Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic Apple iPhone price cut surprising but brilliant
Fuzzy Logic Apple iPhone price cut surprising but brilliant | Apple iPhone price cut surprising but brilliant |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Sunday, 09 September 2007 | |
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Page 2 of 3 The iPhone was the first device to bring the concept of multi-touch to the masses, although Microsoft quickly followed up with the announcement of the Surface Computer, able to simultaneously understand the input from 40 individual fingers, resulting from four players sitting around the coffee-table sized computer who could be using any of their fingers to interact with the system. Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
Touch screen technology was getting better with or without Apple. But Apple’s new touch technology takes us to the next generation instantly, and is something that all competitors will have to copy, in some form or another. Even voice recognition software, whether Vista’s built in software, Dragon’s Naturally Speaking 9.5 for Vista (or version 9 for XP users), or the same for users running the software in a virtual machine (or natively with Boot Camp) on an Intel-based Mac, has come a very long way. Today, it actually works, all you need is a modern computer, 2GB of memory and the software, and you can be talking to your computer to your heart’s content with amazing accuracy – at last. Surely this can only get even better over the next 5 to 10 years, where hopefully we will have computers than interact with us naturally simply by talking. While the iPhone and iPods don’t yet feature voice recognition, there’s no doubt that future iPods and iPhones could easily offer this capability, especially if we are talking about models running OS X and, in the future, ever faster processors and ever more storage space. That said, the existing iPhone doesn’t even let you call contacts by voice, a standard feature of many phones. Theoretically Apple could fix this with a software update, so there’s hope yet that the feature will be added so existing iPhone owners can take advantage of it. iSuppli confirmed that Apple’s margins on the iPhone were very large, with only half the $599 list price for the 8GB iPhone going to construction costs. These kinds of profit margins are much larger than the rest of the PC, cell phone and electronics manufacturing industries enjoy, and clearly, Steve Jobs has decided that offering the iPhone at a lower price, alongside the new iPod touch models, will get the technology into millions of people’s hands, that much faster, while still making Apple a healthy profit in hardware and digital media sales, alongside creating a powerful third party accessory economy. There's also now the theory that Apple will raise the price again when it launches the inevitable 16GB iPhone with 3G and other capabilties - at the old $599 price, somewhat similarly to what Sony did with the 60GB and 80GB PS3 models, re-establishing the $599 price as the price for the 'best model'. But Apple does have some opportunities to save money up its sleeve. Apple’s enormous clout in accessing very competitive flash memory pricing is by now legendary, given the number of units it orders - and sells. That clout also gives it the power to offer 16GB of memory at a time when competitors, such as Nokia, have just started releasing the N95 8GB model, which is pretty amazing in its own right, although lacking the smooth sophistication of the iPhone’s interface. An iPhone with the N95’s capabilities – and more – is only a matter of time. Of course, Nokia will release 16GB and larger models of its own in the not too distant future to compete, no doubt replete with ever better digital still and video recording capabilities, touch controls of its own and other features, but barring any astounding announcements from anyone else between now and Christmas 2007, Apple has led the pack yet again, not only in bringing out really desirable technology first, but also just in time to really take advantage of the entire upcoming Christmas/holiday/end-of-year season, and beyond. The most amazing thing though has been the $200 iPhone price cut. Never before has such a significant price cut come so quickly. Imagine the sales figures and the rejoicing had the PS3 been cut by $200 two months after its release! It does make one wonder what will happen the next time Apple releases an expensive product. Need we all just wait two months for the price to drop by a third – especially if no-one is buying because everyone is waiting? Jobs did say that technology was a bumpy road. Given people’s desire to be first with the latest, and given how many people love their gadgets today, especially seeing as we have so many of them on sale today, always being updated to have more and better capabilities each year, there will always be a market. So, was the price cut a mistake? Isn't it a really good thing, and hasn't Steve Jobs made it up to us? The answers are in the conclusion on the next page, along with what competitors are now working on to compete! Please read onto the last page now... |
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