New solar powered cellphone and iPod charger and I forgot to mention it here. Although it normally resides in our emergency “bug out bag” for earthquakes and the like, I take it out at least once a week to charge up my Treo without having to pay the electric company anything. It works beautifully and always fully charges my phone to full capacity within a few hours of sitting on the windowsill.
I am thinking of ordering another one that I can leave in the window 24/7 so I never have to plug my phone into an outlet and can always charge it for free. Having one in the emergency kit makes me feel good because in case I need to leave my house and cannot find anywhere to stay, at least I will always have my phone charged up and ready for use, so I don’t want to keep it out of the bag all the time.
The charger came with a whole bunch of adapters, so my Treo, my wife’s little cheapy phone and my iPod can all be hooked up to it, and it also came with a plug to plug it into a regular outlet “just in case”. Anyway, I would recommend getting one of these to anyone, even if it is just for your emergency bag…which if you live in California you already have….right?
"Our research indicates that an Apple-designed smart phone has moved from concept to prototype and recently has progressed to near completion as a production unit," analyst Shaw Wu told clients in a research note on Tuesday. "We believe this smart phone has been in development for over 12 months and has overcome substantial challenges including design, interference, battery life and other technical glitches."
Pointing to the existing smart phone market, Wu noted the challenges companies face when trying to produce a converged product of high quality. However, he said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs "is finally satisfied with the end product Apple engineers have produced in terms of quality and the right blend of cell phone and portable media player."
Given Jobs' previous track record, the analyst said he has the utmost confidence the Apple branded cell phone, which he says will conform to a sleek candy bar form factor, will meet the highest of standards with "no exception."
"Clearly, we would like to share more detail as we have conducted extensive work on the product pipeline, but for now, here is what we will convey," Wu wrote. "The design will be an iPod nano-like candy bar form factor and come in three colors (we are not certain of the exact colors but we suspect black, white and platinum, similar to Apple's current color scheme of iPods and Macs)."
For Apple to enter the cell phone market in the United States, it would first need to gain approval from the FCC. The process would require the traditionally tight-lipped company to disclose both photos and specifications in public filings prior to launch. But Wu says Apple could avoid premature public disclosure by announcing the device in advance with a later ship date. Moreover, he said, it could possibly submit the filing through a OEM manufacturer, similar to the route Microsoft took by gaining FCC approval for its upcoming Zune player through a Toshiba filing.
Still, what is unclear to Wu is Apple's go-to-market strategy for the device, which he believes is an ongoing and serious debate within the Cupertino, Calif.-based company. While it could take the traditional route and partner with existing wireless giants like Cingular and Verizon, it could also adopt the MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) model, where it would rent and then resell space from such carriers under its own brand.
"We believe the go-to-market strategy is likely the gating factor in Apple shipping its cell phone imminently," the analyst wrote. "However, we believe the company's 155 Apple stores will prove to be a boon regardless of the marketing strategy, proving Apple local presence and competitive advantage."
Nevertheless, Wu said, he is "very positive" about Apple's prospect for building a material smart phone business given its strong brand name, loyal customer base, unique user experience, large installed base of 58 million iPods, and what he estimates to be about 300 million iTunes users.
"Should Apple gain 1 percent share in the billion unit [cell phone] market, we believe that could amount to a $2 billion opportunity assuming around 10 million units at a $200 average selling price (similar to its current iPod), but not including potential services and accessories revenue," he wrote.
Wu notes that despite being universally panned by critics, LG's new Chocolate phone is a strong seller for Verizon, accounting for nearly 15 percent of its volume. "We view this as a positive for Apple as this indicates that the US market has some degree of market acceptance of converged cell phone-MP3 player and that a product of mediocre quality like the LG Chocolate phone can still do very well," he wrote.
Given the results of his findings on the Apple cell phone project, Wu is modeling modest contributions (about $100 million) from cell phone sales into his fiscal year 2007 outlook for the company. "We believe our cell phone assumptions are conservative given the high-end user demand for an Apple cell phone and the key point is that this is an incremental new opportunity that could help drive sales of other Apple products," he told clients.
The analyst is now modeling Apple to generate $22.2 billion in revenue and $2.60 in earnings-per-share during fiscal 2007. He also raised his price target on the iPod maker from $75 to $91.
The curly-haired Parisian is the chairman and founder of Musiwave, the company that powers Vodafone's new mobile phone music download service, which launched across Europe this week. He's sure that huge numbers of people will eventually find it natural to buy and listen to music on cell phones--but in some countries more than others.
"In Europe, phones are probably the only effort that can really compete with iTunes," Babinet said, noting that more Europeans are likely to adopt music on cell phones than they are to buy songs from Apple Computer's download service. "The attraction for customers in the United States may be less, because iTunes is so much more developed."
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The potential of mobile devices as a music delivery platform is clear. There are hundreds of millions of cell phone owners, particularly in European countries, where penetration rates can be as much 80 percent of the population. That pool represents a vastly larger potential market than the millions of people who use iPods or other MP3 players.
But companies that sell content for mobile devices face different marketing and technological challenges compared with businesses that deliver PC-based online services. Some now see the markets as distinct rather than competitive. That's raising the specter of two kinds of service, with separate pricing models and possible walls that would prevent music purchased on cell phones from being transferred to a PC, and vice versa.
Different strokes Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone company and a trendsetter, is aiming to bridge that gap with its splashy new European service. Contradictorily, the service is also a sign of a split--it underlines the growing divergence in the way Americans use technology to find and listen to music compared with the way people in Europe and Asia do.
The U.S. market remains dominated by computer-based services and by devices such as the iPod and its related iTunes service. A handful of music services for cell phones have been launched, but these largely involve downloading music to a PC and then transferring it to a phone.
In Europe and Asia, cellular carriers and record labels are thinking more ambitiously. They see the latest generation of Internet-connected, multimedia phones as the natural extension of Sony's Walkman--devices that will be vastly more common than the iPod and able to make it easy to impulse-buy music at any time.
The idea is still young. Music for cell phones is relatively expensive and scarce--just 3,000 songs are available through Vodafone's music download store, although the company promises that will rise to 50,000 in just a few months.
Formats, too, are in flux. Vodafone offers full versions of songs. In contrast, German carrier T-Mobile sells re-edited, two-minute versions of songs that are faster to download. In addition, record labels in Europe distribute albums on memory cards that can be slotted directly into phones--most notably, the recent EMI promotion of Robbie Williams' newest album.
Phone carriers, particularly in Europe, see the music and upcoming music video services as a way to attract people to their new third-generation, or 3G, networks that can deliver broadband access to cell phones. Collectively, European carriers have spent more than $100 billion on purchasing the wireless spectrum needed to offer broadband service, and they're desperate to make that money back.
On the content side, sales of ring tones indicate that the mobile market is already a gold mine. Research company Strategy Analytics esti-
