Lehman Brothers Debunk Holiday Release of iPhone Nano (Try Hosted Kerio MailServer)

Lehman Brothers Debunk Holiday Release of iPhone Nano
While the Daily Mail may have wet people’s appetite with rumors of an iPhone nano earlier this week, new analyst reports may be putting a damper on claims of a holiday launch. Analyst Firm Lehman Brothers, feel that Apple’s supply chain would not appear to be in line with a diet iPhone until next year. [...]

While the Daily Mail may have wet people’s appetite with rumors of an iPhone nano earlier this week, new analyst reports may be putting a damper on claims of a holiday launch.

Analyst Firm Lehman Brothers, feel that Apple’s supply chain would not appear to be in line with a diet iPhone until next year. Analyst Ben Reitzes advised his clients in a recent report noting, “While we believe Apple is working on a lower-end iPhone form factor, we do not think one will come until Spring 2009.” via ElectricPig.

This certainly seems to be suggesting that Apple does have plans to rollout a slimmed down version of the iPhone and is no longer a question of if, but rather when.

The evidence of a Spring 2009 arrival would would seem far more plausible than a holiday launch as Apple’s on-going struggle to meet the demand for the current iPhone 3G market, which will be expanding to 20 more countries by late August and 30 more by the end of the year, has been a difficult road.

Reitzes added, “While we have picked up indications of a product like this in the supply chain, it doesn’t appear that the company has yet solidified the form factor, so it may be hard to get it finalized in time for the holidays.”

Additionally 9to5Mac has posed an interesting theory that the Daily Mail’s sources may have botched rumors of an iPhone nano, confusing it with Apple’s plans to upgrade the iPod line. Perhaps they have mistaken what could be a multi-touch iPod nano for a smaller version iPhone.

Apple in Hot Water Over Lawsuit Alleging Labor Violations
Apple may have some serious explaining to do as one former employee is shedding light on some serious violations of employee rights. As a network engineer at Apple for over a decade, David Walsh has pretty much seen it all. Yet now, it seems that he has reached his breaking point with the company that [...]

Apple may have some serious explaining to do as one former employee is shedding light on some serious violations of employee rights.

As a network engineer at Apple for over a decade, David Walsh has pretty much seen it all. Yet now, it seems that he has reached his breaking point with the company that has built a reputation on overworking their engineers, as he has made claims that workers are not being compensated for mandatory overtime work.

Walsh has since filed a class action lawsuit against the Cupertino based company, citing that Apple has manipulated various job titles designated to IT workers which has made them exempt from federal overtime pay as well as numerous other rights delegated by federal and California law.

The suit details that Apple’s IT employees are often required to work days exceeding 8 hours as well as weeks of over 40 hours of labor. Many are additionally required to be on call 24 hours a day for periods of up to a week, and any work that is put in while on call is not compensated. The final kicker may be the fact that these employees are often denied breaks as the law mandates.

Walsh insists that while, “federal law provides exemption for employees in management or supervisory roles,” the job titles have been manipulated to appear otherwise, even though all work is directed and requires initial approval by management. The lawsuit itself, cites violations of Federal Labor and Standards Act as well as California Labor Code and Industrial Workers Wage Order Requirements.

It is not surprising that employees who are worked to the bone that are not appropriately compensated will inevitably reach their brink. Whether there is an element of truth to these allegations or not has yet to be determined. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to these accusations, as a company that is sitting on over $20 billion in the bank, will not be looked well upon if their employees federally granted rights are not even being met.

[via ArsTechnica]

The Results are in; First Million iPhone 3G Sales Breakdown
Details have been emerging about where exactly those fabled one million iPhone 3G’s that sold in just 3 days went to.  Medialets has posted the results of a recent Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research report that breaks down the sale statistics. Last month, Apple had officially released the announcement that the 1 million mark had been [...]

Details have been emerging about where exactly those fabled one million iPhone 3G’s that sold in just 3 days went to.  Medialets has posted the results of a recent Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research report that breaks down the sale statistics.

Last month, Apple had officially released the announcement that the 1 million mark had been broken over the course of three days.  An impressive milestone, to say the least.  While the first generation iPhone took 74 days to accomplish the same goal, it is tough to compare the two, as the 3G was released in 21 different countries simultaneously.

It would come as no surprise that the U.S. would make up a significantly large amount of the total units sold, boasting an impressive 60% for a total of 600,000.  Following behind was Japan, ringing in a total of 70,00 devices sold, a factor of almost ten times less than those sold in the States.  As expected, Germany and France were close on Japan’s heels with 69,000 and 67,000 units sold respectively.  These top four nations contribute to a factor of 81% of the total iPhone 3G’s sold during those first 72 hours.

The results for carrier distribution would not come as much of a surprise either, as it primarily follows suit with the amount of devices sold in the country that the carriers operate in.  AT&T is quite fittingly far ahead of the pack, followed by T-Mobile, Orange, and SoftBank.

Our iPhone World Map shows all the information regarding iPhone rate plans, pricing, coverage and Apple’s plans for global domination.

Former Apple Employee Spills The Beans on Apple’s Internal Internet Projects
Chuq von Rospach, a former Apple employee who worked behind the scenes on Apple’s email lists, for a very, very long time, spills the beans on what it’s like to work for Eddy Cue, the new head of the Mobile Me team, who is reporting directly to Steve Jobs. The following is taken from Chuq von [...]

Chuq von Rospach, a former Apple employee who worked behind the scenes on Apple’s email lists, for a very, very long time, spills the beans on what it’s like to work for Eddy Cue, the new head of the Mobile Me team, who is reporting directly to Steve Jobs.

The following is taken from Chuq von Rospach’s post explaining some of the Mobile Me launch disaster situation, as well as attempting to debunk the Leaked Internal Email written by Steve Jobs to the Mobile Me team we reported about yesterday.

Rospach: I expect a bunch of friends and people I know were involved in that project, and I feel really bad for them. But the reality is, the thing wasn’t ready and the release got botched. And Steve and Apple aren’t terribly tolerant of that kind of major screwup. I expect heads have rolled and there are a few tanned hides waiting for the welts to go away.

Excerpt from Steve’s Email: “It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” he says. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”

Rospach:There are two aspects to this. Steve is absolutely right — but also remember that ultimately, it was Steve’s call to go live (or not). he’s never been afraid to say “this ain’t ready” and pull something from release; his rehearsals for MacWorld Keynotes are legendary (and sometimes brutal), and stuff literally has disappeared in the last 24 hours, if he wasn’t satisfied with it.

So Steve has some responsibility here a swell, but with a caveat: someone he depended on to tell him what reality was told him it was ready to roll, and Steve believed him. And whoever told him that was wrong, and made everyone (including Steve and Apple) look bad. That’s not a good way to advance your career at Apple.

That this release was botched isn’t about Apple not having a clue, but about the MobileMe people either blowing it (I can think of any number of scenarios — scaling it hard). The ultimate failure seemed to be more capacity planning mistakes than anything else, if I’m guessing right. but the ultimate failure was not being willing to tell Steve “we aren’t ready” and taking that heat. They thought they could release and make it work, and guessed very wrong (or thought they were in good shape, which is worse).

Some areas of Apple “run their own show”, effectively using Apple’s IT datacenters as a hosting facilities. Others build and operate within Apple’s IT infrastructure. One of the groups that basically runs its own IT outside of Apple’s core IT group is Eddy Cue’s group — because of the way stuff Eddy is in charge of gets built and managed.

Eddy’s name isn’t familiar to most apple people, but he’s in his way as important to apple’s success as Jonathan Ives. His specialty: the back-end infrastructures that make Apple’s online universe tick. His groups did the Apple online store, iTools (later .Mac), iTunes store, etc, etc. It’s the not-sexy part of the company, but it’s the guts that make all of the sexy front ends actually work.

I’m actually amazed that Eddy hasn’t been poached by a startup, much as I’m amazed that Tim Cook hasn’t been poached — but the reality is that if you survive and become one of Steve’s inner core of people he trusts (and that ain’t easy) — you tend to stay. Apple doesn’t generally get poached by startups or other places at the exec level often, anyone notice?

Rospach’s thoughts on Eddy Cue, Mobile Me’s head honcho, who reports directly to Steve Jobs.

I’m actually amazed that Eddy hasn’t been poached by a startup, much as I’m amazed that Tim Cook hasn’t been poached — but the reality is that if you survive and become one of Steve’s inner core of people he trusts (and that ain’t easy) — you tend to stay. Apple doesn’t generally get poached by startups or other places at the exec level often, anyone notice?

A lot of that is because it’s not easy working for Steve, but if you can do it, you get to do really great stuff, and that’s addictive. trust me. you just don’t see people running off from apple to CEO a startup the way you do Yahoo or Google, not out of the top few levels of the company.

Eddy’s real specialty is to be able to take what Steve asks for, implement it, hit the target dates, make it work, and KEEP THE DAMN THING A SECRET UNTIL STEVE ANNOUNCES IT. That’s a big reason why his team is self-contained. It also means his people can do what needs to be done to implement things that never existed before and which don’t fit into normal IT “this is how we do things” standards. he and his teams spends most of his time off in uncharted territory where a need to be innovative and flexible is a must, and yet they have to do it on huge scales.

On the other hand, Eddy’s no easier to work with than Steve is, for obvious reasons. I invariably warned people not to hire into his groups unless they wanted to donate their life to the cause. When I was there, I worked pretty closely with various parts of his world, and it was populated with equal who were just as maniacal about this as Eddy and steve and people who were in process of burning out. Not much middle ground (but it works).

(full disclosure time: Laurie worked with Eddy way back when; me, I once almost got re-orged into his world until management remembered my vow to die before working for him, and re-arranged reality to fit (otherwise, lists.apple.com never would have existed….) — but I had a chance to deal with him while I was there and I’ve got a lot more respect for him now than I used to. I still wouldn’t want to work in the kind of grind his organization demands, though, but it does pretty good work under really scary conditions.

So you can bet, MobileMe will get fixed.

For the full article, (must read) click here.

Sprint Execs Love the Instinct; Dismiss iPhone as a Threat
Sprint Execs have learned to love the Instinct handset. In fact, the only time you see them without one in their hands, is when someone nearby has an iPhone they’re playing with. In Sprint’s second-quarter performance discussions with Wall Street analysts this morning, the company’s execs made it abundantly clear that they are not threatened by [...]

Sprint Execs have learned to love the Instinct handset. In fact, the only time you see them without one in their hands, is when someone nearby has an iPhone they’re playing with.

In Sprint’s second-quarter performance discussions with Wall Street analysts this morning, the company’s execs made it abundantly clear that they are not threatened by the iPhone. And that the Instinct is all they need.

Although Sprint lost nearly 901,000 subscribers during the third quarter, CEO Dan Hesse is putting heavy focus on essential, core goals… like keeping existing subscribers. Good luck trying to squeeze innovation into rate plans and contracts. The Samsung Instinct, and Sprint’s new Simply Everything calling plans, are making a big difference, Hesse said.

Additionally, Hesse said, “Our Instinct drew rave reviews and broke sales records at Sprint retail stores and at Best Buy.” Sounds like typical CEO jargon, where their product is the best one in the marketplace. But, I’m pretty sure Apple, Steve Jobs, the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G had a lot to do with Sprint’s fail rate.

“Sprint is faring much better this year than it did during the debut of the original iPhone at slowing the exodus of its subscribers lured away by the sleek and shiny device.” John Garcia, a senior Sprint executive, said in attempt to dismiss those concerns.

The impact of the iPhone has been muted, he said. “Last year we didn’t have the Instinct,” Garcia said. “This year we do. We are very proud of the phone.”

Sprint also seems to be very happy with its cellular network. So much so, that they seemed to go a little too far when dismissing AT&T’s 3G network that the new iPhone runs on. “The iPhone certainly is a nice product,” Garcia said. “It’s on a brand new 3G network a fifth the size of ours.”

Hey Sprint, wake us up when you have anything worth looking at, ok?

via Sprint Connection

America Movil Announces Future iPhone 3G Release Plans; 10 New Countries
According to CNNMoney.com, Mexico’s America Movil, Latin America’s largest mobile phone operator, announced plans to launch the iPhone 3G in 10 more countries in the region at the end of the month. In an America Movil (AMX) press release, the company confirmed its plans to release the iPhone in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, [...]

According to CNNMoney.com, Mexico’s America Movil, Latin America’s largest mobile phone operator, announced plans to launch the iPhone 3G in 10 more countries in the region at the end of the month.

In an America Movil (AMX) press release, the company confirmed its plans to release the iPhone in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay on August 22nd. Movil is the first carrier to offer the iPhone in Latin America, with its unveiling in Mexico earlier last month.

American Movil boasts 165.3 million wireless subscribers in 17 countries at the end of June2008. Movil’s decision to offer the iPhone 3G is part of their push to enter the third-generation mobile telephone service, as it rolls out advanced networks based on UMTS/HSDPA technology across the Latin American region. As of present, Movil has 15 countries on its 3G network.

Currently, America Movil (L) shares trade on the Mexican Stock Exchange and were up 0.5% at 25.44 pesos ($2.55) in early trading Wednesday.

Our iPhone World Map shows all the information regarding iPhone rate plans, pricing, coverage and Apple’s plans for global domination.

Kerio Moves Global Headquarters
Messaging and Security Leader Joins Other Technology Companies in the Heart of Silicon Valley

Can the iPhone Call Home and Disable Apps?
A recent report from iPhoneAtlas is showing that Apple has apparently created a ‘blacklisting mechanism’ within the iPhone OS 2.x. This mechanism allows the handset to call home, search for unauthorized applications and eventually disable them. Included in the iPhone OS is a URL that points to what appears to be a page [...]

A recent report from iPhoneAtlas is showing that Apple has apparently created a ‘blacklisting mechanism’ within the iPhone OS 2.x. This mechanism allows the handset to call home, search for unauthorized applications and eventually disable them. Included in the iPhone OS is a URL that points to what appears to be a page containing all blacklisted applications, although there are currently none listed.

Author of the book, “iPhone Open Application Development” as well as an iPhone Forensics manual, Jonathan Zdziariski notes that:

“This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.

“I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation.”

It will be interesting to see how things will play out between Apple and jaibreakers such as the Dev Team, as one would figure that all of the Installer applications will eventually make the blacklist. The Dev Team will manage to strip this off Pwned phones and Apple will combat it with new firmware updates and thus a viscous cycle will ensue.

Savvy Developers Get Trials in the iPhone App Store; Kinda
According to jkOnTheRun.com, iPhone application developers have found a way around not being able to offers users free trials of their products. Prior to the invent of the iPhone, many of us were just getting used to downloading free trials of games on our mobile phones before making the commitment of actually purchasing the application, or [...]

According to jkOnTheRun.com, iPhone application developers have found a way around not being able to offers users free trials of their products.

Prior to the invent of the iPhone, many of us were just getting used to downloading free trials of games on our mobile phones before making the commitment of actually purchasing the application, or moving on to something bigger and brighter. With iPhone Apps, we have to plunk down the $0.99 to $19.99 (or even $999) to even get the first glimpse of what the product actually has to offer. At this time, there are technical reasons as to why “trials” are not currently available. In order not to bore you, I will just tell you that they have to do with license keys, and Apple’s current inability to only offer functionality for a given length of time. In other words, once you buy it, you own it.

Today jkOnTheRun.com shared with their readers that by using the search keyword “lite” in the App Store search tab, you can find a plethora (two dozen or so) of free to discounted versions of watered-down Applications. This allows the user to, at the very least, check out the functionality of the App, as well as visuals, usability, and likability. Then, the consumer can make an educated decision as to whether or not they want to invest in said Application.

As of now, creating a “lite” version of their product is a developers solution for coaxing their way into the iPhone App purchaser’s heart. But we can expect (or hope) to see Apple’s solution in the form of free, time sensitive trials in the near future. Maybe it can squeeze its way in line behind Mobile Me?

via jkOnTheRun