Analysts Duel Over Nano iPhone Forecast
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Industry-watchers bicker over Apple's next likely move in consumer electronics.
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Users may see an iPhone with 3G technology in the next six months, a financial analyst said Monday, citing waning inventory of Apple&#39;s current iPhone and the increasing demand in Europe for 3G products.The iPhone shipments are likely to be weak during the March quarter, and inclusion of 3G technology in the phone could ensure that Apple meets its target of shipping 10 million iPhones in 2008, analyst Richard Gardner of Citigroup said in a research note on Monday. 3G is a high-speed wireless communications standard that provides broadband Internet capabilities to cell phones and mobile devices.An iPhone upgrade to include 3G technology could help the company forge more relationships with carriers as it builds a European presence. &quot;We believe that lack of 3G has been a significant headwind for iPhone in Europe where 3G is already pervasive,&quot; Gardner said.During meetings with Citigroup, Apple reiterated its plan to introduce the iPhone into additional European countries and Asia by the end of 2008, Gardner said.In a December report, Shaw Wu of American Technology Research said a 3G iPhone would likely ship around the middle or in the second half of this year after network coverage and battery life issues are addressed.During the iPhone rollout in the U.K. last year, Jobs said that 3G chips were &quot;power hogs&quot; but also said he expected to see better battery consumption this year. Chip vendors, including Broadcom and Arm, are developing power-efficient 3G mobile chips with multimedia capabilities.3G is still not widely deployed in the U.S., Wu wrote in a report. Apple could possibly position the new iPhone as a high-end smart phone with the current iPhone being shipped as a more mainstream product, Wu said.Apple&#39;s 3G plans in the U.S. could get a boost from AT&amp;T&#39;s announcement last week that it was expanding its 3G wireless coverage to 350 major U.S. markets, including all 100 of the largest cities.Until the iPhone becomes available in more countries, unlocking numbers will remain high. But as the iPhone&#39;s presence expands, &quot;most consumers will prefer to use iPhone on the network with which Apple has a relationship -- only then can they take advantage of innovative features, such as visual voicemail and ongoing software updates,&quot; Gardner said.Up to 35 percent of all iPhones sold since its launch in June have been unlocked and sold in countries where Apple does not yet have a formal relationship with a wireless carrier, Citigroup&#39;s Gardner said.There has been plenty of speculation surrounding the release of a 3G iPhone. Last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and AT&amp;T CEO Randall Stephenson separately said a 3G iPhone was coming in 2008, though the exact date is shrouded in secrecy.
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The controversy around Apple's iPhone price cuts seems suspiciously calculated.
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A Wall Street analyst is predicting an assortment of new MacBook Pros and a good look at Leopard at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference.
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Investor's Business Daily - All those long lines of first-day Apple iPhone buyers didn&#39;t immediately pay off as expected for the device&#39;s service provider, AT&amp;T, but the company on Tuesday still reported better-than-expected earnings, aided by strong wireless growth.
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Despite the buzz building around next week's release of the iPhone, research firm IDC said success is not guaranteed; user expectations, price and network limitations could all hinder sales in the long term.
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As the wait for Apple Inc.'s iPhone reaches a fevered pitch, here are five trends in gadgets that may be even more important, and a few highly touted ideas that may not make it.
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Similar to earlier forecasts? Industry moles have told Morgan Stanley analyst Rebecca Runkle enough to convince her that Apple will launch the eagerly awaited iPhone in the first half of 2007 after an announcement at Macworld Expo early next year.â¦
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While purely speculation, it's a fairly safe bet that future versions of the iPhone will cost less and offer more features than the first iPhone.
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When Steve Jobs hits the keynote stage at the 2008 Macworld Conference and Expo on January 15, he will face a ballroom full of bloodshot eyes, a sea of journalists, analysts, and bloggers knocked loopy by the culture shock of going to sleep in Vegas (where the Consumer Electronics Show was just held) and waking up in San Francisco. Talk about your tough crowd.Fortunately, Jobs doesn?t need to kick into charisma overdrive to capture minds, hearts, and wallets. This year?s conference is already a banner event, a coming-out party of sorts for a Mac platform that has seen its biggest evolutionary kick since the demise of the original Mac OS. The combination of OS X Leopard and new Macs based on Intel?s Penryn CPU will help Mac outsiders remember that Apple sells more computers than phones.iPhone, take 2 What will happen this week? Only Steve Jobs knows for sure, but here?s my best guess.Although Leopard and Penryn have pushed the Mac to dizzying heights and should thus gain some stage time, the Macworld Expo keynote will still go heavy on iPhone and iTunes. And this time, the hype will be justified. eBay will be awash in mint-condition, used iPhones the day that Apple ships the new model that links to AT&amp;T?s fast 3G network (in the U.S.). With the speed of the 3G cellular data network, lots of RAM space for cached maps, and a close partnership with Google, iPhone could blast a tunnel through the in-car navigation market. CES was packed with navigation newcomers, but none has the hook of iPhone?s multi-touch interface, much less the capability to make phone calls and purchase music from iTunes.Another indirect but even farther-reaching benefit derived from the faster cellular network is iTunes Tagging. When listeners with compatible receivers are tuned into terrestrial and satellite radio stations that have licensed iTunes Tagging, they can purchase music that catches their ear with a button press. This will see its greatest uptake among users of Mac and PC iTunes, but iPhone owners could have the song downloaded before the radio is done playing it. No more trying to figure out the title of a song from the words in the chorus.iPhone?s support for native applications will see its official debut in February, but third parties are undoubtedly already on board. If Apple doesn?t take up navigation, the likes of Telenav and TomTom surely will. Voice-over-IP would make a great keynote demo, and with native application support, Apple might not have to write it in-house.Do pre-show announcements clear the stage for new notebooks? Apple always gets what it considers to be its lesser product announcements out of the way just before Macworld Expo so that Steve Jobs can focus on the high-percentage pitches in his keynote.The pre-keynote rollouts for 2008 are Apple?s specialty machines: the Mac Pro desktop/workstation and Xserve rack-mounted server. Both have been reworked for Intel?s quad-core Penryn family Xeon CPUs, nicknamed Harpertown. Mac Pro buyers can now get 8-core systems for about $1,200 less than before, and the Harpertown Xserve is the first 8-core server Apple has ever sold. Both systems also support significantly faster front-side bus and memory speed. This sort of performance kick might go unnoticed by most home and mainstream commercial users, but Mac Pro and Xserve buyers are going to love it.With the power user, workstation and server Mac announcements out of the way, Apple has room on the Macworld Conference and Expo keynote stage for new notebooks. The story there isn?t necessarily limited to Penryn. AMD recently announced its ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series GPU (graphics processing unit) for notebooks. Among the new GPU?s attributes are improved power efficiency, PCI Express 2.0, and direct HDMI output. The new ATI GPU has one other feature: on-chip decoding of HD and Blu-Ray DVD content. It may be a long shot for this Macworld Expo, but there is a high-def DVD-equipped MacBook Pro on the near horizon.What to do after the keynote Those Macworld Conference and Expo Attendees who don?t fly home after the keynote will be treated to a packed schedule of sessions targeting audiences from home users to scientists and IT professionals.Macworld Expo?s organizers -- IDG World Expo, which has the same parent company as InfoWorld -- have also managed to pack the exhibit hall. Attendees will find familiar faces such as FileMaker Pro, REALbasic, and the venerable BBEdit programmer?s editor, but they?ll also see Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Xerox, VMware, Parallels, Iomega and, of course, Microsoft.Next to Leopard, Office 2008 for Mac will be the best-selling software for the Mac this year. It?s not only the first native version of Office for Intel Macs, but Microsoft?s first Office designed from scratch for OS X. The Mac faithful may outwardly jeer Microsoft for taking four years to catch a clue, but they?ll be buying Office along with all other commercial Mac users. Office 2008 will be just one of many new products showing at Macworld Expo that don?t need Steve Jobs to sell them. They?ll sell themselves.
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JP Morgan analysts have expressed doubt about a colleague's claim that Apple is planning a Nano iPhone.
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Quanta will start making iPhones for Apple in September, reports say; stock price jumps.
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(InfoWorld) - Google and Intel have already expressed interest in the forthcoming 700MHz spectrum auction. Now, speculators say Apple may throw its hat into the ring. TheÂ auctionÂ is creating a bit of a frenzy because the winner will obtain some of the last available prime spectrum, ideal for delivering broadband wireless Internet access. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expects to auction it off next year. While Google has said that it may bid in the auction, Apple's participation is pure speculation, and analysts appear split on whether it makes sense for theÂ iPhoneÂ maker to become a network operator. Apple's entry into the carrier business, while interesting to speculate, is difficult to imagine since the company already has a "sweetheart deal" with AT&T, said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. In an unusual arrangement for the mobile industry, Apple is thought to receive a portion of the monthly service revenue that AT&T earns from iPhone customers. AT&T is the iPhone's exclusive carrier. Gartner analyst Van Baker finds it "highly unlikely" that Apple would be interested in buying the spectrum. "It's a very different business than they're in, and it's not something they have a whole lot of expertise in," he noted. Apple could decide to partner with another company that has more experience in the mobile operator business, which could make more sense, Baker said. Still, the arrangement between Apple and AT&T looks beneficial to both companies, so there probably isn't a significant incentive for Apple to want to change that setup, especially because the operator business comes with "lousy margins," he said. However, Apple might have at least one good reason for wanting to operate a network, said Avi Greengart, an analyst with Current Analysis. "They do like to control the end-to-end experience," he said. While becoming a mobile operator would be a "tremendous stretch" for Apple, it wouldn't surprise Greengart if Apple was considering it. An Apple network would likely be very tightly integrated with Apple products and come with very simple pricing, he said. Such a strategy could have a ripple effect across the industry. Operators tend to watch what competitors are doing and make adjustments to their own strategies accordingly, he said. Greengart and the others cautioned that they hadn't heard directly from the company or other sources that Apple was considering the auction. "But they're pretty good about being tight-lipped," Greengart said. Apple is known for being very secretive, with big announcements leaking out only days in advance, if ever. BusinessWeek first reported on the rumor that Apple might be interested in the spectrum auction.
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The company offers a range of predictions. Lots of folks are keying on the guess that Apple will double their U.S. share, but I'm intrigued by other predictions, including forecasts that we'll be traveling without laptops and renting our business software
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Rumors that Apple is preparing a second-generation iPhone continue to circulate.
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(InfoWorld) - Gartner, IDC, and 451 Group research analysts, this week warned IT administrators to keep iPhones away from their businesses. "We're telling IT executives to not support it because Apple has no intentions of supporting [iPhone use in] the enterprise," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said. "This is basically a cellular iPod with some other capabilities, and it's important that it be recognized as such." As if that will stop people from buying them anyway when they hit the market in the U.S. next week. The reality is that no matter how hard IT administrators try, the iPhone will be snapped up by their employees -- and not just the average Joes either. The device is a status symbol that will likely be snapped up by business leaders as the digital technorati. Try telling your CEO the iPhone doesn't play well with your IT systems. Dulaney and other researchers notwithstanding, this device can be good for the enterprise because of the business needs of smartphone users. It is an iPhone, after all, with an emphasis on phone. It offers e-mail -- currently the most popular means of business communications. There's an address/phone Book for quick access to contacts. It offers SMS, a quick way to contact other mobile phone users, and voicemail -- both useful to road warriors. There's a real Web browser -- by far the most underpowered and underappreciated part of a mobile phone. And it contains a slew of enterprise-worthy apps, including a calendar, access to maps, spreadsheets, and a document reader. All of these things are important -- and all can be done to a greater or lesser extent on most business-focused PDA phones. But in the business world, the mobile Web browser is the key to the future of business apps, and it is becoming a platform unto itself. One thing that Apple CEO Steve Jobs made abundantly clear at last week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is that the iPhone would include a full browser. The Symbian and Linux platforms' best browser is Opera Mini -- which isn't that bad -- but it by no means constitutes a full browser. Windows Mobile's browser isn't bad either, but it also falls well short of Internet Explorer 7. Additionally, the iPhone browser has a lot of zooming and panning tricks that make it more usable on the relatively small screen. In that crucial area, advantage: iPhone. Why is the browser crucial? Because most new business applications are being built around it. AJAX and other browser technology innovations over the past few years have turned the browser into a veritable platform. Sure, a lot of legacy applications still require browserless, platform-specific client applications. But those days are numbered. It's not just the isolated applications that are moving to a browser. All of the stalwart office applications are also moving to the Web. With Google Office (which now works with Safari -- the iPhone browser), Soho Office, and even Web-centric versions of Microsoft Office applications, the browser is truly the new business platform. The iPhone is not without its business-use flaws. It doesn't natively sync up with Lotus Notes or Exchange - and Microsoft, at least, will most likely do everything in its power to try to keep it that way to protect its Windows Mobile business. It can, however, hook up to IMAP email, LDAP address books, and WebDav for calendaring; with a bit of tweaking, that will work well for Exchange-based companies. Microsoft SharePoint can also be browsed from the Web interface, but to what extent? Time -- and the work of apps developers -- will tell. A newly anointed relationship with Cisco on all things iPhone should also let the device into the VPN and might even let an iPhone play well with Cisco VoIP solutions. And of course, don't forget the arduous task of getting your conservative IT department to accept the idea of letting loose an Apple phone -- or even MacBook Pro -- into the office. Previews of the phone haven't yet touted an instant messaging client like Apple's iChat or AOL Instant Messenger. It is likely, however, that Apple will include something with instant-messaging functionality in the near future -- there are still four slots left in the iPhone's application window. It's also true that the first-generation iPhone isn't the raw specs winner by any stretch. That honor goes to the Symbian/Windows Mobile 6 Phones coming from Toshiba (the G900), Nokia (the N95), Samsung (the F700) and HTC (the Shift). AT&T's EDGE wireless network is slow by today's standards, and while Wifi connectivity will help, there are questions about why Apple has forsaken the HSDPA/UTMS component and when an update might occur. Given that battery life is a factor -- Apple this week released updated specs that go beyond what it touted in January -- EDGE makes sense because it's more energy efficient. Also, the 8GB max on storage is seems low. At a time when you can buy an 8GB SD card for less than $80, Apple likely looked to keep costs down with an eye on upping that storage when it's economically smart. Most users would likely be happy with a micro/mini/SD card slot now standard on most smartphones. There is, of course, the price. The iPhone's hefty $499 and $599 price tags, depending on which model you buy, is a definite disadvantage in business. With relatively comparable gear (from a corporate standpoint), such as the Motorola Q, which is almost free with a service plan, buying an iPhone requires serious justification. We're talking about spending the equivalent of a budget laptop. Of course, something that you spend half your day using should justify the premium that this delicious piece of hardware demands. And then there are at least two intangibles: Usability. Apple's legendary reputation for making painful tasks easy will totally transform the mobile phone industry. And remember, companies love productivity from their workers. Until now, the big players have been Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, and Linux. They all had successes. But it's the last 10 percent of usability that Apple always manages to squeeze out its products will be the differentiator. Apple did the same in the computer industry until Microsoft caught up. Apple has learned from this and patented every minute detail of the iPhone, making it harder for copycats to appear anytime soon. The few seconds here there that the iPhone saves users will quickly add up. It's the little things that make for big savings across an entire enterprise. Business bling, baby. Everyone knows that this is the phone to have. Just look at the buzz ahead of the June 29 launch. Apple has spent the last few years building up its brand across all channels and is reaping the rewards like no other company in the industry. As much as the enterprise IT guys will want to recite better specs for rival Windows Mobile devices, nobody wants to hear that. I can imagine any number of CEOs saying, "I don't care! Just make the iPhone work on our systems!" And if it works for the CEO, you can bet the sales folk will want in on the action, too. Think they'll want to show up to a meeting with an important client and whip out last year's "hot" phone? They might as well wear parachute pants as well.
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New Windows Mobile alternative Apple's iPhone is going to hit Palm hard, a US analyst has forecast. Research in Motion's consumer-friendly BlackBerry Curve will harm the PDA pioneer too, Piper Jaffray wireless hardware analyst T Michael Walkley claimed this week.â¦