and sub rosa reblog
Can Apple’s Winning Streak Continue With The Next iPhone?
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple’s next-generation iPhone, which CEO Steve Jobs is widely expected to unveil Monday, will have to really set new standards in multimedia content and function to wow Wall Street and consumers.
Apple’s challenge may be to dream up game-changing innovations, since the iPhone is already an unqualified blockbuster that is the company’s main profit growth driver, and its share price hovers near record highs. The bid is made tougher with the early success of the iPad tablet computer, which many say has already created a new market.
Competition from a host of well-received smartphones based on Google’s Android operating system is also growing, pressuring Apple to raise the bar even higher.
The “iPhone 4.0 will keep them ahead of the game. Is it as easy as last year to stay ahead? No. I think Android has made huge progress,” said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.
Only last year, Research in Motion Ltd was seen as Apple’s top rival. While the company’s Blackberry remains the smartphone of choice for many corporations, Apple has made strides in that market as security concerns addressed by the Blackberry have eased.
More than 70 percent of Fortune 100 companies have deployed or piloted the iPhone, according to Apple.
But the iPhone’s prime target — for now — remains the consumer, in a market where it increasingly goes head-to-head with Android phones from vendors like HTC, Motorola and Samsung Electronics.
Longer-term, investors are squarely focused on the iPhone’s spread into international markets including China, Apple’s pricing strategy, and when the device will be available through another U.S. carrier besides AT&T.
Jobs takes the stage at Apple’s developers conference in San Francisco on Monday following a hectic public schedule of late, where Wall Street is expecting to get its first formal look at the fourth-generation iPhone.
The phone will likely be faster, have more capacity, a better screen and battery life, and a front-facing camera — all nice additions, but none of which move the competitive needle very much.
“There will be some pretty cool things on stage with Steve, but at the end of the day we know the general functionality,” said Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall.
Some features that iPhone users have long clamored for, such as multi-tasking, will also be added.
Read the original post on Epicenter
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10 Reader Comments (Reply Now)
June 7th, 2010
@ 10:28 am
I can’t buy the statement that the iPhone created the modern smartphone industry, but I could buy that they showed millions of people that they can benefit from a smartphone.
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@Garion:
doesn’t matter if the iPhone is out on verizon or not, all of the people who still have a 2g or 3g (not 3gs) are going to want to upgrade, their contracts will likely be finished this year, allowing them to upgrade, and as a user of a 3g myself, I can tell you that the cracks in the back cover, and cracks in the glass of my iPhone that’s never been dropped, plus the way that the phone seems to be more and more glitchy, well it’s getting long in the tooth. Not to mention as a 3g owner, I can’t take advantage of the biggest thing to hit the iPhone OS, multitasking.
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My contract can’t be up soon enough. But, in me, Apple has failed, I’m going to the nexus one with tmobile.
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Others won’t though, and there will be millions of people upgrading their old and busted iPhone to the new iPhone.
June 7th, 2010
@ 11:05 am
response to phoneawebobserver:
Agree, the iPhone did not create the modern smartphone industry. Apple inc., with the iPhone, simply created a DIFFERENT industry, where the iPhone, which is actually a very powerful hand held computer, is also able to handle phone calls. In THINKING DIFFERENTLY, Apple Inc. changed the relationship between consumer and the old comfortable and ridiculous stranglehold the handset makers/network providers had over zero innovation. Now, all phone handset makers are scrambling to join in the DIFFERENT industry that Apple Inc. has created. Today, they will continue to languish when we hear how the iPhone 4G/iPhone OS4 and other ecosystem changes will keep Apple Inc. well in the lead. This has nothing to do with walled gardens, fanboy rubbish, just down-to-earth innovative leadership that all asinine hype and rhetoric from the likes of you is trying to unseat, with zero effect!
June 7th, 2010
@ 11:09 am
Let the HYPE machine run:
iPhone created the modern smartphone industry (suuuurrrre it did…)
iPhone is in a class all of its own (suuuurrrre it is…)
iphone dominates the planet (suuuuurrrre it does….)
iPhone is the Christ (the way you iCultists talk it suuuurrre seems like it!)
It gets embarassing to read, really – the news media is all over it because they hope it helps them with their profits and their future. But really, it is just a lot of excessive hype – and when the hype dies down in a few years, the cognitive dissonance effect will come into play:
All the iCultists will be behaving like the Jehovah Witnesses did when they realised the end of the world did not arrive:
the iCultists will simply pretend that the whole thing did not happen, that they never REALLY said all the silly things they did, that they never REALLY got caught up in the silly hysteria, they never REALLY adored Apple and Stevie-weevie the way others said they did, oh no. It never happened.
It’s a friggin phone, folks! a PHONE! – yah you can touch the screen like you do at a grocery store and do neat things, but it ain’t gettin you laid, it ain’t revealing the mind of God, and it ain’t changing your lives to make them anymore meaningful! For crying out loud, if it takes a phone to make your lives meaningful, you’re already lost!
So stop the silly worship, enjoy your phone for what it is (omigod! it’s a PHONE!), establish a meaningful relationship with a person whose name is not Steve, and get a grip! If you DID get a grip, then the OTHERS (anyone who does NOT worship in the iCult) will relax and shutup about the silly things THEY are saying about THEIR phones!
and, oh yes, the “others” – those heretics who belong to Nokia, Android, RIM and believe in their false gods – are likely not heading for desolation yet – so you can stop proselytizing!
phoneawebserver
June 7th, 2010
@ 11:15 am
“But yes the iPhone did change the modern smartphone industry! That’s not arguable. Dumbass.”
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Um, hey dumbass, there’s a HUGE difference between “change” and “create”.
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And it’s not like other companies weren’t also working on fully touch screen phones before the iPhone. The only thing that iPhone came up with, *MAYBE* is the form-factor which has been popular for… 3 years. I guess any smart phone made before that isn’t “modern” or something.
June 7th, 2010
@ 11:42 am
What the Apple fanboys don’t understand is what is coming down the pike. It will make closed systems like Apple’s an instant dinosaur. It’s name? Chromium.
June 7th, 2010
@ 12:10 pm
Invented the smartphone? Uh no, that would be Palm.
June 7th, 2010
@ 12:28 pm
This is how a real CEO answers — No direct answers, all implications and confusion is their game.
I guess it’s so hard to answer a simple “Yes or No” when asked, “Would you choose a different carrier aside from AT&T on 2011?” … Again, that Verizon iPhone 4G, seems to be on the dim light, once again.
June 7th, 2010
@ 12:33 pm
It’s silly to say that iPhone users have long clamored for multi-tasking. Tech writer have whined about it, but I’ve never once heard an actual iPhone user say, “Man, I wish this iPhone had multi-tasking.” While it’s something a sub-set of iPhone users care about, the vast majority haven’t cared. It’s silly to pretend that the users have been begging for something, when it’s really just the critics who have been vocal about it.
June 7th, 2010
@ 12:48 pm
The iPhone “created the modern smartphone industry”…
“Steve, all cars have steering wheels in them, but no car company claims that they invented it.” Bill Gates to Steve Jobs.
Will you EVER learn?
June 7th, 2010
@ 1:29 pm
“created the modern smartphone industry” and “keep them ahead of the game”. Really? With version 4 I have to admit they start to get ahead, and confirm if they will really change the smartphone industry. I work with an iPhone 3GS, and is a good device (iPhone 3G was really bad in all aspects), but still has a lot of annoyances that make me prefer other ones (like the symbian I have, or maybe Android).