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June 9, 2008

Today, Apple has announced a faster and lower-cost iPhone that the company hopes will deliver real value to wireless consumers.

The new phone is expected to address one of the biggest complaints about the older, but still very popular iPhone: its network is too slow and sluggish.

Jobs announced the 3G iPhone at the company's annual World Wide Developers conference in San Francisco this morning.

Based on 3G technology, CEO Steve Jobs said the new iPhone is up to 36 percent faster than top rival Nokia's N-95 smartphone.

The new 8-gigabyte iPhone will sell for $199 and a 16-gigabyte version will cost $299.

Jobs says the new iPhone will be available worldwide starting next month. It will allow up to 6 hours of Internet browsing and up to 5 hours of talk time.

Jobs also introduced a whole range of new applications for the iPhone, including a wireless system that automatically forwards e-mail to other devices.

Jobs also showcased a new friend-finding service called Loopt and new mobile blogging software from TypePad.

The new iPhone applications are aimed at boosting revenue from data services. Wireless companies increasingly are looking to these services to offset slowing growth in mobile phone sales.

Apple, for instance, will start charging $99 a year for its new Mobile Me service, which sends updates to a user's e-mail, contact list and calendar to all of her devices.

The new services drew plenty of 'oohs' and 'aahs' from the 5,200 attendees at Apple's developers conference. However, the main attraction was the 3G iPhone.

Other new applications for the iPhone include a service from MLB.com that provides a live scoreboard of major league games and music-making software, called Cow Terry, for creating songs on the phone.

Since the original iPhone was introduced in mid-July 2007, Apple has sold 6 million handsets, Jobs said Monday.

The company has set a goal of selling 10 million handsets worldwide for 2008.

Steve Jobs kicked off the conference by talking about the iPhone for business users, a lucrative market dominated by rival Research in Motion.

He said that the iPhone now works with Microsoft's Exchange office server systems - a key feature if the iPhone is to crack the BlackBerry's lock on working professionals.

But iPhone users have complained loudly about the cumbersome EDGE network, which is operated by AT&T, the exclusive seller of the iPhone in the United States.

Jobs also said that about 35 percent of Fortune 500 companies have participated in a beta program for business applications for the iPhone.

Some analysts present at the conference think that number may be exagerated somewhat, but that Apple's next two quarters will be revealing as far as iPhone sales are concerned.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0.

Source: Apple.