I’m not so sure. So lets consider another scenario. While I’d love for the iPhone trajectory to be more open, more in support of P2P that doesn’t appear to be it’s direction. I’m inclined to believe that the “notification service” will become a “chat service” We may even get batched updates. Managing our “notifications” will be the most important aspect. Notifications are about “access” and if Apple give us more control over access and interruptions then we are more likely to love them and the phone.

Ask yourself. Can you afford to have all these apps beeping in the background etc.? Do you want them to all have the knowledge of where you are? How will you know what they do with the data? Doesn’t this notification service change the game in relation to GPS? How can we as users understand and use this information.

Apple is actually going to help us control who has access to us. As a user I want a single control point. Match this up with MobileMe and I can take control of my information flow, dependent on my environment, my current context and relationship specified with various services.

Where Apple must be so careful… is on the data side. It’s my data. My fear is they will want to sell it, market it etc. They better do it in conjunction with what I want.

It was pointed out to me this am that this limitations on apps at a time isn’t the way we run our desktops or laptops. Then we have never really run our desktops as an integrated part of personal networks. In fact many turn off apps like chat or twitter that are intrusive or interrupt. I also am wondering how the iPhone developments will change our relationships with our laptops, our PC’s our home entertainment systems etc.

The social phone is more than just what it does, it is the new controls it will allow us. Let’s hope Apple is really thinking about us.

I only know about taking apart iPhones from what I see on Youtube and from the general spec sheets. Today Apple announced their new 3G iPhone at $199 worldwide. That means some significant cost cutting and also being smart vs the competition with the feature set. That means the new sales target is off the previous charts. With a little more info a good analyst should be able to create an effective prediction. How many must Apple sell? One thing is possible, it could be the best selling smartphone of all time by Christmas. Then the carriers may get greedy with their new plans and….targets will be missed.

How does Apple cut costs?

• First run 6 million units; 3G production 30m? What’s the impact? Even 20 million?
• Keep the same chip; no upgrade in processing power.
• Keep the storage to 8gb and 16gb (and charge a huge premium for 8 extra gigs of storage) So 16gb subsidizes the 8gb.
• Keep the same screen.
• Change the backplate from aluminum to plastic. Make it cheap for carriers to put their own backplates on.
• New battery / higher volume / lower cost.

How do they keep costs down vs Nokia smartphones and others?

• Continue with the 2mpx camera, no auto focus or second camera and ignore video calls for now. Oh how I wish for a decent camera.
• No streaming bluetooth in stereo which saves power? and makes for a cheaper antenna no doubt although it frustrates me.? Still not sure about this.
• Forget about adding a keyboard and keyboard lights. It’s just software and use less buttons.
• Use one cord for both the charging and the synchronization.
• Use a smaller box to ship in and eliminate paper instructions and CD’s. Ship many more per container. Lower freight costs.
• Provide a simpler headset and mic unit.
• Make one charger with plugs that swap out. It is more elegant and you can sell more plugs.

Adding Cost:

• Add 3G antenna (but the comp has this!)
• Add GPS capability (again the competition increasingly has this at the top end)

Net net this one costs them quite a lot less…. and they will get a subsidy payment upfront from the carrier. Appears profitable.
Note on volumes:

• The Nokia 1100 is deemed the worlds best selling mobile phone. Nokia has sold over 200 million of them. Apple sold over 100m iPods and Sony over 115m PS2’s.
• 10+ million ipods shipped (which type??) in the first quarter of 2008 and 1.7m iPhones.
• 69.5 million PCs were shipped in the first quarter of 2008
• First quarter 2008 sales of Symbian phones were 18.5 million.

So if you are the competition you have to match the costs as well as the utility. I really don’t think you can keep building mobile phones the way the industry has been. Apple proves that the screen not only saves cost but makes up for it in design utility.

The lesson here may be important for more than the mobile industry. The iPhone is about to invent a new genre of games. (Why can’t it stream game outputs to a TV? iWii?) Concurrently, I keep looking at it and asking why I can’t have one that is paperback sized… or notebook sized. Where’s my folding screen? Apply the same type of cost cutting to a laptop and where might it go? What would a kids “slate” look like where they can draw letters on a larger screen etc. What happens when Crayola provides the markers without the ink?

That’s it enough on iPhone today. Unlike the US auto industry this thing designed in California might be more than a game changer.

Is the walled garden more walled than before?

• While the iPhone now reaches every country with deals and a promised (max price $199 everywhere) the question becomes what’s the contract?
• Can I unlock it? Etc. Do I have to go to the iTunes store?
• Will the big players abuse my trust?

We know that Apple has convinced the carriers that there is no other phone that can take them into the 3G world with the same impact and into the new use cases. The proof is already there in browsing. Signing all these carriers is a big deal. That they are all salivating and about to push the iPhone globally as their number one phone is an almost certainty. It’s the biggest upsell opportunity they have had.

However, where does that leave us?

I’d like to find or see emerge an “iPhone User Rights” blog. One that looks at every program at every update to software and every change in terms / carrier terms and lets me know if I’m OK and what to watch out for.

What matters? What new features?
The “Apple Push Notification Service” is very cool! Did you see it coming? It means apps don’t run in the background but will be able to call for updates remotely. That’s a big deal and opens many new opportunities. This fills a missing piece for me.

Separately, I’ve been trying to use GPS on Nokias for almost two years. It’s never been very successful. By contrast the mapping feature on my iPhone just blows people away. So do satellite views of their house. I see huge potential and the products built around this capability will be revolutionary. Anyone in some form of meetup business needs to understand the impact.

I simply loved the games examples. When the iPhone can be my gaming steering wheel that is just so cool. (When they can stream eg bluetooth to the big screen TV…) The graphics were great and they will sell at 9.99.

The medical app they showed provided an interesting look into what can and will happen in business and professional environments. The business opportunities will be huge. Just need to get the video camera working on it.

What wasn’t talked about?
Apple said nothing about the price for an iPod Touch. Looks like $199 and no activation is a great way to get the kids either paying or later saying…. need this new plan and I’ll have this as a music gaming VoIP device now! So how will the iPod and iPhone pricing strategies work out?

They said nothing about VoIP. Well I didn’t hear anything and there are quite a few already available. Fring, Siphon, Sipgate, RF.com to name a few.

How do you feel about your old iPhone?
The new phone will be $199. I paid $499 plus a contract on the battery etc. That’s a big gap. No hope now of getting more than $100 for my iPhone. Should I feel ripped off? I’m not sure and in my case I don’t. I bought it to learn from it and I’ve had fair value on that score. I think I’m looking at a business model now that obsoletes my iPhone once a year. That surprises me but is ok at $200. Yeah the old one will continue to run just fine but I do want the GPS and 3G. The GPS I think I will learn from. However, as a phone it still misses out on the cameras and bluetooth streaming that I think should be there.

What do you think about the competition?
Well Garmin and the map services are in trouble. With a little suction cup my iPhone will be the perfect Navigation device. Why pay to have it preinstalled in your car? Maybe it should run my car too?

Nokia, well I’m worried about them. They have really pushed GPS into phones. They have better everything in terms of equipment. Yet each new version comes up short. They need to go touchscreen and quick. The benefits are now obvious. While I’ve seen some of their top end phones subsidized in Europe I think they are overpriced versus the promised $199 global price for the iPhone. It’s worth looking at the cost structure for the iPhone versus other phones.

Most of all I hope and wish this platform would trend to be more open. In the meantime the noise isn’t going to die down.

What could the “live bloggers” do better? How should Apple adapt their format? What did I find?

Here’s how I go my news. Live audio via Upstream.TV for awhile a lousy video off Qik before I’m guessing they were shut down. Seeing this game play was an eyeopener. I quickly turned off the sound on the QIK and just listened to Upstream which ran flawlessly. I gave up on Twhirl and refreshed my Twitter feed and used Summarize. I found it was a dead heat on pictorial and text uploads on Engadget and Gizmodo. By contrast Techcrunch didn’t have the picture uploads mastered and far fewer in total. Venturebeat also had a Friendfeed Livestream. I found this all but useless.

What’s my learning? Just wait next time for the Apple Video. Still if you must do it live then…

If you have audio and there is no video then the real-time photo updates are a big deal. Would have been great to have even more. I probably should have followed a flickr feed. However on checking this..afterward it wasn’t very effective. Effectively I was looking for the realtime PPT copy. It’s understandable that at this conference Steve’s slide deck wasn’t put up in advance.

If you missed it you could read any of the blogs above to get the details in a few minutes versus the two hours I let it run for. Still I found I didn’t have the tools to really follow it effectively. Twhirl was useless. Twitter only worked from the web. That’s not good enough.

Some suggestions.

1. Set the camera and some tags early to auto upload to flickr. Be even better if it had a series counter on as well; like page 1, 2 etc.
2. Provide an audio feed. Use HighDefConferencing and simply let other skypein to it. May be easier than upstream and you can phone in too.
3. Find a way to SkypeIn a Video Conference to upstreamTV. Or just use stickam.com A web cam on the laptop would have worked just fine here. Yet I listened to a session that was recorded here and they were accessing WWDC the same way I was.
4. Apple… let me just log in from the iTune store and just stream it! I really believe that streaming is the way to build conferences. I’ve seen this with Poptech in particular.

What did I learn about the iPhone 3G?
Not much really in terms of features; the new price point $199 needs some carrier contract info to be really clear. The iPhone is still a big deal! Actually now an even bigger deal than before.

However, the real reason in my mind that the iPhone wins is it’s ability to “stay in social touch”. The email, the SMS, the browsing experience has enabled much of the behavior that social networkers have mastered already on the laptop or desktop. It’s not about the technology, it is about how the device helps you socialize.

Till now the mobile was a “cameraphone”, “smartphone”, and perhaps a messaging device (particularly blackberry). The enhancements have often focused at making it a better cameraphone and increasingly on uploading some of this content… eg photos to flickr. The activity focus has been on upload and send. Retrieval that isn’t pushed has been slow, difficult or frustrating whether web pages, podcasts, or even maps.

By contrast and perhaps as luck will have it… the iPhone is a social device. It fills the gaps in calls with keeping in touch. It is helping us keep in touch with the peripheral vision whether facebook updates, twitter streams, IM or other apps or browsing one may do. It’s also very easy to forward content (web pages etc from the iphone.

So the iPhone wins because it both keeps us in the flow and keeps us loosely connected. Perhaps a little like adding a “lurking” factor…. iPhone in hand I have a better sense of what my friends and colleagues are doing.. I am more connected without actually thinking about it or working at it. As someone who’s never used a Blackberry and yet observed the “connected” behavior that creates around email (like IM) it’s been a revelation.

Net Net. Devices that keep us more connected and “loosely connected” without pressuring us to wear a heads up display are going to win over those that just add a better camera. In the end it is about the conversations, the chatter, and the ability to engage wherever you are. I even find the iPhone works well as sort of a second screen… for glances at email updates, entering Twitter updates etc. In that way it is supplementing my desktop.

I think this socializing factor is probably true of the applications that will be developed for these devices. I said it above mobile devices are social. The more social they are the better they will perform. The iPhone demonstrates this is so many ways on top of the basic email, browsing, send a pic etc. The photo album, or the ability to view a video together or review music choices.

So are you making that mobile device more social? More playful? More engaging when with others? Is this socialization factor limited just to the mobile or should we think even more broadly about anything we carry with us? I have always loved the Nokia positioning of “connecting people”. Where once this was about technology and mobility, it now needs to reflect everything we’ve learned about social networking, social media and accelerating the flow of information. As few years ago I wrote a number of posts on “Presence”. This focused on that “sense of presence” a more tacit rather than explicit understanding. The devices that enable this “sense” in an open and unstructured format that can evolve are likely to be more successful at being social and sensitive to the users context and relationships.

We’ve seen some of this emerging already. Recently some blogs have referred to the new browser wars. Money was recently raised by a new browser startup while Mobile Safari has now been seen on a Samsung phone. Then we have Flock as the social browser etc. And yesterday we saw Android demoed on yet another large touch screen HTC mobile. I actually wonder whether in five years there will be a mobile in existence that has a keypad? Is viewing replacing texting, replacing calling, as the central focus of the mobile? If / As this happens then how does my new mobile change the relationship I have with all my other devices?

On Tuesday, June 3rd, from 9am-11am PT (12pm-1pm ET), I will host an interactive conference call and chat on “Open Flow” — the technologies and business practices that allow information to move freely between users, websites, and organizations. This is a precursor to a track at Supernova 2008, sponsored by BT, on June 17 in San Francisco.

To receive dial-in information, please RSVP by replying to this email at openflow@supernova2008.com.

Topics we will address on the call will include: What are the key issues around interconnecting social networks, identity systems, and online applications? Is openness always a good thing? How do open networks change business models, as well as processes within companies? What new opportunities emerge in an Open Flow environment?

Participation is free and open to anyone interested.

First LIVE images and videos of FULLSCREEN Android demos! | Android Community

Google’s latest Android prototype is miles improved over the versions we last saw. Back at CES the GUI was clunky and the whole thing looked relatively primative; Google themselves asked us to keep an open mind and instead concentrate on the OS’ potential. Now, they’ve brought out a device that you could, frankly, mistake for production hardware.