<strong>given that japan is the number 2 market for apple, it is likely that an announcement of any iPhone will not be at Paris.
France is all and only GSM.
Sprint and au in Japan share CDMA tech. It is very likely that any iPhone by apple will use CDMA tech.</strong><hr></blockquote>
@ niji:
Do you refer to W-CDMA here ? This is kind of the designated standard for 3G in most of Europe and Japan. Docomo is using WCDMA, but I thought some of the others you mentioned (au, J-Phone...) are using CDMA 2000. And the latter will also used in the US with Qualcomm pushing it (also in China, Korea). But most of Europa and Japan will use the W-CDMA standard for 3G phones...
This shows the problem DaveGee and I mentioned as well earlier in this thread. A lot of operators and different technology standards to deal with ....a problem Apple didn't have to gace so far.
Still, there won't be as many standards left soon (some key standards already emerged with WAP2.0/SyncML and Bluetooth).
An Apple GSM (GPRS capable of course) phone could cover parts of the US and almost all of Europe for now.
The next generation could use CDMA 2000 or WCDMA with two variants of the phone....
Great find from the original poster. I was expecting the same tired recapitulation of long standing Apple PDA/phone rumors from that article, but it definitely had quite a few valuable insights. And there have been a lot of great posts in this thread as well. There are obviously many hurdles Apple would have to overcome before introducing such a device, but I believe that device does exist in some form. One message I came away with from MWNY is that an Apple smart phone would be very palatable to SJ. And as far as who the product would be marketed to goes, remember that Mac users bought a large number of iPods. Would not an insanely great Apple PDA phone sell well to the same faithful users who bought the iPod? I believe the device exists; once the market conditions are right it will be out.
Wouldn't this be cool. What if Apple is making an iPhone and adds the following technology.
Using iCals' subscription engine feature, the sync on the phone has a subscription service for databases. This way, when you turn on your phone, it calls up your .mac account address book and syncs it on the phone.
A great extension of this would be for company employees. One could turn on their phone and its address book would automatically sync with the employee Database and update with with the latest contact numbers and information.
Would not an insanely great Apple PDA phone sell well to the same faithful users who bought the iPod? I believe the device exists; once the market conditions are right it will be out.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is my belief as well. The iPods' success made me a believer Apple can do this - although this one will be much harder to pull off as discussed above.
But the iPod was kind of their training ground to prove the naysayers (count me among them back then <img src="graemlins/embarrassed.gif" border="0" alt="[Embarrassed]" /> - and I guess I was not the only one) wrong.
Apple needs such devices to grow beyond their desktop niche - and grow that niche by making heads turn and attracting converts.
They could reuse the same introduction strategy they tried with the iPod :
Make this iPhone a Mac-only product for some
months to creaty envy - and then offer it to PC users as well. And update the OS continously to refine features.
Take the SonyEric P800 as a basis for a kind of device what Apple could introduce:
Add GPS and Airport as well as some (existing) iApps and Sherlock on the desktop side and exchange the Symbian OS with something else (PalmOS 5 or Pixo or whatever is good enough). ...And maybe even trow in Inkwell ? I am not sure about this one.
I know the P800 costs too much ($1k +). But prices are dropping rapidly....
"Connect the dots for the business model. Huge *recurring* revenue streams for Apple....restaurant searches, tickets, mobile chats. "
Vindigo sort of does this already but they only have a version for palm os and pocket pc (i asked them about symbian which the sony/erickson p800 uses and they said not yet)
OK now on Tech Tv they showed a prototype phone for a split second from i believe the last CES show in Vegas.
This phone looked EXACTLY what I would expect an Apple phone to look like.
It was white with metal accents. It was the thinnest cell phone I have seen, very similar to a sony Clie... they showed it during a segment today (freshgear repeat on about 11:30 I think eastern time which means westerns may still have a chance to see it!) on 3g phones...
DOES ANYONE HAVE A PIC Of THiS??
it didn't say what company made it but it looked Sooo Apple...
Someone find it!
you west coasters may still get the feed at I think 11/1130 your time...
"Add GPS and Airport" and don't forget to add an OLED screen...they are beautifal and thin...and we should start seeing them first in phones this fall or early 2003 (sanyo I believe will be amongst the first to release a cell phone with OLED)
<strong>When i first said this and people barraged me insults about how i was wrong!
</strong><hr></blockquote>
So was I when I proposed Apple buying Danger Inc. some 6+ months ago here....well, maybe the NYT time article will give some more credibility to this 'iPhone' thing.
PS: Just to clarify my idea before anybody writes in again that 'his Danger thing sucks'. Apple should have taken Danger as an example/basis for a better device (color screen etc.) not just buy and resell it in my opinion. Now, it's too late. Danger will do it on their own - and probably fail since they are late to the game and their device is still B&W.
if that danger hiptop was spruced up a bit and the price was lowered to $99 I think it could be a hit in schools...
But anyway if WOZ's wheels of Zeus GPS venture goes well, and he teams back up with Jobs, and they take over wireless and create what the mac was to 80's.... that would be...
wow so the ny times read the boards cause we've talked about this already after the anaylyst meeting me thinks where he says pdas are dead and whatnot and cellphones are the modern pdas or something
<strong>well first of all, there is no way you are going to see a HD in a cell phone.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
You are most probably right. I just thought if you could have all these nice sync capabilities, what about a micro drive or very tiny HD...the other phones all have MemoryStick (P800 of course) or similar with limited storage capabilities.
Better than nothing....but I kept asking myself how to store all the nice things Apple could pack in (sync with iApps like iPhoto etc. etc.) ?
Storage is already becoming a big problem for phones with cameras.
Well, any iPhone with iPod style and ease of use will do fine for me, the HD is probably just a pipedream...the original article just got me too hooked up.
In Europe, the T68i is about a quarter of the price of the P800. I got that one.
It's available since July in Europa, P800 is not available yet, so I couldn't compare. But P800 will cost a little over $1k here...urgh.
PS: Don't get the Nokia 7650 camera phone. It looks and feels like a brick and is an embarrassment for Nokia in my view.
Compared to the Japanese phones with camera, it's a bad joke. The first Japanese phones with camera from Kyocera came out in *early 2000*. Embarassment for a market leader to bring out the 7650 two years later in the West with that size ! Ok, that was my 'Nokia sucks' rant. Sorry, had to do it.
everyone seems to think a phone NEEDS to be held to your face.plenty of people use earbud/mic wires now. imagine an ipod that you keep in your pocket with a double earbud + mic set up so you could listen to your mp3s and deal with phone conversations should you need to. it could have voice activated dialing as many phones currently have for the majority of calls which would be from address book. other numbers could be punched in from a clio style key pad which would be very thin and easy to put on the back of an i pod. with an oled screen the internals which usually go into a screen would be significantly thinner. make it touch screen and you could manage/add contacts too. most phone use can be handled from a unit remotely kept in a different place on the body ( like pockets) . everything would sync with your desktop by bluetooth and you could keep the firewire for mp3s. imagine listening to mp3s and getting a call waiting signal...a button on the new remote(send) is pressed and the mp3 put on hold...have your conversation with the mic which would be hanging off one of the earbud wires , hang up with the end button and your mp3 continues. a scroll wheel / voice activation would be sufficient for like 75-85% of everyday needs. entering data by hand would be used much less often. this would make an ipod/phone a must have device in my opinion....
1) Instead of a phone, why not think of an iBook-like device that accepts a phone (physically or via Bluetooth)? Steve is always bringing up the bad points of PDAs. Imagine something similar to an iBook that makes your own cell phone USEFUL. The iBook has the big screen, powerful OS, full size keyboard and large amount of storage to let you really utilize the data which is accessible by phone.
2) Extrapolate a few years out, hardware costs are approaching zero. Apple is beginning to switch its business model to get funding from intellectual property (aka .Mac) rather than hardware. Perhaps Apple will look at a way to provide a service via phones through .Mac? This way they get $100 a year per user and they don't have to manufacture a phone.
3) Just in case they want to incorporate a phone via a PC card or such remember that Motorola has started to offer cell phone chip sets to third parties.
4) FYI, last week Andy Gore (of MacWorld) was interviewed on KGO radio in San Francisco. He produced a small PDA with wireless connection that will be introduced this fall for about $200.
duplication of features for users of iPod (bad... users won't buy max version since some things already ".mac capable")
standalone iPhone - no storage... FW cable / Bluetooth / Airport only
no duplication of iPod/iBook - complementary product (good... if users already own iPod, will max features of phone <screen size/colour, mem, camera res, etc>.
if users don't yet own iPod, will encourage more sales of iPod.)
'iPodpaq' phone/camera - MUST have iPod for anything more than 128Mb mem stick or 'dumb' phone
as above with respect to transfer technologies (FW only... later "PC compatible" can dumb down to USB) Airport/Bluetooth
additionally (for both these options), by offloading all the storage onto the iPod, all of the buck you invest can be devoted to OLED screen (better battery _and_ actual outdoor use in sun), real glass optics (not plastic lenses), 3+ megapixel CCD, and minimum Tri-mode support as is reasonably common in some pricier phones now. analog, CDMA spectrum a,b (or TDMA a,b in places)
Apple could be insanely great and release a quad-mode + GPS phone/cam with all of the upgradeble BTO in full synergy with iPod, etc.
logically, this option would allow for the largest uptake of all new iProducts and the largest perceived interaction of digital iHub-iness between an increasingly cool family of snowy metal gizmos.
next on the list would be the iDVcam which would supercede the cam function of the iPhone enough to drive upgrades and switches... then the corners are more truly filled
i'm inclined to think iPhone/Cam + iPod synergy will outweigh the mktg pitch for the phone to pack a mini-iPod of duplicate storage and scroll wheel (redundancy is so un-jobs/ivey)
the added 'benefit' to requiring an iPod (or mac) to drive the phone/cam's "bonus" functions will be to preserve "only-on-apple" cachet until the PC market starts a frenzy of demand to join the cool club
plus, think of all the new "switch" ads...
ellen feiss: "my old phone like ate the number. no redial. bummer." <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
Comments
<strong>given that japan is the number 2 market for apple, it is likely that an announcement of any iPhone will not be at Paris.
France is all and only GSM.
Sprint and au in Japan share CDMA tech. It is very likely that any iPhone by apple will use CDMA tech.</strong><hr></blockquote>
@ niji:
Do you refer to W-CDMA here ? This is kind of the designated standard for 3G in most of Europe and Japan. Docomo is using WCDMA, but I thought some of the others you mentioned (au, J-Phone...) are using CDMA 2000. And the latter will also used in the US with Qualcomm pushing it (also in China, Korea). But most of Europa and Japan will use the W-CDMA standard for 3G phones...
This shows the problem DaveGee and I mentioned as well earlier in this thread. A lot of operators and different technology standards to deal with ....a problem Apple didn't have to gace so far.
Still, there won't be as many standards left soon (some key standards already emerged with WAP2.0/SyncML and Bluetooth).
An Apple GSM (GPRS capable of course) phone could cover parts of the US and almost all of Europe for now.
The next generation could use CDMA 2000 or WCDMA with two variants of the phone....
[ 08-19-2002: Message edited by: jabba ]
[ 08-19-2002: Message edited by: jabba ]</p>
Using iCals' subscription engine feature, the sync on the phone has a subscription service for databases. This way, when you turn on your phone, it calls up your .mac account address book and syncs it on the phone.
A great extension of this would be for company employees. One could turn on their phone and its address book would automatically sync with the employee Database and update with with the latest contact numbers and information.
[ 08-19-2002: Message edited by: geobe ]</p>
well, booya y'all! <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
<strong>
(...)
Would not an insanely great Apple PDA phone sell well to the same faithful users who bought the iPod? I believe the device exists; once the market conditions are right it will be out.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is my belief as well. The iPods' success made me a believer Apple can do this - although this one will be much harder to pull off as discussed above.
But the iPod was kind of their training ground to prove the naysayers (count me among them back then <img src="graemlins/embarrassed.gif" border="0" alt="[Embarrassed]" /> - and I guess I was not the only one) wrong.
Apple needs such devices to grow beyond their desktop niche - and grow that niche by making heads turn and attracting converts.
They could reuse the same introduction strategy they tried with the iPod :
Make this iPhone a Mac-only product for some
months to creaty envy - and then offer it to PC users as well. And update the OS continously to refine features.
Take the SonyEric P800 as a basis for a kind of device what Apple could introduce:
<a href="http://www.sonyericsson.com/P800/frameset.htm"; target="_blank">http://www.sonyericsson.com/P800/frameset.htm</a>;
Add GPS and Airport as well as some (existing) iApps and Sherlock on the desktop side and exchange the Symbian OS with something else (PalmOS 5 or Pixo or whatever is good enough). ...And maybe even trow in Inkwell ? I am not sure about this one.
I know the P800 costs too much ($1k +). But prices are dropping rapidly....
Vindigo sort of does this already but they only have a version for palm os and pocket pc (i asked them about symbian which the sony/erickson p800 uses and they said not yet)
OK now on Tech Tv they showed a prototype phone for a split second from i believe the last CES show in Vegas.
This phone looked EXACTLY what I would expect an Apple phone to look like.
It was white with metal accents. It was the thinnest cell phone I have seen, very similar to a sony Clie... they showed it during a segment today (freshgear repeat on about 11:30 I think eastern time which means westerns may still have a chance to see it!) on 3g phones...
DOES ANYONE HAVE A PIC Of THiS??
it didn't say what company made it but it looked Sooo Apple...
Someone find it!
you west coasters may still get the feed at I think 11/1130 your time...
<strong>When i first said this and people barraged me insults about how i was wrong!
</strong><hr></blockquote>
So was I when I proposed Apple buying Danger Inc. some 6+ months ago here....well, maybe the NYT time article will give some more credibility to this 'iPhone' thing.
PS: Just to clarify my idea before anybody writes in again that 'his Danger thing sucks'. Apple should have taken Danger as an example/basis for a better device (color screen etc.) not just buy and resell it in my opinion. Now, it's too late. Danger will do it on their own - and probably fail since they are late to the game and their device is still B&W.
Anyway, I still keep an eye on this site...
<a href="http://www.woz.com/"; target="_blank">http://www.woz.com/</a>;
WOZ could very well link to the NYT article and Apple in my view.
Think about it, the iPod is amazingly small, yet, imaging using it as a phone. It just isn't the right aspect ratio, needs to be skinnier and longer.
(Although, if the phone had a firewire hookup there may be a way to synch phone/ipod.)
well, I will be the first to eat my socks if i'm wrong...
I'll check tech TV at 11:00 tonight. I can tape it and I may be able to get it on my comp, i'll find out.
But anyway if WOZ's wheels of Zeus GPS venture goes well, and he teams back up with Jobs, and they take over wireless and create what the mac was to 80's.... that would be...
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
Now Bill go back to Dos where you belong!
looks like i am going to wait untill this pans out or not.
[ 08-19-2002: Message edited by: keyboardf12 ]</p>
<strong>well first of all, there is no way you are going to see a HD in a cell phone.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
You are most probably right. I just thought if you could have all these nice sync capabilities, what about a micro drive or very tiny HD...the other phones all have MemoryStick (P800 of course) or similar with limited storage capabilities.
Better than nothing....but I kept asking myself how to store all the nice things Apple could pack in (sync with iApps like iPhoto etc. etc.) ?
Storage is already becoming a big problem for phones with cameras.
Well, any iPhone with iPod style and ease of use will do fine for me, the HD is probably just a pipedream...the original article just got me too hooked up.
I'm a believer in this new device.
Must be there for some reason.
<strong>doh. i just decided to buy either the t68i or the p800 depending on the price when it rools out nov 1.
[ 08-19-2002: Message edited by: keyboardf12 ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
In Europe, the T68i is about a quarter of the price of the P800. I got that one.
It's available since July in Europa, P800 is not available yet, so I couldn't compare. But P800 will cost a little over $1k here...urgh.
PS: Don't get the Nokia 7650 camera phone. It looks and feels like a brick and is an embarrassment for Nokia in my view.
Compared to the Japanese phones with camera, it's a bad joke. The first Japanese phones with camera from Kyocera came out in *early 2000*. Embarassment for a market leader to bring out the 7650 two years later in the West with that size ! Ok, that was my 'Nokia sucks' rant. Sorry, had to do it.
here's hoping though...
I think it will be on at 11:30 and it is one of the first segments...
now like I said it shows the white phone prototype for a split second but when you see it you will see why I thought it looked like an Apple Phone
1) Instead of a phone, why not think of an iBook-like device that accepts a phone (physically or via Bluetooth)? Steve is always bringing up the bad points of PDAs. Imagine something similar to an iBook that makes your own cell phone USEFUL. The iBook has the big screen, powerful OS, full size keyboard and large amount of storage to let you really utilize the data which is accessible by phone.
2) Extrapolate a few years out, hardware costs are approaching zero. Apple is beginning to switch its business model to get funding from intellectual property (aka .Mac) rather than hardware. Perhaps Apple will look at a way to provide a service via phones through .Mac? This way they get $100 a year per user and they don't have to manufacture a phone.
3) Just in case they want to incorporate a phone via a PC card or such remember that Motorola has started to offer cell phone chip sets to third parties.
4) FYI, last week Andy Gore (of MacWorld) was interviewed on KGO radio in San Francisco. He produced a small PDA with wireless connection that will be introduced this fall for about $200.
- Hypothetical iPhone Bundle Options
- standalone with internal HD / storage
- standalone iPhone - no storage... FW cable / Bluetooth / Airport only
- 'iPodpaq' phone/camera - MUST have iPod for anything more than 128Mb mem stick or 'dumb' phone
i'm inclined to think iPhone/Cam + iPod synergy will outweigh the mktg pitch for the phone to pack a mini-iPod of duplicate storage and scroll wheel (redundancy is so un-jobs/ivey)duplication of features for users of iPod (bad... users won't buy max version since some things already ".mac capable")
no duplication of iPod/iBook - complementary product (good... if users already own iPod, will max features of phone <screen size/colour, mem, camera res, etc>.
if users don't yet own iPod, will encourage more sales of iPod.)
as above with respect to transfer technologies (FW only... later "PC compatible" can dumb down to USB) Airport/Bluetooth
additionally (for both these options), by offloading all the storage onto the iPod, all of the buck you invest can be devoted to OLED screen (better battery _and_ actual outdoor use in sun), real glass optics (not plastic lenses), 3+ megapixel CCD, and minimum Tri-mode support as is reasonably common in some pricier phones now. analog, CDMA spectrum a,b (or TDMA a,b in places)
Apple could be insanely great and release a quad-mode + GPS phone/cam with all of the upgradeble BTO in full synergy with iPod, etc.
logically, this option would allow for the largest uptake of all new iProducts and the largest perceived interaction of digital iHub-iness between an increasingly cool family of snowy metal gizmos.
next on the list would be the iDVcam which would supercede the cam function of the iPhone enough to drive upgrades and switches... then the corners are more truly filled
the added 'benefit' to requiring an iPod (or mac) to drive the phone/cam's "bonus" functions will be to preserve "only-on-apple" cachet until the PC market starts a frenzy of demand to join the cool club
plus, think of all the new "switch" ads...
ellen feiss: "my old phone like ate the number. no redial. bummer." <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
edit: damned UBB... tab + return doesn't add crlf, posts
[ 08-19-2002: Message edited by: curiousuburb ]
[ 08-19-2002: Message edited by: curiousuburb ]</p>