Mobile Opportunity - News And Views from Google MO

Welcome to Mobiforumz.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

I never thought I’d say that, but Apple’s making me wonder. Apple says 100,000 developers have already downloaded the iPhone SDK (link). For comparison, it took Palm a couple of years of heavy evangelism to hit the same milestone. That’s a deceptive comparison, though — Palm was a small and relatively unknown company at the time, whereas Apple is a huge brand, with a large base of current Mac developers that it can bring over to the iPhone.

So the process was quite a bit easier for Apple. But still, criminey, 100k is a lot of SDK downloads in just four days. Apple has clearly struck a nerve.

In addition to the 100k statistic, the Apple press release included new endorsements from companies like Intuit, Namco, PopCap (Bejeweled, baby), and SixApart. It’s a very interesting variety of companies.

Which raises an interesting question: How in the world will all those developers find an audience? Based on the current iPhone installed base, Apple already has one developer for about every 40 iPhone users. Let’s be optimistic and say every user will spend an average of $20 a year on applications (a figure much higher than we’ve seen on any other mobile platform). Apple keeps 30%, so there will be a total of $560 in revenue per year available to each iPhone developer (not to each app, to each developer). The iPod Touch will increase that number a bit, but not enough to change the math. Either Apple has to grow the installed base enormously, or there are going to be a lot of iPhone developers going hungry.

Posted by Steve Kanefsky, Software Engineer, Google mobile team

We all know that using the web on mobile phones can be a challenge sometimes. Compared to our personal computers, the screens are smaller, it’s more difficult to navigate and enter text, the network connections are slower, and the browsers lack many of the features we’ve become accustomed to. I deal with this every day as both a developer and a user of mobile web applications. So you can imagine how excited I was when the iPhone launched with a large touch screen, Wi-Fi, and a full-blown Safari web browser!

I started thinking about how to use AJAX technology to improve Google on the iPhone. I set out to create an application that would preload my favorite Google products and allow me to switch between them instantly. I wanted web results as well as image, local, and news results without having to repeat my search. I wanted to check Gmail and my news feeds in Google Reader without having to load a new page every time. I also wanted Google Suggest to save me time typing queries on the virtual keyboard.

I created a prototype and showed it to some fellow Googlers. After that, things started moving pretty quickly. A few weeks (and a few gallons of mint tea) later, I had an improved version which Googlers throughout the company were using on their iPhones (it works great on the iPod Touch too). Now we want to share it with everyone.

Our guiding principles were “fast” and “fluid.” We think we’ve achieved both, thanks to some AJAX magic made possible by the iPhone’s Safari browser. To try it out, just go to www.google.com on your iPhone.

We want to know what you think! You can post your comments below or submit specific questions on our discussion board. We hope you’ll like it.

Posted by Marc Vanlerberghe, Product Marketing Director

In case you missed it, Google officially announced today that we’ll be applying to participate in the upcoming 700 megahertz spectrum auction. You can read more about it on the Official Google Blog. As Chris notes, we’ll be obligated to remain silent on this for awhile — just so you know.

Posted by Mike Chu, software engineer, Google mobile team

We’ve all been there: You’re out and about, and you need to figure out where you are, what’s around you, and how to get there. Google Maps for mobile can help you do all that, but first you have to enter in a starting point using the keypad. And let’s face it — entering things into your phone using the keypad is so 2006. While some people are lucky enough to have GPS-enabled mobile phones that provide location information for Google Maps for mobile, the vast majority of us are not. So what to do?

Starting today, we have an answer: Google Maps for mobile with My Location . My Location is a new beta technology from Google that uses cell tower identification to provide you with approximate location information, so it will work on phones without GPS. Simply fire up Google Maps for mobile, press [0], and the map will indicate your approximate location by centering on a blue circle like this:

If you do have a GPS-enabled device, My Location can actually complement it. My Location kicks in faster than GPS in most cases, so you can access your location even faster on the map. It also works reliably indoors (unlike GPS) and doesn’t drain your phone battery at the rate that GPS does.

Of course, this feature is in beta, which in this case means a few different things: First, although accuracy and coverage may vary, both will improve over time as more and more people use Google Maps for mobile. Second, My Location isn’t currently supported on all devices (see our Help Center for more on this); we’re working on that. Third, we’d love to get your feedback on it — feel free to leave your comments below.

To give Google Maps for mobile with My Location a try, text “MYLOCATION” to 33669, or head to www.google.com/gmm on your mobile browser.

If you’d like to learn more about the My Location technology, take a look at this short video:

Posted by Marc Vanlerberghe, Product Marketing Director

Welcome to the new Google mobile blog. We hope this will be your first stop for the latest news and views from our global team that has been working to bring you innovative mobile products for awhile, now.

Through this blog, we plan to share with you over time more on what we’re up to, who we are, and what we think is going on in this dynamic industry. We’ll have plenty of product launches, features, and tips to tell you about. We also hope to introduce you to some of our partners and some of our users along with the applications they love. Additionally, we plan to offer up comments on trends in the industry and even an occasional take on non-Google products we feel are particularly noteworthy.

Earlier this month we launched Android, one of our most ambitious mobile initiatives to date. While Android is an important part of our mobile strategy, so too is our goal of developing useful and compelling mobile products for our current and future users, devices, platforms, and partners. As always, you can find out more about our full suite of Google mobile products at mobile.google.com.

Finally, we’re very interested in reading what you have to say so we invite you to submit comments below pertinent blog posts. We’ll do what we can to respond; feel free to respond to each other as well. For specific questions on Google mobile products, please visit our discussion group and submit them there.

I thought it would be good to add a suggestion box to Mobile Opportunity. Here it is. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about this weblog, please post a comment here. I’ll link to this post from the sidebar, so you can get to it easily.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

The folks who run the Carnival of the Mobilists are running an online poll to select the best mobile-related weblog post written by Carnival participants in 2006. If you’re not familiar with the Carnival, it’s a weekly collection of weblog articles on mobile-related topics.

Authors nominated their favorite posts, and then the Carnival folks picked the ten finalists. They are:

Casual Mobile Snacks for Everyone speculates that the intensely personal nature of mobile devices will lead to the development of very personalized types of games.

The big ‘07 Forecast surveyed 32 mobile gaming executives on what they expected to happen in mobile gaming in 2007. I was surprised by how little they agreed on. About the only opinion most of them shared was that they each think their own upcoming product releases will be critically important watersheds for the industry.

The Mobile Web Grows Up is an overview of mobile data news from 2006.

Nokia N91 Kills the iPod is an article claiming that the Nokia N91 music phone is much better than an iPod.

Youth Mobile Trends Summary is a mashup of four blog posts exploring the use of mobile phones by young people.

Qualcomm: An Empire Under Siege is an enormous overview of Qualcomm’s status and all the legal actions the company is involved in. It’s a long read, and I don’t agree with all the analysis, but I think it’s still a very valuable overview.

We Interrupt This Broadcast is a very enthusiastic discussion of the prospects for advertising on mobile phones.

Coltan and Your Mobile discusses the social problems created in central Africa by the mining of tantalum for use in capacitors (including the capacitors used in mobile phones). I was not aware of the tantalum situation; you can read more about it here.

The Mobile Web Phone calls for the creation of a mobile phone optimized for web browsing.

We need a new mobile platform. Sort of. is something I wrote exploring the faltering sales of mobile applications. It suggests that instead of trying to fix the mobile operating systems, we need a software layer that runs on top of all mobile devices. I nominated this article because it’s an issue I feel very strongly about. I’d like to thank the Carnival folks for making it one of the finalists.

You can vote for your favorite post by clicking here. You’ll see a screen that makes it look like you need to register, but that’s not necessary. You do need the survey password, which is: mobilists

And even if you don’t feel like voting, check out the Qualcomm post. It’s very interesting.

It’s too early to tell if the Apple iPhone will be a sales success; we’ll have to see how the product actually works. But I think Apple’s announcement is very promising, and whether or not the product is a best-seller, it resets a lot of the agenda for the mobile industry.

This post is in three parts:

–Information on the iPhone. What we know for sure about its specs and functionality, and other information that appears to be true but is not yet confirmed.

–Prospects for the product. Speculation on the iPhone’s potential sales success. Who might want it and why.

–Impact on the industry. Who suffers, what the opportunities are, what to watch for next, and what to do if you’re working at a mobile company.

Information on the iPhone

Before I even get into details about the iPhone, I want to acknowledge for the record that Steve Jobs does great announcements. The Apple faithful were appropriately awed. But the most impressive moment to me was his handling of Google and Yahoo. Both companies are posturing as the future dominators of mobile data, but Jobs managed to have each of them on stage, in order, catering to him. A wonderful power play, and a nice inversion of that first Macworld after Steve’s return when he kowtowed to Microsoft. This is a long, multiyear exercise in personal and corporate redemption.

About the device. It’s a small mobile device with a touchscreen-centric interface. It has a 160-dpi 320×480 screen, four gigs or eight gigs of memory, a quad-band GSM/Edge cellular radio (not 3G), WiFi (802.11 b and g), Bluetooth 2.0, and a two megapixel camera.

The device senses whether it’s being held horizontally or vertically, and rotates the screen image appropriately. There’s a proximity sensor to turn off the touchscreen when the phone is held against your face, and an ambient light sensor to dim the screen when you’re in low light conditions.

The device weighs 4.8 ounces / 135 grams, and is nicely sized (not as thin as some phones, but acceptable size and weight for most phone users).

Battery life is supposedly five hours of talk and 16 hours of music playback.

There are no buttons on the face of the device — dialing, typing, and all user interface is controlled through the touchscreen.

The operating system is Mac OS X. Bundled software includes the Safari Web browser, an e-mail, Google Maps and associated location-based services, iPod music and video playback, a suite of phone apps (address book, threaded SMS, calendar, dialer, visual voicemail [pick messages from a printed list on screen]), photo management software, and some widgets provided by Apple.

The visual voicemail feature is nice to see but also frustrating because we were talking about this feature at Palm roughly four years ago. Sigh.

The touchscreen interface includes multi-touch support, so you can use on-screen gestures to navigate the interface. For example, you can pinch two fingers together to shrink an image, and spread two fingers to enlarge it. This will be especially important to applications like the Web browser, which lets you zoom in and out on web pages.

Price is $499 for four gigs and $599 for eight gigs. That price apparently requires purchase of a two-year service plan from Cingular. The phone is exclusive to the Cingular network in the US for “multiple years.” Availability is June in the US, late 2007 in Europe, and 2008 in Asia.

What it doesn’t do. There are apparently some important restrictions on the functionality of the device.

No direct connection to iTunes. Time Magazine reports that you can’t download songs and videos directly from iTunes; instead, you have to go through a PC or Mac and then sync the songs over. That may be a blessing since the phone doesn’t have 3G performance, but it ought to work direct at least on WiFi.

No wireless sync. You have to use a cable to sync it to a PC, even though it has high-speed wireless. Again, why restrict this?

No third party apps. This one was a shock to me. Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research reports that Apple says the iPhone is a closed device — only Apple will be able to add applications to it. Michael thinks it won’t be an issue to the masses, but I think it’s a huge missed opportunity for Apple. They have Mac OS X in there, they have the Widgets infrastructure — if they turned the developers loose on it they could rapidly amass an incredible array of add-on features and system completers. I don’t know if the restriction on third party apps is a temporary thing, or an intentional and permanent part of Apple’s plan.

No Office enclosure support. Michael also reports that Microsoft Office files enclosed by e-mails can’t be read by the iPhone. I lived through this sort of restriction at Palm, and it is a stopper for serious e-mail users. This is exactly the sort of thing that third party developers could fix if Apple opened the platform.

What we don’t know:
–What’s the processor and its speed? (Just curious about this; it doesn’t make much difference to the user.)
–How powerful is the battery, and can it be replaced by the user? (This is important because I suspect that doing heavy media and maintaining a wireless connection will drain the battery fairly fast. I remember back when Palm thought the Treo didn’t need a replaceable battery. Wrong.)
–Will the GSM SIM card be removable? (This might let you use the device on another network, although you’d still have to buy it with a service plan.)
–What’s the price of the required Cingular service plan?

Prospects for the iPhone: Great, for a segment

As I’ve said a few times, I think the market for mobile data devices is split into at least four big segments: people who won’t pay more for anything other than voice (65% of the population), people who will pay extra for communication features, people who will pay extra for information management features, and people who will pay extra for entertainment features (each of those three groups are about 12% of the population). The iPhone looks like an ideal offering for the entertainment-centric users. Steve says he wants one percent of the mobile phone market (for now). I think that the iPhone and its lower cost offspring could eventually get about 12%.

Is that a big number or a small one? Well, it’s a hundred million phones, and would be enough to make Apple a top five phone vendor. So it’s a big hairy number.

Of course, that’s assuming the phone actually works. I think it will — the demos today were very impressive — but we can’t really tell yet. Here are some thoughts on drawbacks and preliminary conclusions:

It’s a segment, not the whole smartphone market. Jobs compared the iPhone aggressively to other smartphones, but that’s confusing. There is no unified smartphone market. You can anticipate a lot of confusing articles and web posts in the next few months with people arguing over whether the iPhone is the ultimate mobile thing, all based on their own personal preferences. Here’s the answer — there is no single ultimate mobile device, let’s talk about which segments will like it and which won’t.

How good will the battery life be really? I’m very suspicions of the power requirements of a wireless + media device that’s as thin as the iPhone. It’s going to be bought first by enthusiasts who’ll use it a lot. If the batteries go flat in a single day’s heavy use, that’s going to be a major issue. It’s one thing when your iPod runs out of power; it’s a very different thing when it takes your mobile phone down with it.

Apple can sidestep the problem partially if the battery can be replaced by the user. If not, watch battery life really carefully.

A lot depends on the multi-touch interface. Since there are no buttons, there’s no familiar interface to fall back on if people can’t figure out the interface. Multi-touch looks really cool when demonstrated by someone who knows it well, but will the average user be able to figure it out? Will the system be able to distinguish well between a tap and the beginnings of a gesture? For example, what if I’m trying to expand an image in the browser, and the system thinks I tapped on a button in the web page? This could create the sort of mess that makes people throw devices against the wall.

Would you like a side order of grease with your phone screen? In the mobile industry, the general belief is that it’s bad to have the phone’s screen pressed directly against your face — it’ll pick up oil and/or makeup from your face, and get smudged very quickly. Apple’s going to test whether that’s a real problem or just a superstition in the industry. (David Pogue says Apple came up with a screen coating that minimizes the grease problem.)

This design may not go over as well in Europe and Asia as it will in the US. In the US it’s easy for Steve to give a speech saying how stupid it is to type using a phone keypad. In Europe and parts of Asia, a lot of phone users are very used to doing it for SMS, and no matter how stupid Steve tells them they are, they kind of like doing it. I think they may not be happy trading in their physical keypad for a screen where they can’t feel the keys. That forces them to look at the screen when they type.

For these people, Apple’s product is like trying to get touch typists to use a keyboard that’s just a flat glass surface without moving keys. With the single exception of the sets on Star Trek, this has never been accepted by anyone because the ergonomics are bad.

I think Apple is at risk when it tries to change the established habits of users.

This is a poor device for communication-centric users. RIM’s stock was hammered today, but I think that’s a mistake. Yes in the long term there’s a risk to RIM from any new competitor, but stock market valuations are not generally driven by multi-year trends. The iPhone as currently designed is a lousy device for RIM’s communication-centric users because it doesn’t have a keyboard and because it can’t handle Outlook attachments. It has a lot of features those communication-focused users don’t care about and won’t pay extra for.

Trashing RIM stock because of the iPhone is like trashing the stock of Caterpillar Tractor because someone brought out a new sports car.

Impact on the industry

The immediate impact of the iPhone is that it changes the terms of the debate for everybody. Every new mobile data device will be evaluated against the iPhone’s specs, which is going to become very irritating for a lot of vendors because the iPhone isn’t shipping yet. It’s like boxing a ghost. I suspect that may have been Apple’s intention. Supposedly it had to announce now because the device would have leaked when it entered FCC testing, but an interesting side benefit will be that Apple can stall sales of all its competition. I think this is likely to be a very unpleasant time for Microsoft Zune, a moderately unpleasant time for Palm, and an intense annoyance for everyone else.

Curious side thought — will this also stall sales of traditional iPods? I think there’s a chance it will.

Microsoft looks foolish. Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, made a big mistake at CES. He got roped into critiquing the iPhone the day before it was announced. Some of his very off-base comments include:

“The latest rumor we hear is that it is going to be a MVNO phone and there hasn’t been a lot of successes in that MVNO space for a lot of different reasons.”

Speculating that Apple won’t sell through a carrier: “Historically, working with partners hasn’t been a strong point for Apple, so maybe it will find a way to work around those relationships.”

“You have to find out what it’s great at. Is it great as a phone or is it great as music player?….If it’s great as a music player, then it’s just another iPod trying to be a phone.”

He ended up sounding both arrogantly dismissive and out of touch at the same time.

Two suggestions, Robbie:

1. Repeat after me: “We can’t comment until we know what they’re announcing. It’s a big market and there’s room for a lot of companies in it. We’re just focused on making the Zune product as great as possible, and taking wonderful care of our customers.”

2. The best way to respond to Apple is to out-innovate it. There’s no reason you guys couldn’t make a product as interesting as the iPhone. Do you have the vision to build it, and the marketing skills to make people buy?

Apple is focusing enormous effort behind this one initiative. Jobs devoted virtually the entire Macworld keynote to this product — so much so that a number of Mac fans are bitching that he ignored the Mac. Can Microsoft put the same focus on Zune and its future siblings, or is Zune just one of fifty other Microsoft initiatives?

The impact on Palm is hard to read, but potentially very serious. The core users of Palm Treos tend to be communication-centric and information-centric users. Without third party apps and without a complete e-mail solution, I think the iPhone is not a great substitute for a Treo today for most users.

If I were at Palm I’d be pounding those issues relentlessly in my marketing for the next six months.

However, the Treo has benefited mightily in the US from its image of being the coolest smartphone. It has been a status symbol in Silicon Valley and beyond. Judging from the reactions of the people I spoke to today, I think that position is profoundly at risk. Check out David Pogue’s enthusiastic iPhone comments in the New York Times. Pogue is a longtime Palm fan, and before he started at the Times he was a traditional keynote speaker at Palm’s developer conferences.

The Treo is still a practical choice, but it’s not necessarily the emotional choice.

I think there’s a danger that Treo will turn into a tweener in the mobile market — not as credible for e-mail as RIM, not as good for entertainment as iPhone, and not optimized properly for information management (screen is too small, not enough storage, no note-taking). Palm needs a stable niche it can dominate, so it will have enough money and time to grow its product line.

I don’t know if Palm wanted to make Jeff Hawkins’ new product a test of the company’s ability to innovate, but like it or not that product is going to be compared intensely to the iPhone, even if they don’t attack the same problems or sell to the same people. It’s Jeff Hawkins vs. Steve Jobs for the title of mobile visionary.

That should be entertaining.

Nokia must be frustrated. It has been doing all these experiments in tablets and media phones, and Apple waltzes in with its first phone product and resets the dialog in the mobile industry. Nokia wants that sort of leadership role, and I’m sure it’ll invest heavily in pursuing it.

SonyEricsson has a problem. I’ve been impressed by SonyEricsson’s media phones, but the iPhone is aimed at exactly that same market. Luckily for SonyEricsson, most of its franchise is in Europe, where I think Apple will find sales a little tougher. It also helps that Apple’s shipping in Europe later than it is in the US. But I think SonyEricsson will find it harder than ever to penetrate the US, and it will have to innovate rapidly to hang onto its emerging franchise in Europe.

And now, the opportunity. Apple did an exclusive deal with Cingular. I’m sure it will do other exclusive deals with a small number of other operators around the world. That will create intense demand for an alternative product among the other operators. Verizon, Sprint, and TMobile US must all be desperate for answers to Apple’s product. That means phone companies that can produce media phones, and software developers creating apps that can duplicate some of the iPhone’s functions, have an important opportunity. Samsung probably spun up a team today to copy the iPhone, and LG probably spun up a team to copy whatever Samsung copies. And so on.

I think the issue isn’t getting around Apple’s multi-touch patents; you don’t have to have a touch screen to make a great entertainment product. The key question is whether anyone else can integrate a wireless entertainment device (services, apps, and hardware) as well as Apple can. It won’t be enough to just dump a bunch of apps into a device, and unfortunately that’s what most of the mobile phone companies are organized to do.

What comes next? Michael Gartenberg made this point, and I think it’s a good one. Apple undoubtedly plans a mobile product line, not just a single product. It’s possible that the other products to come will plug some of the gaps, and attack additional targets.

I’m sure there is a lot more to think about in this announcement. Please post your comments and questions; I’m very interested to see what you think.

I’ll do a post tonight with thoughts on the iPhone announcement (update: now posted here), but in the meantime here are some tidbits. During the announcement, Chris Dunphy and I did an instant messaging session as we watched feeds of the announcement (we’re on opposite sides of the continent right now). Chris and I worked together at Palm, so we’re both mobile veterans, and we used to spend a lot of time talking about industry trends.

I thought you might like this transcript of our comments. It’s sort of a color commentary on the presentation. It gives you a little insight into how a couple of tech industry people think, and which features stood out to us at first glance.

My only hesitation about posting this is that I feel like I’m participating in Apple’s hype. But in this case, I think the impact of the announcement actually justifies the hype. Mostly.

Chris Dunphy says: Total lust…. Are you following the iPhone details?
Chris Dunphy says: wow.

Michael Mace says: This isn’t a phone, it’s a PDA reinvented for 2007.
Michael Mace says: Extremely nice job.
Michael Mace says: I wonder how long the batteries will last with Mac OS X in there.

Chris Dunphy says: My thought too.
Chris Dunphy says: I sure wish it had 3G data speed…. But I am willing to trade all that I think.
Chris Dunphy says: Awesome looking hardware and UI.
Chris Dunphy says: Face proximity sensor is a bit of obvious genius.
Chris Dunphy says: Dangit - visual voicemail interface… We were trying to get that idea worked on 4 years ago!
Chris Dunphy says: 160dpi screen. Wow.

Michael Mace says: I like the sensor that rotates the screen image depending on how you’re holding it.

Chris Dunphy says: Simple elegant stuff. I love Apple.
Chris Dunphy says: Multi-finger touch interface UI. Sweet.

Michael Mace says: Yeah, that multi-touch stuff has always impressed me.

Chris Dunphy says: Gads - how can this thing actually have MacOS in it?!!? Egads.

Michael Mace says: Battery life, battery life, battery life.

Chris Dunphy says: Safari with a 160dpi 3.5″ screen will blow all other mobile www out of the water.
Chris Dunphy says: Apple Fusion.

Michael Mace says: Plus you should be able to run the base of Mac OS apps. This should re-energize Mac OS apps development.

Chris Dunphy says: I am guessing it is actually just a set of API’s - not the full OS. But still - the developer potential is enormous.
Chris Dunphy says: I wonder how open it will be?
Chris Dunphy says: And if they thought through the ecosystem issues?

Michael Mace says: Good questions.
Michael Mace says: Putting Mac OS X in there is freaking brilliant. It lets them leverage so much infrastructure, and it’s already paid for.
Michael Mace says: Okay, widgets. So they are thinking about third party apps at least some.
Michael Mace says: Ya know, Jobs and his team just think further ahead than a lot of other people in the industry.

Chris Dunphy says: Google maps is location aware. YES!

Michael Mace says: This screws up a lot of companies that were planning map services in the future.

Chris Dunphy says: I bet the same widget architecture as on the desktop.

Michael Mace says: I’m sure the architecture is the same; no reason to make it incompatible.

Chris Dunphy says: Interpreted so CPU / platform independent.

Michael Mace says: Yup.

Chris Dunphy says: And simple enough even for amateurs to program.

Michael Mace says: They’re getting so many things right…
Michael Mace says: Ahhhh, services tied to location. Another thing people have been talking about but not yet shipping.

Chris Dunphy says: I am not sure I have ever been so lustful for a gadget before. Egads….
Chris Dunphy says: Not since the preview of the twist/flip Clie…

Michael Mace says: This is far better than the Clie — Apple has thought through the software. It’s a solution, not just a gadget.
Michael Mace says: And yeah, I want one. I’m waiting to hear the price.

Chris Dunphy says: Yep. Amen!
Chris Dunphy says: They could name almost any price for me right now… If only it had 3G….
Chris Dunphy says: I’ve been dying for a decent phone.

Michael Mace says: You know a 3G version has to be in the works.

Chris Dunphy says: Absolutely. This was the smart call for now.

Michael Mace says: And then put this thing on WiMax in 18 months…

Chris Dunphy says: Cingular here I come.

Michael Mace says: Oh, now Eric Schmidt is on stage with him talking about WiMax. Sheesh!

Chris Dunphy says: EGADS!

Michael Mace says: Steve builds in Yahoo mail and Google gets on stage with him. What a great deal-maker.
Michael Mace says: He has totally shown up everything on display at CES.

Chris Dunphy says: I’ve made $850 in AAPL in the past few days. I wish I had bought LOTS more.

Michael Mace says: I wish I had my old options.

Chris Dunphy says: Yahoo is the search - egads!
Chris Dunphy says: What a way to play all sides.
Chris Dunphy says: Amazing dealmaking.

Michael Mace says: Since it has a full browser, the bundled search does not matter as much. But it’s the optics.

Chris Dunphy says: Look at the size compared to a Treo: http://www.gizmodo.com/
Chris Dunphy says: AppleTV looked awesome too.
Chris Dunphy says: What a day for Apple.

Michael Mace says: Uhhh, five hours of battery life? Does that mean five hours of talk time?

Chris Dunphy says: I hope so!
Chris Dunphy says: That beats the Treo if it is.
Chris Dunphy says: Music playback time seems to indicate that.
Chris Dunphy says: EDGE radios can be VERY power efficient. Was smart to go 2.5G.

Michael Mace says: And here comes the price…

Chris Dunphy says: Tease

Michael Mace says: Yup, this is the crescendo, to be followed by the ship date.

Chris Dunphy says: A master at work.
Chris Dunphy says: Aigh - JUNE!

Michael Mace says: I wonder if that price is with a contract.
Michael Mace says: And now Steve, having done an exclusive with Cingular, will negotiate favorable contracts from every other GSM operator, one per country.

Chris Dunphy says: Yep - 2yr contract.
Chris Dunphy says: Ick.
Chris Dunphy says: I wonder how long the exclusive is…

Michael Mace says: Might depend on how cooperative the operator is.

Chris Dunphy says: “Cingular Exec on Stage 10:45 - ZZZzzzzzzzZZZZZzzzzzzz.–Brian Lam”

Michael Mace says:
Chris Dunphy says: You’d think they’d learn.

Michael Mace says: Might be exclusive for this device. But when WiMax is available, I can’t believe they’d duck that.
Michael Mace says: Cingular’s subsidy is helping Apple get this to an affordable price. They couldn’t have launched this at an affordable price without it.