Apple iPhone 4: All that Metal Includes the Antenna

Which means signal reception is going to be affected by the way the user holds the device, though possibly less so than in the older design.

That's a lot of metal, with fairly good spatial dispersion for the antenna element. So in a weak signal area, reception might improve, for voice, when the speakerphone is activated and the user is "hands free."

Apple Demo Crashes: 570 Wi-Fi Networks Live in the Room

Sign of the times: Apple demo crashes. Attendees told to shut everything off. Why? "There are 570 Wi-Fi base stations operating in this room...That’s why our demo crashed.”

But the iPad updates are pretty amazing. About two million iPads were sold in the first 59 days (one every 3 seconds).

Some 35 million apps have been downloaded, about 17 per iPad.

Five of six biggest book publishers say the share of iPad e-books is 22 percent of all ebook sales in the first eight weeks.

There’s now more than 225,000 applications in the App Store and there have been five billion downloads.

About 15,000 apps are submitted every week, and 95 percent are approved in seven days.

AT&T Appears to Allow Some iPhone 3GS Users to Upgrade to iPhone 4 Without ETF

AT&T says it has adjusted eligibility requirements for at least some iPhone owners, allowing them to upgrade to the version 4 model without being slammed with an early termination penalty.

It is not clear to me that "every" iPhone customer will be able to do so. One of the iPhones on my account was replaced in November 2009 and it still appears that the upgrade date remains November 2011.

With some exceptions such as this, it appears AT&T wants to avoid negative reaction from most iPhone users who have gotten their 3GS devices and have had them a year or so.

Last year, AT&T likewise allowed some, perhaps most, iPhone 3G users to upgrade to the newer iPhone 3G S at the same discounted price as new subscribers. The move followed customer criticism about having to pay a $200 fee to upgrade to the iPhone 3G S before their two-year contract was over. Now AT&T is getting ahead of the crowd to make sure recent customers will see the same heavily-subsidized iPhone pricing as new and out-of-contract users.

iPad Gets 22% of E-Book Reader Market in Several Months on Market

Steve Jobs says Apple's iPad already has gotten 22 percent market share of e-book readers. Not too shabby for a product that allows users to read e-books as a feature, not as the primary device function.

Is Microsoft About to Fall Behind in Tablets AND Mobile Phones?

Goldman Sachs analysts caution that Microsoft is at risk of falling behind the iPad in the same way that the company fell behind the iPhone.

"Given iPad’s success, tablet PCs dominate many investor conversations, as it has created the potential of a fourth consumption device (PC, phone, TV and now tablet)," writes Goldman Sachs analyst Sarah Friar.

Microsoft seems to believe the tablet is simply another form factor for the PC. Apple perhaps doesn't agree, and maybe doesn't have to worry about which view is correct. If all Apple can do is make the absolute-best tablet PC, then it wins. If it uncovers the fourth media device, and executes, it also wins, and maybe wins even bigger.

But it is hard to see how Apple can lose, at this point. The bigger question is whether anybody else can win, and if they can, how big they can win.

As Ballmer shrugs off the iPad, Microsoft risks another late start:

Google TV: Still the Business of the Future?

There's no telling what Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, might bring up today at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. He might announce something that would make Apple TV more than a hobby, which is how Apple formally characterizes it.


But that hasn't stopped Google from launching Google TV, its own effort to meld "the best of TV and the best of the web in one seamless experience." Google  TV builds on Google Chrome to allow users to access all of their favorite websites and easily move between television and the web.

Google TV will use an SDK and web APIs for TV so developers can build richer applications and distribute them through Android Market.

Google is working together with Sony, Logitech and Intel to put Google TV inside of televisions, Blu-ray players and companion boxes. These devices will go on sale in the fall of 2010, and will be available at Best Buy stores nationwide.

"The TV industry is eventually going to be severely disrupted by the Internet, and eventually, I hope that I'll be able to get everything I want to watch online," says Dan Frommer, Business Insider deputy editor. "But it's going to take longer than it should, because TV companies are still fairly insulated -- especially as Comcast buys NBC -- and can protect their legacy business models for a while longer."

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Less Apple Hype Than is Typical

Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone on June 7 that is thinner with a flat back, higher resolution display and a front-facing camera. Apple might have additional details about the iAd network and Game Center, the social networking feature, according to Wall Street Journal reports.

There might be less hype for this upgrade than typically is the case, because of the unauthorized leak of a prototype.

A new iPhone OS 4.0 operating system also will be debuted.

Analysts believe that the phone will be priced at a similar range as the current iPhone 3GS, which starts at $199 with a two-year contract, with the iPhone 3GS price cut to $99 with a similar contract.
The new lower price for the 3GS device, combined with AT&T Inc.'s new data prices, which lower the entry-level monthly service rate, could accelerate demand beyond the strong triple-digit growth the phone has been seeing, some believe.

"One of the impediments to smartphone adoption has been the service plan," says Shaw Wu, an analyst for Kaufman Brothers, adding that "when they make a form factor change, it's pretty powerful."

Apple is expected to sell about 36 million iPhones in its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010.

So Who'll Follow AT&T's Wireless Pricing Model?

Question: Which Internet access providers will follow AT&T and adopt some form of "bucket-based" access pricing? Answer: Everybody, eventually.

To be sure, Sprint says it has no immediate plans to change its "unlimited" pricing. Sprint Nextel currently has no plans to change its mobile data pricing structure in the wake of AT&T Mobility's decision to move to a usage-based model, according to CEO Dan Hesse, at least for its fourth-generation network and voice devices.

Sprint already has a 5-Gbyte monthly cap for users of its 3G data cards and dongles, though the 4G network has an unlimited plan for dongle and data card users.

Clearwire Corp, 55 percent owned by Sprint Nextel Corp, also plans to keep unlimited data plans. But pricing changes are inevitable.

The reason the WiMAX network can offer unlimited data access across the board is because there are so few users on the network at the moment. That will change.

So Who'll Follow AT&T's Wireless Pricing Model? - Comcast: 'gauging customer interest' in unlimited wireless broadband - dslreports.com

Sprint Says HTC Evo Set a Sales Record

Whatever else the HTC Evo might mean for Sprint, it seems already to have accomplished one thing: settting a single-day sales record for Sprint Nextel. On June 4, 2010, the Evo became the device that has sold the most units in a single day, ever, at Sprint Nextel.

Sprint says the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined.

In many cases it appears the Evo, which works on both the 3G and 4G networks, was being bought by customers who actually cannot use the 4G network yet, as Clearwire, which is building the 4G network, strains to add markets in Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

"HTC EVO 4G has more than lived up to our expectations that it would be one of the most anticipated technology products of the year," said Kevin Packingham, Sprint SVP.

China a High Cost Producer?

China has a "problem," caused by its success. Before the recession it was clearly the low cost provider of goods among the largest nations of the world.

It has only been in the last year or so that China’s cost of labor has spiked up, notes 247wallstreet analyst Doug McIntyre. As did the Asian Tigers and Japan before it, China is on the way to becoming a country that will progressively move up the value chain in its hardware businesses, for example.

The country is the victim of its own success as Japan was, in a sense. It has a large middle class, rising wage rates and will have to create an internal market for its goods, rather than focusing on exporting.

China Becomes The High Cost Provider Of Goods – 24/7 Wall St.

Top-10 U.S. Telecom Sites Suggest

The May 2010 Hitwise report on site traffic has some interesting potential implications for communications service providers.

The top single site was Cricket, a firm historically focused on the wireline replacement market and using value pricing to replicate the unlimited free local calls element of fixed line service.

Verizon has three sites in the top 20, as well as holding spots two and three for traffic.

What is notable is that one of the three Verizon sites is the customer portal, indicating that people are becoming quite comfortable with using the portal for paying bills, asking questions and checking on usage and status information.

AT&T has two sites on the list, and the percentage of traffic for the four leading U.S. mobile carriers mobile sites is in line with their respective market shares.

T-Mobile USA also has two sites in the top 10, one of them its customer service portal, which likewise suggests user comfort with online support, as well as T-Mobile's possible success converting its customers away from paper billing to online-only billing.

Comcast's site in the top-10 also is a customer support portal. Back in the "old" days the top-10 sites were likely to be retail sales and transaction portals. These days, three out of 10 are relatively strictly customer support sites.

Steve Jobs Single-Handedly Restructured The Mobile Industry

With the introduction of the iPhone, Steve Jobs achieved something that might be unique in the history of business: he single-handedly upended the power structure of a major industry, argues Chris Dixon, Hunch co-founder.

Before the iPhone, the carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) had an ironclad grip on the rest of the value chain, particularly, handset makers and app makers. Back in the old days, an application could get access to the customer only by cutting a deal with a carrier.

That mostly is not the case anymore. To a greater or lesser degree, app developers can work directly with handset vendors these days. That's a huge switch.

Steve Jobs Single-Handedly Restructured The Mobile Industry:

Thank you

The only territory the United States gained after World War II...inhabited by the most selfless among us.

The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France is located on the site of the temporary American St. Laurent Cemetery, established by the U.S. First Army on June 8, 1944 and the first American cemetery on European soil in World War II. The cemetery contains the graves of 9,387 of our military dead, most of whom lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations.

Annual Smartphone Shipments will Double by 2014

Smartphone shipments will rise 105 percent to 506 million units in 2014 from 246.9 million in 2010, according to researchers at iSuppli Corp. Smartphones have become the fastest-growing segment of the cell phone market with unit shipment growth of 35.5 percent expected in 2010. Overall mobile handsets are expected to grow 11.3 percent.

At the same time,  video-oriented consumer electronics devices equipped with high-bandwidth wireless video interface solutions are surging as well, though from a low base.

Researchers at iSuppli expect the market for video-enabled consumer devices with high-bandwidth wireless video interfaces will grow to more than 85.2 million units by 2014, up from 606,000 units in 2009. By 2014, more than 53 million of these devices will be wireless-video-enabled digital TVs and netbooks or laptops.

LeapFrog Explorer to Take Advantage of App Trend

LeapFrog Enterprises is unveiling a new "Leapster Explorer" touchscreen gaming system that supports downloading of apps using a wired PC connection.

The Leapster Explorer is a multi-faceted device, allowing kids ages four to nine to play games, read e-books, watch 30-minute videos, or download new educational apps.

 It connects to a computer via a universal serial bus cable. The device isells for $69.

Apple’s iPod Touch seems to be the driver, rather than the iPad, as the Touch has become quite popular with tweens, for example, and many parents will not want to pay $500 for an iPad. LeapFrog has half the market share for the educational gadget market in the United States.

The Explorer comes with its own customizable pet, such as a dog, which the child can name and use as a persistent avatar on the device, and which also can be uploaded to the online site LeapWorld.

About 18 Leaplet apps will be ready for the launch.

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