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iCell in the Works?
SirWraith writes "Ars Technica is running a story speculating on the possibility of an Apple cellphone." From the article: "At last week's CES, Motorola officially dumped Apple with its new ROKR E2 phone and its new iRadio digital music service. ... After the ROKR's lackluster launch, speculation abounded that Apple was saving the 'good' iTunes phone for itself, and the new 'Mobile Me' trademark lends credence to that line of thinking. At this stage of the game, it looks like Apple is moving in the direction of launching its own cellular service complete with its own lineup of phones (or phone, as the case may be)."
Portable device convergence has been obvious for years, with the inclusion of cameras, music players, video players, video calling, games etc... being crammed into mobile phones, it's unsurprising that Apple would want to segway its iPod market into the mobile phone market.
Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in? If Apple doesn't capitalise on the current media and consumer 'love' for iPods, then the plethora of other devices with similar or superior function will destroy Apples market (and it's only so long before flash storage becomes comperable in capacity to drive based iPods.)
Apple could quite easily pull off a 'one phone' network not because it was technically superior or cheaper than other networks/handsets, but because Apple would do what Apple does best, give it a slick UI/customer experience and use their flair at advertising to buy the market.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Either way, I'll follow suit and ask how much longer will it be until the iPod is your computer, media player, internet access, cell phone, credit card, personal identification, financial recorder/advisor, taser, keyless entry and pace maker?
My work here is dung.
The disappearance of the 1Gb shuffle might also suggest that its function might be replaced by a "new product". One can't strap a phone to one's arm in a gym, so the smaller shuffle's in a market segment of its own.
Another interesting development is, when Tiger originally came out, a new feature was added that no hardware currently takes advantage of. Tiger can rotate it's screen just like all other Table PCs and most PocketPCs.
Off hand I don't remember how to force it to do so, but Tiger does have this feature. Combined with the new trademark, we may see an Apple PDA and/or Tablet sometime this year.
I wonder of this is business or tit for tat type of thing.
Amongst the uses they include mobile phones.
Also can someone stop beating this rumour to death. They'll release it when they figure out a cool name for the product iCell just sounds lame, especially with the supersecret spreadsheet applications "Cells" (amongst a host of other rumours.) With the latest Apple nomenclature, it'd probable be MacPhone.
I have on this website and on another predicted that Apple will simply buy a mobile phone network. Before anyone argues that they don't have the market cap, I will say that smaller fish have been known to swallow biggers ones, and I believe that there are venture capitalists and banks that would be prepared to back Apple on this one. It's the only logical way to go.
Isamu Sanada is an industial designer who designs fictious
Apple products in his spare time:
http://www.applele.com/index.html
http://www.applele.com/pictures.html
I personally favor this iPhone design:
http://www.applele.com/pict_04hipod_r02.html
Almost better than the real thing!
the interface? Hard to say. To me one of the biggest appeals of the iPod is it has the best damn interface there is for a portable music player. Now is it possible to keep this interface while adding a phone interface? Of course I could be wrong, but I'm guessing no. All they need to do is to give Nokia a ring to find out just how difficult it is to make a phone that also does something else. Face it, humans probably aren't going to change significantly in the next 5 years so we will be stuck with the limitations our little fingers and faces give us. To me, that is the biggest obstacle facing convergance devices.
Monstar L
I think it would be better for Apple to Just add Wi-Fi support to the iPod.
That way Apple will have internet access which they could use for downloading music/video, web-surfing etc.
In a few years, when Wi-Fi is as wide-spread as the cellphone networks are, they can easily convert the iPod to a VoIP phone. All you need is to add a mic and a speaker (or just use head-phones with an attached mic). They could even keep their wheel thingie, and just put numbers around it.
That enables Apple to control their own VoIP network and circumvent the cellphone service providers. Plus they won't need to go through the hassle of incorporating GSM (or whatever) technology into the iPod.
Other speculation is that the play here isn't for a conventional cellphone. It's for VOIP.
:)
A conventional cellphone means that Apple would have to kowtow to all the carriers and their phone would be just one phone among a plethora of other, well-established outfits (Nokia, Moto, Samsung, whoever).
But a VOIP phone using wifi would enable Apple to sidestep being just another player and control the whole thing all the way down the line. Of course there is the minor problem of establishing a huge wifi network, but maybe this is where Google and friends come in, and anyway didn't someone say this is all wild, wild speculation?
Can't recall where I read this. Mabye yesterday on Slashdot
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If Apple is planning to increase the range of devices around its "digital hub", and so benefits from being able to offer more seamless interoperation, is it time that Microsoft got into the hardware business and started building MS PCs?
Or is that what the Xbox is?
I think that Apple can produce a winner in any tech area if it set its collective mind and resources to it.
Or rather, they don't set thier collective minds and resources to it unless they think they can come up with a winner.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog