iPhone Traffic Data Puts Apple at Center of Mobile Web
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Something big is happening with the iPhone. No, it's nothing Steve Jobs will announce today at Macworld. Rather, it's how iPhone customers are using their phones. On Christmas, iPhone traffic to Google surpassed traffic from all other mobile devices, The New York Times reported Monday.
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CHICAGO _ The anticipation for Friday's release of Apple Inc.'s iPhone continues to build, but there is a mobile service launching this week that also holds the potential to significantly alter the wireless landscape.
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Don't expect this gadget to turn attention away from the iPhone.
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More than a quarter of people who  bought Apple Inc's  iPhone are using them on wireless  networks other than AT&T's, the exclusive iPhone carrier in the  U.S., a "stunning" number that will pressure the company's  business model, an analyst said on Monday.
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Company turns up the heat in the mobile Web market with with launch of tool that aggregates messaging and social-networking information for cell phone users.
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Hackers have found a way to use Apple Inc's iPhone on networks other than AT&T Inc's, opening up the coveted device to rival carriers and overseas customers, according to a Web report on Friday.
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âThe best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc. â the iPhone.â  That, according to David Benjamin (EE Times) was the conclusion reached by a âblue-ribbon panel of human behavior and technology experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.â And, Benjamin points out, âAnup Murarka, director of technical marketing for Adobe, cited a study showing that 77 percent of iPhone purchasers described themselves as âvery satisfiedâ with their user experience.â
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(InfoWorld) - When Apple launches the iPhone on Friday, it 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. By introducing a combined smartphone, mobile e-mail platform, and MP3 music player with a touchscreen interface, Apple has sent other hardware vendors running back to their drawing boards. And the company has enjoyed positive press coverage since CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in January, analysts said. Apple is feeding the fire with strong advertising in its retail stores. On Monday, staffers at the Apple store in the Cambridgeside Galleria mall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wore black T-shirts with the logo "the wait is almost over," printed above an image of a calendar page for Friday, June 29. iPhone anticipation has already created a "halo effect" of increased sales for Apple's notebook and desktop PCs, an impact that is likely to increase after the launch, according to a report from ChangeWave Research. Apple posted a strong profit for the last period despite struggling with a U.S. federal investigation into executives backdating their stock options. In April,Â Apple beat Wall Street expectations by posting a profit of $770 million for the second quarter, an 88 percent rise from that period last year. Because the company has already garnered media attention and a sales boost from iPhone demand, Apple will suffer little damage even if the device is a flop in retail sales, one analyst said. "No way Apple will seriously impact Nokia or Motorola or Samsung, who combined sell over a billion phones a year. But if Apple manages to sell several million, then that is probably pretty good for their overall business," said analyst Jack Gold, founder of the research firm J. Gold Associates. "I think the potential gold mine is in the services, not the phone hardware." The iPhone will bring new subscribers to Apple's iTunes online music store, and Apple could make more money if it decides to launch future wireless mobile products like navigation, location-based services, VoIP telephony, and video streaming, Gold said. In the meantime, Apple has already given a headache to competitors scurrying to catch up, such as Motorola, Samsung, and LG Electronics. Even vendors with comparable products -- like Nokia's N Series and High Tech Computer's HTC Touch phones -- lack Apple's cachet and will have trouble competing on store shelves, he said. In fact, some experts are warning that iPhone sales could fall short of Apple's high expectations. Their criticism includes potential user confusion about Apple's "virtual keyboard," a battery that may fade too fast and is not user-replaceable, andÂ resistance by some corporate IT departmentsÂ to the added expense and security risk of supporting mobile e-mail networks in addition to the servers they use to support Research in Motion's BlackBerry device. Those drawbacks could limit the iPhone's success in the business market, said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research. Still, the iPhone will be popular with those who tend to use smartphones more by scrolling through menus than typing long messages and who have made Apple's iPod music player a huge hit despite similar concerns about its battery, Wu said. Likewise, consumers will likely shrug off corporate security concerns and use mobile e-mail systems from GoogleÂ and Yahoo. In the long run, Apple will use the iPhone to beat its competitors in creating an end-to-end channel for digital media, spanning from Mac PCs to the mobile iPod music player, iTunes online store, and Apple TV set-top box for sharing Internet and television video content. The only thing Apple could do to spread that net even wider would be to offer iPhone models at less than the current $499 for a 4GB version and $599 for the 8GB, Wu said.
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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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Apple Inc. has sold four million iPhones since the cellphone, which includes Internet access, videos and music, was launched in June, chief executive Steve Jobs said Tuesday.
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Researchers at Independent Security Evaluators have announced at least two vulnerabilities in the way the Apple iPhone opens a specially crafted Web page in Safari. From Crave, CNET's gadgets blog.
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Digg.com founder cites 'solid' source Apple's upcoming iPhone will go on sale next month with two memory capacities and no ties to a specific network, it has been claimed. The 'small as s**t' handset is based on a slider form-factor, it's said - presumably to better match the iPod design ethos.â¦
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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 details have emerged at the iPhone Web site that should please those who are hungry for details about the device.
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Apple's beta version of its Safari Web browser -- released this week for Windows users -- is a speedy app with new features that works as promised. It also offers another glimpse of the big picture: Apple is suddenly, seemingly, everywhere.
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Blog: Underground sites fuel interest in breaking Apple's mobile security.
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After testing the iPhone for two weeks in multiple US cities, Walter Mossberg and Katherine Boehret consider it âa beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface,â they say, âworks well.â In addition to combining âintelligent voice calling and a full-blown iPod,â iPhone also âoffers the best Web browser we have seen on a smart phone and robust email software.â It offers âthe largest and highest-resolution screen of any smart phone weâve seen, and the most internal memory by far. Yet it is one of the thinnest smart phones available and offers impressive battery life, better than its key competitors claim.â It is, the two conclude, âa pleasure to use.â