Apple optimistic it will sell 10 million iPhones by year's end Apple is "really confident" it will sell 10m iPhones by the end of the year, the company's COO, Tim Cook, said yesterday. Today, O2 announced the phone's launch in Ireland. Cook was speaking at a Goldman Sachs investment conference and his comments came on the day Apple invited analysts to a meeting to be held next week at …
Anybody know if Apple have admitted defeat and removed the contract revenue on a quarter of anticipated iPhone sales from their revenue projections.......?
If they're still showing projections as Unit profit plus contract kickback on 100% of sales, I wouldn't like to be their shareholders when the chickens come home to roost. That sounds like a biggish number to me.
Just because it's currently cool to pour scorn on the iPhone, that doesn't make it irrelevant. It's still a massively important device in the mobile communications space because it has shaken up the industry:
1) It features a very revolutionary UI that every major manufacturer is scrambling to emulate/compete with. It doesn't matter that you don't personally rate the UI - it is very important in the industry.
2) With their revenue sharing model, Apple have redefined the relationship with their carriers. It doesn't matter that you think 02 got stiffed - they probably did and it matters to the industry
3) 10 million is a very large number of a single model of phone to sell, especially at that crazy price point. It doesn't matter that you think it's too expensive. A lot of people obviously don't and that matters to the industry
4) Apple dared to publicly criticise 3G. Who else has done that?
So get over yourself and realise that the purpose of tech journalism is to report on what's important to the industry, not to ignore things that aren't cool.
Heh. Ok ... the iPhone:
- Has no QWERTY keyboard
- Has no crypto services (Content Protection)
- Is unable to run 3rd-party apps (hacks don't count, especially when talking about business use)
- Is marketed as a "fun gadget" (remember what happened to the Amiga???)
so how exactly do they plan on competing with BlackBerry??? I got my BB8300 for the content protection, 3rd-party app support and of course, the unlimited data plans (ok, iPhone's got that one ;) and well... I don't care about "webapps". Oh, and I wouldn't "downgrade" from a real QWERTY keyboard to a touchscreened one, after many mishaps with my old HP Jornada I really don't care for those anymore.
Having been cursed with a BB in my new job, all i can say is bring on the business iPhones.
God, Blackberries have to be the worst phone i've *ever* used, containing a webbrowser designed by the devil himself.
For all the abuse hurled at iPhones, they cack all over RIM's substandard corporate-crapotron.
quote:
Nobody actually. Spot on. It's about time we had a vote to ban mention of the iPhone on El Reg. It should go the way of "mobe" (sorry).
I certainly won't be part of the 10 million.
Hmm, ok fair enough, however, you'll probably be in the minority. Even tech minded people on El Reg will probably follow the general trend of making the iPhone the #1 smartphone. It may not have a majority of Reg users but I bet it will have the majority of Reg users over a single model of smartphone.
The truth of the matter is, for most smartphone users (a target demographic of The Register) the iPhone is a solid choice.
Not for you obviously, but I happily turned in my shiny Treo for an iPhone and haven't regretted it. BTW, in the U.S. the Treo is still one of the best smartphones out there (next of course to the iPhone.) I don't know why you over the pond have so many better choices for smartphones.
However, maybe The Register does need a poll regarding the iPhone?
>- Has no QWERTY keyboard
It has multiple virtual QWERTY keyboards that are at least as usable as those physical keyboards provided by the average smart phone.
>- Has no crypto services (Content Protection)
It plays DRM'd tracks, works with HTTPS web pages etc, what do you mean it has no crypto services?
>- Is unable to run 3rd-party apps (hacks don't count, especially when talking about business use)
Which is what the SDK launch next week is about,
>- Is marketed as a "fun gadget" (remember what happened to the Amiga???)
I'm not sure which marketting you've been looking at, but it's marketed as a mobile internet device designed to help you organise your life. What's the Amiga got to do with it BTW?
>so how exactly do they plan on competing with BlackBerry???
Once they add push email and third party apps, all on top of a mobile BSD Unix implementation (so shed loads of library code and software support), how is the Crackberry going to be any better?
Exactly as my title states - are there really that many people blind/daft enough to hit that figure? There's god knows how many better phones out there, but I suppose rather alike most iPods and Macs themselves, people will always be happy to fork out for inferior products at vastly inflated costs - for the sake of a label on the hardware.
Out of the thousands of people I deal with on a daily basis, only one has had the balls to admit to owning an iPhone - and even then he announced it was still under a 14 day return to O2 contract thing which he was about to do and change for a Sony Ericsson w960i.
Apple need to come down off their soapbox, and people really need to stop buying for the sake of a label.
They would have to do some heavy restructuring to give it the functionality of a blackberry. Both WinMo and the Blackberry support better business fucntions and allow more control from IT.
They like the Blackberry because they can brick it remotely so none of my data falls into the hands of bad men.
as an iPhone lover, I'll freely admit, this is not a phone for everyone.
If you want the best phone for the mobile web, there is no better phone. There are faster phones, but no better.
If you want some other feature, with perhaps the exception of the music player, there are better phones... The blackberry is currently best of class in email, those buggy crappy windows mobile attrosities are best in class at syncing PIM data, and it can't do mms (why send a costly mms if email is free?).
If the iPhone is such a non event, why is every other phone manufacturer trying to match it.
Maybe the iPhone is a phone thats using old tech, but this is the phone everyone else should have released years ago, if they did, 3g services would have taken off like the marketing goons promised, because people would see a point( yes i know the iPhone isn't 3g, but it would have made mobile data seem worthwhile)
Just as evidence as to how good the iPhone is for web, this whole reply is typed on one, on the train... Let's see you type something this long onto a comments page using your Sony...
Well, thats the sort of atitude that pushes the difference between the average fanboy and people actually in the know.
I'd rather hear valued opinions from more sensible folks such as Chad H. I agree - lots of people are jumping on the bandwagon and rightly so. Apple are usually right up there with ideas - they're just rarely implemented too well.
But for further information - I'm also writing this on my Sony. Doesn't take long, the handwriting recognition is a godsend. I've never been a fan of short txt msging 4 kids and prefer a good, properly written sentence. Ok, point taken; writing like I do ;)
"Well, thats the sort of atitude that pushes the difference between the average fanboy and people actually in the know."
I really do not understand what you mean.
You state that you you only know of 1 person (in the thousands you deal with on a daily basis) that has an iPhone - and they don't like it.
I state that I know 2 people that have iPhones (out of ALL the people I know) and they both say it is the best phone they have ever owned. - Now that (in your words) is from "someone in the know" - someone who has actually bought the phone, used the phone and and decided how it compares to the other phones they have owned.
As I said, I haven't got an iPhone (how does that make me a fanboy?), I have a nokia something-or-other (which is the worst phone I have ever owned), and I don't do txting because it's much easier to talk - which (for me) is what having a mobile phone is all about.
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