Apple Orders 12 Million iPhones

Waqas writes "Apple has placed an order for 12 million iPhones to be built by a Taiwanese contract manufacturer, according to an analyst citing reports from Asia. The Chinese-language Commercial Times on Wednesday cited Taiwan-based sources within Apple's iPod component supply chain as saying the phone is due to arrive during the first half of next year."

Comments

It's all about the interface

[jmp_nyc]

While I don't care about a phone that plays music or video, I want a phone that has a quick, intuitive interface for placing calls and text messages to people in my address book. I find that each time I've had to replace my phone, I'm progressively less satisfied with the interface. It seems like Motorola et al are so worried about form factor that they ignore interface design.

For example, about 7 years ago I got a Motorola StarTac. It was the coolest form factor phone at the time, and had a reasonable interface. Each name in my phone directory could have multiple numbers associated with it, with each number having an icon for office, home, cell, etc. When I wanted to call someone, I first selected the name, then the appropriate icon from that person's list. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it worked reasonably well. Now I've got a Motorola RAZR, and they've somehow lost the ability to recognize that a single person can have multiple numbers. If I have office, home, and cell numbers stored for the same person, I get three entries for them, making the full list of names much longer. Not only are phone makers not making steps forward, they're moving backwards.

Given Apple's track record, I'd say they're the most likely candidates to figure out an elegant cell phone interface, and I'm looking forward to the iPhone for that reason alone. If the interface is half decent, I'll be buying one to replace my RAZR.
-JMP

Re:It's all about the interface

[oldosadmin]

Being a guy with a heavy southern accent, phone dial doesn't like me much :(.

I wish they'd make it work better for those of us from the south :)

My LG has that multi-number icon deal

[mekkab]

ANd the best feature of all, a timer. And not just an alarm clock (which it does have) but a "ring 10/30/60/ minutes from now" timer, and it's only 4 keystrokes TOTAL (my old nokia had me set the time and date and it took 12+ keystrokes).

Re:It's all about the interface-My RAZR

[Nom du Keyboard]

I also had a StarTac, now have a RAZR, and had a V60i in-between. I have no trouble with my Verizon RAZR associating multiple numbers with a single name entry. Perhaps you just aren't entering them correctly.

My beef with the RAZR is its Voice Recognition. While it works, it doesn't understand my preferred terminology. With the V60i, I recorded my own voice tag for selected numbers. That let me refer to a telephone as Name Cell. RAZR only accepts NAME MOBILE. Also for business numbers I used Name Office. The RAZR only understands Name Work.

How will the iPhone fare?

[nevesis]

So, I'm rather curious as to Slashdot's opinion on the iPhone.

Most industry/financial analysts have been harshly attacking Apple for the iPhone. (Many of these same analysts were gushing over Motorola's "genius" idea to design a "cool" cell phone, ala razr)

So I ask you, Slashdot analysts, how will the iPhone fare?

Apple Product Lifecycle

[The Hobo]

The headline reminded me of the (in?)famous lifecycle

What if?

[UnknowingFool]

What if the iPhone isn't also an MP3 player? What if it's just a phone? Here's my thoughts: my phone sucks. The interface is horrible. If Apple designs a better phone, would people buy it? Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves. I'll give you another topic. The holy Roman empire was neither holy nor Roman. Discuss.

GSM or CDMA? Which carriers?

[Nick Driver]

Will these phones be GSM or CDMA? And are there any carriers lined up for them? I'd predict they'll likely be GSM since most USA CDMA carriers like to cripple the snot out of their phones and remove all the cool features unless they can nickel and dime their customers out of pay-per-use of those features. Heaven forbid you wish to make your own mp3 ringtones without buying them from the carrier or anything like that, or dare to use BT for anything other than connecting an earpiece.

Re:GSM or CDMA? Which carriers?

[Michael Wardle]

Or UMTS, the "3G" standard used in most of Europe and Asia.

Most 2.1 GHz UMTS phones also speak GSM, but UMTS would be a great feature as it allows much faster download speeds, which could be handy if you're downloading 128 kb/s AAC song files! It would allow you to download a three minute song in one minute.

It's not just the interface...

[DerekTomes]

...but I'm sure Apple will do a good job of it. Phone technology at the moment is a pain in the butt. Most of us have a home phone, a mobile and a work phone not to mention skype/voip. Why can't these all be the same thing? I'd like a phone that figures out the best way to contact someone and calls the correct number. I'd like a phone that:

• when I'm at home rings if someone dials in on my home number
• when I'm at work rings if someone dials in on my work number
• if I have voip and the person I'm after it does too, call using that

I really don't cary about being to take photos. I own a camera that is vastly better than my phone camera. I'm hoping Apple will shake the tree a bit with a new phone concept. I'm unimpressed with most of the phones at the moment because they really only offer new ways for TelCos to take money off me.

Re:How about SD?

[StikyPad]

Yeah, this is what turned me off:

You can download songs only through the included USB cable. There's no way to transfer iTunes music wirelessly, you can't listen to music through a Bluetooth headset, and you can't use iTunes tracks as ring tones. The strict 100-song storage limit hasn't changed either, and all songs must be saved on the TransFlash card, assuming you haven't filled it up with a lot of other data. And forget the idea of storing more music on the phone's skimpy 5MB of integrated memory--it just isn't possible. So in other words, don't get too excited about circumventing the inadequate 100-song cap. Like the Rokr, the Slvr L7 also connects with only one computer at a time. When we tried connecting to a second computer, the Slvr L7, like the Rokr E1, erased all our previously loaded songs. http://reviews.cnet.com/Motorola_Slvr_L7/4505-6454 _7-31313329.html

So it would seem you couldn't just pop in a (micro) SD card with mp3s on it and go. Even worse, it's only USB 1.1.

Re:A special kinda stoopid

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

The Mac maker has placed an order for 12 million iPhones to be built by a Taiwanese contract manufacturer, according to an analyst citing reports from Asia. Hon Hai Precision, whose customers include Apple, Cisco, Dell, Nokia, and Sony, has received the order, according to a Taiwan media report cited by UBS Investment Research.

Notice that this is a guess by UBS Investment Research based on a guess by a Taiwanese media. It could be that they came to the conclusion based on part orders instead of from a leak by Hon Hai. They've been manufacturing computers and iPod for Apple for a long time to know the penalty of leaking unreleased product info. IIRC, there were orders shifted to Quanta because of leaks in the past. IOW, Hon Hai may be innocent of this rumor.

Wish people would get over phone subsidies

[Timbotronic]

Interesting to see that TFA is already predicting that the iPhone will bomb because it can't compete with subsidised handsets in the US. I really wish this meme would die.

For one thing, of course there's no such thing as a free phone. You just pay the cost over time through higher call plans. Admittedly, you may get some benefit of scale when the network buys handsets in bulk but there's no reason Apple couldn't do that too. More likely some company will just start offering much cheaper pre-paid SIM plans like everywhere else in the world.

Another thing, the US carrier market is only a minor fraction of the world market. There are 1.5 *billion* handsets in the world. There are around 300M US citizens. Do the math. The European and Asian markets are enormously larger and people there are used to buying unlocked handsets so that they can connect to any network they like. Here in Australia we've had number portability for years.

Lastly, independence from carriers is a *good* thing. We need to stop carriers dictating phone features. I'd like to see a phone that can switch to WiFi when it gets a signal, or peer to peer when I'm close to the person I'm calling. Think the carriers want that? There's no technical reason that phones can't do this today, but the longer the carriers control the phones people buy, the longer it'll take to happen.