Apple

I’ve just read a very interesting article over at ComputerWorld (via Engadget) about a trademark issue that Apple may be having once it starts selling the iPhone in China. As the story goes, it seems that another company, Hanwang, owns a trademark for the term ‘i-phone’ on mobile phones. While Apple owns an “iphone” trademark that only covers computer hardware and software.

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Apple has recently celebrated it’s one billionth download from the Apple AppStore. The lucky grand prize winner of the App countdown contest is Connor Mulcahey, age 13, from Weston, CT. Connor will receive a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule and a MacBook Pro. Lucky guy, he’s going to have a grand day downloading all the games he wants with the 10,000 dollar gift card.

Just read from Arstechnica that Apple has released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 3. Several changes have been included in the third beta build that includes changes in the notification types, XIB files and the IDE for creating dashboard widgets. Apple seems to be on track with the June final release.

As most of the Apple iPhone users already know by now, the iPhone OS 3.0 update is a very welcome update since it will be bringing things like search, cut and paste and MMS to the iPhone. These features have been a few of the most requested since the iPhone was released. Also, iPhone developers will be able to do more with the new iPhone OS with the addition of about 1000 API’s. Even single person iPhone developers have been successfully raking in the income from the Apple Apps Market since it allows them to sell directly to the iPhone users and earn 70% of the selling price.

AppleInsider is reporting that talks between Apple and AT & T are in the works for AT & T to maintain its exclusivity on the iPhone up to 2011. Although AT & T is subsidizing the iPhone to probably the tune of $1.3 billion to date, the estimated 4 million users paying $60 per month coming into 2009 will be producing another quarter of a billion dollars in subscription income. This is above what AT&T is getting from all those voice calls over the free voice call minutes from the millions of iPhone users.

If the current growth of US iPhone users continue to increase AT & T will continue to rake in those communication dollars going into 2010 when the US carriers will start implementing network upgrades that will use the LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology. I’m pretting excited with the technology since it’s a truly IP connected phone that people will be using when that happens.

One thing I love about Apple, when they choose to enter a product space their attitude is — “Be the innovator or don’t”. The iPhone is an example of this attitude. Now it looks like they’re planning to put not only an FM receiver but also an FM transmitter into the iPhone. That is apart from what looks like a plan to also put in support for 802.11n wireless communication into the iPhone.

Getting an FM receiver is good for news, music stuff but an FM transmitter is great for some pretty cool usage scenarios.

For example, now you can depend more on your iPhone as a central storage of your music files. Want to listen to them on your high end car stereo? No problem, just turn on that FM transmitter and listen to the music on the car stereo just like you’d listen to other FM stations. Do you have one of those headsets equipped with an FM receiver? Now you can also listen to your own music in your iPhone.

Do you have a hi-speed wireless N lan at home? Now you can stream those music over the LAN (I hope).