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NYTimes Speculates On the Next iPhone
Achromatic1978 writes "The NYT has a story on the next revision of the iPhone, and discusses what will become of the iPhone, now that the hype is starting to slow (Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold — as of the first quarter, only 1.7 million have left the shelves). The WWDC is the rumored release date for a next version, and Jobs has promised that this year will see a 3G iPhone released."
1.7 million x 4 = 6.8 million in 2008. Maybe Jobs meant to round up to the nearest 10 million...
Jobs: "We'll just release 4 more versions of the iPhone this year and the same 1.7M painfully hip people will have no choice but to buy them, each time!"
"Wireless. About as much space as a nomad. Still Lame?"
- Steve Jobs, wondering if we're finally satisfied.
Given the ways Apple has crippled the iPhone it seems to me that a well designed open platform has the potential to blow them out of the water.
So how is Open Moko coming along? And are there other candidates that appear to be beyond the vapor stage?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
as much as the next guy. I also love my iPhone, and get quite fanboyish about it, but why is this news? People have been speculating about what the next iPhone will be since the last one came out of the gate. Just because the NY Times puts out pretty much the same story as everywhere else on the internet does not make it news. The article is just a nice concise retread of all the news stories out on the iPhone for the last few months.
Here, let me summarize the article for those not willing to read it: "We know the new iPhone is coming and it will have new features but we don't know what they are beyond 3G but we'll speculate to expand our word count so this is an actual article rather than a short sentence."
The iPhone users use 30x the data of others. That's because Mobile Safari is about 30x better than the competition.
I use an iPod Touch (iPhone minus the phone) as a portable web browser. Some great jail-broken apps (helluv'a ebook reader), too. Amazing experience, yet with mind-boggling weaknesses, too (copy and paste, people???). I'm hoping Opera 9 is going to catch up, because there were other advantages to more conventional PDAs, but, Mobile Safari is just too good to go away from.
So, short sell Apple because they will not perform up-to expectations? Or will Jobs pull one of his a** and somehow sell another 9 million units?
Don't underestimate Steve Jobs, you're talking about the mastermind who after 30 years has managed to dominate an entire 3% of the computer market.
What do you mean they didn't even try to get Verizon? Verizon rejected Apple iPhone deal - USATODAY.COM...
Too many believe that the next iPhone will be head and shoulders above the previous version, and are holding out before purchasing.
Until the new one's released, Apple is a victim of their own hype.
Folks, once the 3g iphone is released, tons of markets will be opened opened up: Japan - big time! The Japanese *will* buy this. China SE Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand) All of these places had 3g networks in place well ahead of the US. There is a reason the iphone didn't land in those places yet, it didn't have 3g!
I doubt that going with AT&T over Verizon has had that desvastating an effect on their sales. I personally would not have bought one if it were Verizon as I had AT&T before and most of my friends and family do as well (yay free mobile to mobile). I think its more an issue that they chose to only make one phone with only one radio system. Either way they were going to alienate someone. In addition its likely a better move to go with AT&T because that opens the doors into Europe with GSM over CDMA.
Tying the hardware to CDMA doesn't make much sense if you're planning on selling the device in other parts of the world, in particular Europe. And note that the device was designed with a quad-band GSM radio, so it's possible they were thinking ahead to non-US sales.
There has been speculation about a higher-resolution camera, possible support for digital video recording, a slightly bulkier and more curved case, and the addition of a global positioning system receiver that would allow new Web services tied to a person's location.
These are all standard features on many Nokia and Windows Mobile phones.
Apple is still just trying to catch up. The only reason for strong US sales is that US carriers have been pushing such feature-poor phones that even the iPhone seems like an improvement.
It would have helped if they had found some way to work with Verizon and other carriers. It will be a cold day in hell (or, at least until Verizon gets considerably worse and AT&T miraculously improves in virtually every area of their service) before I switch to AT&T.
The iPhone looks cool. It's the kind of gadget I'd probably be interested in. A lot of my friends agree. But of all the people I know that wants one, only one actually got one. Everyone else is waiting for that exclusive deal to AT&T to expire and has said they're not switching carriers to get one. (Or, for that matter hacking their phone, either.)
Why companies deliberately lock themselves into agreements with other companies like this is beyond me. Maybe it's working for them. But given how far it looks like they're going to miss their target, it kind of looks like it's not.
I've had service from all of the viable carriers in my area (T-Mobile is available, but there bad coverage makes them non-viable around here). The fact is that if you want to have a cell phone, then you're going to have to deal with a shitty company. They ALL suck.
As a result, I pretty much choose my carrier based on who has the phone I want.
As for the objections to getting stuck in a contract, all I have to say is WTF? If I'm going to spend $400 for a phone, I'm doing it with the intention of using that phone for at least a few years. And since we've already established that ALL of the carriers suck, I don't really see the advantage in being able to switch to a different one.
I know you're joking, but Apple is in many ways the most successful PC manufacturer. By differentiating its products, it is able to charge higher margins, and hence earn higher profits, which has given the company a market capitalisation about as high as IBM's, and far higher than those of HP, Dell, et al.
When Apple tried to compete for market share in the 90s, it did make some gains, but almost went bankrupt in the process, because margins collapsed. Steve Jobs, in contrast to the Apple management of the 90s, has always followed a strategy of selling high-priced, differentiated products, and that's why Apple never went the way of Commodore or Atari in the 80s (even though Commodore had much higher market share), and managed to recover from near death in the 90s, under market-share-driven management, after Jobs returned.
The fact is, Apple may only have 3 pc or so of the market, but as long as that 3 pc prefer Macs enough over other PCs that they're willing to pay a premium for them, Apple can earn a higher profit. It doesn't matter if the other 97 pc prefer PCs (and it's probably less than 97 pc who actually do), because they have so many choices (Dell, HP, Fujitsu-Siemens, etc) that it's difficult for any of the manufacturers serving that 97 pc to earn margins anywhere close to Apple's.
Incidentally, I'm not in the 3 pc (or 5 pc, 10 pc, whatever) who prefer Macs to Windows PCs, so I would only buy a Mac if it was the same price or less for equivalent hardware, including warranty, expected maintenance costs over the life cycle (eg new batteries, upgrades) and so on. So, Steve Jobs would be stupid to try to sell to people like me when he can sell to the ones willing to pay more.
I sometimes wonder what a company with Bill Gates running the management/technical side and Steve Jobs running the marketing/design side would have produced. Microsoft may be more successful overall, but both of those guys are the top entrepreneurs of their generation by far, and have been extremely successful with different business models (with a focus on market share for Microsoft, versus product differentiation for Apple).
As for the objections to getting stuck in a contract, all I have to say is WTF? If I'm going to spend $400 for a phone, I'm doing it with the intention of using that phone for at least a few years. And since we've already established that ALL of the carriers suck, I don't really see the advantage in being able to switch to a different one.
I pretty much agree with everything else you wrote, but there's one advantage in being able to switch: the carrier will be slightly less inclined to treat you like dogcrap in order to keep you from leaving.
Tweet, tweet.
Or it could possibly be that you can't even buy an iPhone from Apple [store.apple.com] at the moment.
I know I am one of them. Then again I know all too well on why not to by revision A apple hardware.
Then again I just wish people would use the real numbers. While only 2 million units had been sold in the first 5 months Apple gave themselves 18 months to hit 10 million.
With the fact you haven't been able to buy an iPhone for the past month, as thy are sold out EVERYWHERE and most of Europe can't use Edge massively limiting marketshare.
I won't be surprised that the 3G iPhone sells two million units in the first month.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Does this really matter? I know this has been "the next big thing" with telephones since at least the 80s, but let's be logical.
If they did, we'd have it on our land lines and such already. The customer has spoken, they much prefer the ability to roam around the house with a cordless phone than to have a video chat.
People want to walk around with them. They want to drive while using them. They want to eat at restaurants, use restrooms, and anything else you can think of. They don't want to have to stand still and stare at something for the duration of a phone call.
You think the talk time on an iPhone is nice? How about with 3G where they may, through some feat of engineering, manage to get 1/2 to 2/3s that? Now engage the CPU to manage things, and video encoders and decoders (since the CPU won't be able to keep up with encoding it), and run the camera all the time. Guess how long your video chat will last. I'd say 15-30 min would be an impressive feat.
You'll need a camera on the front of the phone. That means either it's in a bad spot to take pictures, it needs to be turnable, or you need to have two. Of course I can already video conference using iChat if I'm near my computer. I often don't want people to see me when I'm talking to them (often doesn't add anything to the conversation, just takes away my attention to other things around me).
I'm pretty sure we'd have something by now (at least 1 FPS video or 15 FPS postage stamp video) on most phones if people cared. I think my phone supports voice and video SMS. Anyone actually use those?
Video conferencing is one of that those amazing technologies that seems to make a great demo but almost no one seems to care about for an actual product.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Not really a logic response.
It would be better to point out that they are focused on a different market... and have 95% of that market.
Not to mention how well that have done since his return.
Best case is to ignore the troll.
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A quote from the article... "Nokia sells more phones in a week than Apple has sold since it started". Of course it's not a fair comparison, but it also shows that the iPhone has not been the "OMG REVOLUTION" that some claim it has.
It makes perfect sense for AT&T to enter into an agreement like this. This makes them the sole provider of an artifically limited resource (service for an IPhone). Given that there is any demand at all for the IPhone, this can only mean good news for AT&T.
But why did Apple enter into this agreement? It artifically restricted their market to those who are willing to accept AT&T as a service provider. That will clearly send some potential buyers away to competing products. Why would you do that to yourself?
I can think of two reasons:
1) AT&T subsidized the development and/or production of the phones, thus offsetting the potential cost of lost business (one can only guess as to whether or not it was worth it).
2) Steve Jobs is a control freak who just LOVES any business model that includes any kind of vendor lock-in. Given the artificial limitations placed on software development/distribution for the IPhone, and similar behavior for every other product Apple has produced, I'd say this is a well-supported statement. I further think that Steve Jobs honestly believes that imposing arbitrary limits on his customers increases his hold on his market and hence improves overal profit, though in my opinion he is dead wrong (and I will point to the success of more open systems such as the PC and Windows (I didn't say "open," I said "more open") to support my position).
So that's why.
Until Apple gets another CDMA carrier,Verizon users will be SOL. Why support another technology when you can do GSM and get most of the world?
I've become quite frustrated and disillusioned about the iPhone. Once the bells and whistles wore off, I've seen the obvious: it's essentially a featureless, fancy phone.
Apple's apparent apathy toward consumer feedback and requests for functionality is a serious turn off. Irregardless of whether it's a first-generation device or not, it seems they spend more time and effort trying to keep this phone "locked down" than in pursuing more useful functionality.
I'm sick of having to visit viewmymessage.com (which doesn't always work well) every time someone sends an MMS. The iPhone is devoid of basic document viewing capabilities, the camera is average.
At this stage, after a slightly buggy 1.1.4 release, the fact that I must "jailbreak" my phone to make it more useful is rather sad. This little phone is capable of so much more.
I'm not alone in this feeling; several of my friends and co-workers who have the phone are growing tired of it.
Conversely, RIM/Blackberry seems to have done it right when it comes to useful phones. Their Blackberry Bold (due in July for AT&T) will be 3G, can do iTunes, the screen size is the same as the iPhone, a real QWERTY keyboard, etc.
That will be my new phone. The iPhone will very likely become an overpriced, featureless paperweight (unless I sell it).
I love Apple computer systems, they are top notch, but I feel they messed up with the iPhone. From what I've heard of the 3G phone, there's no motivation for me to hang out and spend more money on the product line.
What I found very disappointing recently was when I posted a politely critical message about the slow development cycle of iPhone features on discussions.apple.com that got "moderated" (read: deleted) with a private response saying I wasn't allowed to be critical of Apple's internal processes.
Not only was that generally petty, I think it speaks volumes (image control, etc).
Goodbye, iPhone...
Apple isn't alone in this. You shouldn't buy revision A from anybody.
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