Recent Comments:
Korean researcher hopes to build ferroelectric RAM {Engadget}
Oct 19th 2007 7:23PM That would be Dr. Shin. Names in East Asian countries (Korea, Japan, China) are in the order of Surname Given name. i.e. Kim Jong-Il, Kurosawa Akira, Mao Zedong etc. etc. Oftentimes the names are reversed in English publications to conform to the Western convention, but they are increasingly being written in its original order, although not very much for Japanese names.
500,000 iPhones sold so far -- but can Apple keep up? {Engadget}
Jul 2nd 2007 3:48PM The ideal should be to sell out, but meet all the demand there is at the same time.
Having unsold inventory is bad, but not able to meet the demand is bad too.
Per your example, say that the maximum profit you can make is P dollars, which would be the case where you have built exactly the number of phones that people will buy at that price.
If you overproduce by x, then your profit will be P - x*$250.
If you underproduce by y and fail to meet demand, it will be P - y*$350.
You lose either way.
Also, the initial demand will be front-heavy, but not all in the first few days. It will taper off to a steady stream, but before that, it should be best to have enough stock to absorb most of the initial demand over the first few weeks. So selling out the first day likely means you failed to maximize sales, whether it was your fault or not. (Maybe that was the best you could do due to component shortages, etc.)
iPhone rate plans revealed, at-home activation announced {Engadget}
Jun 26th 2007 3:49PM This is way better than what AT&T currently offers for their PDA phones, which is essentially what the iPhone is. With a Treo, Blackjack, etc. , you pay $25/month more for the same plan!
I see many people who are complaining have never really used a data plan with a phone. Well, if you want access to data over the phone network, you need to pay for it, that's how it is at present.
As for comparisons with rates on other networks, there is a reason why T-Mobile, Sprint etc. give you more minutes for the same price. They need to, in order to compete with AT&T and Verizon's larger in-calling network, and other advantages. If they were priced the same, which would you choose, a bigger network where you can call more friends for free, or the smaller one?
Cingular scheduled to rebrand as AT&T by iPhone launch {Engadget}
Jan 10th 2007 5:32PM For me, this is something that I dreamed about but didn't really expect Apple to deliver. I seriously thought they'd just come up with a iPod with phone capabilities. So I was amazed when I watched the Keynote to find out that they had actually made exactly what I wanted in an Apple phone.
Only thing is that it doesn't have 3G, which is understandable as the coverage isn't quite fully deployed yet and having both EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA would make the phone heavier/larger/power hungry/expensive.
I'm sure Apple will add on 3G for the next iteration, and in the meantime I just got the Treo 750 (upgraded from a 650) to tide me over. I am a Treo fan, but I can't wait to get my hand on a 3G iPhone whenever it comes out. Maybe next year.
As for the 2 year contract and data plan etc., anyone who's using a PDA phone, which the iPhone is (look at the comparison Jobs was making), is already dealing with the same issues right now with any carrier/phone combination.
