The New Apple iPhone 2.0 able to use faster 3G communication was announced today. It will be available for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. iPhone 2.0 will be availabe July 11, 2008.
Competing Smartphones
The Economist magazine notes that while the Apple iPhone has 20% of the smartphone market in the United States it only has 5% worldwide.
There are competing phones from Samsung with superior digital cameras (5 megapixel) instead of 2 megapixel for the iPhone. The iPhone sets the standard for
the quality of its interface, The new iPhone will also have improved enterprise software and integration with Microsoft Outlook email.
The Samsung Instinct will be on the Sprint network at 3G speeds
Samsung Omnia i900 will become available in Southeast Asia first and then be launched to other markets over the second half of 2008, according to Samsung.
More info on the Samsung Omnia i900
Blackberry Bold 9000 is a 3G smartphone.
The Blackberry Thunder touchscreen phone is featured at Blackberry cool They have a picture which shows the Thunder as having a large screen like the iPhone.
Nokia is still the world smartphone leader with the N95 and the Nokia S60
FURTHER READING
The Times Online discusses the competing smartphones
CEO Steve Jobs said the new iPhone, which is based on 3G technology, is 36% faster than top rival Nokia's N95 smartphone.
Jobs says the new iPhone will be available worldwide starting July 11. It will allow up to six hours of Web browsing and five hours of talk time.
Jobs announced the 3G iPhone, which had been rumored for months, at the company's annual World Wide Developers conference in San Francisco.
During the show, Jobs also introduced a slew of new applications for the iPhone, including a wireless system that automatically forwards e-mail to other devices, a friend-finding service called Loopt and mobile blogging software from TypePad.
Other new applications for the iPhone include a service from MLB.com that provides a live scoreboard of major league games, and music-making software, called Cow Terry, for creating songs on the phone.
The new iPhone applications are aimed at boosting revenue from data services. Wireless companies increasingly are looking to these services to offset slowing growth in mobile phone sales. Apple, for instance, will charge $99 a year for its new MobileMe service, which sends e-mail, contact and calendar updates to a user's devices.
The official Apple iPhone site
iPhone 2.0 features listed at Apple.com
June 09, 2008
New Apple iPhone 2.0 Available July 11, 2008 starting at $199
January 03, 2008
Apple's operating system share
Apple's Mac OS's share of the overall operating system market hit 8% at the end of 2007
This share is very likely to increase because of faster growth in Mac sales and because of the shift to laptops where Apple is even stronger with 17.6%.
Industry analysts predict that notebooks sales will exceed desktop sales for the first time in 2008. By 2011, IDC expects laptops to represent 66 percent of corporate purchases, with 71 percent of consumers opting for a notebook instead of a tower.
According to NPD, Apple’s U.S. retail notebook market share for June 2007 was 17.6 percent, an increase of 2.2 percentage points over the same period last year when Apple posted a 15.4 percent market share.
Apple has a 29% share of the premium notebook market
Apple has a choice in strategy to keep prices relatively high and possibly not hold market share gains or to get slightly more competitive in price and possibly allow sales of the Mac OS onto say Dell machines. Dell has indicated that it would sell and install the Mac OS if it was licensed by Apple.
The Inquirer made the case for licensing to Dell back in Jan 2007
The laptop shift and licensing to Dell could see Apple getting up to 40% operating system market share in 2011.
