Apple Doesn't Need a Cheaper iPhone

You can't deny the smashing success Apple has had with the iconic iPhone. Since it was launched in 2007, more than 100 million iPhones have been sold and the revolutionary device now accounts for about 40% of Apple's sales. But Google (Nasdaq: GOOG ) has caught and passed Apple in the number of cell phones running its operating system and is adding 500,000 devices per day to its ranks. That has some Apple watchers calling for a cheaper iPhone to compete with free (with a contract) Android phones. Should Apple listen?

Above the fray
Apple's history of sticking with the premium product is mixed. In the 1980s, adhering to a closed system and high margins let Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT IBM, NYSE: IBM get the upper hand in the PC race. But recently, the premium product is what has differentiated Mac in the PC market and has led to its success. Likewise, when netbooks were all the rage, Apple stayed away from the price-sensitive products and instead worked on the iPad, which revolutionized the industry.

With the iPod, Apple expanded a successful product into the Shuffle, Mini, Nano, and Touch varieties that cover any price range consumers may need. That's the model Apple would probably follow if it wanted to reach beyond its current base.

But the answer of what to do with the iPhone depends on how Apple could make the product less expensive without ruining the experience. You can’t just shrink an iPhone, reduce the size of the screen, and have a hit the way Apple did with the iPod Mini. The iPhone is all about a superior experience, and any "dumbing down" may bring in more buyers, but they may not be happy with their experience.

Of course, Apple already sells the iPhone 3G for $49 with a contract through AT&T. Verizon doesn't have that option because the 3GS doesn't work on its network, although newer models could be made available at reduced costs.

But remember that one of the reasons the iPod model worked was that Apple essentially replaced the iPod with the iPhone, so it never became a commodity business based primarily on price. Apple gets on a slippery slope if it starts trying to make every consumer price point happy with iPhones.

Increasing sales volume has never been the only goal of Steve Jobs or Apple; instead, they've had success sticking with "delighting their customers." Unless Apple has some magic trick up its sleeve (and it might), I hope it doesn't stoop to making a dumbed-down iPhone

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Samsung Sues Apple Over IPhone, IPad, IPod

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest computer-memory chip maker, filed another lawsuit against Apple Inc. (AAPL), claiming the U.S. company infringed patents for technology used in its iPhone and iPad devices.

“Apple has copied many of Samsung’s innovations in its Apple iPhone, iPod and iPad products,” lawyers for the Suwon, South Korea-based company said in a lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court in Delaware.

Samsung also filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington on June 28 seeking to block imports of the devices containing the allegedly infringing technology.

The suit follows litigation in at least four countries as Samsung and Apple, the world’s largest technology company by market value, compete in the mobile-device market. In April, Cupertino, California-based Apple sued Samsung in federal court in Oakland, California, alleging the Korean company’s Galaxy phone and table computers “slavishly” copy the iPhone and iPad.

“They seem to have a lot to talk about,” Seo Won Seok, a Seoul-based analyst at NH Investment & Securities Co., said. “With these steps they are taking now, they seem to be trying to take a favorable position as part of the process to reach an agreement on cross-licensing in the end.”

Prior to the latest lawsuit, Samsung, which also supplies memory chips for Apple, had sued Apple in Seoul,Tokyo, San Francisco and Mannheim, Germany. Apple also has a case pending against Samsung in South Korea.

Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment on the suit.

Samsung’s Delaware suit will be delayed if federal regulators agree to investigate the company’s complaints against Apple. The trade commission typically completes its reviews in 15 to 18 months.

Apple’s April 15 complaint claims Samsung is infringing seven patents related to the way Galaxy devices’ touch screens understand user gestures, including selecting, scrolling, pinching and zooming. Samsung is also copying three patents on the design, including the flat black face of the iPhone and iPad, according to Apple.

Apple also said on April 18 that Samsung “blatantly” copied its technologies and designs.

Samsung had asked a federal judge in the U.S. to order Apple to turn over samples of Apple’s forthcoming iPads and iPhones. It lost that bid on June 22.

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Apple's iOS more secure than Google's Android, says Symantec

iOS, the mobile operating system that powers Apple's popular iPhone and iPad devices, offers more protection than its Android counterpart, the security experts at Symantec have concluded in a newly published report.

Symantec this week published "A Window Into Mobile Device Security," a 23-page document that details the security approaches employed by Apple and Google in their respective mobile operating systems. It also offers a closer look at past and possible future security holes found in the iOS and Android platforms.

In a head-to-head comparison, Symantec found that Apple's iOS is more secure than Google's Android. Specifically, iOS was characterized as having "full protection" against malware attacks, while Android was deemed to have "little protection."

iOS also has more protection than Android against resource abuse and service attacks, data loss, and data integrity attacks. Apple's platform was also found to have greater security feature implementation in the categories of access control, application provenance, and encryption.

In fact, Google's Android platform only topped iOS in one security category: isolation. There, Android received the highest marks, while iOS was said to offer "moderate protection."

In specifically discussing iOS, Symantec's report concluded that Apple's "provenance approach" acts as a strong security barrier, as every app that is to be released on the App Store goes through vetting procedures. This, according to the paper, has “proved a deterrent against malware attacks, data loss attacks, data integrity attacks, and denial of service attacks."

The report characterized iOS as "well designed and thus far...has proven largely resistant to attack."

However, Symantec did find vulnerabilities within iOS, namely 200 different security holes dating back to 2007. While any vulnerability is a weakness, the bulk of issues were found to be of lower severity, which, according to the report, would allow the assailant to "take control of a single process but not permit the attacker to take administrator-level control of the device."

The study did discover security concerns that could allow entry to administrator-level control, and were therefore of the highest severity. If an attacker had administrator-level control, it would reward them with access to "virtually all data and services on the device," Symantec wrote in the report.

Synamtec's report highlights what is likely the most public example of an iOS security breach, the iPhoneOS.Ikee worm released in November 2009. But that worm only affected devices that users have willingly "jailbroken," a term used to describe a warranty-voiding process that allows users to install unauthorized software on their iPhone, and something that Apple explicitly tells its customers is a major security concern.

Also highlighted in the report is iOS’s isolation model. While iOS "totally prevents traditional types of computer viruses and worms, and limits the data that spyware can access," Symantec said it does not "prevent all classes of data loss attacks, resource abuse attacks, or data integrity attacks."

Lastly, iOS’s permission model can safeguard access to the devices location as well as the SMS and Phone applications. This stops the attacker from knowing where you are, being able to send SMS messages, and phoning numbers without your consent.

As for Android, Symantec found that although Google's mobile operating system is a considerable improvement over traditional desktop operating systems, it has two extreme weaknesses.

First, the provenance system in place "enables attackers to anonymously create and distribute malware," they found. In addition, its permission system "relies upon the user to make the important security decisions," and considering most of Android users are not of high technical capability, this causes problems.

During February this year, Sophos security researchers encouraged Google to cancel its over-the-air installation of apps. They urged Google because they expected it would allow the swift and quiet installation of malware to unsuspecting Android users.

Sophos warned that as soon as the "install" button was pressed on the website, the application would be installed on the device in the background, without any input from the user.

The review concluded that "mobile devices are a mixed bag when it comes to security." While they may have been built to be secure, they are made for the consumer market, which has has led to less security for more usability.

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Apple Hopes to Thwart Jailbreakers with iOS 5

When Apple releases iOS 5 later this fall, users who like to jailbreak their devices might find the process more complex than usual.

While perusing the code for iOS 5 beta 2, the members of the iPhone Dev Team discovered Apple is putting measures into place to make it more difficult for iOS 5 users to rollback to earlier versions of iOS.

It isn’t uncommon for more advanced users to want to try out the latest non-jailbroken software and then revert back to an earlier version so that they can take advantage of their jailbroken features. The current workaround is for users to backup their SHSH blobs before upgrading the software. This ensures that an older version of the OS and firmware can be restored at a later time.

With iOS 5, Apple is changing the way that the blobs are created. The blobs will be regenerated every time a device is rebooted, meaning that simply having an old version of the key around won’t allow users to install an older version of the software.

While this doesn’t prevent groups like the iPhone Dev Team from finding exploits and providing tools so that users can jailbreak their devices, it might make keeping a device in a jailbroken state more difficult.

With iOS 5, Apple will also be looking at doing over-the-air OS upgrades, meaning that the software can update itself without needing to connect with iTunes. In theory, this means that Apple could push out small updates to patch exploits, preventing a user who has agreed to install said update from jailbreaking their device.

On its blog, the Dev Team doesn’t sound overly concerned about what this means for jailbreaking in general but does note that Apple has “stepped up their game” when it comes to locking down the OS. We’re sure the cat-and-mouse game will continue.

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Opinion: Apple iCloud Won’t Stream Music Because of AT&T and Verizon

You can’t use Apple iCloud yet. When you can, which should be this fall, you’ll notice something really peculiar: Unlike other music lockers, iCloud can’t stream music to you over the internet or a cellular connection. Instead, it downloads the files to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or iTunes-enabled computer, where you can play them from local memory.

This was such a surprising decision by Apple that, in the heat of the moment, some journalists initially reported that iCloud would in fact stream music. We weren’t the only publication to fall prey to this (and we posted a correction nearly immediately).

Even today, a Google search for “iCloud streaming” returns over one million results — and yet there will be no such thing. So, why won’t Apple stream music from iCloud, when every other music locker, past and present, does?

A colleague suggested that perhaps the major record labels, which control the rights to much of the world’s popular music, forced Apple to make iCloud download-only — possibly as part of the same negotiations that allowed Apple to a true cloud service that allows users access to millions of tracks for a monthly fee.

I have another theory. Apple, which owns the biggest record store in the world, and whose iPhone rose to power partially on the strength of the iPod, is obviously a big music player. In addition, people who buy iPhones tend to use more bandwidth than users of other phones do, which is why AT&T no longer offers an unlimited data plan, and also why Verizon is ending their equivalent.

First, people would hit their bandwidth limits faster, degrading the perceived value of their expensive wireless plans.

Second, both networks would suffer significant slowdowns from all that music streaming, because unlike downloads, which can happen at any pace, and which only need to happen once in order for the user to listen to it as many times as they want, music streaming has to happen in near-real-time, and must happen every time the user presses the Play button.

Third, AT&T and Verizon would be forced to spend even more money than they already do on new cellular towers and increasing the overall throughputs of their networks — already an expensive proposition in a country of this size.

Quite obviously, cellular service providers are not like ISPs, although they both deliver data to devices. HP, which made the computer I’m writing on this morning, doesn’t have to ink a deal with my ISP before I can upload this article, the way Apple has to with AT&T or Verizon in order for me to post it from an iPhone. (Okay, I could use WiFi, but you get my point.)

As such, Apple must keep its partners’ businesses in mind when rolling out new features — and indeed, Apple itself has a big incentive to help those networks. Without a decent data connection, the iPhone turns into an iPod Touch.

So this fall, when you’re wondering why the music stored in your iCloud account won’t just play, the way your Amazon- or Google-stored music does, remember: It’s all about the relationship between Apple (the hardware company) and your cellphone service provider.

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YouTube Commercial Kings Rhett and Link Talk New TV Show

Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings, a new television show premiering tonight on IFC, plots two best friends as they journey across the United States to understand the country—via advertising.

Rhett & Link won’t be a hyper-intellectual attempt to analyze our highest aspirations and deepest desires as a nation, as most media depictions of glamorous advertising do—from the Hucksters and What Women Want to Mad Men. Quite the opposite. We talk to the men behind the show below.

Rhett McLaughlin (left) and Link Neal (right) have one of the most subscribed-to channels on YouTube, where they show their clever commercials, each a viral hit in its own right. Although every ad boasts a different look, the pair deploy the same questionable production values, haphazardly written jingles, and guest appearances to make a hilarious final product. The IFC show documents the creation and production for each of these entertaining, more-rough-than-diamond, gems.

TOH: When did you develop a love for local advertisements?
Link: From the moment I started watching TV, I was developing a love for local commercials. When you see a guy trying to sell you used cars wearing a chicken suit, even if you’re not in the market to buy a car, even if you’re seven years old, you remember that. 

Rhett: One of things always grabbed our attention is the ‘unintentional funny.’  I don’t think every producer or business owner thinks it’s going to be really funny…

TOH: You started building your fan base on YouTube years ago.  Was expanding your channel into a television show part of the plan?
Rhett: Not really, but it’s something that you’re going to see more and more.  Anybody who wants to be in entertainment is going to be uploading stuff and if they’re good they’re going to build a following.

TOH: How will you use your YouTube fame to command a TV audience?
Rhett:  These crazy local commercials went viral. They make great stand-alone video. But then people start asking questions, like—is that real?  They want to see us interact with Rudy [the Cuban gynecologist-turned-American used-car salesman]. The commercial is candy; the TV show is a full course meal. You see the final product on the Internet, you can see the process on the show.

TOH: What has been your favorite commercial so far?
Link: Presidential carwash, with this great couple from India. They are committed to being the best carwash in town. This meant dressing them up as Presidents and having them rap. 

Rhett: My favorite is for Fountain of Health in Florida, which offers colatics. This stuff doesn’t sell itself. Often for local commercials, there will be a celebrity endorsement and we have a Grammy-award-winning musician famous for his 80s love songs, who will be making a cameo and [helped us] write the jingle.

TOH: How do you go about turning local business owners into Internet celebrities?
Link: With the owners of Presidential carwash, the owner said ‘why don’t you hire some actors or rappers.’  I said, ‘First of all – we don’t have a budget, but more importantly, we want people to see you and your wife starring in your own commercial.’  They are winsome. We want people to say, ‘I want to meet these people.’

Rhett: And what happens time after time a commercial goes up here, everyone who is local says, ‘I have to go to this carwash.’ Person after person in YouTube comments says, ‘I’m getting my car washed there,’ or ‘if I lived in America I would go here,’ or ‘I will drive across the country to go there.’

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Apple iPhone 5 versus Google Nexus 4G - Who will rule the smartphone jungle?

Apple's next generation iPhone, dubbed iPhone 5, which is expected to feature a "radical new design" and boast of major hardware and software changes, could rule the smartphone jungle but it faces a powerful adversary in Google Nexus 4G.

iPhone 5, which is expected to be launched in September, will reportedly feature a "radical new case design," keeping in line with Apple's reputation as a company which is always on the bleeding edge of industry design.

iPhone 5 is expected to boast of the following features:

> A5 processor in the range of 1.2-1.5 GHz
> Aluminum metal backing of the original iPhone instead of the current glass surface back piece
> A teardrop design, like the new iPod Touch, with the top being thick and then tapering to a skinnier bottom
> An improved antenna (no more Antennagate, yay!)
> More RAM, possibly 1GB
> Better camera (perhaps 8-megapixel) with 1080p video playback and panaromic photo capture capability and an improved dual-LED flash unit
> Bigger-edge-to-edge 3.7- to 4-inch curved glass screen (iPHone 4 has 3.5-inch screen)
> A SIM-less design
> 3-4 internal antennas for both GSM and CDMA networks
> 4G connectivity
> iOS 5, which will be true multitask capable and come with loads of new features such as News Stand, Reminders, Delta Updates and iMessage
> Improved speech recognition features, and
> Wireless charging capability
> Better talktime and standy time

On the other hand, Google Nexus 4G smartphone is expected to be an "absolute beast," according to BGR, that can seriously rival the iPhone 5 with a potential 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz Krait-based Snapdragon processor.

Nexus 4G is expected to sport a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera (with advanced sensor delivering superior low-light performance) and a front-facing 1-megapixel camera for video chat, edge-to-edge "monster-sized" 4.5- to 5-inch screen, NFC technology and slim form factor.

However, the most important thing Nexus 4G will be featuring is the latest Android OS 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich.

Ice Cream Sandwich, Google's next version of Android OS, which will combine the best features of Honeycomb (Android tablet OS) and Gingerbread (Android smartphone OS), is expected to boast of features like expanding and resizing widgets and apps, facial detection with the camera and will allow Android devices to be used as USB hosts to allow gamers to plug in external hardware devices such as an Xbox controller. It will additionally feature voice-guided GPS feature and Adobe Flash 10.1 support.

Nexus 4G is expected to be released just after Apple releases the iPhone 5 in September at the iPod refresh event.

Who will be the king of the smartphone jungle? According to latest surveys and reports, Android smartphones are selling better than iPhones and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS could tilt the balance in favor of Google forever.

However, iOS 5, which will power ipHone 5, is no push-over.

According to Apple, iOS 5 boasts of 200 new features and promises an "incredible" user experience. Some of the features are:

Improved Notifications System - "Scaled beautifully," the new push notifications system is no longer annoying or obtrusive and will be displayed on the lock screen together with stock and weather alerts.

News Stand - Similar to iBooks, News Stand will be dedicated to magazines and newspapers.

Improved Mobile Safari - The mobile web browser now comes with tabbed browsing feature even as the Safari Reader allows users to quickly save stories for later reading in the Reading List.

Reminders - The new Reminders app in iOS 5 now makes it possible to maintain multiple list and save them with dates to alert you. The Reminders has geolocation capabilities i.e. it can send reminders to user based on user location.

Camera – The camera can now be accessed faster as it gets a shortcut on the lock screen. To access, double tap the home button and then tap the camera icon. For taking photos, simply tap the volume up button. Other new camera features include crop and rotate, edit, red eye reduction, auto focus and auto exposure, and auto enhance (using iPhoto).

Mail – The new Mail feature in iOS 5 has seen some significant changes. It now comes with rich text formatting message flagging and draggable addresses. Now entire messages can also be searched.

There are also keyboard enhancements: Now it is possible to drag the keyboard up, split the keyboard (to make it more ergonomic). The size of the keyboard can also be reduced to facilitate thumb-typing.

PC Free Function – iOS 5 is "PC free" i.e. now there is no need to hook up mobile Apple devices with PC to access iTunes. iOS updates are now possible over the air. iTunes library can also be synced wirelessly via Wi-Fi. iTunes sync is now automatic and possible even while an iOS device is being charged.

Delta updates are also available i.e. software updates are now over the air and you can download only the necessary update and not the entire app/software.

iMessage – iMessage is perhaps the most important feature in iOS 5. The iMessage, which is only available to iOS users, allows sending text and multimedia messages over Wi-Fi and 3G. It comes with read and delivery receipts and real time typing indication. The iMessage can be pushed out to all iOS devices a user owns, thereby allowing, for instance, the user to start a conversation in iPhone and continue the same on an iPad right where it was left off.

Most importantly, iOS 5 will give iPhone users immediate access to Apple's new cloud-based photo, video, music and data backup and push out service called iCloud. RBC Capital has predicted that 150 million iPhone users could sign on to Apple's new iCloud service and help Apple generate an additional $750 million in revenue annually, which will be shared between Apple and music labels.

If that is true, it would spell disaster for rivals like Google Music Beta digital locker and Amazon Cloud Drive.

But that's another story.

Who will rule the smartphone jungle? iPhone 5 or Google Nexus 4G. Leave your comments below.

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