Happy iPhone Obsolescence Day!
October 4th, 2011, 12:20am by JakeThe long-awaited iPhone 5, the phone to end all phones. And now more than ever, Apple absolutely rules the cell phone industry. The best example is Sprint committing to buy 30 million iPhones costing up to $20 billion over the next 4 years. Keep in mind, Sprint only has 30 million post-paid subscribers, so they’ll need fully half of their current subs to switch, and buy a new iPhone in 2 years, to fulfill that commitment. Of course, with those quantities there’s a fair chance that Sprint will offer a pre-paid version as well, for folks willing to part with $600 of their money.
I’ll take a look at the new iPhone and the New Nexus due a week later deciding on where to next put my smartphone dollars. The Pre 2 has solved all the main problems with the Pre, so there’s no urgent need to switch. Not sure what the iPhone still has up its sleeves. But let’s face it, Apple could scribble a “5” on the back of an iPhone 4 and still it would be the best-selling phone in the world. Anyone planning to watch the Stevelessnote?
October 4th, 2011 at 1:08 am
30 million over 4 years only works out to 2 million a quarter, and if I remember correctly from my days following Palm (way back when 🙂 ), Sprint sells about 4 million phones a quarter. Doesn’t seem that tough to meet that commitment. I don’t understand why Sprint hasn’t been subsidizing other phones $500 if they are willing to do so for the iPhone. They could be selling the EVO 3D for free, for crissake.
Anyway, what might help Sprint is this crazy rumor out of BGR that Sprint’s iPhone 5 will be an exclusive. Sprint really doesn’t seem to be offering enough for Apple to consider that. The opportunity cost of forgoing a global launch is probably 30 million in 3 months, not 4 years.
Personally, my wish list for the event is: 1) Facebook iPad app, 2) immediate availability of iOS5, and 3) an update to Apple TV. I doubt I’ll be interested in anything else they could announce. I don’t see myself getting an iPhone without a keyboard. And I’m intrigued by WP7 more than ever…
October 4th, 2011 at 2:01 am
Yeah, there was some bad math in the WSJ, hypothesizing that EVERY Sprint customer would have to buy an iPhone– neatly forgetting that most folks replace their phones every 2 years.
October 4th, 2011 at 7:13 am
As for the title of the post — I’m hopeful that, like previous phone announcements, it’s the opposite of iPhone obsolescence day. In the past, I’ve has days where I’ve gotten substantial, function-enhancing updates to my phone and AppleTV, making them less obsolescent.
That said, I think there’s a 10% chance ios5 will be released today — there hasn’t been a report of a GM yet, that I’ve seen. Would be nice if this Assistant ran on iPhone 4, but let’s face it: (1) the A5 is a much more powerful chip, which may be necessary, and (2) Apple needs something besides “a little faster” to drive the legions of iPhone 4 users to upgrade, since the 4 is very entrenched and people are by and large very happy with it. Maybe some tailfins would help.
I may tune in and out of the liveblog, but I’ll swing by here to catch up in the latest from the Pyslent thought leaders — and hopefully I can download the keynote from Apple to watch on the train on the way home.
October 4th, 2011 at 8:46 am
To that point, shouldn’t it just be “Phone Obsolescence Day?” Nothing shakes up the competitive landscape like a new iPhone, after all. Although I find it amazing that 15 months later, no other phone can match the iPhone 4’s display resolution or camera, which were the 2 major new features in the 4, if I remember correctly. Oh, I guess there was also Facetime announced at the same time, which is the one feature that the competition did end up incorporating.
Anyway, going back to our iPhone 4 discussion is fun, as always. I love this little declaration of mine: “But at least built value by not going with Android. No one would have paid $1.5 billion for a struggling Android manufacturer.”
October 4th, 2011 at 8:47 am
Oh, here’s the link to the iPhone 4 topic, if you want to reminisce…
http://www.pyslent.com/?p=1894
October 4th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Tabbed browsing? Never got that one, just open a new card! Nice to see notifications reach webOS c. 2009, not that it was a surprise. So far, going over long “leaked” details of iOS 5.
October 4th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
6 hours of 3G browsing is impressive. I can probably get 4 hours, if I have 2 batteries.
October 4th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
I think it will be a great time to buy a gently used iPhone 4. The phanboys are going to grab the latest & greatest, but not sure how revolutionary it is. Siri could be a game changer, or Newton handwriting recognition all over again. Or maybe more like Facetime, a nice feature seldom used.
I’ll tell you one thing, no matter they’ll sell well over 100,000,000 in the next 4 years just in North America.
October 4th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
It would be a nice upgrade to my 3GS, but I’m not going to rush out and preorder the 4S until there’s a confirmed jailbreak for it.
October 4th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Very underwhelming, although if you go back to the iphone 4 discussion, you can see that we expected Android to be blowing away the iP4 by this time, and that hasn’t really happened. The fact is, other than hideously large screens, battery killing 4G LTE/WIMAX, and maybe NFC, Android phones can’t really boast of any better hardware than what the 4S will offer. No leapfrogging, but where else is there to go? The fact that anyone is even talking about the Pre2 being adequate a year later speaks to how slowly the hardware side of the equation has evolved.
As for the improvements to iOS5, tabbed browsing is a nice-to-have for me. You can switch webpages with a single tap as opposed to 3 gestures with webOS (or 2 taps with iOS4). Not life-changing, but definitely an improvement.
What I will say is that Sprint really sucks. 3G at 500 kbps was too slow to watch the UStream running commentary on Twit, and the 4G coverage coming from home to work was too spotty to be able to watch more than 5 minutes at a time without dropping out travelling at train speeds. Seriously, between a rock and a hard place. But at least I have that option. Sprint 4S users can only choose the rock!
October 4th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Really, you guys weren’t impressed by that? The Siri demo was a little long, it looks like, but parts seemed pretty cool. I’m hoping a jailbreak will enable Siri on the 4. I mean, I already have the (2 year-old) Siri on my phone now, but it doesn’t do much of anything like what they showed today.
That being said, there wasn’t much else that was demoed that makes me want to run out and buy a 4S. Still think there’s an iPhone 5 coming soon? Neither do I.
BTW, Safari for iPhone was doing cards before they were cool, wasn’t it?
October 4th, 2011 at 3:43 pm
I didn’t watch the demo– maybe Siri doesn’t come across as impressive when described by text :). Anyway, I am personally disappointed because Apple went 0 for 3 on my wishlist. They just don’t care about customers, I guess. iOS5 in about a week is acceptable I guess.
October 4th, 2011 at 4:03 pm
I just saw the engadget live blog, no video. As for your wishlist:
1) iPad Facebook app. What’s the big deal? Aren’t there non-official iPad FB apps? Are they just not any good, or maybe they don’t work with the new layout?
2) iOS5 release today wasn’t in the cards.
3) What AppleTV update are you waiting for? What do you want it to do? Frankly, all I want it to do is stream various formats from a home server, which it’ll do now with a jailbreak. Are you hoping it’ll run apps? What would you want it to run? With Airplay mirroring, it seems like you can get most of your iPad stuff displaying on your TV anyway, right?
October 4th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
1) Non-first party facebook apps suck. Facebook has some silly privacy flag that let’s users specify if 3rd party applications can see their data. Sounds like the safe thing to do, but in practice, it also means that when I use a 3rd party app to check Facebook, half of my friends’ posts just don’t show up. I’ve been using the Facebook website, but I hate doing that when a perfectly good app has been in existence for 5 months.
2) Yeah, I guess not, but seriously, they unveiled iOS5 4 months ago. This is how Microsoft rolls out OS’s, not Apple.
3) I guess I just wanted to know if it’s safe to buy an AppleTV now. All things being equal, of course, I’d prefer to buy at the beginning of the product cycle, not at the end. I don’t know what’s lacking in the current version, but I was sure if there was a new one, it would be cool. If nothing else, though, I might as well wait for the one that has iOS5 built in.
October 4th, 2011 at 6:58 pm
How lame is Sprint? No mention of the iPhone on their website.
October 4th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
With webOS, you can switch web pages with a single gesture– the full swipe.
October 4th, 2011 at 9:06 pm
You really think that’s as good as tabs? Maybe for phones, but when you have the extra real estate of a tablet, why not have tabs? I think of the Windows task bar as the best implementation of multitasking on any platform, and a row of tabs is pretty good approximation, at least for web browsing. Personally, I find that it works pretty well on the desktop. Blindly switching between adjacent cards always seemed so clumsy to me. I barely ever used it on my Pre.
October 4th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
To be clear, they’re bringing tabbed browsing to Safari — there are tabbed browsers for iPhone already. I don’t find myself truly multitasking much on the phone browser — more like I want to keep a page loaded for reference later, so I don’t even use Safari’s multi-window implementation for real multitasking. It’s more like bookmarking.
I agree that there are fewer and fewer meaningful hardware innovations left — the handset makers (not just Apple) have pretty much figured It out. Other than NFC, a 3D camera, or a kickstand, there’s not much the iPhone lacks. Except as Kelvin said, a keyboard.
October 4th, 2011 at 11:47 pm
Right, there’s a subset of people who’d love to see a keyboard or a larger screen, but these are design decisions as much as hardware features.
The tabbed browsing is only coming to the iPad, right? It doesn’t make much sense on a phone. Yes, I’ve tried Dolphin on the iPad, which has chrome like tabs. Pretty cool, but it’s not as stable as Safari.
October 5th, 2011 at 12:05 am
Oh, Tabs on the iPad is fine. Thought we were talking phones.
October 5th, 2011 at 7:57 am
Same, I thought we were talking phones, too. I’ve used Atomic on iPad, seems pretty good, but since there’s no way to set the default browser, I always end up back at Safari.
October 5th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Ah, I assumed you were talking about the iPad since the tabbed browsing is only for iPad’s safari. For the phone, the less wasted space, the better (webOS does a nice job here).
October 5th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Despite getting a new Pre3 from an HP friend (AT&T/global), Ed says he’s definitely going to get an iPhone 4S on Sprint. I think most people won’t upgrade from an iP4, but the 4S seems well worth the $100 price difference if you were buying an iPhone for the first time.
October 5th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
J will be getting one, too, I think. I realized this morning that I’ve owned and used 3 of the 4 available iPhones (original, 3GS, 4), and between J and me, we’ve had them all (and will likely keep the trend going).
October 7th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Apple needs to sell downloadable voices for Siri. Obviously, Jarvis from Iron Man or KITT. Have Siri say “WORKING” like the Star Trek computers after every request.
October 7th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
100% agree. I’m sure there will be a market, just like GPS voices or ringtones.
October 10th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Woohoo, Facebook app is finally here– it says so right at the Facebook Blog (who knew Facebook had a blog?)
https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150311269432131
October 12th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
iOS5 is downloading (slowly) as I type. 34 minutes until Apple checks off 2 out of 3 items on my wishlist. Mike had tweeted last week some evidence popping up for a dual core Apple TV 3 in the works, so the trifecta might be in sight. Although I’m purplexed as to when Apple would release it, if it exists. If they want it in time for the holidays, they need to announce it soon.
October 12th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
There was an announcement of an ATV software upgrade today, but haven’t had time to look into it. Doubt it’s all that amazing, though.
Will upgrade the iPad when I get home, then probably my iPhone (gotta be sure work stuff still works first).