Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

Doubt that the iPhone is big? Well guess who just launched an App?

Today, we’re excited to announce the new White House App available for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.  The White House App delivers dynamic content from WhiteHouse.gov to the palm of your hand.

If you’re interested in the rumoured Apple tablet, forget reading articles from the Mass Media. Instead, check out these three pieces by Apple gurus in the know.

The first, from John Gruber is, as always my favourite. John argues that the Tablet will be

defined by three or four of its built-in primary apps. But long-term, big-picture? It will be to the MacBook what the Macintosh was to the Apple II.

The second piece from John Siracusa called Antacid Tablet makes some concrete, bold preditictions:

The Apple tablet will have a color, video-capable touchscreen, about 10 inches diagonal. It will have flash storage, WiFi networking, and few ports and hardware buttons. There will be a software keyboard. It’s operating system will be based on the same core as Mac OS X and iPhone OS, and its GUI API will be an evolution of Cocoa Touch. The platform will (eventually) be open to third-party developers. You will be able to buy media and applications right on the device using your existing iTunes account. Some of that media will be new territory for Apple: print media like magazines, newspapers, and books.

Lastly, Marco Arment, inventor of the ever popular Instapaper chimes in with his thoughts:

I see two possible outcomes: either Apple has come up with a radical new input method for this form-factor that will overcome the fundamental problems that made every other similar device suck, or the Tablet isn’t this form-factor.

According to Nielson, iPhone 3G takes number one spot with 4% of ‘embedded base of all subscribers’, with RIM chomping on its heals.

Interesting, and best analysis I’ve seen on why the iPhone seems to be a sleeper in China.

I’m not sure I actually believe the numbers that have been thrown around; only Apple and China Unicom know for sure, but if media reports are to be believed the iPhone isn’t off to a good start.

Shaun Rein, reporting for Forbes says:

The phone is being sold packaged with monthly subscription plans, just as in the U.S., but the vast majority of Chinese prefer to buy pay-as-you-go charge cards. Top-up cards can be bought and recharged cheaply at street vendors everywhere in less than 30 seconds, with no identification required. Subscribing by the month is a pain.

Apple has shown they are willing to change the way they sell the iPhone depending on different market preferences. If it really is the case that the iPhone isn’t selling well in its current form I’d expect them to change the model quickly.

In Australia, iPhone’s are available on Prepaid so there’s no reason the same couldn’t apply in China too.

Commentary from Melinda Varley in Business Spectator on the market for mobile marketing:

In the UK – the most sophisticated and saturated mobile market in Europe – marketers spent almost £29 million on mobile advertising in 2008, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Mobile Marketing Association now expects total spend to reach £1 billion by the end of 2009.

In the US, ad spend on mobile is expected to reach $US6.5 billion by 2012. And although in Australia the medium remains in its infancy, growth is poised to almost treble with communications specialist Telsyte forecasting that spend will grow to $20 million by the end of 2009 from just $7 million in 2008.

Paul Graham’s latest thoughts about the App Store, and it’s failings.

How would Apple like it if when they discovered a serious bug in OS X, instead of releasing a software update immediately, they had to submit their code to an intermediary who sat on it for a month and then rejected it because it contained an icon they didn’t like?

His observations about the industry are also good:

The main reason there are so many iPhone apps is that so many programmers have iPhones. They may know, because they read it in an article, that Blackberry has such and such market share. But in practice it’s as if RIM didn’t exist.

Can anything break this cycle? No device I’ve seen so far could. Palm and RIM haven’t a hope. The only credible contender is Android. But Android is an orphan; Google doesn’t really care about it, not the way Apple cares about the iPhone. Apple cares about the iPhone the way Google cares about search.

According to this report, Apple who has a small overall share of handset sales has overtaken Nokia and was the world’s most profitable handset vendor in the third quarter of 2009.

The firm estimates that Apple’s iPhone operating profit came in at $1.6 billion in Q3, while Nokia recorded only $1.1 billion in operating profit. “With strong volumes, high wholesale prices and tight cost controls, the PC vendor has successfully broken into the mobile phone market in just two years,” said analyst Alex Spektor in the research note.

PACMan3000 argues (on Flickr, strangely enough) that when you think about the iPhone, you also need to consider the other iPhone, the iPod Touch; a product that has and will continue to sell millions and millions of units to people who don’t want to sign up for an expensive cell phone+data plan.

To kill the iPhone, you must also kill the iPod Touch, iTunes, the App Store and any other product that Apple puts out with the same OS, like the 10 inch Tablet device that may or may not come out next year.

Saul Hansell reporting in the NYTimes:

More cellphone makers are turning to the free Android operating system made by Microsoft’s latest nemesis, Google.

This move by Google is straight out of the Microsoft playbook. If you can’t compete on price, give away your product for free. Exactly what Microsoft does in developing countries where their biggest competitor is piracy.

Thanks for making SuperRacing the Number 1 app for the Spring Racing Carnival.

The SuperRacing App gives you live access to race information for the four biggest events in the Spring Racing Carnival. It’s also the only App available that gives two different odds feeds, live results, and tips direct from the Herald Sun.