News Of Dual-Network iPhone 5 Benefits Verizon More Than AT&T

Verizon’s recent gaffe confirms that the iPhone 5 will indeed be a dual-network device that will work with both CDMA and GSM. While the notion of a dual-network iPhone 5 isn’t much of a revelation, the news helps Verizon more than AT&T. Here’s why:

Another slip of the tongue has confirmed yet another detail about the upcoming iPhone 5.
Less than three weeks after Sony CEO Howard Stringer tacitly admitted that the next iPhone 5 camera would be of the 8 megapixel variety, Verizon’s Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo seems to have now confirmed that the iPhone 5 will indeed be a dual-network device, supporting both AT&T’s GSM and Verizon’s CDMA technologies. Venturebeat reports that “in an attempt to deflect an analyst probing for details on Apple’s next phone, Verizon inadvertently mentioned that [the iPhone 5] will be a ‘global device’.”
While the iPhone community is always happy to have virtually any detail about the iPhone 5 confirmed or corroborated (except, perhaps, for the recent report of a late September release), news of a dual-network iPhone 5 should not come as an earth-shattering revelation to those who have followed the it over the past six month of so. It is true that Apple had to fashion an alternate CDMA-equipped iPhone 4 to work on the Verizon network, creating two network variants with very slight design differences between the two.
But the production of the CDMA model was a work-around for Apple; obviously, a deal with Verizon had not been solidified by the time the iPhone 4 was launched in the summer of 2010, meaning that the initial AT&T model had no CDMA capabilities. And as we all know, there was no way that Apple could have clandestinely outfitted the original AT&T iPhone to run on CDMA — too many iPhone geeks out there pop open their new iPhones to look under the hood. Any stealth move to equip the iPhone 4 for both networks would have been discovered. This time around, however, it makes good business sense to make sure that the iPhone 5 works on both networks; it will keep production costs down and make shipping and inventory far easier.
An interesting question to consider, however, is whether or not a dual-network iPhone 5 benefits either carrier, or is it just a wash?
I would argue that, while the dual-channel iPhone 5 revelation isn’t going to be any kind of groundbreaking game-changer for either mobile carrier, it is Verizon that may have the most to gain from the notion that both companies will share the same iPhone design.
More than any other iPhone 5 topic on this blog, the subject of AT&T versus Verizon has inspired more angst, vitriol, and hurt feelings. We wrote an article about it a while back, and people weighed in on the issue with gusto, defending their mobile network providers with bravado. It’s a fact: iPhone users are passionate about their carriers. AT&T and Verizon are like political parties around here. (I guess Sprint customers are the Independents.)
Thus, I know that I am stepping into a minefield with Verizon customers when I reluctantly state that CDMA is generally considered to be the slower of the two mobile technologies, disallowing the kind of multi-tasking that AT&T iPhone users typically enjoy. Whether or not this is true, however, is not the issue: the fact remains that this is the prevailing belief about Verizon.
With this is mind, one can imagine that it can only benefit Verizon for prospective iPhone 5 customers to see that the device works on both networks. Unlike the iPhone 4, which has two variants for GSM and CDMA, the iPhone is the same phone, same specs, same technology. AT&T will no longer be able to infer that they have the “better iPhone” model.
Sameness is the name of the game for Verizon this time around, as they will finally have a chance to compete with AT&T right out of the gate with the iPhone 5. The game plan will be the same for both carriers: AT&T will tout speed and versatility, and Verizon will roll out their maps. It should be a real hoot.
Perhaps this admission by Verizon about the dual-channel iPhone 5 will turn out to be the first innoquous shot fired in the iPhone 5 network wars?

<< Read Now >>

Greenpeace’s “Green Libel:” Calling Apple the “Least Green” Tech Company

Greenpeace claims that Apple is the "least green" tech company. Does that really make any sense?

For years now, Apple has led the way in the technology sector on environmentally-friendly design concepts and business practices. But Greenpeace’s recent report indicating that Apple’s investment in a data center — reportedly for a soon-to-be-unveiled cloud data storage feature on the iPhone 5 — doesn’t jive with Apple’s eco-ethics. What gives?
Anybody who is a big believer in Apple products knows that green technology and environmental concerns have long been a priority for their research and development. Regardless of where one charts on the ideological spectrum when it comes to environmental issues, one thing is for sure: Apple has been an honest broker in its environmental initiatives. While a cynic might suggest that the green angle on Apple products is little more than a marketing pitch for its devoted customers, the end result of Apple’s eco-friendly developments are unquestionable.
Browse the various gadgets at Apple.com and you’re bound to notice that its most popular products boast a wide array of green-inspired features. For the MacBook series of laptops, Apple devotes an entire section to the environment, highlighting how an efficient power supply, advanced power management, 5.2 energy star qualification, and fewer toxins used in the construction of the design materials all lead to some of the greenest electronics out there on the market today.
The same is true with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod: Apple’s glass displays are recyclable, as are the aluminum chassis used on the MacBooks. In addition, Apple goes out of its way to package its products with an emphasis on minimalism, saving tons of cardboard, plastic, and other packaging materials.
But what is most impressive is Apple’s advancement in battery technology. For as much as carbon emissions are the flavor of the month when it comes to the environmental debate, fewer things pollute a landfill more than alkaline batteries and the grandpappy of rechargeable battery technology: the NiCad. Apple’s LiON battery technology — which really came into its own in 2010 with the iPad and MacBook Pro — is simply out of this world, allowing users to get maximum longevity and performance out of the battery packs used to power their mobile devices.
Given all of the efforts that Apple has made to accommodate environmental concerns, does it strike anyone as strange that an eco-activist organization like Greenpeace would levy such a scathing claim against them, labeling Apple as the “least green” tech company in the world?
It is, in effect, a green libel.
Greenpeace’s report, which is entitled How Dirty is Your Data?, is specifically targeting data centers throughout the world who rely on coal-fueled electricity to power their energy needs. The Guardian reported that, “The facility’s power will be supplied by Duke Energy, with a mix of 62% coal and 32% nuclear.” Apple’s top ranking on Greenpeace’s list stems directly from their recent purchase of petrabytes of data storage at this facility in North Carolina. In case you didn’t hear about it, this investment by Apple is most likely going to account for ushering in cloud data storage on the next iPhone 5 — something that the vast majority of avid iPhone users are incredibly excited about.
The Guardian goes on to state that Greenpeace’s findings are little more than an educated guess: ”Greenpeace drew on publicly available information on investments made in data centres, to estimate the maximum power these facilities will consume, and matched that information with data from the government or utilities.” In short, their findings are mere speculation, in spite of the fact that they are reported empirically.
Guess what, folks — you can’t power petrabytes and petrabytes of data storage for all of the music, photos, videos, and files that we love — not to mention the vast amounts of data storage that top corporations and governments rely on to keep commerce and services running — with a few windmills. The Guardian says, “Data centre energy demand already accounts for 1.5% to 2% of world electricity consumption and is set to quadruple over the next 10 years.”
Regardless of what we may think of coal-powered electricity, we have still yet to come up with a means of powering high performance technology assets like mass data servers with anything less than fossil fuels (or nuclear power, though these days it isn’t the most popular alternative power source). It is unrealistic for Greenpeace or any other iPhone user for that matter to desire more power, more storage, more productivity, and more Appley goodness without their being an increase in the carbon footprint.
We cannot have our cake and eat it, too.
The good news is that Apple has already been so pro-active in reducing its carbon footprint that one could argue that it has some leeway for expanding its data servers. After all, imagine how much less power is used throughout the world on Apple machines, thanks to all of the above-mentioned eco-features? Given all of these advancements, is Greenpeace claiming that Apple is a bigger eco-offender than the top Chinese technology companies, which do not have to abide by any carbon standards whatsoever?
Scan the Greenpeace website, and you quickly come to realize that destroying the coal industry is their primary focus. Whether or not you agree or disagree with coal power or Greenpeace, you have to ask yourself this question: is Apple really the best company to bully over coal-powered electricity and environmental responsibility?

<< Read Now >>

Latest White iPhone 4, iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 (Yes!) Scuttlebutt From All Over

The white iPhone 4 is due out soon. How about the iPhone 5?

Charles Moore of the iPhone 5 News Blog probes deep into the new rumors of the white iPhone 4 — and touches on new developments for the iPhone 5 and even iPhone 6!
The Italian news site PhoneItalia says that according to information received “from a reliable source,” they can reveal (“perhaps”), that the white iPhone 4 will go on sale in Italy on April 26.
With the qualifier that this information is based on hearsay from from the unnamed source and therefore, can’t be verified or refuted directly by the editors of iPhoneItalia, they note that the white iPhone product code is already open at H3G stores in Italy, so declare the news to be “almost certain though not announced,” especially in light of many other rumors indicating a possible release of the white iPhone in late April.
The French Apple-watcher site HardMac suggests that the white iPhone release could well be a strategy of Apple’s to ease pent-up demand fro something new in the iPhone category, given a fairly strong consensus that the iPhone 5 will not be coming until the fall, with the best explanation of that delay coming from experts studying the supply chain in China who say that Apple has not yet ordered any new components for iPhone 5 production and that no new manufacturing chain is being built so far, and deduce that the probable reason for that would be that the A5 dual-core processor, expected to be a key upgraded feature in the iPhone 5, is in short supply because of heavier than anticipated demand for the iPad 2, leading to a constant shortage of iPad 2.
Since it’s unlikely that Apple would release the white iPhone in Europe or elsewhere before it hits the U.S. market, if this scuttlebutt is correct, it’s looking good for a white iPhone debut soon after Easter.
As for the iPhone 5 itself, when it does arrive, HardMac notes divers predictions that it will have a metal housing made of aluminum of Liquid Metal and a higher-resolution screen than the iPhone 4 in the neighborhood of 8 to 12 million pixels.
HardMac also notes that rumors are also ramping up that the iPhone 6 is being readied for a projected launch in the “first semester” of 2012 featuring a completely different design from previous models, which would suggest that the iPhone 5 will be an evolutionary development from the iPhone 4, and not a clean slate redesign.
Back in the U.S.A. and points east, AppleInsider’s Neil Hughes cites a note issued by Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on Monday contending that the iPhone 5 will only have “slight modifications” from the iPhone 4′s spec., including the faster A5 processor, an 8 megapixel rear camera and a Qualcomm baseband that would enable the same phone to support both GSM and CDMA wireless services (but no 4G?), and that it will not enter trial production until August and full production in September due to component shortages caused by the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disasters, and to finally be released for sale for sale likely after Apple begins its next fiscal year beginning in October, with anticipated overall iPhone (4 and 5) shipping volumes of 28 million and 32 million units for 2011.
However, Hughes says Kuo thinks Apple will at least give us a peek at the iPhone 5 at the World Wide Developers Conference to be held June 6-10 at San Francisco, and that due to its similarity to the iPhone 4, one of its primary selling points will be the new iOS 5 operating system, which of course will support the iPhone 4 as well. The Register’s Rik Myslewski, on the other hand, says he thinks a preview of the iPhone 5 at the WWDC is highly unlikely, given that with the he iPhone 4 is still selling quite well, undercutting it by announcing that an improved model that won’t appear until months later would be poor strategy.
Hughes observes that Kuo’s track record for predictive accuracy is pretty strong, his having called the iPad 2′s retention of a 1024 x 768 resolution display and use of lower-quality iPod touch cameras instead of iPhone 4 units.
Kuo predicted last month that Apple would begin white iPhone 4 production in April to ship late in the month, and concurs with the European rumoristas that the iPhone 6 will likely be rolled out during in the first half of 2012 in order to counter “fierce competition” from Android-based products.

<< Read Now >>

Late iPhone 5 Release

The iPhone 4 has been Apple’s most successful iPhone by far, as the delayed release of the Verizon iPhone and rumors of a white iPhone 4 on the way keep sales brisk. But is the success of the iPhone 4 pushing back the iPhone 5?
You know the old saying: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
For as much as Apple analysts have pointed to the rise of the Droid platform in 2010 as the first shot fired in the smartphone wars, and that the iPhone 5 has to “keep pace” with Droid technology to remain competitive, iPhone 4 sales remain brisk. Apple sold nearly 40 million iPhones in 2010 alone — most of which were of the iPhone 4 variety — and the launch of the Verizon iPhone in 2011 and the soon-to-be white iPhone 4 (which we predicted as a spring 2011 release back in October) all point to continued robust sales throughout the spring and early summer.
Given this reality, why are we even surprised that the iPhone 5 remains sidelined?
There’s no doubt that the iPhone 5 has been completely designed and tested by Apple — there have even been rumors of iPhone 5 prototypes being spotted from North America to Asia. But we know for a fact that Apple has yet to begin iPhone 5 production, with some reports indicating that even no “production roadmap” has been presented to Apple’s component suppliers and assemblers.
Now, just because the news leak-prone Asian suppliers haven’t seen the production roadmap doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist: the iPhone 5 could most likely be put into production at a moment’s notice by Apple, since by this time, all of the plans and specs for the next iPhone are in place. But when you consider how successful the iPhone 4 has been over the past 10 months or so, why even bother rushing the iPhone 5?
To be sure, a severely-stalled iPhone 5 could irk enough stalwart iPhone users to defect to Droid, as we have reported on in another article. But there is another angle to this iPhone 5 delay: Apple may may have realized that stalling the iPhone 5 will funnel more prospective iPhone users to the iPhone 4.
After all, why spend all of the time, money, and resources to improve on the iPhone 4 if it’s still selling like hotcakes?
I often use Nintendo’s various gaming consoles as an analogy to Apple’s own marketing and production logic, and the Wii proves this rationale beautifully: the Wii hasn’t been updated in years, and yet the console — and its litany of games — continue to sell robustly. All Nintendo has to do every year is refresh the product with something cosmetic — such as the black and red Wiis — or the addition of new accessories, like the Wii Motion Plus.
In many ways, the white iPhone 4 is akin to these above-mentioned examples, and a simple, cost-effective way of extending the lifecycle of the iPhone 4.
Will Apple Wait Until 2012 to Release the iPhone 5?
Up until this point, the iPhone 5 News Blog hasn’t entertained rumors that the iPhone 5 could get pushed back as far as 2012 — for the most part, we’ve stuck to our belief that it will make its debut at the end of the summer. (And we were the first blog to predict a late-summer release of the iPhone 5, by the way.) However, the only factor that supports the notion that the iPhone 5 could be released as late as 2012 is the continued sales success of the iPhone 4.
In the first quarter of 2011 alone, Apple has sold 16.24 million iPhones. And with the release of the white iPhone 4 sometime in April or May, as well as continued rumors of the late iPhone 5, it isn’t unrealistic to imagine that Apple may come close to doubling up on sales at the end of the second quarter.
With all of this in mind, perhaps the most effective way of ensuring a timely release of the iPhone 5 is for people to stop buying the iPhone 4?

<< Read Now >>