iPhone News

Now that the dust has settled from Apple¡¯s Worldwide Developers Conference, we¡¯ve had time to answer some of the most pressing questions relating to the iPhone 3G. Steve Jobs unveiled the next version of the popular handset to kick off WWDC, with the new iPhone arriving in Stores on July 11.

Although there are still some things we don¡¯t know about the iPhone 3G¡ªand probably won¡¯t until we¡¯ve had some extended face time with the updated phone¡ªhere¡¯s what we¡¯ve figured out after talking to AT&T, scouring the Web, and racking our brains.

The iPhone 3G will be available through Apple resellers in the Netherlands, writes MacWereld. The site says that several such retailers have claimed deals with T-Mobile, which will otherwise be the only legal vendor of the iPhone in the country. Apple's official stores are located solely in Canada, Italy, Japan, the US and the UK, and the only authorized third-party iPhone distributor is the UK's Carphone Warehouse.

Apple will be dependent on a halo effect for increasing profit through the iPhone 3G, says the Needham & Co. analyst group. With the eliminating of revenue sharing from cellphone carriers, who are also helping to subsidize the new $199 and $299 prices, Apple is not expected to make as much money off each device as it is currently. Needham further proposes that Apple could be hurt by revised, more "realistic" iPhone shipments, and cannibalization in the sales of iPods, which in some cases duplicate iPhone features without the benefit of phone calls or GPS navigation.

Changes in Rogers Communications Inc.'s cellphone plans are coming within the next two weeks as the company gears up to release a slew of new data-heavy mobile devices.

Rogers president and chief operating officer Nadir Mohamed made the remarks during his keynote address at the Canadian Telecom Summit yesterday morning in Toronto and highlighted the emergence of widespread usage of broadband Internet access in the wireless world.

"There's a recognition on the part of Rogers that the world has changed," Mr. Mohamed said. "We'll be changing our prices to reflect that."

The Samsung Instinct, which is being deemed the most viable iPhone knock-off at the moment, is coming out first, and now as of today, we are hearing it will also be cheaper. Sprint announced that the phone will be available June 20, and cost $129.99 with a two-year contract after a $100 mail-in rebate. The monthly contract ranges between $70 a month for 450 voice minutes and unlimited data to Sprint’s Simply Everything Plan, which costs $99 for features such as GPS navigation, email, web surfing, Sprint Music Premier and Sprint TV Premier. Contrast that to the iPhone, which will come out three weeks later on July 11 and cost $199, depending you your carrier. It’s monthly fee starts at $70 a month for unlimited data and the smallest voice plan.

Wall Street continued to make bullish predictions about Apple after reports suggested that sales of the company's Mac computers grew far more than expected in the year to May.

Sales of Macs increased by 50 per cent in the year to May, new figures from the market research company NPD suggest - well ahead of the 37 per cent growth that had been expected by analysts at Lehman Brothers.

Smartphone makers and analysts have downplayed fears that Apple's iPhone 3G could pose a serious challenge for older smartphone manufacturers.

Analysts from Primasia Securities said in a report on major Taiwanese smartphone maker High Tech Computer (HTC) that concern about the iPhone 3G is " overblown".

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) has come and gone, and in it's departure has left us with a quite a few new goodies for us to analyze.
The biggest news coming from WWDC is the iPhone 3G. As was expected, the new iPhone has been upgraded to work on AT&T's 3G network. Which is currently the fastest cell-phone wireless data technology out there. The former iPhone was on the much slower EDGE Network. In-fact the 3G network boasts near-broadband speeds, and is 3x faster than the EDGE network. The new iPhone is what I consider "The Real iPhone", as should be expected with any brand new product from any company, the first generation will always sport some new bugs, or missing features that those suckers who couldn't wait for the 2nd Gen. model will complain about.

One of the problems with viewing iPhone software from the perspective of being a Mac (or PC) user is that sometimes you make assumptions that can guide you far off course.

Take files, for example. Our computers have hard drives full of files. But on the iPhone, files don’t exist. (Okay, they do exist, but Apple obscures them. A regular iPhone user has no clue that there’s a file system in there.) Hiding files from iPhone users makes a lot of sense, in terms of keeping things simple.

Apple settled a lawsuit launched by Klausner Technology for its use of Visual Voicemail on the iPhone. Company founder Judah Klausner told Reuters that Apple, AT&T and eBay have agreed to license its patents.