Report downplays concerns over lack of 3G iPhone - Page 5

ROFLMAO! You do have to wonder... like Steve, the spin is fast and hard.

A history of spin is also why I don't take Steve at his word regarding battery life being the reason for no 3G yet, especially since Samsung has already 'done it' (i.e. released a 3G smartphone with good batt life).

I think its just cheaper for Apple to wait until the Asian launch to do it, Stevie's obsessed 'bout them there margins a'gin...

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Big boys don't cry, Teno.

And its hilarious that you'd think Mel and I would want the sales to be bad, considering that we're both stockholders. Tell me another.




Next up... Teno quibbles over what the meaning of 'is', is.



This is the scam I love best. As Aegis pointed out, Apple has been blocking the official Euro iPhone sales numbers (which is very telling, considering that we learned the US launch numbers almost immediately), so the only numbers you can really get are from unnamed sources. Which of course can then be attacked by Apple and Apple-spinners as being unofficial.



Only in that with Enron and MCI, the lying rose the level of being a criminal offense. But lying is lying, regardless, and beyond a certain point, that's exactly what you're doing... willfully providing false information to stockholders and prospective stockholders.



Uh-huh. I'm sure that's what the Enron and MCI guys told themselves too.

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While, as a stockholder, I can't honestly say I want sales to suck, I fully understand the frustration. As you and Mel noted elsewhere, Apple seems to put out products for themselves almost as much for the market. It's kinda like, "Here it is, we like it, so you should too."

The upside of that is that sometimes Apple's vision is ahead of the curve in a very positive way, and fills a need that everyone had but didn't know they had... the iPod, for example. But the downside is that sometimes that very same approach leads to a bit of tone-deafness and arrogance on Apple's part... customers are saying, "No, that's NOT what we want, we want THIS", but Apple will stick to its guns for quite awhile, insisting that we accept their original vision, even if it doesn't meet our needs.

The whole 'Apple knows best' thing, for good or ill, in this case, ill. \

So yeah, in those cases you kinda do have to leave it up to the market to knock some sense into Apple's noggin. Hopefully Apple receives the message sooner rather than later, all the better for my shares.

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Of course it can be done. Look at the LG Viewty, HSDPA and has 1000mah battery, not only that but has a decent sized 3.0 inch screen to power.

399 Euro or 269 pounds inc tax, which when you compare it with US pricing seems about right. Even the tariffs seem about right too when you compare it with US tariffs.

But when you compare it with it's competitors in Europe such as the N95, LG Viewty, HTCs, SE P series, all of which are available for free with better tariffs, the pricing looks completely out of whack. That's leaving aside any argument about whether the iPhone needs 3G or a 5mp camera like it's competitors have here.

The iphone needs to be free and available on tariffs that cost about £15-20 a month without data like the N95 is.

Yeah, Apple definitely has to address both the feature set issue and the pricing issue. \

If they can do that, I think there's no stopping them. But Apple seems to be against subsidizing the price of the iPhone to the consumer.

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The definitions are from the Oxford Dictionary not Wikipedia. How have I assumed my guess will be correct. I've never claimed it to be the absolute truth.


That is because the US launch happened days before the end of that quarter. At the end of the next quarter is when Apple announced it had sold 1 million iPhones. We are near the end of this quarter and will soon hear the current sales numbers.


Its not against the law for a CEO to say we are never going to make a product and then actually make that product.

Yep. But Apple sales tracking isn't in the stone age... they already know how the Euro launch went, and there is no law requiring them to report all numbers only at quarterly intervals. If they wanted to squelch all the leaks and unofficial numbers pointing to disappointing Euro iPhone sales, they could do so right now, simply by releasing their official launch numbers... if said numbers were good. \

But they aren't, so releasing them now would simply confirm what's being said unofficially already... and Apple definitely doesn't want that.

It's a lot better for them to distract us with the bright, shiny objects of Macworld '08 new product introductions, and then lay the heavy on us a week later, with the required "everything's fine" spin attached, of course. Steve might even set that up with a lil' bit of preliminary spin during the keynote, by cherry-picking numbers and such... a great time to do it, when his RDF field is at its strongest.



Sure, Steve's very good at stopping just short of crossing the line. But he has to understand that when he lies like that, it undermines his credibility for everything else he says as well.

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Yep. The Viewty has 4 hours talk time with 3G on, and that's with an, IMO, undersized battery. Imagine what the talk time would be if it had something like the Blackjack II's 1700 mAh battery?

I think Steve's battery life excuse is going to suffer increasing ridicule as 3G smartphone after 3G smartphone releases with good battery life, and long before Apple says they can do it. The 'jack II is just the beginning.

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That's part of the arrogance I don't like.

This is the same thing I saw with the Cube. It truly was an innovative machine for the time. It was expandable, which most people didn't know.

But, when sales proved poor, instead of listening to the buying public, which suggested changes to both the machine, the pricing, and the way it was marketed, Apple instead chose to discontinue it.

To me that reeks of foolishness. A refusal to acknowledge mistakes, and to accommodate prospective customers. It seems that, often, they would rather have something go down in flames than admit their "vision" wasn't winning the public over.

I have seen a bit of movement in that attitude, but not as much as I'd like.

If they do indeed want to increase sales beyond their "natural" audience, they must accommodate people who want things that are further out from their "universe".

Either that, or stagnate.

One always assumes their guesses will be correct. If one doesn't know, then that statement can be made instead. But if one is willing to state something that they can't possibly know, they are assuming that that guess makes sense. If they believe that it makes sense, then they think it will come true. If they believe that it will come true, than that is their assumption.


Of course.


Did I say it was?

I agree with most of that. Though I think Apple being unwilling to accept less-than-fat margins on it played as much a role as arrogance. Or perhaps that's merely a different form of arrogance. \

Y'know, call me crazy, but I'd love to see Apple bring the Cube BACK.... if they priced it right from the get-go this time.

Sure, it would 'complicate' the lineup, but it does have its own niche... an 'upscale Mini' or a 'monitorless iMac', whichever. With Apple's upswing in reputation and improving Mac sales in general, the environment is just all-around more conducive to it doing well (or at least 'well enough') than it was back in 2000-2001.

All Apple has to do is not fumble the ball by overpricing it or forcing a poor feature set down ppl's throats.

It would be a nice little addition to the lineup, but knowing Apple, they'd probably still kill a new Cube for being merely a solid seller, rather than setting the world on fire.

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What type of tortured logic is that? Apple has only released sales numbers at the end of the quarter. Because Apple does not make an exception to disprove unsubstantiated rumors said rumors must be true.


People make forecasts and predictions all the time. Those predictions are made based on the information given at the time. Most rational people understand no one can predict the future with 100% accuracy. Unknown variables can and will come into play, foreseen circumstances may change. There is the concept of making a guess with the current information you have and the caveat that anything can change.


This is a good example of an assumption: a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof.

An assumption I feel comfortable in making is that no matter how many iPhones Apple will have sold, no matter how many millions in profit it will have made Apple and their partners, or how it will continue to push Apple's escalating stock. You will still say they should have sold more.


Yeah that's true. Jobs has even said as much. Like any business model it has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage so far as been a cohesive vision for their products. While many other companies products feel like each part of it was made by different departments that don't communicate. The risky part is in Apple committing to a direction that is not met by the consumer. So far they have far more checks in the win column than the loss column.


Looking at Apple's history what I'm hoping is that they planned the initial glow of the iPhone would carry sales through the Christmas season. After which software updates and hardware refresh would reenergize sales for the first half of 2008.

I do agree its time for Apple to bring the promised updated features and apps on the phone. If MW 08 and the SDK come and go without any significant core updates. I agree its foolish and iPhone sales likely will and should suffer.


But the numbers Apple has been putting up for the past few years clearly show they are growing out from the die hard Mac user base. Just because they don't always do what you think they should does not mean they are necessarily doing the wrong thing.

Meh... you say 'exception' like its some colossal big deal. There's no law against Apple saying "Hey we did great, here are some numbers" before the third week of January- they already know what the launch numbers are.

It seems very likely that the picture being painted by the unofficial numbers is true- the Euro launch was lackluster. So Apple, who will have to release official numbers eventually anyway, wants to do so against a background of exciting new product releases (MW '08) and carefully controlled spin. Can you blame them?

Sounds like typical corporate strategy, so why the big fuss from you? (I'm the one who dislikes corporate lying, after all. ). Do you honestly think Apple wouldn't manage its bad news as carefully as the next company, if not more so? This is Steve, we're talking about, right?



Ugh. I have zero desire to be part of the picky, anal little dispute you started with Mel over what the exact Wikipedia vs Oxford dictionary definition of a particular word is. It's a more than a bit pissy, so my name's Paul and that's between y'all. \



Well, it's been pretty clear to nearly everyone except you that the Euro launch has indeed been lackluster, so I guess I wouldn't put much faith in your track record on assumptions... sorry.

Far as the 'you will still say they should've sold more' part goes... well, duh. Even you yourself admit that Apple would've sold more iPhones if it had had 3G. That's certainly a no-brainer. Where we disagree is how significant that oversight has been in Europe.

But there again, you've heard from many ppl on this board and no doubt from much of the news coverage that no 3G and no MMS *IS* a big deal in Europe, and yet you somehow still want to spin that it doesn't matter so long as Apple sells "enough" iPhones in Europe. Since when is it great to leave money on the table? And now we hear that they didn't do that well, and you want to try to spin that too.

Honestly Teno, at some point you must be feeling like a member of the Flat Earth Society on this one. My condolences.



Yep. The problem is, the iPhone has the potential to be a mighty huge one in the 'loss' column, which is why most reasonable people want them to be respond sooner rather than later to the lackluster Euro launch.



It was a good bet in the US, and a poor one in Europe, looks like.



I too am looking forward to some nice 3rd party apps for the iPhone, plus a lot of the functionality holes hopefully being plugged by a softwar update (MMS, crippled bluetooth, voice-dialing, landscape keyboard outside of Safari).

The problem of course is that some of the shortcomings are only fixable by new hardware, not software- 3G and true GPS, for example. And there's really no guarantee that Apple will fix what it needs to fix in the next major software update, only hope and some firmly crossed fingers.



Sure. But when you have a whole lot of consumers screaming at you "We want THIS, not THAT", and when your launch numbers are underwhelming, heyyyy, maybe its time to wake up and smell the coffee, eh?

Sounds like a plan.

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Oops!

So far no one who works in 3G chip design or battery design have come out to dispute Jobs excuses. That would be a much more reputable source.

You cannot just compare two phones in that way. Power budget has to be distributed several ways 3G is only one part of it. Battery efficiency may differ because of CPU speed - screen size and brightness. Unless you know how these different phones budget out their power you cannot really compare simply based on a spec sheet.


If everything is fine why does Apple need to say its fine now instead of waiting until the end of the quarter?


I'm not trying to pull you into it that just happened to be a good example of an assumption.


I've never said definitively that Euro sales numbers are great. I've only said that rumor and innuendo don't prove they are poor.


I've admitted that there are some number of people who would not buy it without 3G. How big that number is we will have to see how well its selling against competing 3G phones. In the US the iPhone outsold most every 3G phone except the entire line of BlackBerry's.


So long as Apple and its partners are making a profit. That is the basic goal of any company for its products.


You are using a fickled source. The media headlines will go which ever way the wind blows. If the sales are poor they will speak about what Apple did wrong. If the sales are great they will tout the geniuses at Cupertino did it again.

Oopsie... looks like reality done went and slapped Teno's spin upside its' head:


Orange, the mobile arm of France Telecom, said it sold over 70,000 Apple iPhones since the touch-screen handset made its debut in France during the final week of November.

The 4-week sales total is approximately 30,000 units short of the "little under 100,000" unit target publicized by Orange chief executive Didier Lombard during a November 27th interview with Europe 1 radio.


And that folks, is from an "official" source. Though missing the target by 30% being characterized as "a little under" is classic (and hilarious) spin. Teno, they could use your services.

The scary part? French sales appear to be the strongest of all the Euro launch countries. The UK and Germany are very likely worse.

Meanwhile, Apple stock is down over 10% in just a few short days, which is quite a bit more than the market in general has dropped. As a stockholder, I ain't happy, but hopefully it'll light a fire under some folks who were in denial for too long. \

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