Free iPhone

T-Mobile recently announced the details their plans to upgrade to LTE in 2013 thanks to a chunk of the 1900 MHz spectrum they earned through the busted-up AT&T deal. Those upgrades will also include enhancements on HSPA+, which should — finally — support the iPhone. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that T-Mobile will be selling the iPhone any time soon, but they’ve been more than happy to accommodate iPhone-toting AT&T expatriates so far, and this HSPA+ expansion should make that job much easier.

We’re holding out for an LTE-capable iPhone 5 to hit the streets this fall, but even if T-Mobile has their first LTE markets ready early on in 2013 and manages to lock down an agreement with Apple to sell it, it will be at least three or four months behind the other major U.S. service providers. That’s going to be a steep handicap, especially considering Sprint will keep offering unlimited plans for the foreseeable future.

Even without LTE, if Apple includes the same HSPA+ 42 radio in the next iPhone that they included in the new iPad, and T-Mobile manages to get the device on their network, performance might not be too bad.

Given how high a percentage of sales the iPhone made up on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint last quarter, and how not having the iPhone seemed to put a dent in T-Mobile’s sales, we’re guessing there might be some deals to be made.

Any T-Mobile customers out there itching to get HSPA+ on their iPhones? Would any of you on AT&T be willing to switch to T-Mobile if you knew you could keep your wireless data speeds?

Source: T-Mobile

The pitch for this one was simple — girls just want to have fun dancing the night away without having to keep track of a purse or a coat, but they still want a place to safely stash their iPhone, credit cards, IDs and key. Enter the JoeyBra. It has discreet pockets on the side that, if you’re wearing the appropriate night club attire, you can easily slip your iPhone out of for a quick call or text, and slip right back in when you’re again ready to rock.

We are now taking pre-orders for the first sexy, yet functional pocketed bra that will allow you to leave your purse behind and hit the dance floor without ever having to worry about the safety of your valuables. Our unique design will hold most cellphones, ID, key, and other small items regardless of bust size – no amount of items will change the way your bra fits you. When the pocket is empty, our patent pending design will look exactly like any other bra which means you can wear it night or day. Never again will you have to reach down the front of your dress looking for the key that slipped out of place. Our product places all pockets within easy, yet appropriate reach.

We’ve seen clothing getting more high-tech for years now, especially outerwear like jackets and even sports tops, so it’s interesting to see inner wear getting the same attention.

Sure, the JoeyBra won’t be the iPhone carrying method of choice for every lady, but the beauty of the internet and the new generation of manufacturing startups means niche products actually have a fighting chance.

There’s only one style of JoeyBra available right now, but it looks like there might be more to come.

The JoeyBra is expected to ship in June and can be pre-ordered now for $29.99.

Source: JoeyBra via CNET

Okay, it’s not that big of a surprise, but Good Technology’s latest data from their enterprise customers confirm that yes, iOS is killing Android in the business world. In the first quarter of the year, the iPhone 4S accounted for 37% of Good’s activations, followed by the iPad 2 with 17.7%, while the new iPad is already claiming 12.1%. The iPhone 4, original iPad, and iPhone 3GS occupy other top spots before Android devices start making the list. By comparison, they scored only 26.1% smartphone penetration and 2.7% tablet presentation. These stats continue the trend initially identified by Good in January.

Of course, Good is often the go-to solution for companies wanting to roll out and manage something other than BlackBerry, which means we don’t have too much context on how well the traditional enterprise leader is faring by comparison, but we’ve seen lots of studies detailing RIM’s downward spiral, and plenty of others corroborating the growing popularity of iOS devices in the enterprise market.

Part of the reason for the Apple’s success relative to Android is the uniformity of the devices. Like BlackBerry, iPhones and iPads come from one end-to-end vendor and so, while they have their own benefits and drawbacks, those benefits and drawbacks are a constant. Once you know how iOS works on ActiveSync or Good, you know how all the iPhones and iPads deployed in your enterprise will work on ActiveSync or Good. It makes everything from rollout to support easier.

With Android, Google has left a lot of the implementation details up to the individual manufacturers and carriers, and so ActiveSync and app compatibility can vary from line to line or even device to device. Having that many more targets drastically increases complexity for both deployment and support.

Apple has also been making it a point to focus on enterprise-friendly features and to tout business adoption figures in their conference calls. Obviously, it’s paying off.

Has your boss issued you an iPhone? How many corporate Android handsets have you seen around the office?

Source: Network World

Okay, it’s not that big of a surprise, but Good Technology’s latest data from their enterprise customers confirm that yes, iOS is killing Android in the business world. In the first quarter of the year, the iPhone 4S accounted for 37% of Good’s activations, followed by the iPad 2 with 17.7%, while the new iPad is already claiming 12.1%. The iPhone 4, original iPad, and iPhone 3GS occupy other top spots before Android devices start making the list. By comparison, they scored only 26.1% smartphone penetration and 2.7% tablet presentation. These stats continue the trend initially identified by Good in January.

Of course, Good is often the go-to solution for companies wanting to roll out and manage something other than BlackBerry, which means we don’t have too much context on how well the traditional enterprise leader is faring by comparison, but we’ve seen lots of studies detailing RIM’s downward spiral, and plenty of others corroborating the growing popularity of iOS devices in the enterprise market.

Part of the reason for the Apple’s success relative to Android is the uniformity of the devices. Like BlackBerry, iPhones and iPads come from one end-to-end vendor and so, while they have their own benefits and drawbacks, those benefits and drawbacks are a constant. Once you know how iOS works on ActiveSync or Good, you know how all the iPhones and iPads deployed in your enterprise will work on ActiveSync or Good. It makes everything from rollout to support easier.

With Android, Google has left a lot of the implementation details up to the individual manufacturers and carriers, and so ActiveSync and app compatibility can vary from line to line or even device to device. Having that many more targets drastically increases complexity for both deployment and support.

Apple has also been making it a point to focus on enterprise-friendly features and to tout business adoption figures in their conference calls. Obviously, it’s paying off.

Has your boss issued you an iPhone? How many corporate Android handsets have you seen around the office?

Source: Network World

Carriers have a love/hate relationship with the iPhone. They hate Apple’s control (because they want that control for themselves) but love the money and customer-retention having the iPhone on their network brings them. Sprint’s willingness to pay damn near all the money in their pockets, and delve into whatever passes for a corporate second mortgage, proves that that point.

AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint sell Android because they want to. They sell iPhone because they have to.

Apple isn’t exactly easy to deal with. Android gives carriers far more control, generally requires far less up front investment (in terms of subsidies), and promises a thus far inexhaustible cornucopia of new devices to thrust at consumers on a seemingly weekly basis. It just doesn’t generate the revenue or reduce customer churn the way the iPhone does.

They tried. They really did. Verizon pushed the Droid and Sprint pushed the Palm Pre and the EVO. They had successes to be sure, especially in sheer volume of units sold. But they never came anywhere near iPhone levels of profit or customer loyalty. And at the end of the day, even for carriers, that’s what matters.

Not that you’d know it by looking at their websites. Go to Verizon.com or AT&T.com or Sprint.com and iPhones have little to no home page presence and remarkably little wireless site presence.

Verizon’s home page features the eye of Sauron the Droid. Their wireless page does have the iPhone in the first of three small blocks at the bottom, but the massive feature boxes are filled almost entirely by Android. There’s even a token BlackBerry thrown into the mix. But no iPhone.

This despite Verizon selling 3.2 million iPhones last quarter, accounting for more than half the smartphones they sold (i.e. the iPhone outsold all Android and other smartphones combined.)

AT&T’s home page is all about Windows Phone and Android, with Nokia grabbing one of the hero slides and HTC and Samsung getting the other two. On their wireless page Nokia repeats in the spotlight, with Android and cheapy phones playing backup. There’s no iPhone in sight.

Yet AT&T sold 4.3 million iPhones last quarter, which was 75% of all the smartphones they sold, and 60% of all the on-contract phones AT&T sold period (including feature phones).

Sprint’s home page has the iPhone in the third of four feature spots, and the fourth of four bottom blocks. They don’t have a separate wireless page, so their home page does double duty.

Still, Sprint managed to sell 1.5 million iPhones last quarter. They don’t break out how many smartphones in general they sold, however, so there’s no way to calculate the iPhone’s percentage of total sales.

And that’s just in the U.S. Internationally, Apple sold over 20 million iPhones. Rogers in Canada reported 35% more iPhone activations, year-over-year, compared to just 20% more smartphone activations overall. (And their home page features Android and Windows Phone, and iPad, and their wireless page shows an iPhone only in a block advertising their Find my iPhone-like Phone Finder service.)

So with little attention, ad spend, and product placement, Apple’s iPhone still accounts for most of the carriers smartphone — if not all phone — sales, and reduces their customer churn. And that probably drives them up-the-wall crazy.

Apple, who doesn’t let them festoon the iPhone with their revolting logos, clog it up with their dodgy crapware, allow them to delay or refuse software updates, or arbitrarily alter casing designs, and charges them among the highest up-front prices of any manufacturer in the industry, is increasingly responsible for their financial and customer success.

And it doesn’t even have LTE (yet) or a ginormous screen (likely ever).

If carriers had their druthers, manufacturers — including Apple — would be little more than dumb assemblers (much as, if customers had their druthers, carriers would be little more than dumb pipes). Yet as much as Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint would far, far prefer to sell the always amenable Android, customers, increasingly, want iPhone. So carriers increasingly have to deal with Apple. Even if they continue to try to find viable alternatives.

That’s why carriers will never go all-in on iPhone promotion. They don’t want to become entirely dependent on Apple (or any one platform). It’s in their best interest to have several, highly competitive platforms on the market that they can hedge with, and against.

Still, it’s interesting to imagine a market where carrier manipulation didn’t influences the market. Free to compete strictly on customers and merits, would smartphones be more like tablets, and would the iPhone have the same relative positions as iPad does to Android tablets, BlackBerry PlayBook, and the like? The same position the iPod had in the carrier-free MP3 space?

During a visit to Boulder, Colorado and Colorado University, U.S. President Barack Obama was caught on video test driving a Sphero — an iPhone controlled rolling robot. Obama first watches the Sphero roll around, remarking “how cool is that, you can make the ball do all kinds of stuff”, before taking the iPhone and taking control of the robot himself. Surrounded by Secret Service — and co-eds — the President of the United States gave it a whirl, seemed to enjoy himself, and complimented the inventor, a Boulder native.

We’ve had the opportunity to try out Sphero a couple of times at CES, and if you like iPhones and robots, it’s definitely something to check out. Video below.

Thanks Obi!

What do you get when you combine a prototype hover vehicle similar to the Parrot AR Drone which can be flown with an iPad and sub-machinegun? Trigger-happy YouTuber FPS Russia recently posted a video showing us just exactly what –”Sharlene”. Sharlene can fly through tight spaces, and even blow itself up on command. The quad-rotor prototype includes a 100 round magazine, can fly 30 MPH, reach altitudes of over 1000 feet, and self-destruct with a 15-foot blast radius. Or that’s the premise, anyway. It’s more than likely that this is all fancy CG work, since the video was sponsored by the fine folks at Call of Duty, who have a game being announced on May 1 likely called Tacitus.

Even if it’s fake, the U.S. Military is knee-deep into significant iOS usage. Not too long ago, the Army launched a web app store for iOS and Android, and even two years ago snipers were using iPhone apps to calculate trajectories. Even if the military has their own proprietary flying gun drones available, I imagine it would be a lot cheaper to have troops on the ground kitted out with iPhones than expensive custom-built consoles. FPS Russia says that because it’s a prototype, we wouldn’t see this thing for another decade; even if it’s all smoke and mirrors, do you think we’ll see gadgets like this on the battlefield within the next ten years?

As for Call of Duty renting out a hugely-popular YouTube channel so that they can sneakily promote a new game, that’s just smart marketing. They really couldn’t have picked a better web personality to team up with. Any Call of Duty fans eager to give this drone a try in the upcoming game? It sure would be interesting if the game used an iPad too… Source: Cult of Mac

Sprint announced their first quarter results today, seeing an operating loss of $255 million, and a net loss of $863 million, but enjoyed 1.5 million iPhone sales, 44% of which were new customers. Last quarter, Sprint sold 1.8 million iPhones with a similar proportion of new additions. Seeing as Sprint added a net of 1 million new subscribers total in Q1 2012, 44% is a pretty significant portion. By comparison, AT&T enjoyed 4.3 million iPhone sales, while Verizon sold 3.2 million. That brings U.S. iPhone sales for the first quarter of 2012 to roughly 9 million. Here are Sprint’s financial highlights. Best ever Sprint platform postpaid ARPU increase of $4.03, or 6.9 percent, year-over-year drives Sprint platform wireless service revenue growth of 16 percent year-over-year Operating loss of $255 million; Adjusted OIBDA* of $1.2 billion, which includes $104 million in Network Vision related operating expense 263,000 postpaid net additions on the Sprint platform in the quarter – eighth consecutive quarter of postpaid subscriber growth on the Sprint platform Total company net additions of more than 1 million for the sixth consecutive quarter Strong iPhone sales of more than 1.5 million – 44 percent to new customers Network Vision deployment continues on track Continue to expect six major cities to launch 4G LTE by mid-year Continue to expect 12,000 sites on air by end of 2012 To date work has begun on 25 percent of planned 2012 sites; 5 percent are on air Nearly 1,300 iDEN sites taken off air to date; expect 9,600 total by the end of the third quarter Sprint says that despite the customers the iPhone is bringing in, hardware subsidies are hitting them hard. Sales expenses increased year-over-year primarily due to iPhone point-of- sale discounts (subsidy) for devices directly sold by the manufacturer to indirect dealers in which Sprint does not take device title, as well as higher postpaid gross additions. The impact from the iPhone was partially offset by improvements in sales channel mix with a larger portion of activations coming from direct retail channels. Even though this quarter’s loss was steeper than the $439 million Sprint lost in the first quarter of last year, it’s not as bad as many analysts expected. Sprint launching their 4G network will be interesting, and set the stage for their support of an LTE-enabled iPhone 5 in the fall, assuming of course that they’ll be able to afford it.

Any Sprint iPhone customers in the house? Is the unlimited data keeping you happy, or are you thinking of switching?

Source: Sprint

Sprint today was the last of the three major iPhone carriers in the United States to release earnings for the first calendar quarter of 2012, announcing that it sold 1.5 million iPhones during the quarter. The number is down slightly from the 1.8 million units sold in the previous quarter, the debut quarter for the iPhone on Sprint.

Sprint remains the smallest of the three major U.S. iPhone carriers in terms of units sold, as Verizon activated 3.2 million iPhones during the quarter while AT&T continued to lead the pack with 4.3 million units. Sprint did, however, experience the smallest percentage decline from the previous quarter among the three carriers. The carrier also noted that 44% of its quarterly iPhone sales went to customers new to Sprint, up from 40% in the previous quarter.

Apple’S Q2 2012 results weren’t quite as strong as last quarter’s (the holiday period), but year-over-year it was another set of records for Apple.

Apple Q2 2012 Highlights Revenue was $39.2 billion, profit was $11.6 billion and EPS was $12.30. Wall Street analysts had been expecting EPS of $10.06, so this is a substantial beat. Apple shipped 35.1 million iPhones, only slightly below the 37 million shipped last quarter (the holiday quarter). Impressive! This represents 88% year over year growth in unit shipments. However, over 2 million of the phones shipped were to help build up channel inventory. iPad shipments were 11.8 million units. This is down from 15.4 million last quarter, but is still 151% unit growth compared to last year’s March quarter. Mac sales grew 7% year over year, while industry analyst data shows that the entire PC market only grew 2%. So while Apple’s Mac business isn’t the sexy growth engine of the company, this product division is still kicking some Redmond butt. As expected, the iPod business is shrinking. Apple sold 7.7 million units compared to 9 million last year. They still control over 70% of the US MP3 player market, but obviously the strength of the iPhone is displacing the need for stand alone MP3 players.

Overall, these strong numbers have set the stock back up to $600, after cratering to about $560 over the last 11 trading days. Is it enough to help the company reach a new high? Perhaps not this week. But I think Apple will get there.

Wall Street’s only criticism is Q3 financial guidance. But that’s typical with Apple. The company notoriously plays down its earnings potential for the next quarter. Then, almost like clockwork, they beat their own forecast.

Apple currently says it will earn only about $8.68 in EPS next quarter. Wall Street had been modeling $9.93. It’s likely that analysts will pull in forecasts for Q3, but I don’t see this as a cause for alarm. Apple is in fine shape. It’s just that they had huge demand for the iPhone 4S last quarter and channel inventory (carrier shelves) were bare. Apple needed to stock them up. So they did. They shipped about 2.6 million extra iPhones to accommodate this inventory build.

Gross margin was also incredibly strong for Apple this quarter. In fact, they reported margin of 47.4%, a whopping 540 basis points above expectations. They say half of this strength was due to commodity pricing. When you’re as big as Apple I guess you’re bound to get better pricing on components. The rest of the margin beat comes down to unexplained one time items, and revenue mix. I find it amazing that Apple’s revenue mix helped margins considering that the more expensive “new iPad” is now selling. It has a more expensive screen, batter, radio, processor and a bunch of other upgrades so it surely has a higher BOM (bill of materials) cost. And they STILL delivered such stellar margins? Wow.

Tim Cook recently unveiled Apple’s big dividend plan. Will this put much of a dent in cash? It sure doesn’t look that way. Apple’s cash balance is now over $110 billion, up from $97.6 billion last quarter. They’ve certainly left themselves room to raise the $2.65 quarterly dividend.

During the Q&A session, Cook took a question on the highly visible topic of iPhone subsidies. He answered by saying that the subsidy is low in proportion to the net revenues carriers generate over the 24 month contract period. But he also said something else that I found surprising. Cook said,

“Our engineering teams work extremely hard to be efficient with data and differently than some others. And we believe as a result of this iPhone has far better date efficiently compared to other smartphone that are using sort of an app rich ecosystem. Finally, and this is most important, iPhone is the best smartphone on the planet to entice a customer who is currently using a traditional mobile phone to upgrade to a smartphone. This is by far the largest opportunity for Apple, for our carrier partners and its a great fantastic experience for customers. So its a win win win there”

So, Cook is saying that the iPhone is far more data efficient versus Android (not BlackBerry, notice the careful wording). But more important, customers who upgrade to their first smartphone still want the best phone … hence Cook’s huge confidence in Apple’s upside.

On China: “There’s a lot of headroom here in our view”

In response to a question asking for more details on China, Cook said revenue was over $7.9 billion in the quarter. That’s up more than 3x over last year. If China was only 10% of Apple’s business, this wouldn’t be so darn impressive. But $7.9 billion is one fifth (20%) of total revenue. That fifth is up over 3x? Holy cow. Cook described the results as “mind boggling”. Pent up demand for iPhone 4S was a big part of the growth. But iPad 2 growth is strong and the new iPad isn’t even shipping in mainland China yet. Mac sales in China were also up 60% versus 6% for the overall market. So the halo effect is alive and well in China.

iPad Growth Opportunity Still Huge

Apple emphasized a few times that the supply of new iPads is constrained right now. They are selling them as fast as they can make them. They haven’t launched it in mainland China yet. The opportunity for iPad growth still seems insanely huge. The education (K-12) market is buying 2 times as many iPads as Macs. The lower pricing on iPad 2 has created a spur of demand in several countries. Cook points out that many industry analyts are forecasting the tablet market to be as big as the PC market by 2015.

Conclusion: The stock is a keeper

I’m hanging on for the ride on this one. I’ve been a very happy shareholder ever since the first iPhone came out. I like how Apple sticks to its view of the world and just executes with precision. There are a lot of mobile phone users who don’t have smartphones. Apple will capture its fair share of them. There are a lot of laptop / desktop users who don’t own tablets yet. Apple will capture a good chunk of those. And there are still tons of people who aren’t using Macs. Apple continues to gain traction there.

The stock may be trading at $600 again, but they have over $116 per share in cash. They’re piling on cash at an incredible rate. I don’t feel like we need to rehash the price to earnings multiple here, but it isn’t high. Given Apple’s growth, it seems to me this is a must own tech stock. But that’s just my opinion.