Apple to allow carriers to subsidize iPhone
By Will Park on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 1:18 PM PST In AT&T, Apple, Rumors
If the 3G iPhone launches with A-GPS, tri-band HSDPA, and video recording, we’ll be more than happy to wait in line to give Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) more of our hard-earned money. But, if Apple ends up allowing carriers to subsidize the price of the next-generation iPhone, there are going to be throngs of iPhone hopefuls lining up for their very own piece of multi-touch goodness.
It would make sense for Apple to loosen their iPhone price schedule to allow for carrier subsidization - especially if they hope to reach that 10 million unit sales goal by the end of 2008. As such, The Financial Times is reporting that Apple has indeed relaxed their strangle-hold over the iPhone’s pricing structure. That means we’ll all see the 3G iPhone sold at deep discounts off of the retail price.
FT doesn’t cite any sources in saying the the 3G iPhone will be subsidized through wireless carriers, but they have a respectable track record when it comes to Apple-related speculation. The publication says that Apple may allow US iPhone carrier, AT&T (NYSE: T), to offer a $200 subsidy on the iPhone 3G - effectively lowering the new iPhone’s price point to $200. In doing so, Apple has purportedly lowered the revenue kickbacks that it has demanded from current iPhone carriers around the world.
The report is in line with previous speculation that the next-generation iPhone will sell for $200.
[Via: FT]
Fingers crossed for shorter contracts.
With all eyes in the mobile world on Apple this week I thought the time was right to talk about what we believe is the best way to conduct a mobile web search on a device like the iPhone…a device with a rich, full screen, touchscreen only. Namely: Voice search. You say it, our speech recognition (running on a server) produces text, the text automatically dumps into the search engine that’s the subscriber’s choice (Google, AOL, MSN, etc.), the search engine returns results. Or via voice, search for any content from your local iTunes playlists.
Using the Apple developer kit, we’ve been hard at work developing impressive technology that make the iPhones capabilities even more powerful. Voice search. Song search and selection. At the touch of a button and simply by saying the word. Over the next few days – as the excitement mounts for the WWDC – we’ll be sharing more and more details here on our blog. For now though, I think all of us should sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Of course, we believe the most powerful use of speech would be running on the iPhone itself (vs a remote server) and made available to the developer community via iPhone’s SDK APIs.
-Nuance (www.nuance.com)