iPhone 2.0 Rumour Revue

by Eric March on May 30, 2008 at 12:41 pm

With about a week and a half to go to the start of WWDC08, we are about to enter the Hell Week of the rumour circuit — the time when the sheer volume of rumours coming from every source grows to such a degree that it gains its own gravitational pull. From the wishful to the wacky to the wonderful, it will become harder and harder to pick the wheat from the chaff as we try and look for nuggets of credibility amongst the hailstorm of “leaked” keynotes, alleged spy shots, insider tips, long-distance speculations, and complete WAGs.

Writing about all of that in individual articles is going to be a bit like trying to collect ants with a fork, so I’m going to run down the week’s latest rumours, opinions, and speculations here. It’s easier for us, and probably better for those of you who just want to skip all the gossip and get to some real news.

Information Week’s Alexander Wolfe will start us off with an OpEd on his gripes about the first-gen iPhone, how it fell short of his expectations, and whether or not his issues will be addressed on the 3G model. On the whole, his two biggest gripes — slow EDGE connectivity and no Push E-Mail — have been addressed in the upcoming device, naturally, but he feels that the soft keyboard is still a bother and the battery life on the iPhone isn’t stellar. I’ll grant with him on the latter (come on, Apple, if you can’t make the batteries larger, make them replaceable so we can buy spares!) but I’m not so bad with the keyboard anymore. I still prefer real keys, but I’ve learned to handle the virtual one halfway proficiently.

Over on the ZDNet blog, Larry Dignan seems pretty confident that Apple will blow past their own 2007 forecast of 10M iPhone units sold by the end of CY08. Analysts have been racking up the brownie points in their own predicions for Apple’s iPhone sales:

* Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, one of the more bullish iPhone fans out there, is predicting 12.9 million iPhones by the end of 2008.
* Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner is predicting 14.5 million iPhone units in 2008.
* Apple’s official estimate 10 million and the company has stuck by that projection each quarter.

However, Larry feels that the one thing that will propel Apple’s cell well over the top isn’t its new features, or even the App Store — not by themselves, anyway. It is international distribution will push iPhone sales into the stratosphere. With Apple rapidly passing the 50 country mark, the iPhone is poised to be available to 32.6% of the total addressable global market. Oppenheimer analyst Reiner opines:

We believe current consensus estimates for the iPhone are far too timid in assessing the significance of the iPhone’s expanding international channel. Early evidence suggests that the iPhone is approximately a third as popular in the international markets where it is already available as it is at AT&T-enjoying roughly the same relative popularity as Apple’s computer do outside of the U.S. Our above consensus target of 14.5 million iPhones in 2008 assumes that this relatively popularity will merely be sustained as the iPhone becomes available to 480 million new international subscribers in 2H08.

Note in particular that this number could be achieved if the phone’s popularity is merely sustained at its current levels across its existing markets. This does not include markets that do not yet carry the iPhone but are in the process of doing so within this calendar year, nor does it factor in a surge in popularity when the 3G iPhone is released.

Over in the rumour mill we turn to 9to5Mac dishing out a rather specious rumour that the 3G iPhone will be delayed. This latest bit of speculative fiction is predicated on a Q208 profit warning for chipmaker Infineon, who are the the putative supplier of 3G chips for the iPhone — a rumour that has been speculated due to an Infineon HSDPA chip model number listed in the iPhone’s beta firmware, but never actually confirmed. The warning was issued as a result of a delay in a forthcoming Nokia project, as well as lower than expected demand for its 3G chips and a ramp changes in an unnamed, as-yet unreleased project, which analysts immediately pounced on and proclaimed the iPhone. Fact is, not only do we not know whether this unnamed product is the iPhone, we don’t even have any proof the Infineon are the ones supplying Apple with the 3G chips in the first place. This one is a rumour spun from a rumour, so take this with a whole boulder of salt.

Now it’s over to MacRumors, who covered last night’s extremely rare closure of Manhattan’s Apple Store to film what speculated to be a commercial for the 3G iPhone. For those who don’t know, the flagship Apple Store on Manhattan Island in New York is normally open round the clock and has only ever closed down twice: The first time for the release of the iPhone almost a year ago, and the second for the release of MacOS 10.5 (Leopard) last fall. Suffice it to say, closures only occur for big events, and the iPhone 2.0 certainly qualifies, so maybe there’s some validity to this one. Camera crews and lights were set up around the cube, but the crew wouldn’t let anyone get anywhere near close enough to catch a glimpse of what was being filmed.

A gallery of more pictures can be found here, and you can read the whole (long) MacRumors thread here.

Off to Apple Insider, who are reporting that AT&T have sent a call out to temp agencies looking for help to beef up their staff coverage for a “mystery” event. We already know AT&T have been telling their staffers not to be taking any vacation time between June 15th and July 12th, so this just reinforces the iPhone 2.0 release date, since this is exactly what they did last year.

Next up, Engadget is reporting on what they claim to be a 3G iPhone Icon included with the latest SDK version release. They come to this conclusion because they state that this icon is different from the other ones normally found in the SDK. Maybe it’s just be, but placed side-by-side with a real iPhone, this new icon looks like … a standard iPhone. In fact, it looks more like a standard iPhone than the image it is placed beside because the real photo has been reversed for reasons unknown. I don’t know where the idea came form that this is a 3G iPhone icon since, unless I’m really missing something, it looks like a bog standard iPhone, so … not really much of a rumour here, is there?

Engadget also reported on more “leaked” 3G iPhone pictures courtesy once again of iPhoneclub.nl who, if you recall, “leaked” the same sort of photos a few weeks back, too. I would still like to know how these “leaks” always seem to happen thousands of miles from their source. At least this one has a bonus shot of the “leaked” iPhone without the actual phone in it, just in case you were getting tired of these shots making even passing attempts at being legit.

Finally, we round off the work week’s rumour machine with Apple Insider’s report of shots purporting to be the steel molds for a forthcoming Griffin iPhone 2.0 case, plus a screenie of the CAD template used to make them. We’ve already heard that case manufacturers were given dimensional specs of the iPhone 2.0 to give them the opportunity to have cases ready for launch, and the dimensions of this one do seem to gel nicely with what’s been rumoured from other sources as well, so there could be some truth to this one.

That’s it for the rumour mill. I’m sure there will be plenty more grist for it in the coming days, so stay tuned.

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Posted in Rumors, iPhone OS 2.0