The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Last week was the once a year Apple World Wide DeveloperÕs Conference. The big news that came out of it was just what was expected Ð the release of a new, slimmer, cheaper version of the iPhone. The iPhone is AppleÕs cell phone. Long expected, it was finally released last year and drew instant acclaim for its ease of use and the new applications which came with it. A few short weeks later, Apple was under fire from its early adopters for first releasing the phone for $499 and then lowering the price to $399. To make up for this, after getting slammed on the internet and in the newspapers, they offered the first group of people who bought the phones at the higher price $100 back to make up for this difference. But last week, Apple released the iPhone 3G for as low as $199. This phone, hooked to Rogers cellular networks, is a third generation phone, meaning that it will work online much faster than a regular cell phone and is meant to revolutionize the cell industry. A cell phone, an iPod, an actual computer that can browse the Internet wirelessly and run dozens of applications from eBay to Microsoft Office, this phone is aimed squarely at being the device that you will carry around in your pocket to keep you connected no matter where you are. For the past year, Apple has kept this phone available only in the U.S. and has been slowly developing a series of applications. This long incubation period ended last week. Available in Canada and 68 other countries beginning July 11, Apple is aiming at a rapid explosion of growth and also at pushing into the enterprise market, hoping that businesses will find a device like this irresistible for keeping their hyperconnected executives online when they need to be. Apple has changed the financial deals they have made in the past to get this phone out much faster. In the first six nations the phone was rolled out to, Apple expected a cut of all future revenues. In the upcoming countries, Apple has instead taken a more traditional deal to get this phone to market faster. This is for one good reason: the halo effect. Apple has been trading on this for some time. Basically, Apple has had an overall market share of between three and five per cent for years. But since the release of the iPod, this has increased to roughly 10 per cent and even above in some places. The iPod is so incredibly popular, that people who buy one and fall in love with them, often move on to buying other Apple products such as laptop and desktop computers. This is the halo effect. Buying something and having a good experience with it makes you look more favourably towards a company and more willing to purchase other products from them. The iPhone is one of a few phones that are being called smartphones by tech gurus. These phones are a lot more then phones; they are really complete computing devices that happen to have a phone in them. Many of them have the ability to browse the internet wirelessly and have touch screens. You can use them as a hard drive, storing photos and documents on them as well as your music. Like the old Jetsons cartoons, these phones also allow for full motion video phone calls between users. Sony, Erickson and Nokia have all released phones like this and the trend is only going to continue. Whichever company can make a phone with all of these features that is easy to use, that has a powerful enough battery to be useful for at least a full day, and can handle data in all of these forms will have a gold mine on its hands. For Apple fans, your day is July 11. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
