Category Archives: iPhone

iPhone Sales, Perhaps Not So Dissapointing After All

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Yesterday, Apple announced they sold 270,000 iPhones in their last financial quarter. This is no doubt giving conniptions to people who were, only days ago, calling iPhone sales disappointing.

Earlier in the week, some members of the press seemed to be having second thoughts about their profession’s participation in the iPhone hype storm, so some of them lept upon a little fact from an AT&T earnings call that they’d only activated 140K iPhones in their last quarter, the last 30 hours of which overlapped with the iPhone’s debut.

This was terrible terrible terrible, because it was only a few weeks ago that they were hyping reporting the most breathless predictions that 700,000 or even one million iPhones had been sold shortly after launch. So they eagerly compared this information about iPhone service activations with AT&T over a 30 hour period to the most optimistic estimates for iPhone sales (ie, they compared oranges to apples) for the entire weekend. They also ignored or downplayed the fact that a lot of iPhone customers had trouble getting their phones activated that weekend, because AT&Ts systems couldn’t keep up.

Predictably, the same people who bought the earlier hype, happily swallowed this “news,” and Apple’s stock price, which had recently shot up on the positive spin, sank due to the negative spin. This drop then lead to more stories about how disappointing the iPhone was and reassured the press that they still have some influence.

Well, Apple stock is back up again. It’s recaptured everything it lost two days ago after the AT&T earnings call. The latest numbers hold up well against earlier estimates of earlier iPhone sales, many of which were in the range of between 300,000 and 500,000. Even if Sunday’s sales were 1/3rd of what they were for Friday evening and all of Saturday, it’s likely that Apple sold over 350,000 phones in the first weekend, and it looks like sales during the following week were also quite strong as most stores sold out of the phones almost as quickly as they received new shipments. I should note that even these estimates would probably have been considered optimistic back in June.

My Take on Someone Elses Take on One Month With the iPhone

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Dave Weiner writes about his first month with an iPhone. I generally share his criticisms, but he gets off to a rough start by resorting to a common but intellectually dishonest journalistic touch at the beginning

He uncritically restates the overly simplistic headline of a NY Times story, (thereby reinforcing it) and takes it at face value as a segway into the rest of his own piece.

The NY Times reports that iPhone sales are disappointing, I’d like to add that the product itself is disappointing.

This is a problem, because the NY Times story draws shakey conclusions based on suspect and incomplete data. The only data available when that story was written was the # of iPhone activations on AT&Ts service over the first 30 hours after launch. That number is not the same as the number of phones Apple sold in the first weekend, it doesn’t count Sunday, July 1st, and it doesn’t take into account the phones that people didn’t activate immediately, either because of AT&Ts systems problems that first weekend, or because the buyer didn’t have time right away.

The NYT compares the 142K phones activated in the first 30 hours to the most wildly optimistic estimates of iPhone sales for the entire weekend.

As to his critique, I agree that rendering full web pages intended for desktop browsers isn’t the ultimate mobile web experience, but I don’t think Apple thinks that is the whole story. By making the web at large practical for mobile users, Apple brings more mobile users to the web at large. This creates a larger installed base, which creates incentive for publishers to invest more effort in creating optimal experiences for users of small-form-factor devices. Plus, mobile safari gives them a rich platform for developing that experience. Apple has provided a mobile device with backwards compatibility on the web, while also providing the incentive for 3rd party developers to take advantage of the new features provided by the platform.

More Stupid iPhone Press Coverage: “Disappointing Sales”

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Apple stock took a 4% hit today because their carrier partner, AT&T announced they only activated 146,000 iphones in the last two days of June

Here is a fine friendly clue. The iPhone didn’t go on sale until 6pm eastern, 3/4 of the way through the first of those days two days. Furthermore, the optimistic estimates from various stock analysts were for the whole weekend, which included Sunday, July 1st. Finally, AT&T had trouble servicing iPhone activation requests over the weekend, so some significant number of iPhones probably weren’t activated until JULY, which would put it after the quarter AT&T was reporting earnings on.

In its second-quarter earnings report Tuesday morning, AT&T said it activated about 146,000 customers who bought the iPhone during those two days.

This number would not include buyers who purchased the device with the hopes to re-sell it over venues such as Craig’s List and eBay. However, the figure seemed to worry investors who had been primed to expect much larger numbers.

Before Tuesday, analysts had been projecting opening-weekend sales for the iPhone of between 200,000 and 400,000 units.

A few projections reached as high as 500,000 units, with analysts citing long- lines at stores and initial inventory figures for the device.Watch interview with Piper Jaffray analyst predicting initial iPhone sales of 500,000 units.

I guess “reporters” need something else to do now that they’ve beaten to death the whole “the iPhone really costs $2000,” because they cleverly included the cost of a two year service plan. Never mind that most iPhone buyers probably already have cell phone service, which would probably run them $1000 over two years anyway. That leaves us with $500-600 for the iPhone, and $480 for the incremental cost of the data service.

Secure iPhone email on Pair.com with SSL for SMTP and IMAP

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The iPhone encourages “risky” network behavior. The cellular EDGE connection is slow enough that its tempting to connect to any available WiFi network. Unfortunately this has security implications, because the network owner can peek into all your traffic if they are so inclined.

Encryption can help. Your connection to the sensitive parts of bank and retail websites is almost always encrypted SSL. Most other websites don’t use encrypted connections. There are ways to address this by using a VPN or secure proxy server with your iPhone, but neither option is easily available to the average user.

One think you can do is turn on SSL encryption for sending and receiving e-mail, which many web hosts support. These options are available in the advanced settings for each e-mail account. I had no trouble encrypting my IMAP connection, which the iPhone uses to receive new messages and manage my e-mail boxes, but it didn’t work for outgoing SMTP mail.

A little research and I found the problem. SSL encrypted IMAP and SMTP use different ports from unencrypted IMAP and SMTP. The iPhone automatically adjusts the port when you turn on SSL encryption for your IMAP connection, but keeps using the standard SMTP port when you turn it on for SMTP.

The solution is simple. For the outgoing webserver, just add the right port number (typically port 465) to the end of the hostname. If you are a pair.com customer like I am, and you use their mail server for outgoing mail, your outgoing mail server when you turn on SSL encryption for SMTP should be listed as “relay.pair.com:465”

iPhone Impressions

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The iPhone is really slick. Having a full web browser that works well on a compact device is really cool. At&t and their edge data network are definitely the weak half of this partnership. When it is good, it is *almost* good enough for most web browsing. The problem is that it often isnt good enough. Its also too slow at starting videos, which cuts into the instant gratification aspect that seems inherent in the whole idea of having such a device. WiFi hints at what things could be like when the iPhone makes it on to a less compromised mobile data network.

In the meantime there are probably a few things apple could do to improve the experience on EDGE, but that is another post.

Text entry isn’t too bad, but it does have its quirks. I’m still getting used to some of the predictive features, but that is to be expected. It bugs me that you can’t reorient the keyboard when you are on text entry mode. I think it is easier to type when the on-screen keyboard is oriented horizontally because it the keys are larger so there is less chance of hitting the wrong one. On the otherhand, if you have to edit some text its easier to do it in vertical orientation because it provides enough room to see the magnifier that lets you position the cursor. In fact, the magnifier is often offscren and useless, a substantial usabillity bug.

I realize as i type this that the predictive text entry and correction works pretty well, when it works. Unfortuntely it doesn’t work across space boundries, which often happen accidentally when trying to type letters on the bottom row.

The other annoyance i have noticed is that it can be difficult, or impossible, to position the cursor if the text on a web form is bigger than the text entry area.

I’m sure I will see other room for improvement. I’ve allready noticed some defficiencies. I expect apple to address many of them in the coming months. There are some that I worry that they will never address because the interfere with their own plans, or those of the carriers they partner with.

iPhone Hacked (partially), Thanks to “DVD Jon”

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Big news on the iPhone hacking front:

iPhone Unlocking Progress, Thanks to “DVD Jon” at iPhone Unlocked
Jon Lech Johansen, who was the first person to crack DVD encryption, has released a Windows utility called the “iPhone Activation Server,” that allows you to activate your phone without iTunes, AT&T or a credit card.

The major caveat is that an iPhone activated this way isn’t really a phone. The iPod and WiFi work, but you can’t stick in a Tmobile SIM and use it on their network. At least not yet.