From the day it launched two years ago, Apple’s iPhone has been a tornado of disruption ripping through the wireless phone market. With the release of the iPhone 3G S and, at least as important, a new version of the basic software for all iPhones, the upheaval will intensify and spread to new markets.
A faster processor boosts performance, and storage is doubled, to 16 or 32 gigabytes. For this, you pay either $199 or $299 with a two-year AT&T contract. At the same time, the existing 8GB iPhone’3G remains in the lineup at a market-threatening $99.
The brand-new Palm Pre suddenly seems overpriced at $300 before a $100 mail-in rebate. Microsoft’syet-to-be-released Windows Mobile 6.5 already looks lame, and many of the competitive software advantages of Google’s Android have been erased.
Apple’s ambitions and the impact of the iPhone go far beyond the handset business. The iPhone now threatens both standalone personal navigation devices and wireless carriers’ subscription navigation services.
Another big shift: Shooting and editing videos and uploading them to YouTube is now as easy on an iPhone as on a Flip camera. That should give Cisco Systems pause; the company recently bought Flip maker Pure Digital for $590 million.
To make matters worse for competitors, the vibrant community of developers who dream up uses for the iPhone never imagined by Apple shows no sign of slowing.
RapidRepair.com flew to Paris to purchase the iPhone 3G S at an Orange Boutique store the stroke of midnight, just so they could diassemble it into its component pieces. They say it’s three times faster.
Apple Insider, Engadget, Gizmodo, C/Net, Information Week, PC World and Google News have more.
Analysts are predicting Apple and AT&T will sell more than 500,000 units over the next few days. Apple Blog has 10 Father’s Day Apps for Your Dad. The iPhone Blog, the NY Times, the WS Journal, ArsTechnica, MacWorld, Wired and ZDNet have more on the new 3.0 software.
Meanwhile, All About Symbian is covering the the Nokia N-97 launch (reviews), also today. But the N97 falls short of its potential, says the Washington Post, largely because the operating system it uses–the Symbian S60 5th Edition. And then there’s the price — $700; unlocked.
