Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

June 16, 2010

Apple's all new iPhone 4 sales appear to be going very well. Both AT&T and Apple's website were bogged down with many online order requests both Monday and Tuesday.

Customers that tried to order the phone from either of the two sites were met with "Try Again Later" messages.

On Apple's website, the white iPhone 4 model was unavailable, but the black iPhone 4 could be had in both the 16 GB and 32 GB models. Still, Internet connections to order the phone were extremely slow and sluggish, as the servers appeared to be extremely busy from all the many order requests.

Going into a brick-and-mortar Apple or AT&T store won’t be of much help either, at least for now. When contacted via telephone, an Apple sales rep at a retail location in Madison, Wisconsin said that customers should keep trying online.

The sales rep said that brick-and-mortar stores were also tied to submitting pre-orders online, and they were experiencing the same problems due to heavy website traffic. Making matters worse, iPhone orders cannot be placed over the phone through AT&T for now.

And the Apple Help Line --1-800-MY-APPLE-- was down due to Extremely High Call Volumes, the automated system reported.

Those who were successful in ordering the new phone had the option of having it delivered to their door on June 24, or they can simply wait in line at an Apple physical store in their local area.

Apple has promised customers that those with a pre-order will be served first on June 24.

For its part, AT&T's website produced more of the same throughout the morning. Users wanting to upgrade were told that the site is experiencing a server error which prevents us from properly serving your request.

AT&T wasn't available for comment before press time.

Apple rolled out a new Apple Store application for iPhone and iPod touch users. The new app, which is free at Apple's App Store, allows AT&T customers to order new products directly from their iPhone or iPod touch devices.

There was no mention of an iPad version for now, but Apple said it will make a news announcement when it is.

As the wireless industry is waiting for Symbian's 3 and Windows Phone 7 to appear, the iPhone 4 is poised for some competition, this time from the Android operating system, and most of its supporters are rising to the challenge.

Also, Motorola is promising to outdistance HTC with a roadmap heading towards a 2 GHz phone. And both Sprint and Verizon are talking about the success of their Android flagships.

Not to be outdone, LG has promised no less than 20 Google phones by the end of 2010. As we said earlier, the industry is clearly not letting Apple have its own way, and is determined to fight back with all it has as ammunition.

Like Samsung, LG has been fairly strong in high end phones with advanced hardware and multimedia specifications, but closed operating systems. Now the two wireless handset makers are getting serious about open OS smartphones. Samsung is likely to produce the first Symbian 3 handset and is readying its gigahertz Android offering, the Galaxy S LG, and along with HTC it will be first to deliver a smartphone for Windows Phone 7, and also for MeeGo, but in the meantime, it plans to increase its Android line-up from a couple of models to at least 20.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Source: Apple.