iPhone News Updated

Sounds like war as iPhone faces rival

NOKIA is preparing to spoil the Silicon Valley party as the mobile phone giant takes full advantage of a surprising but significant blip by Apple in rolling out fresh supplies of its much-lauded 3G version of the iPhone.

Apple appears to be a victim of its own commercial success and it looks like some will have to wait until December to buy their new iPhone.

Both O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores have repeatedly sold out since the new iPhone was launched simultaneously in 21 countries on July 11, when one million sets were sold in the first three days of launch.

O2 says it is urgently trying to clear its backlog of orders for the device.

Adding to the confusion, many customers awaiting an iPhone upgrade are having to wait even longer. Apple is working hard to provide a pay-as-you-go rather than pure contract deal.

Two months is a long time in mobile phone development, and the delay is music to the ears of Nokia, still the world’s largest mobile phone maker, and it has now rushed out its own new touchscreen.

It uses a music service called “Comes with Music”, and word in the Valley is that the launch plunges Nokia into a frontline battle with Apple, which is used to dominating sales of digital music through its iTunes online store.

Charles Scott, technical director at Quorum Network Resources, an Edinburgh-based IT solutions provider, has questioned the iPhone’s tariff costs since its July launch. “Is it the phone that executives will use, with the rest of a company using traditional Windows devices? At an £840 top tariff, what about the general consumer?”

Peter Cunningham, senior analyst at Canalys, claims: “At the end of the day consumers do not care whether a phone is ’smart’ or not.”

It all depends on the services vendors offer on specific products and how they position and price them.

But the musical element could prove crucial. Cunningham says: “Music is a very popular hobby, and vendors are now banking on the fact that consumers will want this on their phones.”

Strategy Analytics reports, according to internetnews.com, that 84% of consumers say they would pay for a service such as Nokia’s Comes with Music.

Apple and Nokia have one thing in common, though – they rarely take their commercial eyes off of the ‘Crackberry’ – Research in Motion’s BlackBerry – which has cornered the lucrative business end of the marketplace.

However, RIM’s BlackBerry Bold model also continues to be delayed, apparently due to extra testing procedures to ensure it doesn’t have the same 3G connectivity problems that plagued the iPhone 3G earlier this summer. RIM’s co-CEO is on record as stating that within his company “everyone (here] wants to be sure on every last test”.

What is evident is that Nokia is attempting an overall product to eventually compete with Apple, according to Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Gartner.

[Thanks: http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com]

IPhone Apps Appeal

SAN FRANCISCO - It might have been the first Steve Jobs keynote speech that wasn’t all about Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs.

Rather than wowing developers gathered at the company’s annual developer’s conference June 9 with his special blend of surprise and salesmanship, Jobs kept it simple. His pitch for the heartthrob device of the moment, the iPhone 3G? It’s faster, it’s cheaper (at least up front). Oh, and you can get it in 70 countries.

Instead, Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) left it to developers–and iPhone software boss Scott Forstall–to put the crowd into a swoon. Up the developers came, like contestants at a junior high science fair, to plug their work. Demos came from online auctioneer eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ), mobile social-networking start-up Loopt, blogging service TypePad, the Associated Press and game developer Pangea Software. The cutest–and most telling–application might be Pangea Software’s racing game, dubbed Cro-Mag Racer. It’s like Mario Kart, without the controller or the console.

Apple’s plan to get developers cranking out applications for the iPhone seems to be working. “Every time I turn around, they seem to do magic,” says Steve Romero, president of boutique software development shop Critical Path Software.

Pretty slick, and developers at the three-day conference were eager to find out more. Eddie Hu of Penpower was on a mission to find out if he’ll be able to take advantage of the iPhone’s built-in two-megapixel camera for an application he’d like to build that would allow users to take snapshots of business cards and dump the information into a contact’s organizer.

Developers–and Apple–are just starting to figure out what the iPhone can do. “The problem I see is I don’t know what kind of processes Apple will have on place to control the usability,” says Tom Thornton, usability expert with Perceptive Sciences in Austin. Right now the iPhone is easier to use than rivals such as Nokia’s (nyse: NOK - news - people ) N95. “But as you start packing new things into a phone, it always decreases usability.”

Preserving the much vaunted iPhone usability might in fact be one reason why Apple was slow to open up the iPhone to outside developers. Now, however, it’s inviting those developers into its tent. The best example might be developer MooCowMusic’s Band. Once confined to hacked iPhones, the developer was sharing stage time with Steve Jobs.

But while Apple is opening up its gizmos to outside developers who once had to hack their way in, it’s not being completely hands off.

Customers will have to make pit stops at Apple’s App Store to download applications onto their iPhone or their iPod Touch. Apple will take a 30% cut of all sales, but developers will be able to sell their software for any price they see fit–or give it away for free.

The App Store also gives Apple the opportunity to filter out applications that could compromise security, or are buggy and don’t run well. However, there are no guarantees outside developers will be able to replicate Apple’s knack for building intuitive interfaces.

Beyond that, however, Apple is giving developers a free hand. Before, developers were limited to working with the Web browser built into the phone. Now developers will be able to use a grab bag of Apple supplied tools to craft applications. Developers are giving the new package good marks: “It’s actually relatively easy,” says Shivakumar Thirunayam, Skyscape’s senior software engineer.

While Apple is making it easy for users to get these applications, however, there don’t seem to be any rules that will make the applications built by other company’s as easy as the software that comes with the phone itself. “Surprisingly it’s open, so it’s in the developers’ hands,” Romero says. Is he worried about the usability of all those new applications? “The end users will dictate how important that is to them.”

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