iPhone spawns gray market
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(InfoWorld) - How badly do you want anÂ iPhone? Would you pay $1,500 to buy one? How about $300 for someone to wait on line for you? A cottage industry to help the desiring acquire the coveted Apple device is springing up prior to its Friday evening U.S. launch. Posts on Craigslist offer a host of options for those unable or unwilling toÂ wait in lineÂ themselves. Others are simply cutting to the chase and offering the device itself for as much as three times its retail price. Online resale of popular electronics items at a premium, especially game consoles such as the XBox 360 or Playstation 3, is nothing new. However, such hysteria has never greeted the launch of a mobile handset before. The iPhone's sale launch seems increasingly like the release of concert tickets than the debut of a consumer electronics product. However, unlike tickets to a live event, which is time-sensitive and has limited capacity, the iPhone sale period will be ongoing, and Apple expects to sell as many as 10 millionÂ of them next year. Also, Apple has not announced per-person buying limits for iPhones on launch night. Because of the nature of cell phone sales in the U.S., where most phones are "locked" to a particular number and service provider, Apple is unable to use what would otherwise likely be its most successful sales channel: its online store. Instead, consumers are forced to go to AT&T and Apple's physical stores to get the goods. Neither its ultimate availability nor the $499 price tag has stopped market forces from coming into play. Lazy buyers can choose line-waiters based on price and location. In California, one would-be waiter in Walnut Creek "will wait in line @ Apple Store in WC for 80 + Beer and a pack of Smokes." That's a veritable bargain compared to "Vince" in the Danville/San Ramon area, who's asking $300 to "wait in line for the release of the iPhone at the San Ramon AT&T Store on Bollinger starting Friday, June 29, 2007, at 8 a.m." In New York City, $250 seems to be the going rate for an all-day wait. "This service is for people who want an iphone on launch day, but have a day job and therefore cannot wait on line. I have at leastÂ 5 line-waiters who are up for the job," wrote this anonymous poster. While Craigslist is awash with iPhone-related listings, eBay's site is devoid of any advance sales of the handset. In March, the auction company said in March that it would remove pre-sales for the phone. However, eBay policy only prohibits listing of items that cannot be shipped within 30 days of purchase. EBay representatives were not immediately available for comment. Those with far more money than time can buy an iPhone outright, at least if anonymous online sellers can be believed. "Avail for pick up Friday after 6pm. $1500 cash only," reads one ad. Caveat emptor. Â
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(270 sec.) Rumors of the search engine making a phone, plus using your iPhone as a PDA.
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On the Seeking Alpha blog, Paul Carton (ChangeWave Alliance) waxes bullish about the forthcoming iPhone. âItâs not often that we say âit rocksâ when analyzing a consumer device trend. But the findings of our latest ChangeWave cell phone survey invite extremes to describe the startling impact the Apple iPhone is having on the cellular industry.â One reason for the excitement: in a recent member survey, ânearly one-in-10 respondents (9%) say they are likely to buy the new iPhone once it becomes available in June.â
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Apple's much-anticipated iPhone is finally hitting the market. So, was it worth the wait?
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Hackers asked to restore iEunuch's dignity Comment Within hours of last week's iPhone debut, hackers were dissecting it. Their goal: unlock capabilities Apple preferred customers not have. As a result, it's now possible to activate the device without entering into a two-year contract, and it's only a matter of time until you can run third-party apps.â¦
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A new iPod cell phone could bolster revenues.
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Efforts by the hacker community to get to the heart of the iPhone continue. A push last week to modify the gadget's bootloader was stymied by effective use of an RSA private key, and attention has now turned to a promising assembler-utility strategy.
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(InfoWorld) - The surest sign marketing hype surroundingÂ Apple's iPhoneÂ has outdone itself is that a small island on the Pacific rim is abuzz over the device, despite the fact it won't be on sale here until next year at the earliest. Part of the reason for the excitement is the number of technology savvy users in Taiwan who want to get their hands on one. The most popular Internet auction site on the island, run by Yahoo Taiwan, boasts six different iPhone sellers. One auctioneer is offering the smartphones at NT$32,000 (US$975), on pre-order. At a rival Web auction site, Ruten.com.tw, one seller has a 4GB iPhone for NT$25,000. Most of the sellers are up-front about the fact users may not be able to use the iPhone for phone calls in Taiwan, for now. "You may only be able to use the camera and music player function of the iPhone," writes one seller. That may not deter buyers. Not only is the iPhone viewed as a status symbol, many Taiwanese often travel to the U.S. for business, and a number of people own second homes in places such as California. They could sign an AT&T iPhone service agreement on a trip to the U.S. The popularity of the Apple product is easy to see every day, in newspaper headlines and on the cover of magazines, including Business Next, which says a lot about the other reason the handset is so popular in Taiwan. Taiwanese companies play a vital role in the production of the device, and rumors of which company is making what component on the iPhone are moving stock prices daily in Taiwan. Apple is sourcing a number of parts from the island, and has asked iPod manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.Â to assemble the iPhones in China, analysts say. In fact, the stock market boom that has taken hold in Taiwan recently has been attributed partly to iPhone hype. Stock traders hope the iPhone sells millions of units, because companies on the island stand to win from every handset sale. Largan Precision Co., for example, supplies camera lenses and modules for the iPhone, according to CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in Taipei. Foxconn Technology Co.Â is a provider of metal casing for the handsets, while Unimicron Technology is supplying printed circuit boards for the device and Cheng Uei Precision Industry is making its chargers and cables, the investment house says. The stock prices of many of these have soared in the months leading up to its launch, but are in a holding pattern now as investors wait to see how the iPhone fares in the market. Estimates of iPhone sales vary widely. Citigroup Research, a division of Citigroup Global Markets, estimates iPhone sales will reach 3.5 million in 2007 and 8.5 million in 2008. That's ahead of Apple's own prediction of 10 million over the same period. Deutsche Bank is even more positive about the iPhone. The investment firm expects 7.5 million of them to ship this year and 12 million in 2008, according to a report dated June 22. An even more optimistic forecast comes from financial services company Credit Suisse, which predicts iPhone shipments will reach 5 million this year and 15 million next year. "Apple's iPhone, expected to launch at AT&T on June 29, is clearly the most widely anticipated product the industry has seen for many years, potentially ever," wrote Credit Suisse analyst Michael Ounjian, in a June 5 report on the device. Lehman Brothers offered a more conservative estimate, saying Apple's own 10 million figure "may be difficult to reach" but that the figure "is achievable" in a June 21 report. The investment house believes Apple will start offering the iPhone in Europe sometime in the last three months of this year, and that it will begin sales in Asia in 2008. Apple has not said when it will start shipping the iPhone overseas. The iPhone, a smartphone with built-in iPod music player functions, goes on sale in the U.S. at 6 p.m. Friday. Apple is offering two models, a 4GB model costing US$499 and an 8GB model at US$599. Users will have to sign a two-year contract with AT&TÂ for phone service. Â
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As the iPhone ascends, Apple contemplates yet another price cut.
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How to have fun with your iPhone right now.
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Wendy Seltzer asks, Which is more open: the Nokia N95 or the iPhone? Regardless of the answer, I'm wondering if there's an objective way to score openness... perhaps a kind of in-the-wild folksonomic list of deal-makers and deal-killers. Rather than bias the list, I thought I'd just put the idea out there to start with, and see what variables ya'll would like to see on the list.
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Customers lined up in droves, some for days, but plenty of the phones are still available for the taking.Photos: Big Apple gets the iPhone
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Apple's iPhone is set to get a jump on its competitors and spark a flurry of new phone designs, regardless of how well the device actually sells.
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While many consumers are standing in line to get their hands on a $500 iPhone, Apple&#39;s new toy is not the only major release in the technology world today. Indeed, Friday also marks the release of version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
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According to Saul Hansell at the NY Times, Apple intends to break phones that have been unlocked.  But Francine Hardaway and Patrick Scoble both updated this afternoon, and bad things happened. Hardaway's phone was "fried," she needed a new phone, and Scoble lost all his data. Hardaway: "Trust me, I didn't hack it." Jeff Clavier: "This effing piece of s..t is bricked." Robert Scoble, Patrick's dad, updated successfully, and got the new features. Spaley's iPhone is "a useless piece of crap." Looks like Josh Bancroft's iPhone was hosed too. I would hold off on the update until we find out what's going wrong.  Sugar Attack: "It wasn't until I saw a friend tweet about the new iPhone firmware upgrade that I realized I could now access the iTunes WiFi store."
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Blog: Exploring future product opportunities using the iPhone's components
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As the engine of iPhone hype gears up for its final power thrust, discussions about the new device range from how many units it will sell to how developers can cash in with widgets to how its iPod-like features might cannibalize iPod sales.