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Anticipating Apple

The Apple machine continues to satiate the tech-hungry among us, and this week we’re in readiness for another announcement.

A number of rumours abound as to the content of the release, including a new ipod nano, an update to the iphone, wireless access for ipods, Apple announcing its own record label with Jay Z, and even the much anticipated release of the Beatles backcatalogue.

My money is on an iphone-esque ipod (with a 3.5″ screen and somewhere around 120gb of storage), but Apple just love brand by association so don’t be surprised if the Beatles back-catalogue is also announced. This rumour is made especially feasible given the John Lennon catalogue was recently secured, and that the tagline for the Sept 5th announcement is “The beat goes on”. Too clever by half!

While my guitar gently weeps, I wonder what the boffins at Cupertino think of some of the extraneous points of interest around the web, such as the sim-hack for the iPhone to enable any non-AT&T sim to use the phone, or the Google Phone a hotly anticipated iPhone competitor.

No doubt Steve Jobs will point to Apple’s stellar rise in the telecoms market with the iPhone outselling ALL other smartphones in the US for July (which counted for nearly 2% of US mobile handset sales) and present a big ingratiating graph showing what you and I already knew (the iPhone is a hit).

To whit, some of the statistical data is interesting, MacRumours (via Cellular-news) reports: 57% of iPhones bought in July were U.S. consumers 35 years or younger, with a 52/48 Male/Female split, and 1/4 of iPhone purchases switched to AT&T from another provider.

I’d imagine that those telcos in the Australian market looking to sway market share are now looking a little more seriously at the iPhone contract. I would be.

– Ben Prendergast