iPhone 2.0 at WWDC - Faster, Cheaper

June 9, 2008 – 5:35 pm | in Technology |

No flash. No tablet. No multiple carrier options. Just a new faster and cheaper iPhone coming July 11.

The new iPhone is based on 3G technology and reportedly 36% faster than its top rival, the Nokia N95 Smartphone.

The new 8-gigabyte iPhone will cost $199 and a 16-gigabyte version, $299. Steve Jobs says the new iPhone will be available worldwide July 11. It will allow up to five hours of talk time and six hours of web browsing.

Funny enough, Apple stock fell 4% after the announcement at the WWDC in San Francisco. The stock had been soaring 55% higher in the past quarter, mainly due to heightened expectations for a radically improved iPhone and the possibility of other product launches (i.e. the Apple Tablet). Apple still comes out the winner. The other winner, consumers. Well, if you can consider spending $300 for any mobile phone with 16GB of content a real win.

The loser, AT&T, whose exclusive deal with Apple calls for the company to share as much as 24% of its monthly iPhone service revenue with Apple. They say they will feel the pinch of Apple’s price cut, as it will have to lay out a subsidy for the new phone. On Monday, they said that iPhone costs will cut adjusted earnings by about 11 cents this year and next. Expect a bear.

Speaking of carnivorous animals, Jobs also announced that the new version of the Mac OS X is called “Snow Leopard”. Jobs previously announced the creation of the iPhone SDK, and deployment of the Apple “Applications Store”, which should be shipping with new iPhone 2.0. Other announcements are listed below:

-New iPhone applications include service from MLB.com that provides a live scoreboard, and Cow Terry, an app for making songs on the iPhone.

-Apple will charge $99/year (also for exisiting .mac users) for its new service MobileMe. MobileMe will push e-mail, contact, and calendar updates to all of a user’s devices.

-The company has a goal of selling 10 million iPhones this year (up from 6 million one year ago).

-In an attempt to compete with RIMM, which dominates the market for devices for business users, the new iPhone now works with Microsoft Exchange office server systems, so that business users can push e-mail, contacts, and calendar information from the Microsoft Exchange Server directly to their iPhone, complete with remote wiping of the iPhone. Jobs also announced that 35% of the Fortune 500 has participated in beta program testing of business applications for the iPhone.

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