Tech Radar did an interview with Andy Lees, the Senior Vice-President of Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business. The interview was focused around the issue of how WinMo is going to survive faced with the iPhone and Google Android.
Do your relationships with mobile operators help you compete with the iPhone and Android?
One of the things that we can do slightly differently to Apple and Google is that they have what I think of as the ‘over the top’ scenario - they’re not doing anything to enhance the mobile operator’s ability to create data plans.
They just want the operator to create the ‘$30 all you can eat’ data plan – what the number is varies around the world. Our approach is to be very operator friendly, so we offer tiered services they can use to have different price plans.
I would tend to agree with Apple in this case. “All you can eat” data plans are the only way that we’re going to get a mobile web experience comparable to what we have on a desktop. If we aren’t moving in that direction, we may as well just give up now.
[Read the interview at Tech Radar]
Want to get an iPhone 3G but don’t live in the U.S.? Don’t worry — as long as you’re on this list. Apple will be launching iPhone 3G in this select group of 22 nations on July 11th at USD $200 for the 8G model and USD$300 for the 16G model with a 2-year contract.
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US.
Not on the list? Check out a list of the 48 other ‘non-VIP’ countries set to get the iPhone 3G sometime later this year.
[via Engadget]
Click here to view the rest of the iPhone 3G countries
We missed this when it first hit, but it’s more than worth reporting, even late: Garmin has announced the nüvifone, a new touchscreen smartphone scheduled for release in Q3 of this year.
Electronista broke the story originally, saying that the nüvifone will compete directly with Apple’s iPhone. The device is controlled almost entirely by the 3.5″ touchscreen, which displays only “Call,” “Search,” and “View Map” on its main menu. From there, users can access a wide variety of features like web browsing, email, instant messaging, and more. GPS is very tightly integrated with the unit, allowing such features as “Where Am I?” which provides a near-instant list of the user’s latitude and longitude, nearest intersection, and nearest hospitals, police stations, and gas stations. If used with the optional car mount, which allows hands-free dialing and other features, it even marks the last known spot where it was removed from the mount to ease finding your car in crowded parking lots.
We’ll definitely be keep an eye on this phone.
Our friends at BlackBerry Cool got the scoop on another report that looks at the present and future of smartphones.
The report from ChangeWave shows Apple’s large lead, with 17% of mobile phone users polled saying they plan to buy an iPhone in the next six months and 16% planning on buying a BlackBerry. Motorola has continued their downward plunge, with 11% of users planning on buying one of them in the next six months compared to over 30% in July of ‘06.
Apple again topped the charts with 72% customer satisfaction, followed by RIM with 55%. Most other manufacturers hovered in the mid-30s, and Palm sat dead last with only 30% satisfaction.
The gang at PalmInfocenter posted the results of a smartphone usage report by Canayls, which shows off the strong growth of smartphones in 2007.
The report compared market share between some of the bigger players in the smartphone industry. Total shipments grew almost 72% just in the 4th quarter of 2007, from 20 million units to over 35 million. RIM was the leader in growth, shipping 121% more units than in the preview quarter. Newcomer Apple shipped 2.3 million units, beating veteran player Motorola by only around 20,000 units.
Unsurprisingly, Nokia was the strong leader, shipping nearly 19 million units.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog has noted that the iPhone and iPod Touch are now available in 16 GB and 32 GB models, respectively.
You can now spend $399 for the 8 GB iPhone model or $499 for the 16 GB model. The 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB iPod Touches are available for $299, $399, and $499.
Why this wasn’t announced at the recent MacWorld is anybody’s guess.
cellular-news has posted an article that suggests Apple may lose up to $400 million from users buying iPhones with intention of unlocking them to work on networks other than AT&T.
According to Apple’s earnings reports they sold 3.7 million iPhones in 2007, while AT&T said they added only around 2 million iPhone subscribers. Wall Street analysts believe around 300,000-400,000 iPhones were sold in Europe, and of course some purchased phones simply haven’t yet been activated, but that still leaves a gap of around a million phones. Toni Sacconaghi, a researcher at Bernstein Research, suggested that Apple forgoes future profits of between $300 and $400 million for each 1 million unlocked phones.
There a lot of speculation but few cold, hard numbers, so take this with a grain of salt. It is, however, a slightly broader perspective about unlocking your iPhone.
The gang at PalmInfocenter discovered that Palm has hired Mike Bell, a 16-year Apple employee, to be their new Senior Vice President of Product Development.
The move was done with minimal fanfare, and Silicon Valley news site Valleywag says the reason for the silence is due to some possible bad blood between Palm and Apple. Palm’s chairman, Jon Rubinstein, was on the team at Apple before leaving in 2006 and has been snapping up Apple engineers for Palm ever since, leading to “screaming matches and threats of lawsuits” between the two companies.
Apple is of course renowned for industrial design and innovative user interfaces, so this could be very good for Palm and their recent slump.
The wait is over: the iPhone Dev Team has released, earlier than expected, software to jailbreak the iPhone firmware version 1.1.3.
The guys at IntoMobile have posted full instructions, which boil down to running two quick applications on a jailbroken iPhone running 1.1.1 or 1.1.2
If you’re the kind who doesn’t like to read instructions, you can download the software (PC only right now, Mac version is in the work) here.
The team at The Boy Genius Report posted a story about Makayama’s Voice Dial, which adds voice recognition to Apple’s iPhone.
The software allows you to do a number of tasks like starting a phone call, opening applications or even browsing to Safari bookmarks. Unfortunately, it uses a rather outdated technology: rather than dynamically recognizing your voice, the software requires that you first record a clip for a specific action, then compares any spoken commands to the recorded clips. Still, it’s the best, the only, solution out there.
Voice Dial 1.0 is available on Makayama’s website for $27.95 or EUR 19.95, and of course it requires a jailbroken iPhone.