What do you know: China Unicom just coughed up some first weekend sales numbers for the iPhone and…well, they’re not much to look at, despite what I said earlier. The carrier sold just 5,000.
Apple’s internationally coveted iPhone finally arrived at market in China last week and by most accounts its debut was uncharacteristically muted. There is “no sign of the sort of sellout reception that greeted the smart phone at its introduction in other countries,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Clearly, the device’s Chinese launch wasn’t the rousing success to which we’ve become accustomed. That said, it probably wasn’t quite the bust it’s been made out to be, either.
Apple’s iPhone finally arrived at market in China today and is evidently selling fairly well, despite wallet-emptying prices. ChinaNews.com found about 300 people queued up to buy the device at China Unicom’s flagship store in Beijing.
As launch dates go, the timing could not be better. Less than a week after Google’s Gmail suffered its fourth service disruption this year, IBM announced a competing Web mail service intended to undercut it. Called LotusLive iNotes, it’s an email, calendaring, and contact management system aimed squarely at the enterprise space Google has been so diligently courting.
Microsoft launched Windows Vista in New York City on Jan. 30, 2007. And it plans to launch Windows 7 there as well. According to invitations distributed today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will preside over an event celebrating the availability and launch of Windows 7 on Oct. 22.
When Motorola announces its new Android handsets at a scheduled Sept. 10 event in San Francisco, AT&T isn’t likely to be among their carriers. Sources close to the company tell MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen that AT&T balked at Motorola’s Sawgrass and Heron handsets, allegedly because of their dated display technology.
A renewed advertising push for the Palm Pre and an increase in the number of applications available for it haven’t done much for the device’s sales. According to Pali Research analyst Walter Piecyk, weekly Pre sales are holding steady in the mid-20,000 range at which they stabilized a few weeks back. One way for Sprint to spur sales, says Piecyk: Cut the price of the Pre to $99, or even 99 cents
Palm’s next webOS handset, the so-called Eos (codename: Pixie), is still in the pipeline, but it may not arrive at market for some time. Though some observers have speculated that the device would debut in the late fall in time for the holidays, others are now suggesting that a 2010 launch is more likely.
The next iteration of Apple’s iPod touch will boast not just a camera, but a microphone as well. That’s the latest rumor, anyway–this one from a “well-connected” Wired source who claims the device is already being manufactured with an eye toward a September launch.
“We will enter Asia with the iPhone in 2008,” Apple COO Tim Cook declared in March 2008. “And we will one day enter China, we’re not saying when.” How’s September of 2009 sound? Because China Business Network claims that China Unicom and Apple have finally inked a deal that will bring the iPhone to the country around that time.
Palm’s Pre may compete with Apple’s iPhone on a feature-to-feature basis, but judging from the latest search stats from comScore, the Pre has some way to go before it matches the iPhone in mindshare. According to the research house, Palm Pre search activity, which more than doubled in late May thanks to Sprint’s “Now Network” advertising campaign, suffered a significant decline in mid-June, right around the debut of the new iPhone.
As Apple marks the one-year anniversary of its App Store with a bit of celebratory smack talk, Microsoft has provided a few more details about its forthcoming rival offering: Windows Marketplace for Mobile store. At its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this morning, the company said it will begin accepting applications for the store on July 27 with an eye toward opening it by the end of the year.
Post-Pre launch, Palm may be, in the words of CEO Jon Rubinstein, “exactly where we hoped we would be.” But how long the company will stay there is an open question. Because according to Pali Research, Pre sales slowed again last week.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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