Apple upsets the iPhone cart

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　　Apple upsets the iPhone cart
        　　    Apple overturned not one but two prevailing expectations on Monday, abandoning the iPhone revenue model by which
        　　    carriers paid it a slice of monthly income in favour of application sales, and announcing that the next version of
        　　    its Mac OS X operating system - "Snow Leopard" - will focus on performance, not features.
        　　    The iPhone 2.0 announcements include a dramatic drop in price, which in the UK will mean that in some cases the new
        　　    handset, available from July, will be free with a ￡45 monthly tariff. In the US the price was dropped from $399
        　　    (￡204) to $199, with a $45 a month tariff. The price seriously undercuts the leading player, RIM, with its
        　　    BlackBerry, which is priced at $350 in the US. Apple last cut the price of the 8GB iPhone in the US in September,
        　　    after it had been on sale for just 60 days, from $599 to $399, and discontinued the 4GB model. The latest cut means
        　　    the price has fallen to a third of its starting price in just a year.
        　　    Fooling the pundits
        　　    But it was iPhone's features - and, in some cases, lack of them - that surprised. As expected, Apple added 3G
        　　    capability, but it shunned improvements to the 2 megapixel camera, did not add voice or speed dialling, picture
        　　    messaging or SMS forwarding, and did not add Bluetooth profiles, any of which would increase the flexibility of the
        　　    phone for little power consumption. Instead it added GPS, which despite being comparatively power-hungry will allow
        　　    third-party developers to write location-based services that could be lucrative for Apple, developers and the
        　　    services themselves.
        　　    The announcement, made at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, put iPhone
        　　    applications at the centre of Apple's plans for the coming year, before a receptive audience who can benefit from
        　　    selling their products to iPhone users: Apple will keep 30% of revenues from applications sold on its "App Store",
        　　    which will resemble the online iTunes Store.
        　　    By contrast, the next version of the Mac OS X operating system was pushed far into the background; Jobs barely
        　　    mentioned it, except to confirm the code name. The name - following on from the previous version, dubbed "Leopard",
        　　    which was released last October - implies the changes that Apple confirmed in a later press release, saying that
            
            

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        　　    instead of packing it with features it will focus on shrinking its footprint and adding performance.
        　　    Snow Leopard will be released some time in 2009 - which may see its launch occur in the same timescale as the next
        　　    version of Windows, where Microsoft has been going in the other direction, promising multi-touch features. Microsoft
        　　    paused in a comparable fashion with Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, released in autumn 2004, though in that case the
        　　    focus was on security, not performance, after it became clear that flaws in the software were being widely exploited
        　　    online.
        　　    Apple, however, seems to feel that consumers are, for now, sated with things to do on their computers, and that the
        　　    operating system should move aside. The next version will "hit the pause button on new features", said Bertrand
        　　    Serlet, Apple's head of software, in a statement. The new version will be optimised for the multi-cores now common
        　　    in the Intel processors Apple uses, incorporate support for Microsoft Exchange (making it more attractive to
        　　    businesses considering Macs) and be able, through 64-bit addressing, to use up to 12 terabytes of RAM (6,000 times
        　　    more than is standard on present Macs). It will also be able to access spare cycles on graphics processing units,
        　　    which are growing in power as quickly as CPUs.
        　　    One hint in the announcement suggests that Apple will, seven years after launching Mac OS X, rationalise its
        　　    inconsistent interface, where different window designs and interaction methods proliferated.
        　　    Different thoughts
        　　    But it was the iPhone announcements which garnered the most attention. "Initial European iPhone purchasers are
        　　    between one and seven months into 18-month contracts," commented Ian Fogg, personal technology analyst at Jupiter
        　　    Research.O2 moved quickly to reassure them, offering free upgrades from July 11 for those on ￡45 or ￡75 monthly
        　　    contracts, and ￡99 for ￡30 or ￡35 contracts - as long as they sign up to a fresh 18-month contract. The move may
        　　    also make it harder to "unlock" iPhones.
        　　    Fogg pointed to the camera quality, in particular, as retrograde: "Here [in Europe] even the new crop of business
        　　    smartphones have 3 megapixel cameras. The current batch of consumer-grade ones have 3-5 megapixels, branded optics,
        　　    and real xenon flashes."
            
            

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        　　    But Apple is clearly focussed on making revenues from its App Store, which will sell applications for the iPhone and
        　　    iPod Touch online, into a replacement revenue stream. Observers thought the price cut could leave rivals in trouble.
        　　    "Competitors in North America now may not be able to innovate fast enough to catch up with Apple's new iPhone," said
        　　    Aleksandra Bosnjak, lead analyst at StrategyEye Digital Media. "The price slash is a victory for Apple in North
        　　    America even if it was largely driven by stagnating sales of its more expensive range."
        　　    Reflecting that concern, the stock prices of RIM and Palm both fell in the day after the announcement, while
        　　    Apple's, which fell slightly during the announcement, recovered slightly.