Orange to carry iPhone 3G this Christmas?

The internet is once again abuzz with rumours that the iPhone 3G may be made available on the Orange network here in the UK before Christmas, as early as October, if the stories are true.

It has long been suggested that O2’s exclusive network deal with Apple was only a temporary one, as we’ve seen Jobs and Co. dabble in network polygamy elsewhere in the world, such as Australia, where the handset is available on three different networks.

The net reached boiling point when a story published on The Register last week cited the blog of one Ernest Doku who claimed that a “very, very credible source on the inside” revealed that the iPhone 3G would arrive on Orange by October.

The post, (found here) says that “in light of recent events” (i.e. the O2 network repeatedly crashing under the groan of demand) the prospect of the iPhone 3G arriving on Orange is “more likely than not.” The post also points to the fact that sales of the initial iPhone were sluggish, although fault cannot be entirely attributed to O2 on that front.

Of course, its all hearsay without Orange, Apple or O2 officially confirming anything, but the prospect of an iPhone 3G available on another network this autumn has galvanised interest on the blogs, with people already speculating about the inevitable price war and how it would pave the way for iPhone availability on other networks.

source : http://www.mobile-phones.co.uk/

Review: iPhone deals

It might be best to stay on hold for an iPhone deal, reports Adam Turner.

Apple's iPhone 3G has finally landed in Australia, but choosing which telco to buy it from can be a challenge.

Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are all selling the iPhone 3G. You can buy them from other stores, but you must sign up to one of these three networks. The 3 network is expected to offer the iPhone 3G in August. iPhone 3Gs are generally sold with a 12 or 24-month plan, although it is possible to buy a pre-paid iPhone 3G. It is, however, still locked to that network unless you download a hack from the internet or pay the telco yet another fee to have the phone "unlocked".

Like all smartphones, the iPhone 3G isn't cheap. Unfortunately the plans from the three networks are complicated, making it difficult to make direct comparisons. The iPhone is available with a choice of 8GB or 16GB of onboard storage.

While you're likely to have an idea of the monthly call and SMS allowance you require, choosing a data plan is more difficult. The data plan determines how much you can use the phone for checking email or surfing the web via the mobile phone network. If you go over your monthly allowance you'll get slugged with hefty excess data charges. Telstra and Vodafone didn't release full details of their iPhone 3G plans until less than a day before they went on sale.

The iPhone 3G's ease of use means you're more like to use the advanced features and chew through more data - especially because of the fast data speeds. The Google Maps feature is great for figuring out where you are, but downloading the maps uses data. It's also very easy to configure the iPhone 3G to check your email. The big screen and great web browser means you're more likely to use the internet while you're on the road. There's also a YouTube link on the iPhone's home screen, which can be a real data trap.

Even light users will struggle to keep their usage under 100MB a month. The iPhone offers the option of push email, which automatically forwards your email to the phone rather than waiting for you to check your inbox.

The iPhone 3G lets you connect to the internet via wifi, rather than the phone network, which is great when you're at home or near a public wifi hotspot as it doesn't count towards your monthly data limit. Unfortunately when the phone goes to sleep it disables its wifi adaptor to save power, which means it switches back to the expensive mobile phone network.

The iPhone 3G would chew through at least 5MB of data a month in the background, even before you use email or the web.

iPhone 3G owners using Optus and Vodafone won't get full 3G data speeds outside the cities.

The most dangerous thing about the iPhone 3G is that you can't disable the mobile data services. You can disable 3G, but this drops you back to 2G speeds rather than disabling mobile data completely.

If your phone is unlocked from your carrier, you might be able to disable data access in the advanced settings. If you change the APN setting to gibberish, you can still make calls and send SMS, but the phone can't access mobile data services. It's not elegant, but it works.

If your iPhone 3G is hacked to run applications that do not have Apple's blessing, a more elegant solution is to add a "DATA off" button to the menus. This can be done with applications such as services.app, iToggle and BossPrefs and - on our hacked first-generation iPhone - we got the best results from BossPrefs.

source : http://www.smh.com.au/

Son of iPhone: the next revolution

It seems as if it was only yesterday that Apple unveiled its revolutionary iPhone, yet the company is already gearing up for the launch of its successor.

As with the original, the new phone will boast many of the features that have helped make Apple one of the most desirable brands in the world. It will also have some new features, including 3G technology to speed up internet access, and applications that could herald a brave new world of mobile communications.

Gadget fans the world over are eagerly counting down the hours to Monday, June 9, when the new phone is expected to be unveiled by Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive.

The original iPhone, launched in the UK last November, was genuinely innovative for being able to respond to gestures and strokes via a touchscreen, while its gorgeous web browser was the digital equivalent of a glossy magazine.

Less popular were its clumsy text entry and outdated 2.5G data connection, which made for painfully slow texting, web browsing and e-mail collection. The upgrade to 3G will at least provide a much faster, smoother internet experience. The move should also mean that users are less likely to be cut off during voice calls, and may now sample the dubious delights of face-to-face video calling, thanks to a front-mounted camera. The high-speed technology will also make it easier and quicker to download music and videos from the web, or upload photos.

If you think that the speeds offered by some 3G networks are fast, an Australian mobile network is claiming that the new iPhone will be able to use the latest 3G technology (known as HSDPA) to offer internet access at twice the speed of the fastest UK home broadband services today.

With nobody beyond Apple’s walls having yet seen a 3G iPhone – the company is famously tight-lipped when it comes to new products – little else is known about the new handset.

There is industry speculation that the 3G iPhone will be priced at £200 at least – plus the cost of an annual contract. There’s also talk that Apple will use that large touchscreen for more than just stroking and poking – the company recently filed a patent for integrating solar panels into its handheld gadgets. Instead of using a separate, fold-out panel, Apple’s plan is to put solar cells behind the LCD screen, so the more you flash your iPhone around, the more power it could generate.

Another Apple patent involves using location-based information to create personalised and localised shopping pages on your iPhone. If you’re walking past a cinema, for example, you might see a trailer of the latest movie, and even be able to order popcorn for delivery right to your seat.

Experts say the one thing that is certain is that the existing iPhone handset will quickly disappear. “I don’t see much room for Apple to continue to offer the original 2.5G iPhone here, although they might move stock to other countries, such as some in eastern Europe without a 3G network,” says Ian Fogg, research director at JupiterResearch, the high-tech analysts.

In the longer term, Apple is expected to introduce a family of phones, in the same way that it shifted from selling a single, original iPod to offering a range of music and video players. Apple will also have to decide whether to keep the touch interface, which requires a large screen, or move to a more traditional design in order to reduce phone size. IPhone nano, anyone?

Although Apple impressed a lot of geeks with the iPhone, sales have hovered around a modest 20,000 units a day worldwide, and that’s a drop in the ocean compared with the 3m phones that sell every 24 hours. That doesn’t mean the world’s biggest phone makers can afford to ignore it, says Fogg. “Apple had never built a mobile phone before the iPhone, yet its designers created the best mobile media player, and the best mobile browser on the market. Apple has already caused its competitors to respond and change their strategies,” he says.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the rash of rival 3G touchscreen handsets – dubbed “iPhonies” by industry insiders – that have appeared over the past six months. While none of these phones has approached the iPhone’s effortless ease of use, some at least threaten to steal Apple’s technical thunder, and often at a considerably lower price.

HTC’s Touch Diamond handset, for instance, not only weighs less than the iPhone but also uses blisteringly fast HSDPA technology and includes a GPS receiver for navigation. Or take Samsung’s F480 phone, which trumps the iPhone’s weedy 2Mp camera with a 5Mp snapper, complete with flash.

Apple clearly has some catching up to do. Many other manufacturers are already selling their second or third HSDPA phone, and have technology such as GPS and digital cameras working well together.

If Apple lacks the research muscle to fully develop the iPhone itself, it is gambling on a new strategy to keep its gadgets up to date by allowing other companies to develop features and applications for users to download directly to the new iPhone.

Jeremy Green, an analyst at Ovum, the telecoms research company, says: “It makes sense for Apple to do this, using the creativity of lots and lots of people to improve their products.”

But will that be enough? Green questions Apple’s decision to partner the iPhone exclusively with a single UK network operator – O2. “In the UK mobile market, the four biggest operators have roughly equal market share. If you go exclusive with one, you’re denying yourself three-quarters of the market.”

O2’s current iPhone contracts include all-you-can-surf mobile internet, and free use of around 6,000 wi-fi hotspots in the UK. It’s not clear yet whether O2 will offer the same deal on the 3G iPhone – although a wi-fi connection is almost guaranteed, as 3G signals can fade quickly inside buildings.

Abroad, Apple is already edging away from exclusive deals. It plans to ship iPhones to at least two operators in Italy, and future deals are unlikely to favour a single mobile phone network. However, Apple’s deal with O2 here still has some time to run, making it extremely unlikely that other operators will be able to sell the 3G iPhone when it launches.

Whatever Jobs reveals on June 9, though, it had better be good. The Apple brand isn’t only about style, and that global gathering of geeks is expecting a phone that’s as least as innovative as its predecessor. If it isn’t, there’s no guarantee the iPhone won’t be a single-ringtone wonder such as Apple’s ill-fated Newton handheld computer, rather than an all-conquering success like the iPod.

source : http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/

Apple, Google Gear Up For Developers

Apple's annual software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone, Apple said this week there has been over 100,000 downloads of the software. WWDC is June 9-13. Conference attendees will likely be exposed to final, or very near-final, features of the finished SDK, which is due out by the end of June. It's clear from the program that Apple expects interest from developers working on some pretty flashy applications, though not based on Adobe's Flash animation format, which the iPhone currently doesn't support.

The agenda says attendees will be able to learn from Apple graphics and media engineers about media-rich mobile applications and cutting-edge handheld games for the iPhone. Sessions will include techniques to animate user interfaces, render interactive 2D and 3D graphics in real-time and how to support video download and playback.

In addition to the iPhone, there will of course be plenty of sessions related to Apple's bread-and-butter Macintosh line and "Leopard" OS X 10.5 operating systems. A third track is focused on IT issues like setting up, integrating, deploying and managing Leopard, Leopard Server, and iPhone OS technologies in heterogeneous environments.

Google's new marquee event

Google's two-day Google I/O "Web Forward" conference is a new event slated for this May 28-29 in San Francisco. A Google spokesperson said its Developer Day will continue to be held, but the company plans to take it on the road as a worldwide tour set of events. "We expect Google I/O to be a marquee event and a hot ticket," said the spokesman.

Five tracks are planned, including a focus on Google's new Android mobile phone and OpenSocial social networking platforms. Java and Ajax tools, Web APIs (define) and other programming tools will be covered as well as sessions on developing applications that leverage Google Maps.

More information on where OpenSocial, currently being deployed in a 0.7 release, is going will be covered in a session "What's Next for OpenSocial." The "Building an Android Application 101" session is designed to help developers new to the platform.

The Google spokesperson said to stay tuned for news between now and the event that promises to heighten developer interest further. "We have some exciting stuff in the pipeline," he said. "We haven't put all our cards on the table yet."

source: http://www.internetnews.com/

Snap Sun decision launches Java at iPhone

Less than a day after Apple unveiled its much-discussed iPhone SDK, Sun Microsystems has told the world it will build a Java Virtual Machine for Steve Job's handheld status symbol.

"We're very excited," Eric Klein, Sun's vice president of Java marketing, told the The Reg. "We've spent the last 24 hours furiously looking through what information was made publicly available, and we feel comfortable enough at this point on the information we have to commit the engineering resources to bring the JVM over to the iPhone and the iTouch as fast as our schedules and Apple's release schedule will allow."

That means the Jesus Phone JVM will arrived sometime after June, when the official iPhone App Store opens its virtual doors. You see, Steve Jobs has allowed third-party applications onto his phone, but each and every one must be funneled through his own private software market.

That said, Apple has allowed developers to set their own prices. And this made Sun happy. "We of course chose to set the price of the JVM at... free!" Klein told us with a chuckle. Or two. Or more. "Apple explicitly said developers can chose to put free applications through the App Store and - heck - we're doing it!"

Klein had no other details to share. Because there aren't any. "We're just 24 hours into this," he said. "We have a lot of learning to do, as do all the developers who just got access to the SDK. We just thought it was really important that our development community has the opportunity to write a Java app and have it run on the iPhone."

Source : http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/

Apple joins top 10 mobile phone vendors

Apple, Research In Motion and ZTE took places among the world's top 10 mobile phone makers in 2007, new research from Gartner Inc. claims.

Despite being available in only four markets — the U.S., U.K., Germany and France — the iPhone transformed Apple into the world's 10th largest handset maker in the fourth quarter of 2007, the analysts said.

RIM took sixth place, while low-cost handset manufacturer ZTE, which specializes in delivering devices to emerging markets, took seventh place.

Apple holds 0.6% of the world market, while RIM has 1.2%. Motorola saw its share fall to 11.9% from 21.5%. Nokia, at 40.4%, and Samsung, at 13.4%, continue to dominate global handset sales.

Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi observed, "The global mobile devices market will remain relatively immune to a recession in the U.S. and Western European economies, as the majority of growth in 2008 will come from emerging markets. The mature Western Europe and North America markets are driven by operator contract terms and replacement cycles and will account for just 30% of the global mobile devices market in 2008."

Source : http://computerworld.com/a

Global mobile phone sales increased by 16% in 2007 - Gartner

Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end-users surpassed 1,15bn units in 2007, a 16% increase from 2006 sales of 990,9m, according to Gartner. Mobile phone sales at the end of the year were consistent with the yearly trend, as fourth quarter sales reached 330m units.

"Emerging markets, especially China and India, provided much of the growth as many people bought their first phone," says Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner, based in Egham, UK. "In mature markets, such as Japan and Western Europe, consumers’ appetite for feature-laden phones was met with new models packed with TV tuners, global positioning satellite (GPS) functions, touch screens and high-resolution cameras."

"After another strong year, we expect the growth in sales of mobile devices to end-users will decelerate in 2008 and fall to about 10% growth as mature markets become more saturated," adds Milanesi. "However, the global mobile devices market will remain relatively immune to a recession in the US and Western European economies as the majority of growth in 2008 will come from emerging markets. The mature Western Europe and North America markets are driven by operator contract terms and replacement cycles and will account for just 30% of the global mobile devices market in 2008."

Nokia achieved its long-term target of 40% market share in the fourth quarter of 2007 when it sold slightly more than 133m phones across the world. Despite some component shortages, Nokia increased its market share sequentially in all regions except North America, which remains a challenging market for the vendor. In emerging markets, products such as the 1110, the 1600 and the 2630 were in demand by consumers, while in mature markets such as Western Europe high-end phones like the N95, N82 and N73 were sought-after devices. In 2008, Nokia will need to continue to improve its portfolio, offering not only more applications and functions, but also novel designs and improved user interfaces.

In the fourth quarter of 2007, Samsung maintained second position, and, although its market share slipped slightly, the gap widened between it and third-placed Motorola. Its success relied on its Ultra and Ultra II family of products. In 2008, Samsung needs to diversify its portfolio further with more form factors and colours so that single products stand out from the overall line-up.

The problems that beset Motorola in the third quarter of 2007 continued through the fourth quarter, and it recorded sales of 39m phones across the world, taking 11,9% of the market. It retained second place in terms of annual sales to end-users in 2007, largely thanks to the inventory it disposed of in the first half of the year. Nevertheless, the extent of Motorola’s troubles can be seen in the 9,7 percentage-points market-share drop in its fourth quarter of 2007 result from the same period in 2006.

Sony Ericsson ended 2007 with another positive performance, growing its market share on a quarterly basis to 9% from 8,7%. Its Cyber-shot and Walkman products, such as the K850i, K610i, W910i, K550i and W300i, remained popular among consumers around the world. As Sony Ericsson widens its reach, adding features such as Wi-Fi and GPS, as well as more low-tier products, it will stay competitive in the coming quarters.

LG’s mobile phone sales totalled 23,5m units in the fourth quarter of 2007, maintaining its 7,1% market share despite the increase of more than three million in sales volumes. The success of the Viewty, the Venus and the Voyager helped LG gain brand awareness across the world as well as improve its margins. Milanesi comments: "In 2008, LG will need to continue strengthening its high-end portfolio for mature markets as well as its mid tier. In the low tier, LG will increasingly be challenged by vendors such as ZTE, which has already been eroding its market share in key markets such as India."

The market saw three new entrants into the top ten in the fourth quarter of 2007. These vendors included Research In Motion (RIM), ZTE and Apple. "On one hand, we have aggressive pricing and a focus on emerging markets (ZTE), and on the other, RIM with targeted functions and Apple with brand and design," says Milanesi.

"Phone manufacturers need to continuously adapt their portfolios to respond to operators’ demands for open platforms, lower pricing and more personalisation," recommends Milanesi. "They should also try to meet consumers’ desires for fashionable, easy-to-use phones."

Source: http://www.computingsa.co.za/