News
Apple unveils 3G iPhone
Stuart O'Brien Jun 9 2008, 7:35pm
Apple's new 3G iPhone will roll out in 22 countries on July 11th.
Steve Jobs has unveiled the 3G iPhone (or iPhone 3G as it's officially called) at this year's WWDC, citing the technology as the product's next challenge.
Apple's top 22 markets (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the US) will get the iPhone 3G on July 11th, with 48 more countries to follow before year-end.
Saying that the firm had learned a lot from the first version of the phone, Jobs said that Apple would be seeking to resolve the biggest problem the iPhone has faced: its cost.
An 8GB iPhone 3G will cost $199 and the 16GB version $299. That compares very favourably to $399 for the original 2.5G 8GB device and $599 for the 16GB 2.5G version.
"Twice as fast and half the price", as the freshly delivered press release states.
The standout technical addition apart from the HSDPA 3G stuff is GPS functionality.
iPhone 3G includes the new iPhone 2.0 software with both the iPhone SDK and key enterprise features such as support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.
Meanwhile, the highly-anticipated App Store on iPhone will work over both cellular networks and Wi-Fi, and will be available in 62 countries at launch.
Speaking at the launch event about the success of the first iPhone, Jobs said: "In that first year we sold 6m iPhones since we ran out some weeks ago. We did figure out what our next challenges are... the next mountain we have to climb to go to the next level."
Via Macworld.
