Seven Overlooked iPhone 3G Details
Tuesday, June 10, 2008 2:21 PM
Sectors: Computer and Technology , Utilities
Symbols: AAPL, GRMN, T
While there's no similar carrier subsidy to reduce these prices, Apple's not dumb enough to leave them there. Expect a $100 price cut on these products before the back-to-school season.
  • Apple's toe dip into running an iPhone NOC. This was a real sleeper, but an important one for developers. Apple has refused to allow developers to run background applications on the iPhone (understandable given power and stability requirements). Instead, Apple is providing a centralized push application service that can present badges, sounds, and text alerts on any number of phones at the same time. What Apple has actually created here is a poor man's Blackberry Enterprise Server and Network Operations Center, complete with the associated single point of failure too. It's too early to know how much developers will embrace this service, but it in essence makes the iPhone a cloud computing client.
  • Multi-mode location-based services. Yes, Virginia, the iPhone does support both GPS and photo geotagging. But the dirty secret of GPS is that it doesn't work in the most common places you use your phone -- inside and in the shadows of buildings in cities. But just as the navigations systems built into cars do, the iPhone integrates multiple sources of location information -- cell tower triangulation, WiFi network triangulation, and GPS -- into its location service. The result: the iPhone's location services may actually be better and more reliable than those you get from your average Garmin or Tom-Tom personal navigation system, simply because it will work in more places.
  • The seventh and final observation I'll make is one that was hiding in plain site during the keynote. Steve Jobs dedicated nearly 40 minutes to third-party software demonstrations during the two-hour keynote. That's more time than any other topic received. If there's one thing we know about Jobs' keynotes is that he doesn't waste time on things that are unimportant to users. By dedicating nearly 1/3 of the keynote to third-party applications, Jobs served notice that the Apple iPhone is not just a consumer device, but is Apple's third big developer platform, following the Mac and the iPod. And while it isn't yet a third of Apple's revenue, just wait. It will be -- and sooner than you think.


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