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iPhone: Smart future
is here
San Francisco, Apple on Wednesday
debuted its much-anticipated take on the smart phone, a sleek device with
a large screen that combines a phone, an iPod and instant messaging, sending
its shares to a record high.
Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO and
chief showman, pulled an iPhonefrom his jeans pocket at the annual Macworld
conference and drew a standing ovation at the end of his speech.
Investors also cheered,
pushing Apple shares 8 per centhigher, while those of rival high-end phone
makers Palm Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. fell. |
Lacking the diminutive keypads
found on other smart phones, Apple’s iPhone has a single button and a 3.5-inch
(9-cm) touch screen to navigate between playing songs and videos, displaying
pictures, typing instant messages or making phone calls
Investors also cheered,
pushing Apple shares 8 per centhigher, while those of rival high-end phone
makers Palm Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. fell.
In a nod to Apple’s widening
influence in consumer electronics, Jobs said it would drop “Computer” from
its name.
Most of what Apple Inc. sells
now is mobile technology, whether it be iPods or notebooks, which now outsell
desktop Macs.
The iPhone is thinner than
some of the cell phone industry’s sleekest devices, such as Motorola Inc.’s
RAZR.
It will cost $499 to $599
when it debuts in the United States in June. Sales are expected to start
in Europe in the fourth quarter and in Asia in 2008.
Cingular Wireless, the No.
1 U.S. wireless network and a unit of AT&T Inc., has a multiyear, exclusive
agreement to provide U.S. service for the iPhone.
Jobs said that in 2008 Apple
could sell 10 million iPhones, representing roughly 1 percent of the current
annual mobile phone market of 1 billion units a year.
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Last year, the consumer
electronics market globally was worth $145 billion.
“This is a huge market right
here,” Jobs said in an interview, calling the iPhone “a natural extension
of what we’ve been doing.”
Gartner analyst Mike McGuire
said Apple seems to have backed up Jobs’ claim that the company had “reinvented”
the mobile phone.
The iPhone could hurt the
market for other high-end phones such as the “Q”, made by Motorola., models
from Nokia and Sony Ericsson and music phones from the same makers, analysts
said.
Jobs, speaking at the conference,
predicted the iPhone would have a similar impact on Apple’s fortunes as
two previous blockbusters: the Macintosh and iPod.
“Apple has been very fortunate
that it has been able to introduce a few of these” hits, he said, referring
to the introduction of the Macintosh computer in 1984 and the iPod in 2001.
“We are advancing the state of the art in every aspect.” |
Apple shares rose $7.10 to close
at a record $92.57.The stock rose 18 percent in 2006, after more than doubling
in 2005 and tripling in 2004, making it one of the best-performing technology
stocks in recent years.
Analysts said iPhone is a
potentially huge source of growth as Apple seeks new revenue streams and
ways to build on its 70-percent-plus U.S. market share for digital music
players.
“I’ve already ordered two,”
said Nick Kaiser, president of Saturna Capital. “I don’t know what the
cost is and I don’t care ... The higher it is the more I like it as a shareholder.”
While iPods are still selling
well, growth has moderated. In the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2006, Apple
sold 8.73 million iPods, up 35 percent from a year before.
In the fourth quarter of
fiscal 2005, Apple sold 6.5 million iPods, more than triple in the year-earlier
period.
Analysts cautioned, however,
that the comparatively high price would keep the iPhone from becoming a
mass market hit soon, though the price would almost certainly drop, as
with most consumer electronics devices over time.
“This (iPhone) does have
the potential to shake up the competitive landscape even if it’s not a
device that’s targeted to mass consumers,” said Stanford Group analyst
Michael Nelson.
The iPhone is 11.6-millimeters
(0.5-inches) thick, has five hours of continuous talk time and 15 hours
for playing music, and includes a camera. It runs Apple’s OS X operating
system, has the Safari browser for Web access and e-mail functions that
can handle graphics and work with external services.
The iPhone can connect to
the Internet wirelessly via Wi-Fi and has Bluetooth, a short-range wireless
technology that supports wireless headsets or links to devices like printers.
Separately, Jobs said AppleTV,
the newly renamed device for streaming movies, music, photos, podcasts
and TV shows to home entertainment systems, would ship in February. AppleTV,
which comes with a 40-gigabyte internal hard drive, will cost $299.
Apple has now sold 70 million
iPods and consumers have bought more than 2 billion songs for about 99
cents each on iTunes. More than 220 TV shows are also available on iTunes.
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