Daily Debrief: Great, big Apple expectations Video

Daily Debrief: Great, big Apple expectations Video Transcript

^B00:00:00 [ Music ]

>> I'm Kara Tsuboi, CNET News.com. Welcome to the Daily Debrief. We're here with Tom Krazit to talk about the 3G iPhone, which comes out in two weeks from today, on July 11. Is that right, Tom?

>> That's right.

>> But we don't know what time of day it comes out, does it?

>> And this is a very important thing. Yes.

>> It sure it.

>> I mean last year it was happy hour with the iPhone, 6:00 in every time zone in America, which allowed people to line up early ahead of time, and you know, get after work and get out there. But this year's gonna be a little bit different, we think. There was a rumor that went around that it was gonna be eight AM in a variety of time zones. I mean, you know, there's a couple of different things about this launch. One, it's international.

>> Of course.

>> So there's gonna be a lot more countries participating.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> But the other thing's that making this launch different is that the companies have put in this in-store activation requirement.

>> Right.

>> And this is going to be interesting to watch how this works. I mean basically, if you want an iPhone 3G, you've gotta walk into the store and sign up for a two-year contract right at that moment. They won't let you leave the store with the phone unless you've already signed for the contract. The whole idea is to discourage unlocking and that kind of thing. The side effect of that, though, is that is gonna take probably 10-15 minutes per customer...

>> Yikes.

>> ...to get this phone up and running. And if there's any kind of line, like there was last year, I mean this thing could take all day. So we're hearing that it might be 8:00 in the morning as the official launch time for the iPhone 3G, but we don't have that confirmed yet, so stay tuned.

>> And that way employees would have the entire day to hopefully get through the whole line.

>> Hopefully, yes.

>> Now, do we know anything right now about supply? How many iPhones are out there? I mean if everyone waiting and wants one will be able to get one?

>> There have been a couple of analysts who contacts in Taiwan, and the system builder community over there that have thrown around numbers like 15 million iPhone 3Gs that will be made available for sale in the second half of the year. I mean those are not -- those aren't hard numbers, so it's hard to really get a sense, but they did a pretty good job last year making sure that supply was in place for at least the first three or four days. And I wouldn't expect anything different this time around.

>> And do we know how many iPhones each customer can buy when you actually get to the front of the line?

>> I do not believe they have confirmed that, but they're probably going to keep the two iPhone limit in place at least, I would think, for the first couple of weeks, just to sort of see how things go. After that, who knows? But, you know, I mean again, the limit was in place last time also because of the unlocking problem that people were buying up all these iPhones and unlocking them and reselling them...

>> Reselling, of course.

>> ...in different countries. So if there is this in-store activation requirement, it may not be as big a deal. We'll just have to wait and see how that goes.

>> And now that the phones are going to be available world wide, again, it may not be that big of a deal.

>> Exactly. Yeah, I mean that -- we will be watching to see what the unlocking market does, whether there's still any demand for that or not.

>> Yeah. Well, I'm sure in the next two weeks, we're gonna hear of probably three dozen more rumors swirling around out there about the iPhone and activation and whatnot. So...

>> At the very least.

>> At the very least. Thank you very much, Tom. I look forward to you keeping us posted on all things Apple and all things iPhone.

>> Sure.

>> Tom Krazit. I'm Kara Tsuboi, CNET News.com. We'll see you on the next Daily Debrief. ^M00:03:03 [ Music ]