Monthly Archives: June 2008

Instinct an instant hit..

Posted on by
Reply

I stopped by my local Sprint store to see if I could get my hands on the new Sprint Instinct. I was to find that the Instinct was sold out instantly at most stores. Many online posters had the same story. Either most stores didn’t carry many or the Instinct is becoming a hit. They did have two display models which I was able to play with. I was impressed with the response the phone gave, it was quick to the touch. The major difference between the touch feature is you actually have to press the keys on the touch screen vs the iPhone where you just touch it. It has many features that are identical to the iPhone. The internet connection was poor in the store. It took over 30 seconds to load a page up from bloomberg.com. This phone is a definite steal at new contract price of 129. But of course remember it lacks a 8 GB SSD. You can always add a miniSD 8GB card (hot swappable) which runs at about 70 dollars. Not sure if I will be switching over to the Instinct as I already have a iPod Touch and a Palm Centro.

Firefox 3 released..

Posted on by
Reply

Firefox 3 was release last Thursday. The new browser has a nice clean look to it. One feature I enjoyed for its control against spam sites. Its able to tell if you have been redirected to a phony ebay site and warns you about it. If you have already done so, I recommended downloading its right away.

Happy Firefox surfing.

Apple release 3g iPhone due July 11 worldwide

Posted on by
1

Steve Job held his keynote before the WWDC today and it had a lot of hype surrounding the event. Its almost that everyone was looking for a surprise for the event but there was a lot of blabbering about iPhone 2.0 interface and how great it is. Then was followed by a bunch of demo’s that were quite boring. Next was MobileMe, a neat web application that allows you to be in sync on your iPhone, Mac and PC. Finally an hour and half through the keynote Jobs introduced the much anticipated 3g iPhone and nice price tag of only $199 w/ 2 year contract. How much will the phone cost for the people that already have iPhone? I at least was expecting an updated price on the iPod touch. Once jailbreak hits the street no one is going to purchase an iPod touch if the price remains the same.

What this meant for Apple stock price? Apple (aapl) opened about 2 dollars down at 181 and dipped as low as 176 during the keynote. The 3g iPhone was expected, so no real surprise. The o’s and ah’s this company has provided the last 4 years wasn’t there at the keynote today.

Final thought: Apple is definitely going have introduce something more amazing if they want to keep investors interested. I am very disappointed with the keynote, I was expecting more since the cost of technology has dropped drastically. The keynote has not inspired me to get the iPhone. I will stick to Sprint and my Pam Centro. Might go for the Samsung Instinct June 20th.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Reply

Apple AT&T relationship a good one?

Posted on by
Reply

This is follow up to this story http://valleywag.com/tech/apple/apple-profits-half-a-grand-per-iphone-314408.php

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a.Yir.VaIVZk&refer=us

Valleywag reported that Apple will make a lot of dollars on each iPhone users over 2 year span. I just think Steve could cash in even if he didn’t make an exclusive deal with AT&T.

Apple Gets $135/per 8 GB iPhone (probably more now, since costs have gone down)
Apple Gets $18/month per user, using iPhone.. $216/2yrs
= 135 + 216 = $351/iPhone
Apple has sold 5.4 million iPhones
AT&T in march reported to have 2.5 million iPhone customers

Steve is losing out on $216 on almost 2 million iPhones.

My rant:
I am sure Apple could have made a deal that would have worked with multiple carriers. They probably would have reached the 10 million goal if the supported CDMA networks.

For example Palm. Palm sells the Centro for AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. Palm also sells an unlocked version of the phone for 200 dollars more then the carrier specific phones.

Apple knows, the industry knows – iPhone is the best phone out there. But as for many companies they have contracts with Verizon and Sprint. Imagine if the iPhone was able to those markets. The reasons are quiet apparent why Apple is 2nd to Rimm’s Blackberry. It will continue to stay this way until Apple offers the iPhone to other carriers.

The math

$216 x 2.5 million = $540 million –> not all upfront
$135 x 5.4 million = $729 million
Total = $1.269 billion

$135 x 10 million (estimated users, if phone was available to verizon and sprint) = $1.35 billion
also all upfront, there is no waiting on the money.

$100 million isn’t exactly chump change..

Bias:
I am a Sprint user. Why? Cause its cheap and I am a happy Palm Centro user. If the iPhone was available to Sprint, I would have it.