Daily Debrief: iPhone 3G's unveiling Video

Daily Debrief: iPhone 3G's unveiling Video Transcript

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>> Steve Jobs took center stage at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference today, where it was, obviously, all iPhone all the time. I'm Charlie Cooper, here with my colleague from News.com, Tom Krazet [assumed spelling]. Tom you were there. So Jobs announced an upgraded iPhone, faster internet connection, satellite navigation capabilities. And the units are priced about two hundred dollars lower than previous models. How did all of that jibe with the advanced hypes and leaks?

>> Pretty closely, actually. I mean for once the rumor mill seemed to be pretty on board. I mean 3G was a no brainer, we knew that was coming almost since the day the first one was announced last year. And actually Jobs and A T and T [inaudible] spoken about 3G capability in the past. GPS we sort of knew, but that was coming you know, a little closer to the event. It wasn't as much advanced hype on that. And the price cut had been predicted I think out of the UK. The Financial Times had a report on that a couple of weeks ago.

>> These developer conferences take on the shape of a revival for Apple fans. Was the crowd excited, disappointed, relative to years past with what he had to say?

>> Well you know, I mean nothing will top the first MacWorld where he unveiled iPhone in terms of audience reactions and things like that. But people were pretty receptive to a lot of what you know, he had to say. I mean again, it's not like anybody didn't know that 3G was coming, or you know, even GPS for that matter. But the price cut was I think more surprising to the audience, and they reacted accordingly.

>> Here's what we've got. Two hundred dollars for an eight gigabyte model, three hundred dollars for sixteen gigs. The old models sold for four hundred, five hundred bucks respectively. No thirty two gig version, but no problem. Still that was enough to get the crowd going, especially with the 3G, which I think is important.

>> Yeah. I mean this was a phone that people were gonna be excited about anyway, because 3G is one of those things where everybody will love that, and notice that immediately as an improvement to their phone. I mean the amount of time that it takes to download a web page right now on the Edge phone is really annoying. And you know, while it's still kind of long, this isn't gonna be like your broadband on your PC, it's much better, and much improved. And you can go visit you know, web pages with heavier amounts of images or video, or you can do that and you won't drive yourself crazy.

>> Another important thing I though was Jobs' offer to enterprise support update, that factors into his bigger ambitions. Can you give us a brief update as to what that was about?

>> Well that was you know, an extension of what they announced in March, was the ability to do the push email on your iPhone, synced up with you know, your Microsoft Exchange server at work. And some of the security things are good along there too, you know, that's the kind of thing that the corporate buyers want to see. I mean what's gonna be interesting is whether or not that technology actually does spur companies to start buying these things by the truckload. I mean the way that iPhones are getting into the Enterprise is through the ground up, you know, through people bringing them in after they buy them at their local Apple or A T and T store. Does this mean now that companies are gonna say hey Apple, give me ten thousand of these for my you know, worldwide sales force. I don't know yet, that's gonna be an interesting development to watch.

>> I'm sure there'll be a lot of romancing of IT directors. As far as the GPS goes, do the Garmans and the Tom Toms of the world have much to worry about?

>> Well maybe, you know? The more you put into one device, the less you're able to do with stand alone devices that only do a couple of things. I mean you know, but I mean is the iPhone going to totally cannibalize the iPod market just because it can play music too? You know, I don't think that's necessarily true, so.

>> One other thing, Jobs said that the product would be available come July. Last time I looked, we're still at the beginning of June. There's a bit of a gap here.

>> This was the most surprising thing I think to those of us who have been watching this 3G saga unfold over the last couple of months, that they would miss the opportunity to announce one before June twenty ninth, which will be the one year anniversary of the first iPhone's debut. And you know, the crowd, there were a couple of hushed whispers at that one, there was definitely some surprise in the hall at that news. And what that also means is that Apple's gonna go something like six weeks without shipping a single iPhone. They started to run out of these in mid May. They'll go the whole month of June without shipping one, and you know, are they gonna have a total you know, huge shipment available on July ninth? I don't know. You know, they'll probably ramp their way up, they'd work their way up from there. So this is gonna be what's interesting to see from here on out. Apple said ten million iPhones in 2008. It's cheaper now, has the 3G capability. Is that gonna be enough to get them to that number, even though they're missing six weeks of shipments? That's what we're waiting to find out.

>> And when did Apple say they'll ship one to you?

>> They are not shipping me one. But from what I understand they will accept my money for one.

>> Thanks Tom. I'm Charlie Cooper. ^M00:04:54 [ music ]