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iPhone

Page history last edited by Brian D Butler 15 years, 2 months ago

 

 

Table of Contents:


 

global supply chain:

 

Although the firm that sells it is American, it provides none of the physical innards. The components are almost entirely Asian: the screen is mostly from Japan, the flash memory from South Korea, and it was assembled in China. Apple’s contribution is the design and software—and, importantly, integrating the innovations of others.

 

 

iPhone from  Apple

 

Recent News:

 

 

 

Business Model Discussion:

 

Relations with Mobile operators (the AT&T's of the world)

 

Operators will subsidise the new handsets to make this low $199 price possible, but will also increase monthly usage fees—and will no longer pass a share of those fees to Apple.  This brings Apple in line with the business model used by other handset-makers, such as Nokia and Samsung.

 

Apply playing catch-up in the "Smart phone market"

 

Finland's Nokia sells the most "smartphones", capturing 45% of the world market in the first three months of this year, and Canada's Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of the famous BlackBerry, is second, with 13%. Even in America, where Nokia is weak, RIM leads, with 42%, followed by Apple with 20%.

 

 

Services & expectations

 

That means not just calling family and friends, but also listening to music, watching television and videos, navigating city streets, finding the nearest gas station, receiving “pushed” messages from the office, sending e-mail and files securely, downloading games and other software, and surfing the web at something swifter than the molasses speed of the original iPhone—all while on the go. And, yes, making cheap, even free, phone calls from WiFi hotspots, too.

 

And while its special features—access to a 3G network, GPS satellite navigation, push e-mail, contacts and calendars, as well as decent web surfing, multimedia downloading and WiFi—have been available on smart phones from Sprint and Verizon for at least three years, Apple has brought fresh thinking to the table.

 

 

GPS + advertising? finally here?:

 

The new iPhone mostly addresses the shortcomings of the old one. It has GPS satellite-positioning technology that will allow a new and exciting category of services, such as location tracking, that depend upon the phone knowing where it is.

 

Working with Developers to create more games, tools, and other stuff...

 

Even more than Palm, with its pioneering smart-phones, or Research in Motion, with its BlackBerry's push technology, Apple has finally taken to heart the lessons of Microsoft's success. Fortunes await not only the builders of successful platforms, but also those who provide the tools for others to build applications to run on them.

 

Apple is now turning the iPhone into a hand-held computer and allowing other firms to write software to run on it. Other handset-makers are doing the same, but the iPhone's operating system and programming tools, on display this week, are better than theirs.

 

Mr. Jobs failed to make his personal computers dominant, in part because software developers did not write as many programs for Mac-based machines as they did for Microsoft Windows PCs. He did not make the same mistake when he developed the iPod music players. Apple's iTunes stores, with easy and inexpensive downloads of music, gave the device an insurmountable lead, to date, over other players.

 

Mr. Jobs contends that Apple does not plan to make much money on games and other applications; he has also said the company does not make much money selling music on iTunes. "We are not trying to be business partners," Mr. Jobs said of the App Store. Instead, he said, the goal is to "sell more iPhones." Apple gives developers a 70 percent cut of sales.

 

Many expect the dealings to be more lucrative than those with wireless carriers, which in large part control what programs end up on phones.

 

Apple has a substantial way to go to catch its competitors. Palm, Microsoft, R.I.M., Nokia and Symbian have all enticed developers to write software for their smartphone operating systems. Palm, for example, says that it has 30,000 active software developers, and Microsoft said last month that it had more than 18,000 applications available for its Windows Mobile operating system, which is available from 160 cellular carriers around the world

 

iFund, which plans to invest $100 million in new iPhone-related software firms. In the last four months, the Kleiner fund has received 2,000 financing requests from developers, 85 percent of them intended for consumers.

 

Twenty-five percent of the first 500 applications at the store will be free, Mr. Jobs said. Of the commercial applications, 90 percent will be sold for $9.99 or less, he said, adding that a third of the first wave of applications will be games.

Mr. Jobs insisted that the 30/70 split is a more generous deal for developers than what is common in the video game industry. And he said that Apple would provide distribution and marketing.

 

Mr. Jobs declined to elaborate on how he expected to foster a more positive relationship with software developers, but Mr. Murphy of the iFund said: "He can't kill the golden goose. The promise of the iPhone is developers. If you choke them off, there are a lot of other platforms waiting."

 

Apple conference for Developers:

 

Companies showing off new applications for the iPhone at Apple's World-Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco this past week included not only game-makers such as Sega and Pangea Software; but also commercial enterprises like eBay, Associated Press and Major League Baseball; and medical software developers, including Modality and MIMvista. Serious office applications from Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.com are believed to be in the works.

 

Mobile Technology Platforms

 

Apple's Future

Eager to offer mobile television, wireless providers in the GSM camp are pushing for a 4G derivative known as LTE (long-term evolution), which promises real-world speeds of 20 megabits per second or more.

 

Competition:

Unfortunately, LTE is still years away. Meanwhile, WiMAX—a faster and longer-range version of the popular WiFi form of wireless networking used around the home—is coming on strong. Sprint and its technology partner Clearwire have started building a WiMAX network capable of delivering 20 megabits or more per second. At the anticipated roll-out rate, WiMAX could be up and running and within reach of 120m customers several years before LTE sees the light of day.

Or so pundits expected before Apple entered the fray. Given the iPhone's added momentum toward LTE, Sprint could wind up being WiMAX's lone supporter rather than the leader of a rival 4G pack.

With financial woes of its own, Sprint may walk away from WiMAX before either it or LTE have proven themselves in the marketplace. That would be a pity.

 

 

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More Reading References

 

Wikipedia Links:  See also

 

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