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."

Round it up!

[by Anonymous Coward]

1.7 million x 4 = 6.8 million in 2008. Maybe Jobs meant to round up to the nearest 10 million...

Re:Round it up!

[Lepton68 (116619)]

You must include all the phones sold in 2007. At the launch, Jobs said they would sell ten million phones by the end of 2008. I believe they will have no problem exceeding the goal. The 3G phone will sell very well, and they have made agreements for it to be sold in many more countries.

Re:Round it up!

[wootest (694923)]

Well, no. Apple's confirmed that they intended "10 million in 2008". See: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/mystery_solved__what_apple_s_10_million_iphones_goal_means__aapl_ [alleyinsider.com]

Re:Round it up!

[geekoid (135745)]

Yeah, it's on a Blog, it must be true.
I note they didn't give any Apple reference, on another Blog that says the same thing.
Whoop - Dee- Doo.

Well, Apple told me they meant 2007 and 2008. If you don't believe, just refer to this post.

Re:Round it up!

[NilObject (522433)]

They can sell 10 million, easy:

http://www.macworld.com/article/133636/2008/05/10_million_iphones.html [macworld.com]

It would have helped...

[KingSkippus (799657)]

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.

Good luck - verizon?

[mveloso (325617)]

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?

Re:I'll tell you why

[Geoffrey.landis (926948)]

...I can think of two reasons:

...2) Steve Jobs is a control freak

I'm not at all sure I agree with this, but I do see a lot of advantages in Apple's "control freak" theory. Basically, in the iPhone model, the phone and the carrier are a single integrated structure. The exclusive agreement gives them the ability to dictate exactly what the service provides and how. So the customers are buying a system, not a set of parts that they assemble into their own system.

Having been part of a lot of situations in which each vendor says that the problem isn't in their part of the system, it's in the other guy's part, I can see a lot of advantage to them in keeping tight control (so the pieces do play well together), and even some advantage to the customer (in that when things fail, they don't get run around in circles trying to figure out which vendor to go to,)

Re:I'll tell you why

[hey! (33014)]

Well, I may have misunderstood, but I thought that Apple demanded and received a cut of the service fees customers paid AT&T.

So, Apple's incentive was that they made more money.

Also, I think there is an element of long term strategy. Nobody knows better than Jobs that big, splashy product launches can be followed by more big splashy product launches.

I bet a lot of people switched to AT&T just to get an iPhone. I bet there aren't a lot of people who would be willing to spend the launch price for an iPhone on their carrier, who didn't eventually get one.

So, think of it this way: Apple probably sold as many iPhones as they could make at a price that was shocking, but not utterly insane. Naturally they could manufacture more at an insane price, but they probably wouldn't have made more profit, and certainly not as much of a splash. The way the whole iPod thing works is you've got to see somebody else with one, then want one for yourself.

Now notice that as soon as the demand slackened, they dropped the price, which means they're watching the adoption curve carefully. When they've milked the universe of people willing to switch to AT&T for everything they can (demonstrating their monster clout to all the other carriers at the same time), they'll have a new, really cool iPhone waiting. If they've calculated things right, this will be right around the time their exclusive deal with AT&T runs out.

Which means that a whole bunch of people who've been sitting on the fence because of AT&T will be able to get one with their current carrier -- for a hefty consideration. It'll be like the second coming of Beatlemania, or like Jobs was peddling an elixir that cured cancer and increased your sex appeal by 800%.

It will be like nothing you've ever seen before.

Anyways, that'd be Jobsian strategic thinking. He stays ahead by planning ahead.

How to get to 10M in 2008:

[by Anonymous Coward]

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!"

Re:How to get to 10M in 2008:

[linuxci (3530)]

The 2.0 iPhone firmware will support Exchange connectivity [apple.com], it's been licensed from Microsoft so no legal issues for Apple on this front.

Let's get this outa the way...

[Tackhead (54550)]

"Wireless. About as much space as a nomad. Still Lame?"
- Steve Jobs, wondering if we're finally satisfied.

Summary

[whisper_jeff (680366)]

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."

So much more data

[Average (648)]

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.

Re:So much more data

[Colonel Korn (1258968)]

The iPhone users use 30x the data of others. That's because Mobile Safari is about 30x better than the competition.

The "30x the data of other users" includes the vast majority of users who don't have data plans at all, so you should have said: That's because iPhone users all have data plans.

still catching up on features

[nguy (1207026)]

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.

Re:They totally screwed themselves

[Coopjust (872796)]

What do you mean they didn't even try to get Verizon? Verizon rejected Apple iPhone deal - USATODAY.COM [usatoday.com]...

One Advantage

[weston (16146)]

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.

Re:How's Open Moko doing?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Much as it is disappointing, I don't think an open platform phone will "blow" the iPhone out of the water any more than Linux is currently blowing Windows out of the water. Consumers choose style and functionality, and business choose features. The "open" platform will only be successful inasmuch as it is a means to those ends.

As for the article, I think it's obvious the iPhone hype is lessened, but that doesn't mean sales are bad. The way I see it, they've already sold 1.7 million phones this year without a major revision. 10 million seems attainable.

Re:Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold

[by Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold

[geekoid (135745)]

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.

Availability depressing sales?

[daveywest (937112)]

Or it could possibly be that you can't even buy an iPhone from Apple [store.apple.com] at the moment.

Re:Video conferencing the ace in the hole?

[MBCook (132727)]

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.

1. People don't care.

   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.

2. It's a cell phone.

   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.

3. Battery life.

   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.

4. Other Stuff.

   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).

5. 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.

Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year

[abolitiontheory (1138999)]

I agree. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the obvious connection between the weak sales of the first gen iPhone in Q1 and the impending release of the second generation iPhone in Q2. Don't you guys see? Q1 is *always* the weakest quarter, saleswise. not to mention you can't even buy the 1st gen iPhone from the website anymore, and like the article said, local supplies are drying up. What does that matter when millions of people buy the 2nd gen iPhone in the month(s) after release?

Besides this, didn't Jobs say he wanted to sell 10M iPhones by2008, not in 2008? Geeze and I'm not even a Mac fanboi (double checks). I hear a lot of unjustified bashing and it seems like people are missing basic ques. 3G + deals in foreign countries + techno-lust + the Christmas season and business apps = easily 10M iPhones by the end of the year, I say.

Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year

[gorim (700913)]

Having lived in Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia, you absolutely don't have your facts straight. Those countries all have modern 3G/UMTS networks. I bought phones in both Japan and Malaysia 3 years ago that did both GSM and 3G everywhere in the region and world (except 3G in US because USA used different frequencies.) Korea is CDMA only but I never went there...