Analyst Predicts Apple to End Exclusive iPhone Deal with AT&T in 2010
In light of a successful switch to a muti-carrier model in France in which iPhone market share has risen to 40% compared to about 15% elsewhere in the world, Apple is set to ditch its exclusive relationship with AT&T in the U.S., according to a note to investors from Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster.
“We believe Apple is slowly transitioning each country into which they sell the iPhone to a multi-carrier model. In other words, we expect Apple to add new iPhone carriers in the U.S. within the next year (likely with a new product launch next summer),” said Munster.
Verizon and possibly T-Mobile are the two likeliest candidates to be added as iPhone carriers in the U.S. if the exclusive deal with AT&T is ended.
“We believe Apple is seeing the increased unit sell-through more than offset the slightly deteriorated economics per unit involved in non-exclusive agreements.” said Munster.
The Piper Jaffray report states that the new iteration of the iPhone, the 3GS, “seems to have exceeded Apple’s internal expectations.”
Finally, Munster doesn’t see Apple offering a $10 basic phone model, such as those that dominate markets like India.
“The screen resolution and all the apps made for the current iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPod Touch also represent a barrier to Apple creating a smaller, cheaper device, one that likely could not run the apps developed for the current devices, and eliminating one of Apple’s key features of the iPhone,” he said.
Man Uses “Find My iPhone” to Find His iPhone and Three Robbery Suspects
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that a man who was held up at gun-point and had his wallet and iPhone stolen used the phone’s “Find My iPhone” GPS function to lead police to three robbery suspects.
The victim, whom police did not identify, later used his computer to track the location of his iPhone to a Wal-Mart in North Versailles, where police said the suspects purchased items with his stolen credit card before moving on to an Eat’n Park restaurant on Route 30, reports the Post-Gazette on its website.
Find My iPhone is part of the MobileMe subscription service from Apple. With the Find My iPhone feature activited on your iPhone, you can log in to me.com from any computer to access Find My iPhone and display your phone’s approximate location on a map.
Apple Patent Speaks of Text-to-Speech Capability for iPhone, iPod and Tablet
Filed under: 4th Generation iPhone, Apple Tablet/Slate, iPod Touch
The Baltimore Sun has come across a patent filing indicating that Apple is working on implementing text-to-speech capabilities that most likely will be used on the iPhone, iPod and possibly the much-rumored tablet.
The filing says: “The speech recognition module can analyze the speech data to derive text data, the text data comprising sequence information associated with each of a plurality of words associated with the speech data. The text composition module can receive the text data and combine the text data with the non-speech data based upon the sequence information. The text composition module can thereby produce combined text data derived from the text data and the non-speech data. The interface can transmit the combined text data to the mobile device for presentation to a user of the mobile device.”
As the Sun notes, the patent filing indicates that Apple is planning to build a comprehensive mobile audio-editing interface for text-to-speech.
The diagram shown here and included in the patent filing gives an example of using text-to-speech to create an email.
AdMob Claim That iPhone App Market $2.4 Billion Annually Slammed by Developers, Analysts
Claims by a San Mateo, California mobile ad agency that iPhone app sales average $200 million a month have been contested by developers, analysts and industry observers.
In a report released on Friday, AdMob said it based its figures showing a $2.4 billion-a-year app market upon a survey of 380 iPhone and 347 iPod Touch users between August 14 and August 21.
“Do the math and that’s a ridiculous claim,” Twittered developer Layton Duncan of Polar Bear Farm, an iPhone developer based in New Zealand.
The math Duncan spoke of was dividing AdMob’s $2.4 billion figure by the approximately 65,000 apps in the App Store, reported Cult of Mac, resulting in about $37,000 income per app.
App developer and App Store-watcher David Bernhard of App Cubby, a developer in Austin, Texas, told Cult of Mac that most apps sell in the single digits per day, and quite a few don’t sell at all. He added that it wouldn’t surprise him to learn that the top 100 iPhone apps gross as much as all other apps combined.
Bernhard said he thought the AdMob figure was five times too big.
“I’ve spoken with other developers who have apps in the top 100 lists of various other categories,” he says. “My rough, but informed estimation: The App Store grosses between $250 and $500 million per year.”
An analyst with Yankee Group, which is preparing its own forecast of US smartphone app store revenues, told Cult of Mac in an email that it felt AdMob’s $2.4 billion was “much too high.”
New: Hitchcock — Mobile Storyboard and Pre-visualization Composer
Hitchcock for iPhone and iPod Touch is a mobile storyboard and pre-visualization composer designed for directors, directors of photography, producers, writers, animators, art directors, film students and anyone who wants to be able to visualize their story.
Hitchcock, says the developer, is the world’s first mobile storyboarding application which allows you to acquire photos with your phone then add traditional storyboarding markups such as dolly, track, zoom and pan. You can even add your own stand-ins. The user can set a duration for each storyboard panel and then play it back to get real time feedback on pacing and framing.
$19.99
App Store link
Developer website
Apple Says iPhones Aren’t Exploding, External Force the Cause of Malfunctions
Bloomberg quotes a spokesman for Apple Europe whos says that reports of iPhones exploding are inaccurate and that damage to such phones is caused by pressure put on their glass screens.
“In all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone,” Alan Hely, a London-based spokesman for Apple Europe, told Bloomberg in an e-mail. “There are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits.”
A couple of weeks ago an English 11 year-old’s iPod Touch reportedly hissed, exploded and shot 10 feet into the air.
In March, a mother in Ohio began court proceedings against Apple, after her son’s iPod Touch allegedly exploded in his pocket, burning his leg.
The iPhone and the iPod Touch are identical products except the Touch lacks telephone capabilities.
Profile: Dr. Steven Schwartz — Pioneering iPhone Adoption at Georgetown University Medical School
Like any physician, Dr. Steven M. Schwartz carries with him a collection of tools to care for his patients. His include a stethoscope, a thermometer and an iPhone.
Dr. Schwartz, associate dean of Medical Informatics and associate professor of Family Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., says he uses his iPhone with every patient and every student.
Dr. Schwartz used to use the Palm Treo but he said he moved to the iPhone about a year ago for a variety of reasons:
- A better Internet experience
- The possibility that he could one day use it to conduct video lessons
- The ability to use third party medical apps and potentially develop them
The clincher was that the iPhone is made by Apple. “I’m a Mac user,” he said, “as are one third of our medical students, so there’s a need for Mac compatability.”
Among Dr. Schwartz’s favorite third party apps is Epocrates, an extensive drug reference. “It’s fast and provides in the fewest clicks the most information most relevent to prescribing at point of care.” He said he also likes the monographs from the British Medical Journal the app provides.
Another must-have app on Dr. Schwartz’s iPhone is an ICD-9 coder (ICD-9’s are the codes used by doctors to classify diseases and other health-related problems). Dr. Schwartz said he uses an app called ICDMeister and ICD-9 pcp, which is free. Why does Dr. Schwartz use two ICD-9 coders? “I am an early-adopter,” he said. “If there are two or three competitors I will try them and see which is best.”
Going online with the iPhone’s Safari browser, Dr. Schartz uses Rcopia from DrFirst for e-prescriptions; Netter Anatomy for reference drawings; and YouTube to help patients visualize aspects of certain medical conditions.
With the iPhone proving to be such a useful tool in both his teaching and his medical work, Dr. Schwartz has a growing iPhone wish list:
- A solution for true integration for all the students’ call schedules
- Better integration with his digital answering service, PerfectServe
- An iPhone native client for the sercure physician-to-physician messaging solution PatientCarenet (Dr. Schwartz has been working on development of such an app)
- A non-instrusive office-visit timer to help him pace his visits (“I tend to go way over and lose track of time.”)
Security on the iPhone is another key area that needs to be addressed, he said.
“Security is a critical issue especially in health care with protected Personal Health Information (PHI),” said Dr. Schwartz. “The iPhone has been a great reference device but security concerns limit it’s use for now as a clinical information system access device. Third party developers will have to put in extra security measures for any app that contains PHI.”
DR. SCHWARTZ STUDENT NOW A PHYSICIAN AND AN APP DEVELOPER
Dr. Steven Schwartz pioneered the use of smartphones at Georgetown University Medical School over six years ago, when, as director of the family medicine clerkship at Georgetown University Hospital, he required that his medical students use a Palm Pilot. Now all Georgetown medical students are using iPhones.
One such student was Dr. Nathan Bender. As part of a class assignment Dr. Bender created an iPhone app called “ShotRecs” that helps a physician or nurse keep up with vaccines needed by children, adolescents, and adults.
“ShotRecs is a perfect example of how, nowadays, physicians are increasingly able to navigate mountains of medical information using programs on their smartphones and on the web,” said Dr. Schwartz in an article about Dr. Bender on the Georgetown University School of Medicine website. “The goal is to improve medical care by providing ready access to medical informatics, including evidence-based medicine. Decisions about medical care depend on the latest information and facts, and these tools provide those facts at hand in easy to use ways.”
Dr. Bender said he built ShotRecs in less than three weeks using Apple’s $100 software development kit and a book about the basics of software coding. “After spending several days reading the book, I knew I could do it,” Dr. Bender says. “Still, I surprised myself because I had real doubts in the beginning that this was possible.”
ShotRecs is available in the App Store and costs 99 cents.
“It is a very handy little application,” says Dr. Schwartz. “It gives clinicians 98 percent of the information they need to know about administrating vaccines.”
New: TomeRaider 4 — Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Classic Texts.
TomeRaider 4 allows you to download and keep a growing library of ebooks, particularly education and reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, guidebooks and classic texts.
These files are available in this version: CIA World Fact Book; King James Bible and the Apocrypha; The Fundamentals of Buddhism; Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Success; Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable; The Dhammapada; The Holy Quran.
$0.99
App Store Link
Developer’s Website
China Unicom Confirms Deal to Sell iPhone, Non-Exclusive for Three Years
Ending months of rumors, China Unicom confirmed that it had completed a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in China, reports Reuters.
Unlike the exclusive arrangement Apple has with AT&T to sell the iPhone in the U.S., the deal with China Unicom will be non-exclusive and will last for the three years.
China Unicom said the iPhone’s launch is expected within the next three months.
The non-exclusive deal opens the door for Apple to work out a deal with China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier. Reuters says China Mobile has 500 million subscribers while China Unicom has 140 million. A further 42 million subscribers use China Telecom. All three companies are state-owned.
Mobile Ad Firm Estimates iPhone App Store Market Worth $2.4 Billion a Year
In a report released Thursday, mobile ad agency AdMob estimates that the combined market for paid apps among iPhone and iPod Touch users is about $200 million per month or about $2.4 billion annually.
Apple allows 70% of revenues from the store to go to the seller of the app while 30% go to Apple. Based on AdMob’s figures, Apple would thus earn about $800 million annually from its App Store.
AdMob said it based its figures upon a survey of 380 iPhone and 347 iPod Touch users between August 14 and August 21.
During the same time period, the company also canvassed 390 users of Android phones and extrapolated that the Android app market is currently about $5 million monthly or $60 million a year.
AdMob also found that:
- Android and iPhone users download approximately 10 new apps a month, while iPod Touch owners download an average of 18 per month
- More than 90 percent of Android and iPhone OS users browse and search for apps directly on their mobile device instead of their computer
- Upgrading from the lite version was the top reason given when users were asked what drives them to purchase a paid app
- iPhone and iPod Touch users are twice as likely to purchase paid apps than Android users.
- Users who regularly download paid apps spend approximately $9 on an average of five paid downloads per month
