Ending months of rampant speculation and anticipation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled plans for the iPhone, a svelte and sexy device that melds the features of an iPod, a smart phone and an internet communicator.
Tuesday's announcement at the annual MacWorld conference in San Francisco ends months of rumors and prognostication about Apple's quest to expand its lineup with the introduction of a full-featured phone. While plenty of pundits have pooh-poohed Apple's prospects of catching up to Nokia, Motorola and other device makers, Jobs said his goal was to capture one per cent of the market by 2008.
(Jobs cited figures that showed 957 million cell phones were sold last year. He didn't list sales of smart phones, which is a small fraction of that number.)
The iPhone ships in the US in June and in Europe in the fourth quarter. Asia will have to wait until next year. A 4GB iPhone will cost $499 and the 8GB will be $599. Cingular has entered in to a "multi-year" exclusive partnership in the US. Jobs didn't identify what carriers it planned to work with overseas.
Jobs also announced the availability next month of Apple TV, a living room device for stereos and wide-screen televisions that Apple first teased in September. It will will connect to computers throughout the home to make it easier to consume pictures, music and video.
The unveilings came as the company formally changed its name from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. to signal its expansion from computers into consumer electronics.
(True to MacWorld's roots as an annual pilgrimage for geeks and the reporters who love them, attendees at this year's event lined up before it began like so many teenyboppers at a Justin Timberlake concert. The scene once the doors opened resembled the running of the bulls.)
Revolutionary
During a two-hour keynote filled with thousands of ogling fans, Jobs made liberal use of the world "revolutionary" in describing the iPhone. Based on the demo, he probably wasn't exaggerating.
The device offers a wider, 3.5-inch screen with touch controls that vastly improve upon the iPod's scroll wheel. To scroll through a list of artists, contacts or photos a user runs a finger down the screen. A faster flick will move further down the list than a slow one. The iPhone also features an improved menu structure that makes it faster to find playlists, artists and albums.
The screen is also improved, allowing the viewing of video and pictures in either portrait or landscape mode. Switching from one to the other requires a flip of the fingers.
The phone offers random-access voicemail, enabling users to listen to messages in the order they want, rather than in the order they were left. It offers SMS messaging and a 2 megapixel camera.
Jobs, who has been under scrutiny for backdated stock options issued to employees and executives, showed how easy it was to access voice mail. One message left on his phone came from former Vice President Al Gore, who was part of an internal task force that recently absolved Jobs of any wrongdoing in the scandal. (Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth got a plug later when Jobs used the iPhone to browse movie titles.)
It also allows seamless access to IMAP and POP3 email, and Yahoo will offer the free pushing of IMAP messages. Web browsing benefits from the availability of Safari, the ability to zoom in and out with a tap of the finger and the iPhone's wide-screen capacity.
Jobs demonstrated a feature that integrates Google Maps into the device, allowing him to locate a Starbucks a few blocks away and order 4,000 cups of coffee to go by phone simply by tapping the number listed on the browser. (He canceled the order before hanging up.)
The iPhone comes with plenty of other goodies, including sensors that control screen brightness, adjust the picture when the device has been rotated from portrait to landscape, and measure how close the user is to the phone.
It supports quad-band GSM, EDGE, Bluetooth and 802.11b/g/n.
Jobs didn't say if Apple had to pay for the rights to the iPhone name. Recent disclosures showed that Cisco Systems held the rights to the brand.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Yahoo Adds Web Search to Mobile Suite
Yahoo Go 2.0 beta includes a new search app designed for mobile devices.
Marc Ferranti and Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
LAS VEGAS -- Yahoo has released a test upgrade of its suite for mobile devices, which includes a new search application, as the company keeps trying to extend its products to cell phones.
A beta version of Yahoo Go 2.0, unveiled here on Monday, can be downloaded to more than 70 mobile devices from various vendors worldwide. Handset makers supporting Yahoo Go 2.0 include Research In Motion, Motorola, Samsung, and Nokia. The suite can be used on "most" wireless networks, Yahoo officials said.
By the end of the year, Yahoo expects users to be able to download Yahoo Go 2.0 onto more than 400 devices, according to Marco Boerries, senior vice president for Yahoo Connected Life.
Get Facts Instead of Links
A key feature of Yahoo Go 2.0 is oneSearch, a new search engine designed specifically for mobile devices that, instead of returning a list of Web sites, provides facts related to the query term, according to Boerries. For example, if a user enters the name of a sports team, oneSearch will display relevant game scores, team information, photos, news articles and the like.
In a demonstration, Boerries showed how, if a user types in pizza, local listings for pizza restaurants will be displayed automatically.
"Consumers want an experience optimized for mobile," Boerries said. "No matter how good the screen gets, no matter how fast it gets ... the mobile phone is different from the PC."
Yahoo Go 2.0 also features local maps, news tickers, a mobile version of the Flickr photo management service, and e-mail.
Yahoo will provide the Yahoo Go 2.0 software for free and make money from advertising and sponsored search results, Boerries said. Ads and sponsored results will be clearly distinguished from results generated by search algorithms, Boerries said.
Mobile Search Market Taking Off
The mobile business generated by Internet search companies such as Yahoo and Google is currently dwarfed by PC-based search revenue, according to Takami Kono, vice president of equity global research at Nomura Securities International. But Yahoo is taking necessary steps to make sure it is well positioned in the mobile market, he said.
"Mobile advertising is less than 5 percent of all search advertising revenue, but it should grow at two or three times per year for the next few years," Kono said. "Google makes more money from search advertising, but Yahoo's content is better," he said. Yahoo Go is a good way for the company to leverage its strength, he said.
Yahoo also announced at CES that Opera Software chose it as the exclusive search engine provider for its Opera Mini and Opera Mobile Web browsers, and that Opera plans to adopt oneSearch this quarter.
Marc Ferranti and Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
LAS VEGAS -- Yahoo has released a test upgrade of its suite for mobile devices, which includes a new search application, as the company keeps trying to extend its products to cell phones.
A beta version of Yahoo Go 2.0, unveiled here on Monday, can be downloaded to more than 70 mobile devices from various vendors worldwide. Handset makers supporting Yahoo Go 2.0 include Research In Motion, Motorola, Samsung, and Nokia. The suite can be used on "most" wireless networks, Yahoo officials said.
By the end of the year, Yahoo expects users to be able to download Yahoo Go 2.0 onto more than 400 devices, according to Marco Boerries, senior vice president for Yahoo Connected Life.
Get Facts Instead of Links
A key feature of Yahoo Go 2.0 is oneSearch, a new search engine designed specifically for mobile devices that, instead of returning a list of Web sites, provides facts related to the query term, according to Boerries. For example, if a user enters the name of a sports team, oneSearch will display relevant game scores, team information, photos, news articles and the like.
In a demonstration, Boerries showed how, if a user types in pizza, local listings for pizza restaurants will be displayed automatically.
"Consumers want an experience optimized for mobile," Boerries said. "No matter how good the screen gets, no matter how fast it gets ... the mobile phone is different from the PC."
Yahoo Go 2.0 also features local maps, news tickers, a mobile version of the Flickr photo management service, and e-mail.
Yahoo will provide the Yahoo Go 2.0 software for free and make money from advertising and sponsored search results, Boerries said. Ads and sponsored results will be clearly distinguished from results generated by search algorithms, Boerries said.
Mobile Search Market Taking Off
The mobile business generated by Internet search companies such as Yahoo and Google is currently dwarfed by PC-based search revenue, according to Takami Kono, vice president of equity global research at Nomura Securities International. But Yahoo is taking necessary steps to make sure it is well positioned in the mobile market, he said.
"Mobile advertising is less than 5 percent of all search advertising revenue, but it should grow at two or three times per year for the next few years," Kono said. "Google makes more money from search advertising, but Yahoo's content is better," he said. Yahoo Go is a good way for the company to leverage its strength, he said.
Yahoo also announced at CES that Opera Software chose it as the exclusive search engine provider for its Opera Mini and Opera Mobile Web browsers, and that Opera plans to adopt oneSearch this quarter.
Monday, January 8, 2007
Sling TV offering comes to Palm phones
Mobile device maker Palm Inc. on Monday said owners of its third-generation Treo smartphones will soon be able to watch television using software from Sling Media Inc.
The SlingPlayer Mobile software, which lets smartphone users watch live and recorded television from their home cable box, satellite receiver or digital video recorder, is already available for devices that run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system.
Sling Media and Palm said they expect to release the Palm OS version for Treo 700p devices sometime in the current quarter.
Shares of Palm were unchanged at $14.69 in morning trading on the Nasdaq.
The SlingPlayer Mobile software, which lets smartphone users watch live and recorded television from their home cable box, satellite receiver or digital video recorder, is already available for devices that run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system.
Sling Media and Palm said they expect to release the Palm OS version for Treo 700p devices sometime in the current quarter.
Shares of Palm were unchanged at $14.69 in morning trading on the Nasdaq.
CES 2007: 200 GB Blu-ray discs, 16.5 GB Mini discs in the works
Las Vegas (NV) - While we are just noticing a greater adoption of the first-generation high-definition media formats and a new wave of 50 GB Blu-ray will be shipping in the first quarter of this year, we have spotted the next generation of Blu-ray at CES.
TDK previewed a massive 200 GB Blu-ray disc, which the company claims has enough room to store approximately 18 hours of high-definition video (encoded at 24 Mbps). The company did not say when such media may be commercially available.
Also on display are 8cm Mini Blu-ray discs, which have a capacity of 16.5 GB by using a single-layer recording material structure. The Blu-ray minis will be available in BD-R and BD-RE formats. Complementing the TDK lineup are thermal and inkjet printable BD-Rs that will begin shipping in the second quarter of 2007.
TDK previewed a massive 200 GB Blu-ray disc, which the company claims has enough room to store approximately 18 hours of high-definition video (encoded at 24 Mbps). The company did not say when such media may be commercially available.
Also on display are 8cm Mini Blu-ray discs, which have a capacity of 16.5 GB by using a single-layer recording material structure. The Blu-ray minis will be available in BD-R and BD-RE formats. Complementing the TDK lineup are thermal and inkjet printable BD-Rs that will begin shipping in the second quarter of 2007.
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