Apple is sending out invitations to an April 8th event in Cupertino that promises to show off iPhone OS 4.0 — and it’s believed we’ll finally get third party multitasking if the reports are right.
Author Archive | Ed Oswald
300,000 iPads Sold on Saturday? Not Too Shabby, But…
Apple said Monday that it had sold over 300,000 iPads on Saturday, which could be taken as a good sign of the device’s potential success. One big wildcard here–these sales also include not only pre-orders for the Wi-Fi-only iPad but also deliveries to the company’s retail partners as well. In other words, not every one of those 300,000 iPads may be in the hands of a consumer yet. On the other hand, the figure doesn’t include pre-orders for the 3G iPad which is due out late this month.
Apple’s new book store did well too, with a quarter million books downloaded on Saturday, and CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement that new iPad owners were downloading an average of about one book and three applications within hours of unpacking the device. All in all, iPad’s launch numbers were very similar to the launch of the initial iPhone.
Some analysts had gone way overboard in their predictions, with Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster being the most overly aggressive with projected sales of 650,000+ in the first 24 hours. Much of this probably had to do with the overwhelming hype surrounding the device, which arguably was unwarranted in most cases. Lines for the iPad, as described by our own Harry McCracken, were in most cases much smaller than that for the first iPhone.
The real test for the viability of this device remains in these weeks following the launch. Will the device continue to sell after the initial flurry of activity? Will we see another spike in purchasing when the WiFi+3G model releases late this month? It’s hard to say. Price will likely play a large part in how this does, and the company has not been shy to say publicly it will tweak prices to meet its sales goals.
The answer will come when we get a better look at the demographics of its buyers. If its just the techie/Apple faithful/Gotta-have-it crowd, the iPad could be Apple’s next Cube. However, if Ma and Pa begin snagging their own iPads, then we know Apple’s onto something.
As much as I can’t wait to get one myself, I’m still undecided here on how I think it will do. It’s a big gamble for Apple, one I’m sure they’ll hope will pay off.
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Verizon, Skype Cozying Up?
Skype may finally be making some headway in the cell phone industry, as the company announced along with Verizon later on Friday a press conference scheduled for Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The two companies are expected to announce a deal that would put the Skype software on Verizon’s cellular phones.
Mobile carriers have generally pushed back in allowing Skype usage on their phones, fearing consumers would use the service to save money by negating the need for more minutes in their voice plans. Even AT&T up until the most recent SDK for the iPhone was giving the VoIP provider the cold shoulder. However, with consumers increasingly using their data side of their plans over the voice side, now may be the time to relax these restrictions in favor of generating more revenue.
The first carrier to allow Skype onto its phones was Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, whose 3 subsidiary began adding Skype in 2007. The addition of Skype has been said to have attracted “hundreds of thousands” of new customers to the service.
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FCC Gets Google To Cut Nexus One Return Fee By $200
Google’s $350 “Equipment Recovery Fee” has pretty much received a universally poor reception among consumers. Complaints have flooded user forums, and apparently some have taken it as far as the Federal Communications Commission. Good news: the FCC’s intervention has seemed to have forced the company’s hand.
Effective immediately, the fee has been dropped to $150. This would not allow a user to escape T-Mobile’s $200 early termination fee — that would still be due to the carrier outside of it’s normal 14-day return period. To be fair to Google, it seems as if people’s complaints are more about the service than the device itself.
Being a former T-Mobile subscriber (and one for nearly seven years before switching to AT&T), I feel these people’s pain. Service when you have it is good — however 3G is extremely spotty, and in many rural locales you will have absolutely no service at all.
Now, in the defense of T-Mobile and Google, company officials are saying they are not making these changes due to pressure from the FCC. Needless to say — the FCC has been looking into these excess charges, which several commissioners have already said they thought were too excessive — and the commission itself has received thousands of complaints from consumers.
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iPad Prices Could Drop Quickly
Credit Suisse analysts met with Apple executives, and has come out of those meetings with an interesting point of view: that Apple’s pricing on the iPad may actually be fluid, and the company may be ready to bring prices down if it’s not selling to the company’s expectations.
Such aggressiveness seems to indicate that Cupertino is very serious about carving out a market for its newest device. It also comes as a shock to much of the technorati, who for quite awhile expected the tablet to have a price of at least $700 if not much higher.
“While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble,” Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope was reported as writing in a Sunday research note by the Wall Street Journal.
It’s not all too clear how well the iPad will do. While netbooks in general have sold quite well, Apple’s device (while not exactly a netbook) is priced above the average price of its competitors. Add to this that getting the most benefit (adding the 3G capabilities) will set you back $629, it may be a bit above most people’s price range.
Personally, the magic price for me with this device (which includes the 3G) would be under $500. I’m curious: what’s yours?
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Apple Will Reject Apps that Use GPS for Location-Aware Ads
Apple is now advising App Store developers that it will reject any application submitted for review if the location-aware capabilities of the iPhone API is used to provide the user with location-aware ads, MacNN has reported. The move could be a signal that the company itself plans to move into the space, and that wouldn’t be that surprising.
Consider that Apple did look into a buyout of AdMob, which ended up being purchased by Google. It bought out mobile advertiser Quattro Wireless, and has said it wants to offer its developers advertising solutions within their apps.
Add this all up, and it certainly seems like Apple is ready to move into the mobile advertising space — and is clearing out any possibe competitors to do it. This is Cupertino’s M.O., so its not that surprising. Developers are certainly speaking out on the issue, such as Craig Hockenberry of Twitterific.
“Looks like Apple is going to keep location-based advertising to themselves,” he said- not surprisingly in a tweet on Wednesday.
I can certainly see why Apple would like to do this, but i certainly do view it as quite anticompetitive. If this is used as a way to give Quattro the leg up on advertising on the iPhone, I’d think it would be frowned upon by competition regulators. Then again, Apple has been doing things like this for years, and nothing has ever been done…
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Ban Texting and Driving All You Want, But Don’t Expect Results
The latest fad among governments is to pass legislation that ban texting while driving, as evidenced by the growing list of states with anti-cell phone laws. But if a new study just released by the Highway Loss Data Institute means anything, these laws don’t change much.
HLDI found that crash rates are not decreasing as a result of these laws.”The laws aren’t reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced hand-held phone use, and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk,” the group’s president Adrian Lund said. This isn’t to say that cell phone use while driving doesn’t increase crash risk — HLDI points out several studies that showed an four-fold increase there — but it isn’t stopping crashes either.
It seems as if the group is shocked by the study’s results, saying it expected to see a decrease in crash occurrences. Maybe the findings of this study are indicative that these laws are just unnecessary legislation that really doesn’t do much to contain the problem. This might be a case where good old fashioned education may play a bigger part in solving the problem, no?
“Whatever the reason, the key finding is that crashes aren’t going down where hand-held phone use has been banned,” Lund says. “This finding doesn’t auger well for any safety payoff from all the new laws that ban phone use and texting while driving.”
Seems like the HLDI agrees.
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Pope Looks to Preach to Internet Faithful
While many observers of the Catholic church speculated that Pope Benedict XVI’s time as the head of the church would be nowhere as revolutionary as that of his predecessor, The Holy See is making his own mark on the future of the church. Benedict has asked priests and ministers to employ new technologies to spread the church’s message even further than before.
The church’s “World Day for Social Communications” will take place on May 16, and according to the Vatican the topic will be “The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word.” Benedict believes that in order to keep the church relevant — especially among youth — digital mediums must be used effectively.
“Priests stand at the threshold of a new era: as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances, they are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word,” he wrote in a message posted to the Vatican website.
Of course, this would not replace the traditional service, but for those who may not be able to attend on a regular basis employing digital mediums will help the Church maintain a greater connection with its parishioners.
This is not the first time Benedict has discussed the potential for the Internet when it comes to the Catholic church: in last year’s message, he called on his priests and followers to begin using the Internet to spread the word of the church, however at the same time value the importance of real-life social interaction.
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Digg’s “Drastic Changes” = Playing With Fire
Kevin Rose has gone on record saying the next version of Digg, due within months, will feature some drastic changes that in his own words will leave some of their users “shocked.” It isn’t altogether clear exactly what Mr. Rose has planned, including navigation bar and Digg button changes, and a greater focus on “real-time” content.
Another big change is that there would be a greater focus on what those more closely associated with a user are digging rather than the user base at large. Previously, the concept of digging meant all users had a say in what content made it to the front pages of the site.
The switch appears to be a response to a overall paradigm shift when it comes to social networking. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have made consumers more apt to follow what their friends are doing rather than some random Internet user they may no nothing about.
Call me crazy, but I feel drastic changes like what seems to be proposed here are often perilous. Users are accustomed to one way of doing things. If you change too much of what has made you popular, you risk alienating and frustrating your loyal users. Will Digg’s changes do just that? It’s hard to say.
I’m just hoping here that they’re not planning to change too much of the user experience, or that could definitely spell trouble.
(Hat tip: Telegraph UK)
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Windows Mobile 7 to Debut at WMC 2010
You may have remembered our reporting about two weeks ago putting the future of Windows Mobile 7 into doubt, and pushing its release further into the future. Enter DigiTimes, who its refuting some of that reporting saying Microsoft is ready to debut WM7 at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona complete with a release date.
DigiTimes says that Microsoft will announce an OEM availability in September, translating to a retail availability by the end of the year or early in 2011. This would be for English and European languages: Asian translations will come later, probably in 2011.
So who’s right? DigiTimes is probably a more reputable source than whomever Bright Side of News is, but their track record in accurate scoops isn’t much better. Guess we will see…