Without much surprise, Steve Jobs announced global launch of the 3G iPhone as of the 11th of July. Technical novelty (only for iPhone version 1 users, Nokia users already have that) is a GPS support. There are no much other news. Disappointingly the camera remains only 2 megapixel. It is also not confirmed that the phone will support video calling. The color is black or white, like iBooks. Perhaps we can expect iPhonePro soon in silver?
As anticipated with SDK beta, 3G iPhone is powered with software version 2. Disappointing news for developers is that Apple follows Symbian practice in locking software by certification requirement. Developing even free applications for iPhone requires participating in “standard program” which costs 99US$ (”enterprise program” sosts 299US$). It is not currently known how long would it take to test an application and get it certified, but the advantage is that the application would be distributed through the Apple store.
Clearly new iPhone targets enterprise users with the synchronization support for MS Exchange (too bad for Notes and GroupWise users) . There is a potential for dethroning BlackBerry in that market. However, I am not convinced that iPhone’s 10 million units sold in 2008 objective will seriously damage Symbian’s hundreds of millions units sold figures.
Certainly I will keep my Nokia N95 for a while (at least until the expiration of my 2 years contract with the mobile operator) And I will continue using it to access mobile Internet, together with geotagging, 5 megapixel camera and full 3G speed (with video calling). Moreover, I will blog even more with my N95 thanks to Wavelog version 2 (still in beta though).
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