As the June 29th release date of the iPhone draws closer, the circle of hype around it swells even more, particularly among members of the media for whom the functionality of the iPhone represents something new — even when it isn’t. A side effect of this will see plenty of new handsets labeled “iPhone rivals”, simply because they’re mobile phones. But some companies are coming out with devices that mimic the iPhone in many ways — such as Microsoft’s favorite white-label manufacturer, HTC, which has announced its touchscreen-driven “iPhone rival”, creatively named the Touch. Of course, there’s only one problem: the touchscreen interface sucks, and is apparently barely usable. Plenty of devices will, unfairly or not, get compared to the iPhone by the media. But if your company is going to portray one of its own devices as a worthy competitor to the iPhone, it would help if it was actually a decent product in its own right.
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According to the mobile operator, the tariffs are designed to suit various segments of the market that have different needs. Orange Solo is, as the name suggests, aimed at the self-employed, and offers minute-based plans starting at £30 per month for 400 minutes. Orange Venture is for businesses with between one and ten employees, and offers seven price points ranging from 275 minutes (£28) to 3,400 minutes (£165) per month. Orange Momentum is aimed at even larger businesses, with prices starting at £155 for 2,500 minutes per month.
Martin Lyne, Orange UK’s director of small business, said on Thursday that the tariffs were “designed to span the work-life blur faced by many small-business owners”. The operator is also offering a small-business advisory service in 10 of its flagship stores around the UK, in a scheme that has been operational for just under a month.
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Nokia has launched three new members to its Bluetooth headset family—the Nokia Bluetooth Headset BH-803, Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-604 and Nokia Bluetooth Headset BH-602. Look stylish on the go with the premium design of the Nokia Bluetooth Headset BH-803 or treat yourself to Hi-Fi audio with the Nokia Bluetooth Headset BH-604, a stereo headset. For business professionals who value talk over tunes, the Nokia Bluetooth Headset BH-602 offers high quality audio.
Nokia is commited to providing the most fulfilling experience with your Nokia device, whether you’re on the go or chilling out to your favorite music. These Bluetooth headsets are expected to be available commercially during the third quarter of 2007.
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iLounge.com, the world’s largest and most popular web site devoted to Apple’s iPod, iTunes, and iPhone products, today debuted the latest innovation in its coverage of the
iPhone: a series of five iPhone accessory videos, titled “The First iPhone
Accessories,” designed to help inform new and prospective iPhone buyers
about the wide variety of add-ons coming for Apple’s first mobile phone.
Based upon iLounge’s popular First Looks section, which offers
exclusive photos and details on just-released iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV
hardware, software, and accessories, “The First iPhone Accessories” videos
place the spotlight solely on the add-ons, rather than iLounge’s seasoned
editorial team. Each of the videos offers 3-D looks at new cases, with new
speakers, cables, earphones, and car chargers appearing, as well.
“iPhone buyers may be surprised to discover that some of their favorite
iPod earphones, speakers, and car accessories don’t work properly,”
explained Jeremy Horwitz, iLounge’s Editor-in-Chief. “Our new videos and
First Looks help viewers learn about the headphone adapter cables, charger
compatibility issues, and other insider tips iPhone users need to know
before they accessorize.”
The First iPhone Accessories videos also show off the wide variety of
case designs available and soon to be available for iPhone. Ranging from
fur-coated pouches to elaborately contoured clear plastic shells and
discreet black neoprene holders, iPhone cases offer your choice of
protection, flashiness, or anonymity — whatever’s best-suited to your
personal needs.
Since 2001, iLounge.com has hosted the world’s most popular discussion
forums for iPod, iTunes, and iPhone users. With over 114,000 members and
nearly 1.1 million posts, the iLounge Forums have been covering
iTunes-compatible phones since before the 2005 launch of the ill-fated
Motorola ROKR phone, and now cover iPhones and their accessories. Unlike
many other forums online, iLounge’s forums are aggressively moderated by a
team of superb administrators, moderators, and assistants dedicated to
filtering out surreptitious advertising and objectionable posts.
As with all of iLounge.com’s content, including its
multi-million-downloaded Free iPod Book 3.0 and iPod Buyers’ Guide
publications, the First iPhone Accessories videos and First Looks are
available free of charge from the iLounge.com home page. “iLounge readers
depend upon us for honest, objective, and timely coverage of All Things
iPod, iPhone, and iTunes,” said Dennis Lloyd, Publisher of iLounge.
“Between our videos, First Looks, forums, and daily news updates, we’ve
delivered everything iPhone users have asked for, and then some. Just wait
until they see what’s next!”
About iLounge
Headquartered in Irvine, California, The Media LLC’s iLounge.com is the
world’s leading resource for iPod, iTunes, and iPhone information, not
affiliated with or owned by Apple Computer or any other vendor of iPod
accessories or services. Founded only days after Apple announced the first
iPod in 2001, iLounge has exploded in popularity, today boasting millions
of visitors and tens of millions of page views each month. Its editorial
content is in no way influenced by advertising, paid placements, or other
unsavory practices. iLounge has been hailed by publications such as Forbes,
Time Magazine, cNet, and The Wall Street Journal as the leader in
iPod-related information online, the former deeming iLounge “The ultimate
in product reviews and tutorials on all things iPod.” The site, its
publisher and editors have been spotlighted by the Associated Press, CNBC,
The Guardian (UK), Italian Vogue, The Los Angeles Times, National Post
(Canada), The New York Times, PC Magazine, Reuters, Stuff (UK), TechTV, The
Age (Australia), The Sun (UK), and USA Today, amongst many other leading
newspapers and magazines worldwide.
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AT&T Inc. agreed to buy Dobson Communications Corp., a provider of mobile-phone service under the Cellular One brand, for about $2.8 billion in Randall Stephenson’s first acquisition as chief executive officer.
The purchase will add coverage in rural areas to AT&T’s wireless network and save the company $2.5 billion in roaming costs and overhead expenses, San Antonio-based AT&T said today in a statement. Since 1990, the companies have had a roaming agreement in which they pay to use each other’s networks.
Taking into account the expected savings, the purchase price is “reasonable,'’ said Jonathan Chaplin, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co., in a research note. The transaction “makes strategic sense,'’ he said.
The bid continues an acquisition spree begun by former CEO Edward Whitacre, who orchestrated $200 billion in takeovers, turning AT&T into the largest telephone company in the U.S. His last purchase was the $86 billion acquisition of BellSouth Corp. in December. Stephenson took charge of the company this month.
AT&T will pay $13 in cash for each Dobson share, a 17 percent premium over the stock’s closing price today of $11.11 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The companies expect to get regulatory approval by the end of 2007, AT&T said.
The Dobson purchase will reduce AT&T earnings by 3 cents to 4 cents a share in the first year after the transaction closes, AT&T said. After that, it’s expected to add to earnings and cash flow.
AllTel Purchase
The acquisition is the second this year for a U.S. mobile- phone service focused on rural and suburban markets. Alltel Corp. agreed to be acquired by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and TPG Inc. last month in the largest leveraged buyout of a telecommunications company.
The sale of other rural providers may follow, Credit Suisse analyst Christopher Larsen said in an interview last month. In addition to Dobson, he identified Rural Cellular Corp., Centennial Communications Corp. and U.S. Cellular Corp. as potential targets.
Other companies with rural mobile-phone operations include Cincinnati Bell Inc. and Alaska Communications Systems Group Inc.
AT&T’s shares rose 76 cents to $41.50 at 4:28 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Dobson’s shares fell 1 cent.
Rural Coverage
Dobson, based in Oklahoma City, has 1.7 million subscribers in 17 U.S. states. Its network covers rural and suburban areas in Alaska, Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The company is the largest wireless provider in Alaska, according to its Web site. It also has more than 200 stores in locations such as Elk City, Oklahoma, and Weston, Wisconsin.
Sales in the first quarter climbed 16 percent to $334.4 million. It reported a loss in the period of $30.6 million, compared with a loss of $10.9 million a year earlier.
AT&T will replace the Cellular One brand with its own, spokesman Michael Coe said.
Dobson and AT&T use the same type of mobile-phone technology, which will make the acquisition easier to manage, AT&T said.
AT&T was represented by Lehman Brothers Inc., with outside legal counsel from Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, Coe said. Dobson was represented by Morgan Stanley, with outside legal counsel from Mayer, Brown, Roe & Maw LLP.
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The future of Apple’s much ballyhooed and eagerly anticipated iPhone is finally in the hands of devotees of the iconic company’s culture-altering gadgets.
Months of technology world hype ended in climactic style at Apple stores throughout the United States on Friday as people, some having camped out for days, paid at least 500 dollars for devices promising to revolutionize the mobile telephone market.
“It’s the phone we should have had ten years ago,” said Olivia Simitzis, who was among the more than 500 people queued at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco by the time the iPhones went on sale.
Simitzis and her husband, Steve, each got iPhones. “We’re going to use them all night and get our greasy little fingerprints all over them,” Steve Simitzis vowed.
Among the innovative iPhone features is that it is completely touch-screen controlled instead of having a typical mobile telephone keyboard.
“We both are total gadget hounds,” Steve Simitzis said. Some near the front of the line in San Francisco began hawking their spots in the moments before black curtains raised inside the store’s glass walls and security guards opened the doors for an iPhone feeding frenzy to begin.
A tourist offered 200 dollars to cut in line. Droves of the iPhone-obsessed snaked into Apple and AT&T shops from New York to San Francisco to buy what by industry accounts is the most hyped personal electronic device in history.
The iPhone merges mobile telephone, Internet browsing, e-mail, and music and video replay (like Apple’s market-dominating iPod) into one device.
Unlike any of its competitors, iPhone commands are done by tapping or sliding fingers on 3.5-inch (8.9-centimeter) wide glass touch-screens.
The iPhone is not cheap, though: it is priced at 499 dollars or 599 dollars, for four or eight gigabytes of memory, respectively.
Influential technology writer Walter Mossberg tested an iPhone prior to the sales debut and dubbed it “a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer.”
“I think there are going to be a lot of people that like it,” said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley.
“Over the next few weeks we will find out what works and what doesn’t work; what people like and don’t like about it, and that will go into a third-generation iPod next year.”
Apple has already contracted a company in Asia to manufacture a second-generation iPod refined, ostensibly based on feedback from the US firm’s iconic chief executive Steve Jobs.
Jobs unveiled the iPhone in trademark theatrical style in San Francisco in January.
“Steve Jobs has had the damn thing long enough that the second-generation model is made for Steve,” said Enderle, who was adamant that there is “no way” he’d buy a first-version of the iPhone.
Industry insiders are convinced that Apple is working with Microsoft to fix compatibility problems between iPhones and the software giant’s widely used business e-mail program.
A revamped iPod model due out later this year might prove to be this year’s true must-have Apple item despite the elite cache already surrounding iPhones, according to Enderle.
“Expect to see an iPod refresh that has the iPhone as the template,” Enderle said. “If you take the phone stuff out of the iPhone, the music and video is pretty darn good. The phone part comes with a network that comes with issues.”
AT&T is the exclusive service provider for iPhones. Jobs says that Apple hopes to claim a one percent share of the worldwide market of one billion mobile phones within a year.
The two-story Apple store in San Francisco remained packed into the night, with a seemingly endless parade of people buying iPhones.
“This is fantastic,” one Apple worker chimed. Overseas consumers will have to wait a few more months to snap up one of the devices. The iPhone is due to debut in Europe in late 2007 and Asia in 2008.
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BlackBerry is not joking around when it comes to making their devices more appealing to a wider audience. The 8320 is expected to have a 3.2 megapixel or better camera, 3.5 mm heapdhone jack, microSD slot and compatibility with the latest Windows Media DRM files.
I still refuse to touch a crackberry with a 10 foot pole due to the horrible font rendering. I don’t care how stable your platform is, if I’m going to be reading massive amounts of text I prefer it being in a font that is not reminiscent of courier new.
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The market for mobile broadband in Europe is tipped by analyst firm Berg Insight to reach five million connections by the end of the year.
Berg Insight forecasts that by 2011 there will be almost 30 million mobile broadband customers in Europe. The total value of the market will grow at an annual compound growth rate of 22.9pc over the coming five years to reach €3bn, it said.
Austria and Sweden are leading the way with hundreds of thousands of consumers signed up to affordable high-speed Turbo 3G network services delivering data rates up to 7Mbps. “Mobile operators like 3, A1 Mobilkom and Telenor are getting this right”, commented Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst, Berg Insight. “Ordinary people have already replaced their old bulky desktop PC with a new slim wide-screen notebook. Now, thanks to Turbo 3G, they can also connect to the internet anywhere for just €20 per month.”
By 2011 Berg Insight predicts that mobile network connectivity will have become a standard feature in mass-market notebook PCs just like WLAN is today. The emerging trend with fixed and mobile broadband access packaged as a unified service is expected to become prevalent among the leading ISPs, erasing the borders between the wired and wireless telecom service domains.
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The day that the iPhone was made available and the day that all Googlemaniacs checked their bank balance to consider the ultimate impulse buy.
All 164 Apple retail stores in the US will stay open until midnight tonight and customers can purchase up to two iPhones on a first come, first served basis. The gadget of all gadgets was recently highly praised by Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO. Footage of Schmidt was posted on YouTube last week showing Schmidt brandishing his iPhone, launching the Google Maps feature and flashing it at the camera. He’s excited and so are we.
So how about the gadgetry of the iPhone? What can we expect from it regarding applications and web capabilities?
The iPhone offers the possibility of easy and user-friendly internet surfing. It combines three products - a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls and an internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps and search - all in one handheld device. A phone, iPod and internet browser in one very sexy little box!
The iPhone features a rich HTML email client and Safari - the most advanced web browser ever placed on a portable device. Safari automatically syncs bookmarks from your PC or Mac. It also includes built-in Google and Yahoo! search. The Wi-Fi and EDGE capabilities immediately connect to the internet. You can multi-task to your hearts content with the iPhone, read a web page while downloading your email and listen to your favourite music at the same time. The iPhone also delivers YouTube videos to users with quality that is head and shoulders above previous mobile video attempts.
The iPhone lets you see the web as it’s meant to be seen. Now, users will be able to view standard web pages, rather than WAP versions of pages. Integrated Google Maps functionality lets users look up locations, search for local businesses and view satellite imagery. The iPhone also supports Dashboard widgets, and Apple announced it will also include weather and stock widgets.
Through the iPhone’s Safari web browser, users can zoom into web pages with a simple tap on the multi-touch display screen. The iPhone’s accelerometer senses your behaviour! When you rotate the device from portrait to landscape sensors automatically change the contents of the display, this lets you instantly see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio.
The iPhone uses quad-band GSM, the global standard for wireless communications. It also supports AT&T’s EDGE network, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, which links to Apple’s compact Bluetooth headset.
Apple is said to be bringing the iPhone to Europe in the fourth quarter of 2007 and to Asia in 2008. So has Apple officially revolutionised the phone as we know it? The answer seems to be a definite yes - but where’s the camera?
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The big story today is the release of the iPhone, of course. One should remember, however, the fastest growing smartphone platform belongs to Apple’s archenemy Microsoft with Windows Mobile. And Microsoft spokesperson said, there will be an additional 20 Windows Mobile 6-run mobile devices released before 2007 comes to a close.
Introduced early in 2007, only a few smartphones built on Microsoft most recent update to Windows Mobile have made it to market so far. Eddie Wu, managing director of Microsoft ODM embedded devices in Asia, a couple of days ago that Microsoft licensees would roll out 20 more Windows Mobile 6 smartphones by the end of 2007, making up for the current dearth of product running Microsoft’s latest and greatest mobile operating system.
He also predicted that global shipments of Windows Mobile devices would top 20 million units next year, doubling Redmond’s share of the global market from 10 percent in 2007 to 20 percent in 2008.
48 Microsoft licensees have thus far released more than 140 Windows Mobile-based handsets.
ASUS, Gigabyte Communications, E-Ten, Samsung and HP are among the companies slated to release new Windows Mobile 6 models by the end of 2007.
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Here Come The iPhone ‘Rivals’
