Applelinks iPhone News Reader - Monday, April 21, 2008
The iPhone Learns To Read
Look out, iPhone: Microsoft quietly buys maker of hip Sidekick phone
5 Areas Where Apple's iPhone Falls Short
iPhone Sellers Braced For Hit On Unsold Handsets
iPhones Being Sold At Loss In Europe?
Is Apple Making Way for the New iPhone?
3G iPhone In Production, Euro-networks Lose On v.1
Explosion of iPhone sales in England
Lackluster iPhone Sales In Europe
3G iPhone To Be 'Radically Different'?
iPhone: European Fire Sales Spreading To France
The iPhone Learns To Read
The Register's Bill Ray reports:
Apple's iPhone can now understand hand-written letters, after an application initially developed to allow input of Chinese characters was tweaked to make it understand English.
The application is very much an alpha release, and users are advised to take backups before installing. Once installed it offers an interface that will be familiar to Palm users, but operated with a finger rather than a stylus.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/17/iphone_handwriting/
Look out, iPhone: Microsoft quietly buys maker of hip Sidekick phone
Detroit Free Press Technology Columnist Mike Wendland reports:
While all eyes have been trained on Microsoft's big bid to buy Yahoo, it has managed to quietly snap up a mobile phone development company that may give the Apple iPhone the best run for the money we've seen yet.
Microsoft announced this week that it has acquired Danger, the maker of the hugely hip Sidekick, currently sold by T-Mobile and a must-have device for many of the twenty-something and upper-teen crowd.
The big question is what will Microsoft do with Danger?
To read more, click here.
5 Areas Where Apple's iPhone Falls Short
InformationWeek's Alexander Wolfe reports:
For two weeks now, I've been the relatively happy owner of an iPhone. Still, I have some major complaints, and I know the folks in Cupertino are just waiting to hear what I've got to say. The problem is that the iPhone is a great gadget and conversation-starter, but not yet a true corporate tool....
OK, so here's my short list of five items which could vault the iPhone onto more equal terms with RIM's BlackBerry.....
1. Push E-Mail.
2. Faster Web surfing.
3. Longer battery life.
4. A better soft keyboard
5. Scratch-resistant screen.
You can check it out at:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/04/5_areas_where_a.html
iPhone Sellers Braced For Hit On Unsold Handsets
The Times' Jonathan Richards reports:
Mobile operators with exclusive contracts to sell Apple's iPhone are bracing themselves for significant losses on unsold stock as they clear the shelves to make way for a new, faster version expected this summer.
O2, which sells the phone in the UK, and T-Mobile, the German distributor, are said to have significantly overestimated the number of first version iPhones that would sell in Europe.
For the full report click here.
iPhones Being Sold At Loss In Europe?
News.com's Tom Krazit reports:
Steep price cuts to the iPhone in Europe are a sign that carriers overestimated demand for Apple's first smartphone, according to a report.
O2, the iPhone's U.K. carrier, and T-Mobile, its German carrier, both cut the price of the iPhone by a significant margin this week, in a move seen by many as a prelude to the debut of a 3G iPhone within the next couple of months.
Before the 3G iPhone arrives, carriers will need to clear their shelves of the current EDGE model, which will look pedestrian next to the faster model. An O2 representative told our sister site Crave U.K., in an utterly predictable statement, that the price cut was not a prelude to a 3G launch.
For the full report click here.
Is Apple Making Way for the New iPhone?
SeekingAlpha says:
It's iPhone supply mania, part two.
In late March reports began to spread that Apple (AAPL) stores around the U.S. were dangerously low on iPhone inventory. Orders at Apple's own online store were taking 5 to 7 days to fill. Something was amiss. Given mismanaging channel inventory or poorly estimating demand is not a mistake Apple usually makes, the anomaly fueled heavy speculation that we were seeing the beginning of a product shift and not a coincidence. Apple was beginning to clear out shelf space to make way for a new phone model, people guessed.
To read more, click here.
3G iPhone In Production, Euro-networks Lose On v.1
9to5Mac's Andy Space reports:
Apple has placed orders for the production of the second-generation iPhone, while its European network partners complain at lower than expected sales.
The company has asked its Far East suppliers to produce 200,000 units of the new second generation 3G-enabled iPhone by the end of May, with production ramping up to two million, or 500,000 per week, in June, making a June release of the device a done deal.
This information comes from a reputable source - The Times newspaper, which explains the new iPhone will have a "radically different" appearance to the current generation. "Among the possibilities are flip version, which would enable the screen to be larger, and a sliding model with a regular qwerty keyboard - as opposed to a touchscreen one," the report informs.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.9to5mac.com/3g_iphone_in_production
Explosion of iPhone sales in England
HardMac's Lionel reports:
Following the drop in prices of the iPhone yesterday, a reader told us that Carphone Warehouse sold 3750 units in a single day instead of the usual 200.
To give a figure for comparison, the Nokia 2310 sold only 1250 units during the same day.
For the full report visit here:
http://www.hardmac.com/news/2008-04-18/#8137
Lackluster iPhone Sales In Europe
Ars Technica's Charles Jade reports:
Is this the new 3GHz PPC prediction?
BusinessWeek runs the numbers on iPhones sold in Europe, and the tally is thus far unimpressive.
Strategy Analytics, a Newton (Mass.) consulting firm, estimates the three carriers sold a combined 350,000 iPhones in the fourth quarter last year, short of the consultancy's forecast of 500,000. It also estimates sales in the first quarter of 2008 dropped to 300,000.
For the full report visit here:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/04/18/lackluster-iphone-sales-in-europe
3G iPhone To Be 'Radically Different'?
Gizmodo UK reports:
The word in the virtual ether is that the 3G iPhone is not just going to get 3G but is going to be 'radically different' to the current model.
At least according to the Times Online team who've been stroking their Deep Throat to hear that the first 3G-enabled iPhone - due in around six weeks - will look very different.
For the full report visit here:
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/04/19/3g_iphone_to_be_radically_diff.html
iPhone: European Fire Sales Spreading To France
Apple 2.0's Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports:
Hard on the heels of a 75% price cut in Germany and 100 pounds (37%) off in the U.K. comes a report out of Paris that two high-level executives at Orange, the iPhone's wireless carrier in France, have flown to Cupertino to figure out what to do about the excess inventory piling up on their shelves.
Under a headline that reads "L'échec de l'iPhone pousse Orange et Apple ŕ renégocier" ("The iPhone's failure forces Orange and Apple to renegotiate"), Les Echos reports that Orange executive director Louis-Pierre Wenes and marketing director Alice Holzman met with Apple COO Tim Cook earlier this week to hammer out a deal that could lead to a French price cut in the next few weeks.
To read more, click here.
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