What does tomorrow mean for Apple?

Moscone Center WWDC 2010.

Tomorrow marks yet another Apple WWDC. Another day surrounded by the anticipation of a new iPhone. I expect this year is more than a landmark hardware launch, though. This will likely be the year Apple makes a serious attempt at the cloud, an area of the market where Apple is starting to fall seriously behind Google and the Android OS.

First off, the new iPhone is a big deal, not just for us but for Apple as well. The phone leak was so big to Apple, in fact, that it refused to invite Gizmodo to the event in light of the investigation. The newest iteration of the iPhone will be the most advanced phone to market. Though we don’t know specifics, it looks as though the phone will support video conferencing, capture HD video, offer a faster processor, more memory, and of course, iPhone OS 4.

It’s OS 4 that will help Apple catch up to Android. The latest Android updates include support for streaming music from your desktop to your phone. It also allows you to push websites, applications, and maps and directions straight to your phone. Apple and the iPhone are way behind in cloud support. The best you have there is MobileMe, which requires a subscription and really only allows you to find your phone if you lose it. Apple’s Lala acquisition could mean good things here.

The one thing you shouldn’t expect tomorrow is a Verizon iPhone. Though we’ve heard rumors since the iPhone launched, it’s unlikely we’ll see anything this year, or even next. I was wholly convinced that we’d get a Verizon phone around the time my 3GS contract expired but recent Verizon comments have made it clear we won’t see one soon.

On the whole, tomorrow is Apple’s chance to position itself in the market. When the 3GS launched it was clearly the best phone on the market. Things aren’t so clear anymore, and the Android devices coming in the near future hold a lot of advantages for tech-savvy buyers. It’s going to take a lot for Apple to outperform the latest version of Android. We’ll see if they have it when Jobs takes the stage for the keynote at 10 PST tomorrow.

Photo Credit: Adam Jackson / Flickr

  

Steve Jobs shows up for estimated 700,000 iPad day one

Steve Jobs iPad.It was a big day for Apple. It was a big day for fanboys (and fangirls). It was a big day for publishers. Alright, it was a big day for just about everyone. Yes, even you haters, because like it or not the iPad is here and it’s a pretty big deal. It’s the first ultra-portable device that’s capable of handling all of your day to day tasks, be it business or entertainment.

The iPad is such a big release that Steve Jobs himself showed up at the Palo Alto location to survey the damage for just under an hour. Analysts are setting estimates for day one sales around 700,000 units, a huge chunk of the supposed couple million Kindles in the wild. By comparison, the iPhone sold just 270,000 units when it launched.

The iPad does have a leg up in that it has access to the iPhone OS App Store. Along with iPhone apps, the iPad will have its own set of apps designed to take advantage of a larger screen size.

  

Amazon tries to stay competitive with Apple, will need a new device

Steve Jobs in a chair with the iPad.The day Apple announced the iPad, Amazon was calling newspapers and publishers before Steve Jobs had even left the stage. As the New York Times’ Bits blog has it, Amazon wanted to hear what Apple had offered. Amazon had been trying for more than a month to sign deals with publishers that would give Amazon customers the best prices anywhere, either by matching or beating the prices given to other dealers.

Amazon tried to sweeten the deal by offering publishers bigger revenues than in the past. Unfortunately, Apple was willing to budge on a much larger issue: price. With Apple, publishers had a bit more flexibility than Amazon would give, which in turn gave publishers bargaining power over Amazon. See, Amazon will do just about anything to stay competitive with Apple.

In fairness to Amazon, it’s not like publishers want to upset that distribution channel. Amazon pretty much pioneered the ebook scene – it certainly made ebooks as popular as they were likely to become before some sort of wonder device came along – which leaves publishers keen to cater to the existing subscribers in Amazon’s marketplace until either the iPad gains enough ground or Amazon releases a new reader.

That last point is very important. If Amazon doesn’t release a new reader within the next year or so, it will pigeonhole itself into becoming solely a content provider, a position I wouldn’t think Bezos wants to be in considering he started the Kindle. Rarely would a company of Amazon’s scale introduce a middling product only to do away with it in a couple years.

Source: Bits

  

Steve Jobs biography to be penned by Einstein/Franklin author

Steve Jobs looking excited.The world has long tried to understand Steve Jobs. There have been several biographies written about him, though none of them were authorized and most have lacked the kind of personal material that make a biography really great. Luckily for all the fanboys (and the haters) Jobs has agreed to an authorized biography.

Jobs struck the deal with former Time Magazine managing editor Walter Isaacson. Isaacson has written two other bestselling biographies on historical figures that show a bit of Jobs’ hubris: Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. Criticisms aside, the book should be very interesting. Jobs has invited Isaacson on a tour of his childhood home according to the New York Times.

Jobs has never been a fan of those other biographies, either. He’s been known to pull books by those publishers from Apple Store shelves in spite.

Source: New York Times

  

Presented with options publishers turn on Amazon

iPad running iBooks.During News Corp’s quarterly earnings conference call, Rupert Murdoch finally revealed his true feelings about the deal between HarperCollins, which News Corp owns, and Amazon for ebooks in the Kindle Store. “We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99….we think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books.”

That pretty much says it all. Now that the company has an option coming with the iPad, it no longer needs to succumb to Amazon’s demands. Things are just the opposite, in fact, thanks to flexible pricing options from Apple. The competition is forcing Amazon to renegotiate prices with publishers for fear of losing market share or publisher support altogether.

It’s tough to say that increased ebook prices actually preserves the value of the book, particularly after prices have been so low. Fortunately for publishers, the ebook reading population was small enough that the rest of the world might not know to care about the difference.