Motorola spooked by Apple's iPhone - Page 2

He was talking about Europe. UK in particular.


You have open free wifi hotspots on trains and in your car and all around town? You have them out in the middle of nowhere in the hills? We don't in Europe, but we do have almost blanket 3G coverage. For instance, I can get 1.4Mps 3G data whilst sat about 3 miles from the nearest building up in the Pennine hills. I can't get WiFi at the bottom of my garden.

Oddly, the UK apparently has more wifi hotspots per square mile than anywhere in the world yet finding a free open hotspot in most major towns is nigh impossible. I know of ONE in my local town but that's because I installed it.

Ah, good times.

I don't know which is worse... the G4 500MHz Fiasco or the G5 3GHz fiasco. I partially wish we would've gone back to Freescale after the G5... But Intel is just fine and dandy now that they dumped the Pentium. Core is finally a decent Intel architechture.

-Clive

They didn't dump the Pentium. Core is based around Pentium III architecture, modified to add more SSE and dual/quad cores.

Who can confirm that Moto really said that they are "spooked"? No senior VP is gonna say that.

Sorry, I should've clarified. The Pentium 4. That chip was sh*t even though it had fast clock speeds. The pipe was too f'in long.

-Clive

If the iPhone is as the reviews are saying, I won't be getting one when my VZW contract expires next year. Apple will have to add voice dialing for me to even consider an iPhone, and it will be extremely hard for me to justify it without some form of 3G in there.

On the other hand, I've been pretty happy with my RAZR V3c. Yeah, Verizon crippled the firmware, but it does everything VZW said it would do, which is all I was expecting when I bought it (and it only cost me $30, after all the rebates and promotions got factored in.) And unlike my previous phone, the RAZR hasn't broken in the 18 months I've had it.

So, when renewal time comes around (in February), if Apple has an iPhone v2 with the features I require, I'll switch carriers and get one. If not, I'm sticking with Verizon and will pick a phone from what they are selling at that time. I may even choose to stick with my RAZR (and have VZW credit my account towards the purchase of a new handset sometime in the future.)

Paris Hilton sounds funny even to Americans. The Hilton family is completely legit - they named the hotel chain after themselves, not the other way around - but to name a child "Paris" is just silly.

One comic strip I read parodied that by having a character name herself "Sheraton St. Louis." As a part of the gag, they even created a MySpace page for the character.

Well, it's theoretically possible that they have a 3G-compatible chipset, disabled for some technical reason (like not finished developing the firmware), but I would be very surprised if that turns out to be true.

I'm looking forward to next week when someone will buy an iPhone and take it apart to identify its chipsets.

3G isn't necessary until you start web surfing.

Read the reviews. It can take several minutes to load some common web pages over EDGE.

That Safari browser that Apple is hyping so much is going to be painful whenever you're not connected to a WiFi network.

Okay but since this first iteration of the iPhone is built and designed for AT&T on their US network I'm not sure how any of what you said matters... If you don't think that the iPhone WILL be updated / reintroduced with 3G then you're just kidding yourself.

I'm not entirely of the opinion that APPLE is to blame for not having 3G in this phone... AT&T doesn't have what I (or many others) would call a ROBUST 3G network, and perhaps they didn't really want to have the iPhone further pointing that glaring fact out. This way AT&T, when criticized with 'slow network' comments can fire back with 'wait till the iPhone has 3G!' if they really were forced to defend themselves...

You can be assured that the EURO iPhone will most undoubtedly have 3G in it's first rollout. Given if what you said about the superiority of the Euro 3G network is true...

Dave

She wasn't named after Paris, France --- that would be SILLY!! No.... She was named after Paris, Texas.

And to be fair, Paris isn't nearly as bad as the names people came up with for their kids in the 60's....

Moon Unit, "Ian Donald Calvin Euclid" aka Dweezil, "Ahmet Emuukha Rodan", "Diva Muffin" and those are all from just one guy!!!

Dave

So just how slow is EDGE? Is it about the same or worse than a dial up connection?

I give it 4-6 months before Apple announces a 3G version of the iPhone. I think the biggest showstopper is the battery life; to support 3G a phone has to have a few more antennas in it, putting more drain on the battery.

I read about some company that will soon deliver an all-in-one radio antenna for phones that will contain pretty much all the differing bands on one chip, instead of a separate chip for each band/radio.

I'd like to think Apple has one somewhere in the basement at 1 Infinite Loop, running on an iPhone ThreeGee.

That's a different division.


Open WiFi is just plain insecure and interceptable by everyone.


Freescale still doesn't have jack. PA Semi had a dual core PPC, I don't know if that went anywhere.


The Northwood / Prestonia version is fine. I still use a Prestonia-based system every day. I never ran Prescott / Nocona though.

Still seems a bit of a lame excuse to me. Surely AT&T are going to have a fully deployed 3G network within the 2 year contract span of initial iPhone buyers?



In theory EDGE is 236kbps to 473kbps. ie. 4 to 8 times quicker than dialup. In reality on AT&T people were getting 40kbps minimum and AT&T have reportedly been tuning the network to increase that to 80kbps. Here in the UK Orange claim 200kbps but I think the reality is much lower.

The initial reviews are puzzling though. A few minutes to load popular pages is a lot longer than I'd expect. One of the things both Orange and Vodafone do here is proxy the phone's connection through their cache and serve up lower resolution JPEGs in web pages to preserve bandwidth. I wonder if AT&T do that?



If they're sensible, they'd allow you to switch off 3G to preserve battery life. Nokia and SE allow that.

Those are all pretty bad, but my favorite weird name is this guy:



I mean, Creflo!? Creflo??? Who the heck names their kid that? It doesn't even rhyme with anything, 'cept maybe TriFlow.

He's some sort of televangelist, so he does get props for his last name reflecting what he's all about.

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You'd think, but its not a slam-dunk. Europe's overall 3G penetration rates are, surprisingly, not that much higher than in the US (though there are exceptions, such as Italy).

It's possible that Apple could launch over there initially with 2.5G, though one wouldn't recommend it. But their Euro launch is slated for 4Q '07, so perhaps there's not enough time to make and test the new version in time. Guess we'll see.

One thing's for certain: They have to have 3G in time for the Asian launch in '08. Japan and Korea lead the world in 3G penetration rates (over 50% already, higher still come 2008), the iPhone stands little chance of success over there without a 3G version. \

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Tell me about it. "Breakthrough Internet device" + dialup-speed browsing = Huh?!?

WiFi helps, but isn't a full solution, because it's not helpful if you're on the move or away from the local Starbucks.

So then we're back to "EDGE isn't... THAT... bad." Or even, "3G... isn't... THAT... good."

I guess some people think that being an Apple fan is all about defending whatever action the company takes. I'm of the feeling that being an uncritical customer doesn't really help them that much. Any company is stronger when it receives honest, and tough, feedback.

So, along those lines, they really need to get a 3G version out, no later than next year. And it should also be able to record video, voice dial, and do MMS- all really obvious and common features that iPhone 1.0 currently lacks. If they can get some of those holes filled via software updates to iPhone 1.0, awesome, more power to them.

It's a good phone, even breakthrough in some ways, but there's always room for improvement.

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A little unfair perhaps. At the end of the PowerBook's life, Freescale released the 7448 and the 8641D Dual processor which had a stack of onboard features moving the north bridge into the CPU.

It's a pretty capable chip from all accounts and holds it's own up against the Core Duo with lower clock speed and lower power.

But once Apple left PowerPC, Freescale didn't have a customer for laptop/desktop chips so it's hardly surprising they've not released anything after that that is better. Same with IBM who have been busy elsewhere (consoles and servers).

The PA Semi Dual PowerPC @ 2.0Ghz has been released IIRC but that concentrates on running at very low power (5W typical). That would make a screamer of an ultraportable if Apple chose appropriate CPUs for the purpose rather than jumping wholesale in bed with Intel. Maybe the iPhone is hope there as it's ARM based but they used an dead end Intel Dothan in the AppleTV where that PA Semi chip might have been better.


Intel for me has been a bit underwhelming too. Jan 2006 their top end laptop chip was 2.33Ghz. A year and a half later we've reached 2.4Ghz. Woooo! Sure, it's better than being stuck with a G4 but I was still hoping they'd have moved on further by now, especially as Apple prefers the laptop chips, not the desktop chips.

There's not been much sign of Intel's ultra low power chips either.

Padmasree Warrior said she was kinda worried, but Motorola has other things to worry about now, see Moto Q1 2007 Conference Call (Apr. 07).

By their own admission:

• Their Mobile Devices business is not even profitable at the moment, they anticipate on returning to profitability in the second half of the year.
  
• Their focus was on market share at all costs: "It's not that we don't want market share [] But you've got to make money in what you do."
  
• Bad return on investment from R&D: "The bottom-line is the R&D and Mobile Devices has to start delivering the profitability that we are spending, otherwise we have to think about that R&D expense."
  
• The plethora of phone models is confusing: "We've got some products, some architectures that are not producing. [] So, we are trimming the portfolio."
  
• Etc: ongoing management changes, channel rationalization

Yes, i am sure you are right, i would expect them the have released at least another version of iPhone in the next year and a 3G version could well be on the cards. It does look a cool phone, there is just a lot of work to do to even get 1% market share when you look at the amount of phones that Nokia sell.

I am not and anti Apple troll on here by any means, in our house we have an imac, a Mac Mini, 3 ipods, ipod HiFi and an AppleTV and the wife is getting a Mac Book this week. I do like Apple products very much, but that does not mean i am just going to love whatever they release and it does not mean i am incapable of criticizing a product when i feel it may be flawed, Just sometimes it is funny to see people defending Apple so much on here.

I agree with that. I think the EuroPhone (Steve said 4th quarter 2007) will be the same phone as the American iPhone v1, but the AsiaPhone (Steve said 2008) will be the same as iPhone 2 in the US, and will be 3G.

To be fair, some of it comes from the days where Apple fans would have to fight off legions of PC/Microsoft fanboy trolls, who would make unfair attacks on Apple, ad nauseum. The mid- to late-nineties was especially 'fun' for this... though it was always amusing to see PC/MS fantrolls whine that "Apple fans will defend Apple to the death". They just could not break us, no matter what.

Of course, you see a lot less outright trolling now, because to stand up and holla "Apple sucks!" these days just doesn't have a lot of credibility behind it. You can say it, but you'll just look like an idiot.

That said, a lot of people here seem to have a hard time differentiating between the occasional unfair PC fantroll attack, and well-meaning advice/constructive criticism given by authentic Apple fans. It seems like many still rush to play the apologist or defender role, when its really not necessary anymore.

Microsoft, Dell, Creative etc are the ones who need apologists/defenders now... not Apple.

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That's the prediction I'd put my money on too, I think its been their plan all along.

Only exception is if Apple is stung enough by the 'no 3G?' criticism here and delays the Euro release long enough to make iPhone 2 the launch EuroPhone. But I'd say odds are against that.

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Regardless of 3G penetration, you just simply can't buy a smartphone in Europe that isn't 3G enabled, except for American rubbish (Palms, Blackberry...)

Or maybe after Paris of Troy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_(mythology)

FYI, I am an "American." And, I have heard of the Hilton family.

It was meant to be, well, I guess, in jest, but I guess you missed that.....

One of the great composer/musicians of the 20th (or any other) century.......

Motorola now own GoodLinks, which is a common application that is deployed on corporate PDA devices to sync with Exchange servers. Let's see if Motorola can come up with GoodLink for the iPhone. I see 3 possibilities:

1) Motorola manages to develop a working GoodLink for iPhone despite the paltry support for third party applications on iPhone.

2) Motorola announces that they are unable to create GoodLink for iPhone, citing Apple's paltry support for third party iPhone software development

3) Motorola purposely withholds GoodLink for iPhone as a way to screw with Apple

Motorola now owns GoodLink, which is a common application that is deployed on corporate PDA devices to sync with Exchange servers. Let's see if Motorola can come up with GoodLink for the iPhone. I see 3 possibilities:

1) Motorola manages to develop a working GoodLink for iPhone despite the paltry support for third party applications on iPhone.

2) Motorola announces that they are unable to create GoodLink for iPhone, citing Apple's paltry support for third party iPhone software development

3) Motorola purposely withholds GoodLink for iPhone as a way to screw with Apple

Apple may feel the sting of some negative feedback, but it'll probably mostly be complaints about at&t.

at&t needs to really feel the consumer's disgust and wrath to light a fire under them.

True, but the question is, does Apple really consider the iPhone to be a smartphone, or something new and different altogether?

They may honestly believe they can get by for awhile in Europe sans 3G. I wouldn't do it, but my initials ain't 'SJ'.

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ATT/Cingular has been feeling the consumer's disgust and wrath for many years now, and it never seems to change or improve them all that much. Mainly because, they don't have to change or improve much to do reasonably well.

The last big carrier merger (Cingular buying the old ATT Wireless) reduced the number of national carriers in the US to only four, which isn't a lot for such a big country, especially considering that there are plenty of places/markets where not all four are going to have quality coverage.

ATT, through its sheer size and better coverage, can handle T-Mobile. And Sprint has been imploding of late, thanks largely to an ill-advised merger with Nextel.

There's only one carrier that ATT/Cingular couldn't really handle, and that was Verizon. And now they've got the iPhone to beat Verizon about the head and shoulders with.

So... what reason does ATT have to really step it up? Apple yelling at them? Apple signed a five-year exclusive apparently (though one hopes for a loophole)... its not like they can just walk.

Ironically, the iPhone may give ATT less incentive to improve. Sure, they did some EDGE network upgrades primarily for the iPhone, but the cost of that was chickenfeed compared to what they spend on their overall network every year.

Don't get me wrong, ATT is definitely throwing a lot of money and resources (overall) at their problems, but it just seems like they never 'get there'. Their customer service is routinely rated in or near the crapper, and they always promise it'll get better, and it never does. They talk a good game on 3G but they lag well behind Sprint and Verizon in 3G deployment. They always get bad ratings from JD Power and Consumer Reports on their network reliability and quality. And their customer churn rate, while improving, is still is far from the best (Verizon).

ATT is basically a .500 team in a perennially weak division... they get by, and hope always springs eternal, but somehow excellence is forever out of reach. Blah. \
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Ok, but even the next rung of phones down are 3G too - the SE Walkman phones, Nokia N series and even Moto phones, which incidentally all tend to have better cameras, video, MMS...

Apple could sell two cups and a bit of string though if they put their logo on it.

Europeans need 3G. That's because they are quite backward on the wi-fi deployment front. For us, on this side, it will be a non-issue, since, for applications such as email, maps, weather and such, 2.5 v. 3 speeds will probably not end up being that important.

So are lots of other technologies. People can also intercept communications on your personal DSL line.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't use these technologies. You just have to remember to only use SSL-secure connections for any communication that involves sensitive information (like passwords and credit card numbers.)

I really don't care if somebody intercepts the fact that I read Dilbert every morning. I do care if someone intercepts my web-mail login.

But you need products distinctive enough and good enough to create that kind of grass-roots support. It's been a long time since mass-market cloners managed to release any product like that.

Microsoft's Surface is probably the first product to come from them in years that I think might create such a strong following, but MS has cultivated (and continues to cultivate) so much bad-will among their customers that no product may be cool enough to create a genuine grass-roots-support movement.

I don't disagree, he's 'my era' but that doesn't make him any less of a loon when it comes to naming children...

Dave

Great post, you are obviously quite sane
The iPhone is a great product and I 'WANT' one but there is some major room for improvement.

That said, I can't help but think they made some 'great' business decisions.
For a start...

* The iPhone has 'enough' features to carry it through at launch (as you can see).

* It uses the 'safest' option for network coverage in the USA. (Mixed with WiFi Coverage = Nice)

* Plus they now have room for evolution. Competitors are going to rush products out the door to try and kill this thing (minus 6 months ago) but Apple will be in the labs tightening the screws all the time and working on the software updates, the 2nd gen models and all the cool stuff that will keep on eclipsing the competition anytime they get close. They are going to slap them from pillar to post.

Not exactly a non-issue. Even Jobs admits that for web-browsing, EDGE is not ideal. From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Jobs acknowledged that the company's new iPhone won't surf the Internet as fast as he would like on the network, called "Edge," but added that the device's ability to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots would give consumers a speedier alternative for Web browsing.

And of course, the reviews have been tearing the iPhone a new one over this (though they like the iPhone overall).

The thing is, the iPhone makes you want to actually web-browse on your phone. So ironically, the iPhone being so good as a 'breakthrough Internet device' actually contributes to the irritations over the issue. If it was like other phones that had the 'baby Internet', prolly no one would care how slow EDGE is. \

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I'm pretty sure that's not the case. There was a report a while back that said the UK at least had the most hot spots per square mile anywhere. France and Germany are pretty good too.

If anything I think we've gone through the hotspot high water mark and as more phones have wifi, the number of free hotspots is shrinking. There's quite an extensive T-Mobile and BT OpenZone network in the UK but they cost a small fortune. With almost blanket 3G coverage for £7.50 a month, it's not that we need 3G, it's just more available.

My handlers at the asylum and I thank you.


Yes, it will be very amusing if the first wave of touchscreen-enabled 'iPhone killers' show up, going on about how they 'have 3G, record video, do MMS' etc etc and basically play directly against the iPhone's feature set (i.e. have all the important things the iPhone does not)... and then, only a few weeks later, Apple releases an iPhone 2 which has 3G and other said missing iPhone 1 features.

In that scenario, 'blown out of the water' would be an understatement.


The USS iPhone-killer

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Exactly. Apple and Google keep releasing cool stuff and Microsoft... keeps not, for the most part. This is sapping their image and their support among consumers.

Look at Vista. It was the culmination of several years of effort and several billions dollars of investment by Microsoft, and it gets met with kind of a yawn, largely because Tiger got there two years earlier. Then you look at Web services and apps, and MS is playing catch-up there too.

They're basically becoming like IBM in the '80s... the big 'moneybags' company that somehow is always a couple of steps behind. Their bottom line isn't really hurt, but their image is. Hence the need for apologists and defenders.


You know that Surface is just a $10,000 kiosk right now. Its supposed to come to computers in a few years, but the 'bathtub and five cameras' design could make that a bit difficult.

Meanwhile, Apple's revolutionary UI is already here, as of today, via the iPhone. No doubt it'll spread to other products as well (UMPCs-style Macs? Subnotebook?), likely well before Surface can get there.

So, it seems like it'd be the Vista scenario all over again. As in "Hey, that's cool... but didn't Apple already do that?".

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They're already out BEFORE the iPhone, I've had a touch screen phone for almost 3 years now, but bring it on. Competition in the mobile phone market is exactly what is needed. Before Apple, Symbian were getting complacent with only Microsoft, Palm and Blackberry to compete against. Symbian OS9 and UIQ3 or S60 were worse than the preceding versions IME. Still miles better than the competition but not brilliant.