iPhone 3G ($199 and up), MobileMe announced at WWDC
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Steve Jobs delivered his Keynote today at the Apple WWDC 2008. Eagerly anticipated were details on Apple’s 3G phone and Apple provided attendees with a glimpse of things to come.
“Just one year after launching the iPhone, we’re launching the new iPhone 3G that is twice as fast at half the price,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “ iPhone 3G supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync right out of the box, runs the incredible third party apps created with the iPhone SDK, and will be available in more than 70 countries around the world this year.”
The 3G iPhone is delayed untill July 11th and will put a bit of a dent into Apple’s plans of shipping 10 million iPhones for 2008. However, the new pricing may make up for the lost sales due to the 3 week delay.
Yes that’s right, half the price! In the US the new iPhone 3G is priced at $199 for the 8GB model, and just $299 for the 16GB model. Compare this with the original iPhone which retailed for $599 when launched and now retails for $399.
Apple also touched upon the various mods users have done to get the phone working in different countries and how apple is fixing the problem. The 3G is good news for people around the world. iPhone 3G will be available in more than 70 countries later this year, beginning with customer availability in 22 countries—Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US.
Apple® also introduced MobileMe™, a new Internet service that delivers push email, push contacts and push calendars from the MobileMe service in the “cloud” to native applications on iPhone™, iPod® touch, Macs and PCs.
“Think of MobileMe as ‘Exchange for the rest of us,’” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Now users who are not part of an enterprise that runs Exchange can get the same push email, push calendars and push contacts that the big guys get.”
The iPhone has enjoyed tremendous success among users but has failed to win the enterprise which is largely dominated by RIM’s blackberry phones and to some extent Palm and Windows Mobile phones. In enterprise environments, exchange connectivity for business e-mail, calendering capability is key. The MobileMe™ may be an interesting gamble for Apple to lure businesses to adopt the iPhone. Apple products are known to play well with each other and there is potential for MobileMe to even increase adoption of Mac in the Enterprise.
