“Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium this week, Apple’s second in command Tim Cook talked at length about the upcoming iPhone, revealing some of the methodology that went into the product’s development as well as the executive decisions that lead to the company’s partnership with Cingular,” AppleInsider reports.
The 45 minute Q&A session was recorded and made available as a streaming QuickTime download from Apple’s website. However, the portion of Mr. Cook’s speech relating to iPhone has been transcribed by AppleInsider. A snippet:
Q: Almost from the second Steve stepped off the stage at Macworld there are people in the press and other people basically coming up with reasons why Apple can’t succeed in the phone market. Can you talk a little bit about why you think Apple will be a success?
A: Well, I think the iPhone is a revolutionary product. And Steve mentioned this at Macworld. And I think this is a very, very good point. Revolutionary products only come along so often. You know, Apple had the Macintosh in 1984 that reinvented the personal computer industry. The iPod in 2001 which reinvented the whole music industry. And we think the iPhone is that class product for the cell phone industry.
Step back and look at the [iPhone] and think about what it is. It’s a very small, thin, lightweight device. It’s a revolutionary cell phone. It has visual voicemail, which if you’re not familiar with that, essentially looks like e-mail. So you can select precisely the voicemail that you want to hear, not the order they happen to come in. It’s the best iPod Apple has ever done. And it’s this really cool internet device that has desktop class email, browsing, maps and searching, all in one product. And so I think people are going to be amazed and delighted over it. So we’ll have to see. Obviously there are people who would prefer us not to be successful in this. But I think this is a revolutionary product. And we’ll see what customers think because that is the most important thing.
More in the full article here.
Connie Guglielmo reports for Bloomberg, “Apple Inc. predicted that 10 million customers will pay at least $499 to buy an iPhone next year because they realize most free mobile phones are worthless. ‘A lot of people pay zero for the cell phone. Guess why? That’s what it’s worth,’ Apple Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook said yesterday at a conference in Las Vegas. Some wireless providers win customers by offering phones that lack the latest features free with service contracts.”
Guglielmo reports, “Up to 75 percent of U.S. iPhone buyers probably will be first-time subscribers to AT&T Inc.’s mobile-phone service, AT&T Chief Financial Officer Rick Lindner said today. The phones will only work on AT&T’s wireless network, formerly known as Cingular Wireless LLC. ‘The majority of those customers, two-thirds to three- fourths, will be coming from outside of our current wireless customer base and that’s a good thing,’ Lindner said during a speech at a Merrill Lynch & Co. conference in New York.”
Full article here.
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Oh please, everybody’s on the hype wagon, and yes, the phone will sell regardless of the usability issues. No one seems to remember when Handspring first came out the Treo, they offered a graffiti input option and a keyboard option. If you look today, only the keyboard option is left.
Lol Spoken like true apple fan boys. Be caureful when patting yourselves on the back for being revolutionary by choosing apple, you’re likely to break your own arm. You’re a niche market and needed to have dual boot before you could climb out of the black hole of uselessness that MAC was in. I have watched the demos of the iphone and you know what, none of the stuff they have is that revolutionary. Touch screens yep they exist already in phones, mega pixel cameras – hmmm been around for a while now, phones with hard drives that play mp3s lets see samsung is already on their second generation. You’re gonna pay 600 dollars so you can carry around an apple logo and say “hey I’m cool, I’m in the club”. The main graphics card makers are coming out with cel phone interfaces that will blow the Iphone away. And by the way Creative had hard drive mp3 players long before the IPOD ever came out and they worked better too, the IUPOD was just hyped more. Anything else you like to claim the iphone is going to revolutionize, like contact lists? Oh ..oh heres one that you can truly claim realy bad battery life and a false smugness.
Hey Rob, I get it, your just trying to be another Zune Tang right? Man, you toss out every BS cliche’ you can string into a paragraph and act like it is common wisdom. Heh, I get it, pretty funny in a neo-expressionist, post modern sort of way.
If advertising could really sell crap for more than a month, people like me in advertising would me multi, multi millionaires. Advertising can make a buzz but it can’t sustain a product in record breaking numbers for multiple years at a time.
Okay, before the Macheads jump on me and ask “whata ’bout MicroShaft?” Well, advertising doesn’t carry them either, their OEM contracts make them the real bucks. They aren’t even really factoring in upgrades, they know it will come in sales of new boxes. MS has wanted Vista rollout to be like ’95 again, but the advertising isn’t helping.
Robby, you would like to believe that people who don’t buy the same stuff as you, must be idiot drones. They are too stupid or vain to see the “truth” ony you can see. I bet you use that attitude with lots of things, football teams, TV shows, political parties, etc.
Go ahead, admit it.
Rob:
Lol Spoken like true apple fan boys…
Perhaps you didn’t notice that this is a website for fans of Apple. In case you missed it, please allow me to point you in the direction of this site’s title.
You’re a niche market and needed to have dual boot before you could climb out of the black hole of uselessness that MAC was in…
<u>We</u> didn’t need dual boot, it was potential switchers that needed dual boot. In fact, many people didn’t need dual boot, and still don’t, but it gave them the security of knowing that if they did run into something that they needed to run, that can only be done on Windows, that option is available.
I have watched the demos of the iphone and you know what, none of the stuff they have is that revolutionary…
Define “none.”
Oh right, you do make an attempt:
Touch screens yep they exist already in phones…
How about multi-touch? Can you find one of those?
mega pixel cameras – hmmm been around for a while now…
No one has claimed that the camera is revolutionary.
phones with hard drives that play mp3s lets see samsung is already on their second generation…
iPhone doesn’t have a hard drive.
You’re gonna pay 600 dollars so you can carry around an apple logo and say “hey I’m cool, I’m in the club”…
No, I’m going to pay $600 to have a phone that actually does what it is advertised to do.
The main graphics card makers are coming out with cel phone interfaces that will blow the Iphone away…
Where are you going with this one? Do you really think that people are going to spend this kind of money to play Halo on a cell phone? Graphics? This was never about graphics.
And by the way Creative had hard drive mp3 players long before the IPOD ever came out …
No one has ever said otherwise.
and they worked better too…
Worked better? They sucked. I had no interest in MP3 technology until after experiencing iPod. That isn’t being a fan boy either. I didn’t think that I would have any use for a “$500 Walkman.” Guess what… I was wrong!
Anything else you like to claim the iphone is going to revolutionize, like contact lists?…
Visual Voicemail. <u>I would buy the iPhone for this feature alone.</u>
Oh ..oh heres one that you can truly claim realy bad battery life and a false smugness…
You must be privy to secret information. I have not yet seen battery life published for the iPhone. Thank you for pointing out this weakness to me.
:rolls eyes: