Hon Hai, aka Foxconn Electronics, won't comment or confirm, but the cat seems to really be out of the bag now. This latest batch of iPhone reports feels like less of a rumor than previous iterations. According to this Forbes article, Hon Hai has "secured contracts from Apple Computer for 12 mln mobile handsets that also function as music players, the Commercial Times quoted industry sources as saying." Yes, that's 12 million. Also, that "Apple will launch the mobile handsets in the first half of next year."Financial analysts everywhere are going to be speculating (or continuing to) on what this move could mean to AAPL. We happened upon the Bear Stearns IT Bytes newsletter from earlier today and they've done a bit of extrapolating. They say the "iPhone" (we really don't know if that's what these handsets will be called, but we'll continue to refer to them as iPhones to keep things simple) should/would be priced around $300 and sales could earn shareholders an EPS (earnings per share) of about $0.70 on $6 billion in incremental revenue. They are assuming between 20 million and 29 million handsets would ship during 2007, implying a potential market share of approximately 3% of the total mobile phone market. Furthermore, they guestimate that an iPhone would "cannibalize iPod (mostly nano) sales" and assumed that iPhone would eat into around 30% of existing overall iPod sales.
I'm an AAPL shareholder myself, but all those numbers and forward-looking statements make my head hurt, so I'll stop now. What was more interesting about the IT Bytes newsletter and other Bear emails I've seen is that Bear Stearns is aggressively promoting the iPod itself (and AAPL by association) by including a picture of the iPod in every single email they send (html + an attachment). The iPod is unmistakably a part of their BearCasts logo. It's not a generic digital audio player. It's Thanks, Mike!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
11-15-2006 @ 2:10PM
BLACKOUT said...
"It's not a generic digital audio player. It's a 3rd gen iPod, no doubt about it."
it's a b&w 4th gen.
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11-15-2006 @ 2:36PM
Ed said...
BLACKOUT beat me to it :( 4th gen it is.
Many companies use iPods as if they were generic, I don't think it necessarily implies an ulterior motive.
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11-15-2006 @ 2:41PM
Laurie said...
I'm not positive you guys are right about it being a 4th gen. I'm not positive I'm right either about it being a 3rd gen. I think we can all agree it's an iPod, though, right? :)
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11-15-2006 @ 2:43PM
Fraser Drew said...
4G was the first with click wheel: I have one! hehe, 3 G had touch wheel and buttons above the wheel
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11-15-2006 @ 2:45PM
Jon said...
I hope this is true... I've been holding out for one of these for a while now. That doesn't mean I'm going to actually buy one, but I will definitely take a look when they come out.
(P.S. You might want to mention that the picture of the iPhone is fake in case some people get confused)
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11-15-2006 @ 2:52PM
bob said...
:" 4G was the first with click wheel: I have one! hehe, 3 G had touch wheel and buttons above the wheel"
dont wanna be a geek but, no, the 2nd gen was 1st to have a clickwheel, after 1stgen with real moveable wheel
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11-15-2006 @ 2:57PM
Ed said...
3G was the last one with the buttons not behind the wheel, and its certainly not a 5G.
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11-15-2006 @ 3:08PM
BLACKOUT said...
back to the point?
okay, yeah, it does look like an iPhone is coming sometime soon,
just how soon?
nobody knows for sure, i'm guessing it won't be in january.
who knows.
possibly for spring.
here's hoping it's soon.
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11-15-2006 @ 3:53PM
ephraim said...
12 million handsets -- how long did it take to sell the first 12 million iPods?
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11-15-2006 @ 3:53PM
superjeff said...
I guess I have to be a little geekier than you bob. The 2nd gen has a SCROLL wheel. It still had separate buttons on the side of the wheel like the 1st gen.
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11-15-2006 @ 4:58PM
Piotr Malecki said...
Anyone know whether the phone will be CDMA or GSM?
I still have a year left (on my 3-year contract) with Bell Mobility (CDMA, Canada) so I'm currently elegible for the free hardware upgrade ($200 CDN off of retail cell phone price), but I don't know whether I should wait for Apple's iPhone (if it's CDMA) or get a new phone now (and resigning a new 3-year contract). Damn the timing.
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11-15-2006 @ 6:22PM
SubFuze said...
Piotr - 3 years?! I felt like I was selling my soul with a 2-year contract.
My guess is that they'll be GSM phones (which has a much larger world-wide footprint than CDMA).
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11-15-2006 @ 6:33PM
Caius Durling said...
It is a 4th Gen, it was the first one with the clickwheel with integrated buttons.
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11-15-2006 @ 6:41PM
Piotr Malecki said...
SubFuse: I don't much mind the 3-year contract (2 years to pay off the phone and then get a "Free" upgrade). What I do mind is that Bell has a really crappy selection of phones and the prices are quite high. The Motorola E815 which is a great BT/1.3MP/flip/dual-screen/speakerphone cell phone and was introduced in the US almost 3 years ago (almost 2 for Bell) still will cost me $99 AFTER the $200 credit. Bell has only one 2MP phone (Nokia 6275i) and 3-4 of their phones are Razrs and Razr clones.
Also my 3-year contract is nothing compared to the 5-year contract that a friend of mine signed 6 years ago (I can't understand why anyone would choose to enslave themselves for such a long period especially with a cell phone where new useful features are introduced every 12-18 months).
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11-15-2006 @ 7:46PM
Justin Gurbisz said...
Isn't that "iPhone" picture just a mock up of the LG Choclate?
Regards--- jgurbisz
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11-15-2006 @ 8:29PM
Steve Hall said...
3G, 4G. who cares? Irrelevant. What's relevant is what carriers it will work with. That's what I want to know.
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11-16-2006 @ 2:26AM
flushingmemos said...
does nobody else notice the reference to a 15" macbook in the article?
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11-16-2006 @ 9:01AM
jonathan Allen said...
when the phone does launch, don't expect it to look as much like the zune as the picture above. It will be quite apple-ified.
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11-16-2006 @ 2:20PM
Patrick said...
The Taiwanese newspaper article (http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/NewsSearch.asp?DocID=VL000000000000000000000000000323&query=APPLE) refers to Sunrex Technology as the keyboard manufacturer. I checked out Sunrex and they make the same old boring press button keyboards that we have seen on desktops, notebooks and cellphones for the last 10 years. I was hoping that the cellphone and the full-screen touch-sensitive video ipod would be combined into one product. Thus the keyboard would be virtual (and somehow Apple would solve the pains that come with that) and contextual. This kind of product could actually then be several different products as Apple sold "hard-software" which could change the function of the ipod platform. However the Sunrex reference leaves me blue.
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11-17-2006 @ 9:16AM
Vihung Marathe said...
While it is very likely that if Apple brings out a phone right now, it will be 2G - CDMA or GSM, perhaps some people might expect Apple to come out with something more cutting edge - using 3G or one of the higher speed wireless standards. We are at the cusp of a big shift in wireless technology and anyone entering this market right now will have to quite agile. I think given the current state of the infrastructure, introducing a phone GSM/CDMA is smart, but they will quickly have to move to the newer technologies.
This might be wishful thinking, but i see them introducing an unlocked SIM-free GSM phone and selling it for a price that is slightly more than an equivalent iPod.
I hope for the world's sake that the phone part of it is generic GSM (tri-band or quad-band) and not CDMA.
However, given how US-centric Apple is (just compare how much Apple promotes their products in the States with TV and print ads vs. how little they promote them in the rest of the world), it would not surprise me if they initially only launched in the US (with perhaps a US-standard only handset), and then after a few months made it available in a GSM model for the rest of the world.
Apple likes to go it alone. I do not see them tying themselves in with a carrier, but you never know. In the US it is much easier to promote your handset if you are doing it through a carrier.
It never ceases to amaze me how the US phone market is so antiquated in the way you can only get certain phones from certain carriers, and you can only use that handset with that carrier. In Europe and Asia, you can use pretty much any phone with any carrier. Here in the UK, you usually get credit towards a new phone when you sign a 1-year contract, but very rarely are those phones locked to the carrier. You can walk in to any high street mobile phone shop, and they would have a whole range of phones available and you decide which phone you want and which carrier to go with based on the calling plan and amount the carrier gives towards the phone. In other words, you can get [almost] any handset you want, not pay the full retail price (for most handsets you end up paying nothing) and use whichever carrier you wish.
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