The iPhone Rumors: Here We Go Again
17th Nov 2006, 08:02 GMT
The iPhone is the rumor that just won't die. It's been around so long -- and with such keening insistence -- that at least one reporter, BusinessWeek's Arik Hesseldahl, has said he's sick and tired of it. Today there is more gas to add to the fire: A Taiwan newspaper has reported that Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, also called Foxconn, has received an order for 12 million iPhones from Apple. If the report is correct, Apple will add the iPhone to its orchard sometime in the first half of next year, no doubt with much fanfare. But the cell phone market is not the music hinterland that it was two years ago, when rumors of the iPhone first began to emerge. Today, there are dozens of phones that combine voice and music, with new versions popping up monthly. Dead on Arrival? Will that knock the iPhone out of the picture? "Absolutely not," said Jupiter's Michael Gartenberg, who noted that predicting the future of a product that has not been announced, not been released, and whose exact features and pricing are still unknown is like reading tea leaves. But he also said he believes there are good reasons to think the iPhone could make a crater-sized impact on the cell phone market. First among them is history -- the history of the iPod, to be precise. "The iPod was not the first MP3 player on the market. There were quite a few others," said Gartenberg. "And they were all bad." As a result, the iPod's sleek, spare design and bevy of user-friendly features drew not only market share but also frank admiration. And according to Gartenberg, the same could happen with an iPhone if Apple pulls off another design coup. "Most of today's cell phones/music players are terrible," he said, noting they lack basic features such as "a real...
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