Why I doubt there will be a new iPhone model this year
By john on Feb 9, 2008 in featured
Ever since it came out, the iPhone has been making huge waves. Almost instantly it outsold all but the venerable Blackberry in the smartphone market. Having owned one now for many months, its easy to see why. It’s sleek and stylish, has a killer user interface and applications that work, and work well. It is, without a doubt the best phone I’ve ever owned.But I don’t really foresee Apple releasing a 2nd generation iPhone (beyond the memory upgraded versions released recently), specifically the one purported to have 3G capability, for a couple of reasons.First and foremost is the success of gen1, you now have a bunch of people who have – within the last year – purchased a several hundred dollar phone. I am willing to bet that a significantly smaller number of people would be willing to pay up that much AGAIN in order to get the “latest and greatest”. Some would, sure, as evidenced by those who have purchased the upgraded memory versions of the phone, but my guess is a lot of people won’t. The higher memory capacity versions are likely to attract some who havent bitten the bullet and now are willing to due to larger capacity, making them worthwhile.
Second is 3G itself. It will suck up battery power much faster than edge would, it’s likely still bulkier than Apple would like ( at least that was one reason cited for why it was left out of the gen 1 iPhone) making it difficult to put into the phone. But most importantly, while AT&T is working on adding more cities to their 3G network, they’re still not quite there yet. My best guess is that Apple would wait until AT&T had a solid 3G network foundation before releasing a product that uses it. After all, if it doesn’t work (even if it’s AT&T’s fault) Apple will likely be slammed for it.
I would venture a guess that, should there be a version 2 of the iPhone (and I’m betting there will be), It would be released in the first half of 2009. AT&T should have their 3G network up and running in many more cities (and had time to make sure it’s very stable), and the contracts of those who bought the gen 1 iPhone will be running out. What better time to upgrade?Of course, this is merely speculation – I have no hard evidence – written, verbal or visual, that this is the path Apple would take.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Post a Comment