If I believe (!!) an article on the irumors website (
http://www.rumortracker.com/framesets/irumors/index.html), that iPhone will be released late September at a price of ... $800 !!!
Either this is the most unbelievable phone ever created by mankind, or they are out of their mind! That would be a few $100 shy of the price of an iBook...
Either way, at that price, they would be sinking the company in no time....
A phone, regardless of what else it does, should be no more than $200-300
In the PDA area, the most expensive ones are the Pocket PCs, but they come with color screen, a lot of memory, etc. Those price for about $700. And they run Windows, which give them access to quite a few applications that most people are most familiar with.
Both the PDA and the phone markets are ultra crowded. There have already been quite a few PDA/Phone attempts. There will be even more in 6 months. So this is a highly competitive market. In addition, there are companies that are hurting in both markets: Palm and Handspring are not doing too well. None of the Telecom/handset companies are doing well either. From the Phone or PDA market perspective, both markets are saturated.
So, not only would Apple have to differentiate themselves drastically from the competition, they will also have to compete agressively on price to persuade people to throw out both their existing PDA and phone to get an iPhone, i.e. yet another PDA format, etc...
So what would it take for that iPhone to be worth that much?
First of all they have to blow a PocketPC's spec away:
Storage: way more than 64 MB of RAM/ space out of the box, with expandibility to over 1 GB range. iRumors seems to indicate 200 MB of storage space. That would do it.
Speed: A Pocket PC runs on a 400 MHz Intel chip and feels ultra fast and responsive. the iPhone would have to be the same in terms of speed. The chip is irrelevant (an embededded Motorola PPC chip?)
OS: It has to be a standard OS, so that a LOT of applications are available out of the box. In Apple's case I only see one solution: make Mac OSX run on that beast.
Screen: Color is an absolute must. The resolution needs to be at least as good as the Pocket PC's (240x320). There is no way you'll buy a $800 without a color screen.
Apps: You'll need all these handy MacOSX apps, + movie playing capabilities (QuickTime). In particular you need e-mail capabilities, calendar, addresses, office apps, quicktime, web browser, etc.
Developers: you have to attract developers to that platform. The only way to that is to make it as easy as possible to port their apps to it. Again that means Mac OS X.
You see where I 'm going with this. Basically, you're better off buying a low end Powerbook and keeping your existing phone!
And at least you do not have to switch phone carriers...
). I suppose you think that components, manufacturing and so on grows on trees and we can get phones for 200-300 USD ? -- SUbsidized perhaps yes, but unsibsidiezed NO WAY. Take a look at nokia's 8890. A 3 year old design, but STILL sells for about 800 euro without a contract. -- even subsidized when voicestream sold it it cost $500!!!!!