Apple heeft een overeenkomst gesloten met China Unicom om de iPhone op exclusieve basis te gaan leveren op de Chinese markt.  In China zijn nu ongeveer 700 mio GSM abonnementen afgesloten. Apple verwacht in deze markt een hoop iPhones af te zetten.

From now on Appleblog is also available on Twitter. Follow me….

Earlier this week an iPhone prerelease was offered for sale on Ebay, Tuesday the item was removed. The iPhone prototype was equipped with a beta version of the iPhones Operating System. The iPhone came with another (nonworking) prototype with a glass screen.

Last february another iPhone prototype hit eBay, seller Mike Evangelist recieved a notice from eBay that his listing violated intellectual properties of Apple.

Today Apple announced that Jobs will take a medical leave until June 2009.

Reuters

With today’s additions, Apple’s iPhone “reach” is 43 countries. Previously, it has said it will have the iPhone 3G in 70 countries by the end of the year.
Last month, Apple’s chief financial officer, Tim Cook, announced that the company would expand its iPhone distribution into 20 markets today, and promised that inventories — which were very tight when he spoke to Wall Street analysts on July 21 — would be sufficient to launch in the additional countries.

Cost per original iPhone (eight gigabyte model): $226

With the second-generation iPhone, Apple is making a significant departure in its pricing strategy.

“The original 2G phone was sold at an unsubsidized price of $499,” Rebello noted. “However, at a retail price of $199 for the low-end 8Gbyte version of the new 3G model, wireless communications service carriers will be selling the product at a subsidized rate, using a common business model for the mobile-handset market. The size of the subsidy paid by the wireless carriers to Apple will be about $300 per iPhone, iSuppli estimates. This means that with subsidies from carriers, Apple will be selling the 8Mbyte version of the second-generation iPhone to carriers at an effective price of about $499 per unit, the same as the original product.”Bottom line: Apple will likely enjoy a profit margin of better than 50 percent on the 3G iPhone. Nice work if you can get it.

Note that the materials and manufacturing cost estimates don’t include the cost of software development, shipping, packaging and so forth.

After the break, I’ve included iSuppli’s part-by-part estimate of the materials cost for the 3G iPhone.

According to the patent filing, the solar cells would be housed underneath the handheld’s LCD touch screen to maximize the available charging surface space, which would protect the fragile cells, and has the added bonus of not impacting Apple’s distinct design style. Adding solar cells to future iPhone models could also address power consumption issues related to electricity hungry components like GPS or WiMAX chips.

Apple isn’t saying if or when it will add solar cells to its products.

Samsung ranked in the lowest tier of companies with a scant 4% of the polled population feeling the brand is gay-friendly. That puts them right between Quaker (5%) and Cracker Barrel (3%). Technically Samsung tied with Wal-Mart and Frito-Lay.