New iPhone 4 Announced
The beginning of the Apple keynote can be summarized in one word: defensive.
Steve is upset about the app rejection complaints and about the Android market share claims. You want “un-curated” apps? Write a web app.
The rest of the announcements can be summarized like this:
- New iPhone 4, thinner then 3GS, front-facing camera, out June 24th
- Video chat on either front or rear camera (FaceTime)
- HD video recording with iMovie app available for the phone
- Camera flash and video illumination
- Usual $199 and $299 price point
- eBooks a big new market for Apple, coming to iPhone and iPod Touch
- iPhone OS is now iOS. iOS 4 just went Gold Master (GM). Available June 21st.
- iAds already has $60 million in ad commitments
Apple is now up to 5 billion apps downloaded.
In the last three years Apple has paid developers $1 billion. So Apple has made $300 million from app sales. If the average app price is $2.99 that means about 333 million of the apps were paid for. So about 7% of apps downloaded are for-pay.
There are 15,000 apps submitted each week. 95% are approved within 7 days. Of course that means that 750 are not approved each week.
Top three reasons apps are rejected
- Doesn’t function or do what it says it does
- Uses private APIs
- Crashes
iPhone 4 released. Looks just like the stolen prototype.
- 24% thinner then 3GS - “thinnest smartphone on the planet”
- Glass front and back with steel band running on the outside
- Screen is custom “bendable” glass
- Front and rear facing camera
- LED camera flash on rear
- Second mic for noise reduction
- The steel band around the outside is a giant antenna
- Display has four times the pixels as the 3GS - 326 pixels per inch
- Supposedly max retina resolution is 300 pixels per inch
- You can’t see pixels in new screen, wide viewing angle, 800:1 contrast
- Interestingly, the iPhone 4 display has 78% of the pixels of the iPad
- Theoretically you can’t see any increase in resolution above this
- Uses iPad A4 chip
- Bigger battery, better battery life - 20-40% longer
- Added gyroscope. It’s tied into the accelerometer.
- 5 megapixel camera - wanted better photos not more pixels
- Kept sensor pixel size the same, switched to back-side illumination
- Translation of above: better low-light performance
- Records HD video - 720p at 30 frames a second
- LED illumination for video
- Costs $199 or $299
- Available June 24th, pre-orders June 15th
iMove for iPhone
- New app, iMovie for iPhone
- Titles, clips, photos w/Ken Burns effects, transitions, music tracks
- Video themes, geolocation, maps, etc.
- Export to 360p, 520p and 720p
iPhone OS is now iOS.
- Stuff covered before: multi-tasking, unified inbox, folders
- Threaded mail, enhanced camera and photo apps, encryption
- SSL VPN, multiple Exchange servers, wireless app distribution, remote management
- iOS 4 goes Gold Master today. Public release on June 21st.
- Upgrade is free
iBooks
- Already owns 22% of the eBook market
- Being expanded to support PDFs, bookmarks and notes
- Being released for the iPhone and iPod Touch
- PDF in email goes to PDF bookshelf in iBooks
- Syncs between devices like Kindle (buy once, read on any device for free)
iAds
- Had people working on them for 8 weeks
- Apple keeps 40% of ad revenues
- Ads are HTML5, fully interactive and don’t take you out of the apps
- Already have $60 million in ad commitments for second half of 2010
- Expect to own half of the mobile advertising space in second half of 2010
FaceTime
- “FaceTime” video chat on either front or rear camera
- Can switch to front or rear during video chat
- FaceTime is wi-fi only, no setup, iPhone to iPhone only
- FaceTime uses open standards
- Working with carriers to get FaceTime on 3G networks
Categories: Dev Trends, iPhone
Tags: Apple Inc., HTML5, Portal Document Format (PDF), iOS, iOS 4, iPhone, iPhone App Store