Friday, August 19, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

Why You Shouldn’t Believe Verizon CEO’s iPhone 5 Comments

Posted: 19 Aug 2011 11:33 AM PDT


Verizon CEO Lowell McAdams has had a lot to say about Apple and the iPhone 5, fueling speculation about the next iPhone’s release date and features. But there’s plenty of reason to take Verizon’s iPhone 5 comments with a grain of salt.

Until the next iPhone is released, its name and disposition will remain the subject of conjecture, since no one truly knows if we should expect a revamped iPhone 5, refreshed iPhone 4s, or 4G LTE-version of the current iPhone 4, which ostensibly could be called the iPhone 4Gs, if Apple wanted to follow suit in iPhone taxonomy.

But Verizon CEO Lowell McAdams’ summer-long hot doggery on the iPhone release issue has filled the iPhone 5 rumor mill with false certainties about the nature of the next iPhone. Today, Beatweek iPhone 5 beat writer Timmy Falcon had this to say about McAdams’ statements about the iPhone 5: “the carrier boss admitted two things. By using the term "iPhone 5″ he confirmed that the next iPhone will indeed be the iPhone 5, putting to bed any remaining nonsense regarding the mythical "iPhone 4S" or "iPhone 4GS" which was never in the cards.” But should Mr. Falcon and the rest of the iPhone intelligentsia take Lowell McAdams’ word for it when it comes to prognosticating the next iPhone?

I think not.

The lion’s share of McAdams’ statements on the iPhone stem from a conference call to investors he made back in June, which we reported on in a June 22nd article entitled, “Verizon CEO's Claim That "We don't know when the next [iPhone] is going to come out" Bollocks.” This is the conference call that McAdams first referred to the next iPhone offhandedly as the “iPhone 5,” and summarily blamed the next iPhone’s delay for Verizon’s lackluster performance to shareholders, in a bid to keep them from bailing on Verizon as their new fiscal year was coming around.

McAdams’ conference call is little more than a spin-job — certainly not a trustworthy performance by any account — wherein he had the audacity to state: “We don't know when the next one is going to come out. You will have to ask Apple that. But we expect that probably sometime in the fall, and I think you will see a significant jump there when we get to that point."

Does the Chief Executive Officer of Verizon, which has a contractual partnership to carry Apple’s flagship mobile device, expect us to believe that he has no idea when the next iPhone is due to come out? To be sure, the local customer sales rep at your friendly Verizon store isn’t privy to that information. But you can rest assured that Lowell McAdams knows with a relative certainty when the next iPhone will be released, considering the multitude of marketing, sales, technical, and operational initiatives Verizon will have to undertake in order to have the new iPhone ready for their subscriber base.

Moreover, you can argue that McAdams’ loose use of the “iPhone 5″ moniker should actually give the tech community some pause as to whether or not the next iPhone will indeed be the “5,” considering how casually and euphemistically he uses it. Again, let’s apply some logic: if the current Verizon CEO is in any way a competent executive, would he haphazardly refer to the next iPhone — which he claims to know nothing about — by the name that, should Apple turn out to use it, will figuratively launch a thousand ships and send the tech universe into spiritual nirvana? Even more, couldn’t McAdams’ use of the real name of the iPhone constitute a contractual breach of the two companies’ non disclosure contract, which they undoubtedly have signed?

Folks, I wouldn’t take the Verizon CEO’s comments too seriously — especially considering that they were meant to massage and assuage the fears of Verizon’s investors. Sure, the next iPhone could very well turn out to be the “iPhone 5.” But it still won’t make Lowell McAdams an honest broker of iPhone news.


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U.S., European Economic Woes Threaten To Dampen iPhone 5 Sales

Posted: 19 Aug 2011 08:33 AM PDT


iphone 5

A late-breaking iPhone 5 Mock-up from MacRumors. Thanks, Erik!

Two big stories this Summer have been on a collision course with another, and yet little has been said about it up until now. The audacious sales forecasts for the iPhone 5 and the conversely slumping global economy have remained strangely sequestered, with bold reports from financial and tech analysts that 35% of all U.S. consumers would come to own an iPhone 5, and that Apple had planned to order 25 million iPhone 5 units for production in order to meet astronomical demands in the last quarter of 2011.

A new report today, however, reveals that a global economy in crisis may have finally given Cupertino some pause in its own sales forecasts for the iPhone 5. The Christian Post reported today on a Digitimes article, saying “According to the tech website, handset solution suppliers have indicated that handset vendors such as Apple and HTC, have cut down their chipset orders for the fourth quarter. The companies are thought to be concerned over the tense global economy and have cut down orders to adjust accordingly, a Taiwan-based chipset-maker source has indicated. The site also claims that sources in the iPhone market revealed that Apple has scaled down its orders for handset parts to be shipped at the end of the third quarter.”



The iPhone 5 News Blog led the way on this new angle to the iPhone 5 sales forecasts. Back in late July, we ran a piece entitled "It's the Economy, Stupid!" Will the Tanking U.S. Economy Affect the iPhone 5 Launch?” that considered the possibility that faltering U.S. consumer confidence could trump the fervent excitement over the iPhone 5′s impending release. Given the current economic conditions in the U.S., with unemployment over 9%, a weak consumer index, and a lowered U.S. credit rating that could make interest rates skyrocket, consumers may not be comfortable with investing in an iPhone 5, no matter how desperately they desire one. Even mobile carriers that bill the cost of a subsidized iPhone 5 onto their customers’ next mobile phone bill — a popular tactic used by many companies to get their subscribers to make a purchase — may find that fewer people are willing to fall for that sales tactic.

Instead, mobile carriers may have to get creative in luring in U.S. consumers to make an iPhone 5 purchase, perhaps by deferring payment on the iPhone 5, or spreading it out over the course of several months. Economic conditions like these also make rumors of Apple offering a low-cost iPhone alternative more believable.

 

iPhone 5 devotees will say that Apple has nothing to worry — people will come up with the money to buy the new iPhone, no matter how bad the economy may get. But while tech enthusiasts may be willing to eat ramen noodles for a year in order to upgrade to the iPhone 5, the average out-of-work American consumer may pass on the new iPhone until the financial situation improves.

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Apple Drops Prices, Boosts Display Orders, Ahead Of Q4 iPhone 5 Launch

Posted: 19 Aug 2011 08:32 AM PDT


Taiwanese industry-watcher site Digitimes’ Yenting Chen and Joy Wan are reporting that strong iPhone 4 and iPad 2 sales have boosted orders for Taiwan’s touch panel makers in third-quarter 2011, but say that low margins Apple has negotiated for these orders may hurt their profitability. Chen and Wen note that Apple is maintaining iPhone 4 sales momentum of by lowering prices ahead of the iPhone 5 launch Coming in fourth-quarter 2011 (which begins in October 1)

Last week, Digitimes’ Yenting Chen and Adam Hwang reported that Apple has increased its total order volume for iPhones,including iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 CDMA and iPhone 5 (which in this context refers to the fifth-generation iPhone whatever it’s officially called), for the second half of 2011 by 12-13 percent,

Chen and Wan also say Apple is likely to ship 28-30 million iPad 2 units in the second half of 2011, their industry insider sources say, with Wintek, for example, having received touch sensor orders from Apple at prices nearly 50% lower than the ones previously offered, with the impact of decreased margins expected to ripple out to other downstream players despite increased volume.

iPhone 5 To Be ‘World Phone’?

The International Business Times is also predicting an October iPhone 5 release, reporting that while there is still no official word from Apple on just it will release the iPhone 5, the TiPb tech blog is predicting an Oct. 7 U.S. release date of what could be an “iPhone 4S” or a completely revamped “iPhone 5″, and the device may be released as a “world phone,” compatible with both GSM and CDMA. The U.S. version is projected to remain a SIM-less design, albeit equipped with up to three to four internal antennas. However, IBT says that it’s also being suggested that the iPhone 5 will feature a SIM card slot for other countries that would allow users to insert any SIM card in the iPhone when traveling abroad.