taking piracy lying down.

Developer Ben Chatelain has implemented a phone home component in his App that checks whether or not the user is running a legitimately paid version of his work by reporting the UUID number to his server. Users will have a 10 day grace period before Full Screen Browser will refuse to launch but not before showing a popup convincing pirates to pay for it out of guilt and having enough time to demo the App. While some users will object to having an App phone home, it will be interesting to see if more developers utilize this as another means to protect their work.

Via: iPhones Talk

App developer instctively know that more attention is better. Smart developers go out of their way to get their apps covered in blogs, reviewed by Jovann Washington and so forth. The more attention an app gets the more likely it is to show up in the top 100 list and the higher an app is on the list the more sales an app will make. More sales, of course, means more dough.

But there is one thing developers have no control over: getting an app featured in iTunes. There seems to be some mystery over how apps are chosen for the list. Getting on the list may be enigmatic but the effects of being on the list aren’t as mysterious as they used to be thanks to this post at Howtomakeiphoneapps.com. Once House Hunter was featured sales shot up 18 times and, interestly, revenue was not effected by the price. Interesting stuff!

If you swing by Wired you can see a story about why the Japanese hate the iPhone. The usual suspects are given, there aren’t enough features, the iPhone isn’t Japanese, it’s ugly, the data rate is too high etc.. But those are the reasons people hate it, not the evidence that people hate it. The evidence is that you can get an iPhone for free in Japan if you’re willing to sign that pesky contract. So it looks like the iPhone has a tough row to hoe in Japan, sorry those Japanese are just too tech savvy to fall for the iPhones charms.

But wait just a second, can the article possibly be correct? Well maybe but you have to wonder when the same page reveals that there are four magazines about the iPhone in Japan. From the article:

Here’s a potential get-rich-quick scheme: If you see an extremely successful product, start a magazine about it. That’s what Japan’s been doing with Apple’s iPhone, anyway.

How can we reconcile these two bits of information? How is it possible that on one hand the iPhone in… more...

You’re familiar with the $99 iPhone rumors that refuse to die but you might not know that the idea isn’t universally loved. Some folks that focus on the business side of Apple think the idea of a $99 iPhone is ludicrous. Take Brian Caulfield at Forbes for one. From Brian’s article:

The problem: With consumer spending declining to its lowest levels since 2002, a cheap phone could damage Apple’s sweet iPhone business. “The economics of an entry-level iPhone appear less attractive when factoring in iPhones/iPod cannibalization,” Abramsky wrote. “Apple must sell three $99 iPhones to replace gross profit from one 3G iPhone.”

Here’s a tip for both Brian and Mr. Abramsky: If the $99 iPhone comes out Apple won’t be worried about cannibalization. Apple is a crafty company, you’d think that the Mac mini would be an iMac eating macine but Apple has set things up so that the only people who buy the Mac mini are… Well, hardly anyone buys a mini. One would expect the same with a less profitable iPhone. The low price gets people in the store but no one goes for the base model. Heck how many… more...

You’re familiar with the rumors about Flash on the iPhone, every week a new date for when Flash will show up on the iPhone pops up. The second most rumored iPhone event is the iPhone showing up in China. And if Apple wants to sell the iPhone in China he company wants to partner with China Mobile the largest cell provider in China by a long shot.

Turns out that China Mobile wants more control than Apple is willing to give. According to The Washington Post the latest round of negotiations broke down over who would sell apps to customers. As you would imagine Apple wanted the direct to consumer sales model the company enjoys everywhere the iPhone is sold but China Mobile saw that move as giving Apple too much power and rejected the idea. With 72% of the market and 634 million subscribers China Mobile can swing a big stick.

You’ll know Apple finally capitulated to China Mobile’s demands when the iPhone goes officially on sale in Chine. But don’t hold your breath.

via Washington Post

The President of Phanfare, Andrew Erlichson, has a blog post up examining whether or not the iPhone is a business class device. Let’s jump straight to the conclusion:

In sum, If I were equipping mission critical staff with portable devices that had to work in a disaster where minutes matter to the lives of others, i would use Verizon Blackberrys. The benefits of the iPhone are mostly in providing a more entertaining and well rounded computing experience, things that while nice, are not mission critical for most people in their jobs. A Verizon Blackberry running against Microsoft Exchange using the Enterprise redirector is a workhorse that is nearly perfect for the task at hand.

Andrew reaches this conclusion by critiquing various aspects of the iPhone. The network, non searchble e-mail, the virtual keyboard and a few other things. The conclusion seems to be predicated on the areas where Andrew doesn’t quite feel the iPhone measures up. But the conclusion seems a bit forced, most of the complaints caren’t really anything different than “well, the Blackberry has a slight edge in X situation and since you might, conceivably find yourself… more...