NYTimes Speculates On the Next iPhone 302
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! (Score:5, Funny)
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! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's stated iPhone sales goals (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Round it up! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Round it up! (Score:5, Funny)
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! (Score:4, Informative)
If you're still skeptical, you should easily be able to find what you regard as more reputable sources transcribing the same calls to confirm or deny.
http://www.macrumors.com/2007/01/17/apple-posts-1-billion-in-profit-1q-2007-and-financial-call-notes/ [macrumors.com]
http://www.macrumors.com/2007/10/22/apple-4q-2007-results-conference-call-6-22-billion-revenue-904-million-prof/ [macrumors.com]
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In plain simple english, they want to hit 1% market share which is 10 million iPhones at some point in 2008.
Re:Round it up! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.macworld.com/article/133636/2008/05/10_million_iphones.html [macworld.com]
It would have helped... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Out for a smaller market, sees success, gets expanded.
I hope that's the plan for the iPhone. If I could ahve just bought a phone, put my chip in it(or transfer the data from my current phone) and continue to use my plan, I'd have one.
I'll tell you why (Score:3, Interesting)
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 th
Re:I'll tell you why (Score:5, Insightful)
...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 (Score:4, Insightful)
It was obviously in AT&T's interest to secure an exclusivity agreement. Whether the iPhone deal would have fallen through without such an exclusivity clause, I don't know.
Now, let's remember that most of the world is GSM/HSDPA-based, and distributing a CDMA/EV-DO (Verizon) phone would require essentially the development of a new iPhone (to a certain extent).
Finally, let's remember that AT&T had to implement certain new network features for the iPhone, notably to support visual voicemail. I'm sure that Apple was happy to have an exclusive agreement in order to have more control over the services available.
In the end, distributing the iPhone through Verizon would certainly increase the addressable market (but if you consider the global market, only marginally). Nevertheless, I'm sure that AT&T compromised in order to obtain the exclusive deal and that both companies benefited from it.
Re:I'll tell you why (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Good luck - verizon? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It would have helped... (Score:4, Informative)
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'll explain what is going on since nobody else seems to have an idea for me to use my mod points on. As I understand it, several of the key features of the iPhone such as the visual voice mail that set it apart from other phones and make it function the way Apple wanted it to for the user, require back end support by the telco company to do so. Why does a telco company go the extra effort to support just one brand of phone? Because they get an exclusive deal. So, AT&T agreed to handle back end support for iPhone features, and in return got their exclusive contract from Apple. After that deal is over, or if you can get an unlocked iPhone, you'll be able to set it up on another service, but some features they have been advertising simply won't work because there is no backend support. Some people might not notice so it's a non-issue from the start for them, others might be willing to deal with AT&T for those features. Like any feature, it's only good if you use it. Apple however is touting those features because it is what sets them apart from the other phones and provides the usability that they are known for rather than just another geek toy.
re: Verizon (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm honestly convinced that MUCH of this is just "voodoo" - caused by complex interactions among multiple factors. (EG. You have the right make and model of phone, happen to live and work in the right places that are close to a certain carrier's towers, and/or haven't had any billing hassles with your present carrier.)
I believed all the "hype" and claims of var
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How to get to 10M in 2008: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How to get to 10M in 2008: (Score:5, Informative)
Let's get this outa the way... (Score:5, Funny)
- Steve Jobs, wondering if we're finally satisfied.
Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold (Score:2)
Re:Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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Re:Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Jobs goal for 2008 was ten million iPhones sold (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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This is success.
How's Open Moko doing? (Score:3, Interesting)
So how is Open Moko coming along? And are there other candidates that appear to be beyond the vapor stage?
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Sadly, I hear the current software isn't that stable (they ARE still developing it), and without a deal to land these in stores, it faces an uphill battle for adoption, at least in the USA.
Personally, I'm waiting to see how Android turns out.
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I'll buy a FreeRunner (despite the dumb name) as soon as it's available, which sounds like it will be pretty soon. Steve says [openmoko.org] he might get phones as soon as June 1, which is only 3 days from now.
$400 (or 10% less, in 10-packs) is no big deal, considering the absolute cheapest service plans seem to run about $30/month. People complained about the iPhone's upfront cost, too, but mo
Re:How's Open Moko doing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:How's Open Moko doing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why I think an open platform can displace iPhone.
It takes a major bump in functionality to displace an entrenched market player. If the iPhone weren't crippled an open phone platform would have much the same adoption dynamics as Linux vs. Microsoft/Apple desktops: A sliver and gradual growth.
But the iPhone IS massively crippled, and attempts to un-cripple it are met with update-to-brick attacks as Apple tries to protect its revenue model and that of its carrier partner(s). And it seems likely that competition could lead them to uncripple it broadly and rapidly enough to prevent a market shift.
This leaves the open platform with an opportunity to make massive functionality improvements and additions that Apple/AT&T-etc. can't or won't match. And that could driver the shift.
As Ubuntu has shown, you no longer have to be a geek to use the advanced feature set of an open platform. The same could be true of an open phone platform: Out of the box already far more functional than iPhone (or whatever), download new whiz-bangs with a few touches as it is developed and you decide you want it - or get your retailer's service department to do it for you for a very nominal fee (or the techie in the next cube or your internet-savvy kid to do it for nothing).
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But the iPhone IS massively crippled, and attempts to un-cripple it are met with update-to-brick attacks
There's no evidence of this. Only one firmware update has bricked phones, and this was found to be due to an *improper unlock procedure* that overwrote some data, but not others, resulting in a very confused updater and hence, the bricking. You cannot seriously expect Apple to bend over backwards to make sure they're not bricking hacked phones.
And if you look back into interwebnet history, you will see that the iPhone Dev Team released a patcher that "fixed" the broken unlock, and from that point forwar
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As Ubuntu has shown, you no longer have to be a geek to use the advanced feature set of an open platform.
But most people don't want the advanced feature set. They want a basic one that works well with everything, all the time.
I love speculating about the iPhone (Score:3, Insightful)
Summary (Score:5, Funny)
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So much more data (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that Mobile Safari performs well helps, but my phone is easy enough to use online, I just can't see paying $50 for the data usage on top of my already exorbitant rate plan with AT&T...
Re:So much more data (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:They totally screwed themselves (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They totally screwed themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
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I doubt that going with AT&T over Verizon has had that desvastating an effect on their sales.
AT&T probably wasn't a bad choice since they are the largest carrier with 71 million subscribers. Thing is, that's less than a 1/3 of US cell phones. If they had offered a version for Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, they could have tripled their available market.
Obviously the terms they offered to Verizon weren't acceptable, so their greed has resulted in lower sales. Very simple.
With carriers offering different levels of service, and all the 'contract extensions' when buying new phones, it c
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But probably more money. So which is better, more sales, or more profit? The deal they stuck with ATT seems to be very lucrative to Apple. Apple could have sold out a long time ago, with their OS, even with the ipod, but they stuck to their way of doing business. Not going for the lowest commmon denominator.
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However you're absolutely right about the single radio system thing. If they're going to only choose one (and having to figure out compatibility is decidedly un-Apple), you can be damn sure that they're going to go with the global standard, even if the screwbal
Maybe they were looking beyond the US market (Score:4, Insightful)
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Japan and Korea, the other 2 big CDMA markets already have very a entrenched smartphone market as well.
Like Verizon is really better (Score:2)
My hate for AT&T is strong, and I haven't bought an iPhone yet in part because of that.
However, if it'd been Verizon, I'd be even more unlikely to buy (as in "probably never"). Verizon is arguably as bad or worse than AT&T in terms of general evil towards their customers.
Not that a non-evil mobile operator exists.
Re:Like Verizon is really better (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
One Advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Hell, the lowered my DSL price mid-contract. They had no obligation to do so, but the included current customer in a deal they were running.
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Sorry but CDMA EVDO is nothing like the speeds I can get on AT&T's 3G network. I have both (a work phone and a personal phone) and there is no comparison between the two services. AT&T 3G offers vastly superior transfer speeds and far lower latency. More often then not my tethered blackjack is faster then the wired network at hotels.
Video conferencing the ace in the hole? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Video conferencing the ace in the hole? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
In a recession here.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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What makes you think that the entire US population is tied up in foreclosures? You know that the US population just rolled 300 million, right?
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They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:4, Informative)
There *are* GSM networks in some of those countries, but they don't have as nearly as much coverage as the other systems...
Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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That's the kind of thing I'm thinking. They've only sold 600,000 of them a month. Only?.
That's a great sales pace for anything, especially when it costs $400+ and needs a big monthly contract. I mean, are comparing this to the iPod? The iPod was new and had a great interface. Cell phones are already insanely common, and available free (with contract). That contract also keeps you from switching. That's quite a bit to overcome for sales.
How many of any given model of blackberry do the carriers sell a month
Re:They will easily do 10+ million this year (Score:4, Informative)
Numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
They aren't going to attract new buyers with hype like last time. Most people who really want one have one.
Their biggest untapped market are the people who are holding out for v2. I'm one of them.
The iPhone would serve me very well. But I generally don't buy version 1 of anything.
Especially when it's so crippled. Jail breaking stuff like pseudo-GPS, lack of Cut & Paste, printing, file transfer, heck it's on the network but it's almost a dumb terminal.
We version 2 holdouts are Apple's biggest iPhone 2 market. Let's go Apple, what are you waiting for?
Oh yeah, and it better be good.
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I could be mistaken, but I believe the answer is "June 9th, 2008."
still catching up on features (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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That's why it hasn't taken off in the UK (and possibly Europe), double the price with less features than other phones, style doesn't make up the difference.
Or were you making a joke? I just can't tell any more.
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The iPhone was not the best in every class of every feature. I know there are camera phones with 5MP cameras in them.
But in the thing that counts most, the iPhone is miles ahead of any phone I've used: the interface.
Are you really going to stand there and tell me that Windows Mobile has an interface 1/3 as nice as an iPhone? It's no comparison.
You're right about features (which are mostly there thanks to world economics, just disabled thanks to greed).
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Except... people do use them.
If you look at the total package Apple has already leapt ahead of the competition, and they know it, which is why they are all trying to make touchscreen interfaces (and failing miserably).
Apple's touch screen is a gimmick and a horrible interface for anything other than watching videos and simple web browsing. It's the result of Jobs's obsessive hatred of buttons, not sound des
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-They use them but they suck. If the only sandwich you were given for years was a shit sandwich then you probably learned to tolerate a shit sandwich. The iPhone has opened my eyes as to how crappy the other vendors offerings are and it's been the phone I've been waiting for since I started buying phones.
"Apple's touch screen is a gimmick and a horrible interface for anything other than watching videos and simple web browsing. I"
-Why is it a gimmick? It works great. It's e
They have it wrong...I think (Score:2)
wallpaper will be visage of Steve (Score:2)
More corporate users? (Score:2, Interesting)
The iPhone will easily top 10 million in 2008 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.macworld.com/article/133636/2008/05/10_million_iphones.html [macworld.com]
whj
Exchange! (Score:2, Insightful)
The iPhone essentially a featureless phone.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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I agree. What I've always thought is that they essentially got their market share because they were the first with a keyboard.
I see ads for Blackberry phones and they amaze me. Their interface is so good they've had to resort to install a scroll wheel or a tiny trackball to make it possible to use them. Now that is a well designed menu system.
The iPhone isn't everything. The camera is average, it lacks voice-dial, there is the MMS problem, blah blah blah.
But let us look at it this way. I like Apple. I li
10 millionth total by end of 2008 is the goal (Score:3, Insightful)
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Until the new one's released, Apple is a victim of their own hype.
Availability depressing sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:you know what that means .... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:you know what that means .... (Score:4, Insightful)
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What is this article anyway? We don't get even a single story for other companies like Nokia and Motorola when they actually ship a new product, but Apple gets yet-another-Iphone story merely over speculation...
Re:you know what that means .... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Of course it will be on the front page later this evening. This is the iPhone we're talking about! ITS MADE BY APPLE FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!!!