World of Apple

The Commercial Times is reporting that Quanta Computer has received an order to build 5 million iPhone units for shipment in September 2007.

The original order of iPhone’s was placed with Foxconn with a shipment date of June.

On the same note DigiTimes offers some further insight into the deal indicating that the order is not for the current iPhone.

The iPhone produced by Foxconn is designated for the US market, and those manufactured by Quanta will be similar in function to those from Foxconn but with a different outer design to fit different markets, the paper quoted sources at Taiwan-based component makers as saying.

This may be the European version of the iPhone due to ship in the fourth calendar quarter of the year.

As of this afternoon Quanta released a statement which neither confirms or denies the existence of a second iPhone. But does confirm the manufacturing contract.

Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times offers an interview with Glenn Lurie, president of National Distribution for AT&T’s wireless operations, responsible for National Retail Operations, National Dealers, Direct Mail/Direct Response, Resale, eStore Sales and Service via Cingular.com, as well as Prepaid/Hybrid Sales

The interview offers background on Lurie and his history with AT&T, but also goes into some details of the iPhone we haven’t heard of in the past.

When discussing the potential success of the iPhone Lurie said;

“The anticipation that we’re seeing, the buzz we’re seeing, at least for me, has far exceeded our expectations of how important this would be to the business and us,”

The interviewer mentioned that he was sceptical on the price of the iPhone compared to current competition, Lurie answered with;

Here’s how I’d explain it. The most popular iPod, a 4-gigabyte Nano, costs $200. If you’ve got a RIM BlackBerry or Palm Treo, you probably paid $200 minimum. Then you’ve got a phone that you got for free or paid maybe $50.

There are other things — you have the widgets, some of the Google applications that are coming — there are just so many things here that the price will not be an issue.

When questioned on whether a subsidy would be offered for the iPhone Lurie said;

We’re not talking about that.

iPhone Used to Browse Websites?

It appears that Apple is now more openly testing the iPhone, Mac Rumors is reporting that identification strings in its logs read:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A538a Safari/419.3

Apple Confirms MySpace Ban

Following a report by World of Apple late this week, CNET now writes that Apple has confirmed the decision.

A statement from Apple Friday confirmed this. “Nearly 2 million people visit Apple stores every week,” the statement read. “We want to provide everyone a chance to test-drive a Mac, so we are no longer offering access to MySpace in our stores.” According to an Apple representative, the News Corp.-owned MySpace is the only site that has been blocked.

An Apple Store employee (who does not work in the Fifth Avenue store), confirmed to CNET News.com that this has been an ongoing problem. “MySpace is a big issue for the Apple stores because people come in, Photobooth themselves (using Macs’ built-in webcams), then stick their picture up on their MySpace account and loiter at machines for hours,” the source said in an e-mail. “It is especially troublesome at the flagships and high-volume stores, and for a while there was no official word on how to deal with it.”

Numerous posts on Google Groups appear to point towards a June 20 release date of the iPhone.

One post in particular reads:

Actually, On the Money last night on CNBC, the telco Analyst said they had been given the confirmed date of the 20th. Not sure where this official release is, but they specifically said iPhone release date was finally released and it was to be the 20th.

Apple has officially targeted the iPhone for late June so the date does fit.

[Update - 25/5/2007 17.28 BST] – MacRumors is reporting the following piece of information:

iPhone sales/support training runs from May 30th – June 20th, giving more credibility to the June 20th date.

[Update - 25/5/2007 23.30 BST] – A video of CNBC’s program showing the rumoured release date of June 20.

Gizmodo offers a counter argument claiming that previous rumours of a June 11 launch are more credible;

One rep in the Business Marketing Group told us the phone could be ordered on Monday, June 11th, which would allow it to arrive on the 12th for phone and online orders. The 11th happens to be the WWDC keynote date, but the 12th is a Tuesday,

AP have also tried to confirm the June 20 date but appear to have failed;

Siegel said he did not know where the June 20 date came from.

Clerks contacted at eight AT&T stores in New York said they had been told the iPhone would launch on dates ranging from June 11 to June 22.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster (Via AppleInsider) has weighed in on the future of Apple and its products. In particular Munster predicted on the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference to be held in San Francisco next month.

The analyst predicted that an iPhone launch are unlikely at such a computer orientated event but did note that a new MacBook Pro could be on the cards.

“While there may be rumors of an iPhone launch at WWDC, we expect Apple will host a separate event in late June to launch the device. But Apple will not fail to deliver new products at WWDC,” he wrote. “Apple has announced that a full-featured version of OSX 10.5 Leopard will be demonstrated and handed out at the event. This means that we will finally see how Apple will integrate Windows operability into Leopard.”

It appears that Munster used the MacRumors Buyers Guide to assist him in the calculations of product life cycles. Using this data the analyst writes that Apple traditionally updates its professional notebook every 182 days, it has been 209 days since the last refresh.

The analyst also weighs in on the iMac which he believes will receive a redesign at WWDC. The iMac has previously seen update cycles of around 168 days but currently the iMac has been without a refresh for 257 days.

On the subject of the iPhone the analyst notes that recent rumours that the iPhone could see a delay are most likely incorrect and Apple is on target to deliver the phone in late June.

“The iPhone launch is set to be one of the largest product launches in company history,” wrote Munster. “Both Apple and AT&T stores will sell the device and both companies will sell iPhone on their websites.”

The analyst was keen to add that he expects to see lead times of 2-4 weeks for the iPhone.

Piper Jaffray maintains an “outperform” rating on Apple with a target price of $140 per share.

Boy Genius reports has revealed screenshots of AT&T’s accounting that shows the iPhone available to pre-paid users.

Screenshot of AT&T internal accounting system

The accounting system shows three versions:

• iPhone PostPaid
• iPhone PrePaid (Pay As You Go)
• iPhone Hybrid (Pick Your Plan)

For clarification for international readers Cingular describes ‘Pay As You Go’ and ‘Pick Your Plan’ as follows:

Pay As You Go
Pay As You Go is wireless made easy. Simply pay in advance for what you need. No long-term contracts, credit checks or surprise bills – just all the benefits of wireless, with no complications.

Pick Your Plan
Get the best of wireless without long-term contracts or unexpected bills. With Pick Your Plan, you establish monthly automatic payments for service and use the balance on your account for voice minutes or other features. It’s that easy.

At this very moment it is unknown whether this is purely an error on AT&T’s system, but if true it would mean customers could simply pony up the money for the phone and use it with other networks.

Coca-Cola Giving Away 2 Billion iTunes Songs

In what is being dubbed Europe’s largest music promotion, Coca-Cola has announced that it has teamed up with iTunes to give away two billion music tracks to European Cola drinkers.

“Coca-Cola has a long and rich heritage in music, from memorable advertising tracks to grassroots support to big live events. In Summer 2006 we started an innovative new partnership with iTunes,” said Chris R. Burggraeve, group marketing director for the European Union Group. “Coke+iTunes aims to reinvent the ways young people create, listen to, and experience music every day. Thanks to Coke+iTunes, European youth will enjoy this Summer 2007 the biggest pan European music experience ever. And what better way to build bridges among European cultures than through music?”

“iTunes is the world’s most popular online music store selling 58 songs every second at a rate of 5 million tracks a day,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We’ve already had great success working with Coca-Cola over the past year and this new pan-European initiative gives music fans across Europe the ability to download free music all summer long.”

The promotion will begin in May and run through to August of this year.

iPods are also up for winning in the competition along with free tickets to many iTunes and Coke-sponsored concerts featuring various big names.

The 17 countries where the concerts will take place are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

Faithless have also recorded an exclusive track for the promotion, and will perform live at the launch event at Cannes Film Festival.

To aid the promotion Coke has designed a limited edition aluminium bottle.

Final Cut 2 Studio Ships

Several readers have noted to World of Apple that they have received copies of Final Cut Studio that they ordered after its release in April at NAB.

It is reported that upgrade versions of Final Cut Studio 2 are yet to ship.

TBWA to Create iPhone Ad

AdAge reports that TBWA will handle all the advertising for the upcoming iPhone.

The report states that people familiar with the account confirm that TBWA’s Media Arts Lab will handle all creative for the iPhone, much as the agency has for iPod. The agency has handled creative duties for Apple since 1997.

Both Apple and TBWA declined comment on the subject.

Apple has received approval for the iPhone this afternoon, the Federal Communications Commission have Apple the green light to commence sales after testing the device for months.

The FCC lab manager wrote the following in a SAR test report:

“The Apple Inc. A1203 GSM Cellular Telephone with Bluetooth and Wifi, FCC ID: BCGA1203, is in compliance with the limits for general population uncontrolled exposure specified in FCC 2.1093. The device was tested according to the measurement standards and procedures specified in FCC OET Bulletin 65, Supplement C (Edition 01-01) and IEEE p1528/D1.2, April 21, 2003.”

Apple requests confidentiality in a letter to the FCC

In a letter to the FCC Apple has requested that Test Setup Photos, External Photographs, Internal Photographs, and the iPhone User Manual be kept confidential for 45 days from the point of approval.

In the same letter Apple has requested that the iPhone’s Block Diagram, Operational Description, Radio Schematic, Radio Bill of Material, Radio Tune-up Procedure, and Exhibit notes be kept confidential indefinitely.

Boy Genius report publishes some pre-launch channel communication directly from within AT&T.

According to the document AT&T will soon begin to train staffers with web based training, workbooks and iPhone product overviews.

The document also notes the following:

• “iPhone will be available sometime in June. The exact date has not been announced, specific dates should not be provided to customers.
• Sales for the iPhone will be on a first come, first served basis. No wait list of names will be taken and NO pre-selling is allowed.
• Two models of the iPhone will be available, a 4GB will retail at $499 and have an 8GB will retail at $599. If asked what the price will be, answer that the prices have been announced as $499 for the 4G, and $599 for the 8G, respectively. There should NOT be any additional speculation/discussion about pricing.”

It is being reported that iPhone carrier in Europe is most likely to be T-Mobile. It has been suggested in the past that Vodafone would win but the carrier has publicly denied this.

Other carriers such as O2 and Orange have reportedly failed in the later stages of attempting to receive the iPhone contract.

Terms of the contract are unknown but it may be different to the multi-year contract agreement that Apple has with AT&T in the US.