iPhone News Updated

iPhone goes on sale in UAE

The Apple iPhone was available in stores this morning, with Etisalat sales staff setting up special sales booths in retail outlets including Virgin Megastores and iStyle, an officially licensed Apple reseller.

Etisalat is selling the device unlocked, meaning owners can use the phone on the du network and with other international operators. But customers wishing to cancel their contract will be required to pay penalty fees.

These charges could be up to Dh7000, depending on the package chosen. Etisalat offers two packages where the customer effectively pays up front for the phone; on these deals only a Dh300 termination fee is charged. On other plans where the handset price is subsidised, customers must pay out the full 12 months of fees.

Sales staff at Etisalat outlets said customers who already own the new generation of iPhones, acquired overseas or through grey-market importers, can switch to the special iPhone packages without buying a new handset. They also said customers can switch between the different pricing plans.

Each package includes a set amount of voice calling minutes, text messages and data downloads. When customers exceed these limits, calls and text messages are charged at the standard rate paid by prepaid and postpaid customers. Additional data downloads above the set limit are charged at Dh0.65 per 75 kilobytes, or Dh8.66 per megabyte, sales staff said.

[Thanks: http://www.thenational.ae]

New iPhone App Competes With iTunes

Recently Apple has approved and application form the group, The Presidents Of the United States of America.

The group had created an Iphone application that allows a user to listen to the groups entire albums list.

The Iphone app sells for $3.99 through Apple, and may be kind of controversial. Basically you can listen to the groups entire song list through this app, instead of buying each song on iTunes. You must be connected through Wi-Fi or a cellular connection to have access to the music, but this new revolutionary idea could be the start of a huge business.

If you were to choose from paying $0.99 a song on iTunes, or pay $3.99 for an application that lets you listen to an entire groups song list, you would surely choose the application version. Some say that Apple will lose money on this idea, but isn’t it just what the people want? People want to legally have and listen to all the music they want without putting a dent in their wallet. Plus having listened to all the groups songs, that may encourage more sales for the band on iTunes for someone who enjoys the music, and may not have access to the Wi-Fi, or cellular service all the time.

So the person would actually want the song on the iPod feature of the Iphone to listen to when they are not connected to the internet.

Since all the music is streamed, artists will not have to worry about their music being deleted off a file sharing site.

The big question is, is it in any violations of licensing rights with the bands or producers. A music producer would not want people to have access to all the music at any time, because the cost is so little to you, they companies will not make as much.

What would happen if bigger music like Katy Perry or Kanye West was released as an application?

There would be much more people buying this application, so that they could have access to the music without pay for each song. It is very controversial, and Apple may not want to let other bands or groups use this idea, because it may hurt the iTunes business.

[Thanks: http://www.morungexpress.com]