ant

With the release of the iPad, the iPhone OS is gaining huge momentum. With OS 4 on the horizon, Apple is working non stop to make this a great release. However Apple has a huge line of consumer electronics, why are they putting all this energy into the iPhone OS? Because of Revenue.

This is Apple’s fastest growing area and they are working on it non stop to make it the very best of the best. We now have three distinctly different yet similar devices that run this OS; iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

iPhone

Apple’s first device that runs this OS. This device created a revoloution in the smartphone market and now leads the way in usability and innovation. The release of the App Store in 2008 was one of the best decisions Apple ever made. Not only did this pave the way for awesome and amazing apps but propelled Apple’s revenue to sweltering amounts.

Think about it, 3 billion apps have been downloaded on the App Store since day 1 with 74% being sold. That’s in just 18 months.  These apps are all created by third party developers and are totally awesome. Of every single app that is sold Apple gets a whopping 30% of each sale. That’s huge. With the average price of a paid app being $3.63, that is billions of dollars in Apple’s pockets. Apple had never expected that and it is growing by a rapid amount.

iPod Touch

Apple soon realised the huge potential of the App Store and wanted to bring it into the hands of millions users, not just the elite who have an iPhone. They looked at their product line and found their most popular product; the iPod.

Now the iPod Touch was born, the iPod has been an amazing success and has sold over 250 million units since 2001. By bringing the App Store to the iPod, not only do the sales of units grow but the revenue Apple gains from apps sold increases. What’s best is Apple does not have to do anything (create, manage or update the apps) and they still get this huge amount of revenue.

iPad

Apple’s latest device which entered the market with a WiFi only version, only in the US on April 3 has sold more than 500,000 units in just under two weeks. That is massive and Apple still hasn’t released the 3G version yet or released it internationally. Analysts estimate the iPad will sell over 7 million units in the first year.

What’s best is this device runs iPhone OS. Not only will Apple make a killing out of the units sold but the huge amounts of apps that are bought. iPad specific apps are much pricier than their iPhone counterparts. Again this means more revenue for Apple from the App Store. No wonder Apple decided to make the iPad run the iPhone OS.

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Now with the beta release of iPhone 4 for the iPhone, Apple have released iAd. This will bring intuitive ads to all devices running the iPhone OS. Again, Apple will take a 40% cut of all sales without having to do anything except manage the system. The number of apps is growing by an insane amount and iAd will take advantage of all these apps and this will put a lot of money into both the developers and Apple’s pockets.

The developers only get 70% / 60% of the cut of the sales but they still love it. Why? Because there is such a large userbase (iPhone, iPod Touch and now iPad) that they will continue to develop and make great apps which will in turn lead to a greater revenue gain.

The best thing about the iPhone OS is its potential, the App Store was only released in mid 08 and now look at these enormous numbers, this was one of Apple’s best moves ever. Apple have realised this and therefore introduced the iPad and then iAd. The potential exists and the iPhone OS will bring Apple to great heights.

Where do you think Apple is going from here? Should they stay and work on the iPhone OS line or move back and try sell even more Macs? Will the Apple line now be dominated by the iPhone OS?

There is no doubt that the iPad has been a remarkable success with selling over 500,000 of the WiFi models in the US alone in the first week. However this device has been longingly waited for by Apple’s international customers and news has just come out that the limited international launch will be delayed until late May.

Apple have said that:

“We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10.”

This ‘magical and revoloutionary’ products popularity has been huge, with even Apple shocked by the number of units sold in the US. As Steve Jobs said, Apple just can’t produce iPads fast enough to meet with demand and therefore this news comes as no surprise.

However the New Zealand iPad page stays the same and it is evident that New Zealand will only see the iPad a while after the international late May release. TUAW have confirmed this in saying that

“The iPad’s UK page used to say “Coming late April.” Today that was changed to “Coming late May.” The good news is that Apple has set a pre-order date of May 10th in the UK, Canada, France, Australia and Germany.”

This is again dissapointing news for New Zealand and will most likely lead to hungry early adopters to order from US or Australia.

I have emailed Apple PR to see if there are any more details about the NZ launch and will update this if anything comes through.

UPDATE:

Apple have confirmed that this press release was only for those affected countries already getting the iPad and have no details on NZ launch.

Hi Anthony,

We have no details available for the launch of iPad in New Zealand at this time.

The alert sent overnight only affected the countries stated in our previous announcements, being Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

Kind regards, Fiona.

Also as a note this comes from an Australian representative rather than a US one.

Are you going to be getting an iPad and will you wait or source from another country? Let everyone know and comment!

With the release of Tweetie 2.1 today, Tweetie is and has been for a long time the best Twitter app for your iPhone. It’s phenomenal and combines two fundamental elements together, function and style. This is why I love it.

So you’re probably thinking why pay the extra $4.20 NZD for an app with a bit more functionality, after all all I want to do is tweet. I’ll tell you why. Instead of writing about all the awesome features of Tweetie, I’ll list my five favourite features. If you want the full list check it out.

Swipe

I absolutely love this feature. Simply swipe either  in the right or left direction over a tweet and a bunch of options will appear.
As shown to the left heaps of options appear that lets you do just about anything you want to with a tweet. You can first click to reply to the tweet, the most common option. If the tweet includes a link you can press the paperclip icon and you will be given secondary options to open, mail, repost or Instapaper the link. The multitude of options avalible allows you to do just about anything you want with the link. Thirdly and fourthy options are given to either view the persons profile or favourite the tweet. The last option allows you retweet, mail and translate the tweet.

Being given all these options from the Tweetie home screen is truly revolutional and adds a totally new dimension and ease of use to Twitter clients for the iPhone.

Composing a Tweet

So this must appear fairly basic right? All you need is some blank space and a keyboard? Wrong. Tweetie adds in all the great features you’ve always wanted.

If you’re out and want to take a snap or video it’s easy as clicking the camera button then pressing capture or record. You can also add a photo from your photo libary, geotag your tweet, find usernames, hashtags and even shrink urls. With all these features literally at your fingertips you can achieve so much without having to leave the composition screen.

This functionality and much more is shown and displayed in Tweetie 2.

Massive Third Party Support

Tweetie 2 provides a huge variety of third party clients that you can use within the app, some of which include Twitpic, yFrog, Mobypicture, Tweetphoto, Twitgoo, img.ly, Twitvid, Posterous, Vid.ly, Twitlonger, Follow Cost, Tweet Blocker, Favstar.fm, TextExpander, Read it Later, Instapaper, What The Trend, Birdhouse, bit.ly, TinyURL, is.gd, I.pr, u.nu, Linkyy, Overlapr, Favrd, Tweeteorites and much more!

That’s an insane amount of third party clients to add to an iPhone Twitter app and pretty much all the added extras you will ever need!

Refresh

This is a small but totally awesome feature.  Instead of looking for that small icon to refresh your Twitter stream or shake to refresh therby damaging your iPhone, Tweetie provides and easy and intuitive way to refresh your tweets.

Simply drag your finger vertically down and release to refresh. It’s that simple! Your stream is automatically reloaded with the newest tweets you want and it is extremely easy to refresh.

Trends

This feature does what its title says it does. It shows the most popular trends on Twiter right now. This is very useful to know what is going on right at any moment by what people are tweeting about.

Sure, any other iPhone Twitter app includes this feature but not to the extent that Tweetie does. You can save the trend, search throughout it and what I find awesome is definitions of the trend are automatically source from What The Trend, therefore if you don’t exactly know why a topic is trending you can tap one button and find out!

So while I love Tweetie 2, push and chat bubbles back would be an even better improvement!

You should download Tweetie 2 right now! It costs less than a cup of coffee.

Follow me on Twitter at @antbs and share your thoughts about Tweetie 2 for iPhone in the comments.

World Wide Developers Conference is coming this Monday the 9 of June and the long anticipated arrival of the 3G iPhone has circled around with many rumours. Firstly Vodafone announced a month ago that they would sell the iPhone in ten different countries this year including New Zealand. This is very exciting, we havn’t ever seen the light of the iPhone if it isn’t hacked. Everyone is hoping that his will be the 3G iPhone. Why would’nt it be? After all is Vodafone so backward that they wouldnt give us the new version? I hope not?

As you may know any first Generation product isnt going to be perfect and this was the case with the iPhone. The iPhone only had a 2 Megapixel camera with no flash or video recording qualities, no GPS, no 3G etc.

The features I would like to see with the new iPhone would be:

• At least a 4 Megapixel Camera with flash
• Video recording qualities
• Flash built in with Safari
• Third Generation technology (3G)
• GPS functionality
• Radio

What would you like to see in the next iPhone?