Mobile Phone News

Filed under: Apple

Tech firms seem to have this uncanny ability to significantly boost functionality while significantly reducing cost with each new generation of a product — and you’ll never believe this, but it seems like Apple is no exception. The teardown and bean-counting experts over at iSuppli are at it again with the iPhone 3G, finding that the whole kit and kaboodle tallies up to just $174.33 (give or take) for the 8GB model in material and manufacturing costs. That works out to about $53 less than iSuppli’s estimate for the original 8GB model back in June of last year, an amount saved in part by moving to a single 10-layer circuit board (versus a pair of 6-layer boards). The firm figures Apple’s shelling out about $50 in royalties for each iPhone 3G that rolls off the assembly line, leading to a grand total of $224.33 in costs. Offset that with a healthy AT&T subsidy, and all told, we’re looking at something like a 55 percent margin to help Steve finance his next round of black turtlenecks.

[Via AppleInsider]

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Filed under: Handsets, Features, Nokia, EV-DO, CDMA

Sure, you might be the biggest Christian Bale fan in the world right at this time, but what about this time next year when The Dark Knight DVDs are already collecting dust on bookshelves around the globe? That was the million-dollar question on our minds when we heard that Verizon was commemorating the launch of its Nokia 6205 and the latest Batman flick with a tied-in version of the low end flip. Turns out it’s all good, though — a look through the custom packaging revealed a grand total of two battery covers, one with the Batman logo and one without, so it should be pretty easy to avoid those embarrassing “what’s with the batphone?” queries in a few months’ time. Otherwise, there’s very little to say about the phone — it truly is a minimalist flip — though we’re definitely excited to see Nokia’s apparently renewed commitment to working not just with CDMA, but with CDMA carriers in North America.

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Filed under: Apple

Psst… you hear that there’s a new iPhone coming out next month? Yeah, us too. in this place are a few iPhone stories we’ve been tracking from the past handful of days:

• An analyst for Oppenheimer claims that AT&T is plan to be shelling out $325 for each and every iPhone 3G it sells, compared to an average of $200 for other devices on the carrier’s shelves. What’s more, devices sold in Apple stores (as opposed to AT&T stores) will cost AT&T another $100 for some reason, bringing the grand total to $425 — not including the $199 or $299 the customer is paying for the 8GB and 16GB models, respectively. Where Oppenheimer is getting its figures isn’t precisely clear, but we suppose it’s believable — and as the analyst suggests, the higher subsidy reflects AT&T’s confidence that they’ll be able to recoup the loss with a higher ARPU.
• The on-again, off-again saga of Adobe Flash on the iPhone continues, with the company’s CEO trumpeting during its Q2 earnings call that it at this time has a version working in the SDK’s emulator. That’s all well and good, but there’s still no sign that Apple wants Flash on the iPhone, and since Cupertino’s still the ultimate gatekeeper in this place, Adobe’s efforts could still all be for naught.
• Canada’s Rogers has finally decided to stop playing coy and has replaced the silhouette of the mystery device launching on July 11 on its site with the real deal. You weren’t fooling anyone anyhow, guys.
• A Columbus, Ohio bus rider was unceremoniously beaten this week in an attempt to nab his iPhone as other riders calmly looked on, showing no emotion whatsoever — a sad state of affairs, to say the least. Fortunately, the victim was able to hang on to the goods but suffered some injuries in the scuffle. If it had been an iPhone 3G, we’d have to summon every ounce of willpower not to have a go at swiping it ourselves, but an iPhone 1? Seriously, come on.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - $325 subsidy [via Mac unverified information]
Read - Flash working in iPhone emulation
Read - iPhone on Rogers
Read - Bus rider beaten for his iPhone

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