Apple's Cabbage Patch Phone Due June 29th
Apple has announced that the iPhone will go on sale on June 29th. The phone has a large touchscreen, will play video, play music, and display and store photos. Apple is hoping for --and can expect-- a sort of frenzy usually reserved for hard -to-find toys at Christmastime for the units, which come with either 4 or 8 gigabytes of flash memory and will cost $500 or $600 respectively.
Worldwide cellphone sales are running at about 1 billion units a year, and Jobs noted that if Apple took a 1 percent market share in 2008, that would mean the company would sell 10 million iPhones.
The debut of the iPhone poses a challenge to other handset makers such as Motorola Inc. and Nokia, who are also selling highly profitable high-end "smart phones."
AT&T, the biggest U.S. phone company, is also hoping the iPhone's draw will give it an edge over rivals such as Verizon Communications Inc., and Sprint Nextel Corp.
It appears the usual ratios apply to this Apple offering: 99% of the world's media talk about it all day long, while 99% of the buying public ignore it, and Apple makes a huge profit on a high margin item. It highlights what an accomplishment the iPod was for Apple. It's really hard to become the industry standard at anything.
