Whilst the US Apple fans gear up for the release of the iPhone on Friday, their compatriots in Europe are still twiddling their thumbs and wondering when they’ll be able to get their grubby little mits on the new toy. Well Apple have still to announce a distributor for the iPhone in Europe but the favourite is currently British firm Vodafone.

According to Reuters both companies are deep in conference on an agreement, but Apple require a guaranteed sales volume for the iPhone and Vodafone want to have control of its price.

Deutsche Telecom and Orange have also been touted as possible partners for the iPhone but Vodafone would be an obvious choice for Apple. Watch this space for an announcement soon!

Source: Reuters

Three days out and Apple and AT&T have finally announced their call plans and rates for the iPhone. The cheapest option at US$59.99 a month gives you 450 minutes call time plus 5000 off peak, unlimited data transfer and 200 text messages. So for a 4GB iPhone (US$499), US$36 activation fee and two year contract (24 x US$59.99), your total spend will be US$1,974.76. A small price to pay to look super cool with your funky new toy. Of course, that’s until the latest new ‘must have’ gizmo appears, probably just before Christmas I’m guessing.

I must admit the deal doesn’t sound bad over a two year period as long as you’re happy tied in for that time. Around $80 a month for a single gadget to make calls, play music/vids and handle emails, oh yes, and to look super cool too.

I’m sure there are a group of people who will rush out and buy one regardless of the cost, in fact they’ve already started queuing. But I don’t think the appeal will stretch much beyond exisitng AT&T customers after the initial hub bub has died down. Then again I’ve been known to be wrong in the past :)

There appears to much ado about the latest cellphone offering from HTC called ‘Touch’ in the tech blog world at the moment. It’s being touted as a potential competitor to the iPhone and with its whizzy ‘TouchFLO’ technology you may think that HTC are onto something here. Certainly a few sites believe so

Daily Tech

HTC’s touch-screen handset could give iPhone a run for its money

BrightHand

HTC Corp. has just launched the HTC Touch, a smartphone whose fingertip-oriented control system was clearly created to compete with Apple’s iPhone.

However I’m not so easily convinced, sure the Touch looks good in ‘wasabi’ and ’soft black’ colour choices but what about the numbers, how does it really stack up against the iPhone. Well let’s take a peek at them shall we?

Sure the Touch is smaller and lighter but at the guts of it there’s less memory for your tunes and less visual display for your vids. The final kicker, how much moola will I have to part with to be Touched? It will sell in Europe for 449 Euros which is about US$600, the price of an 8GB iPhone. Hmmm, brave try HTC but I don’t think Apple execs will be Touching the alarm button with this release. Roll on June 29th.

Another rumour? Well sort of, the guys at engadget have been told that June 29th is the date advertised in the next series of iPhone commercials. The source? Someone who ‘works in television’. Again all a bit ‘bloke down the pub told me so it must be true’ kinda thing, but one thing is for certain the launch date isn’t between June 1st and June 3rd ;o)

Anyway here’s the famous Conan O’Brien iPhone ad skit to tide you over until the new ads come out which, hopefully, will confirm the 29th.

Source: engadget

Three days away from the start of June and the rumours are flying around about when the iPhone will hit the shelves of your nearest AT&T store. The truth is nobody really knows, at any rate those who are blogging and reporting about it don’t really know. Here’s a list of the current suspects and the source of the rumour

June 20th - made popular in Google Groups as being reported on CNBC’s ‘On The Money’ program. Check out the video at Gizmodo. CNBC had contacted an AT&T store to obtain the date, yet the same store stated that there are no pre-orders yet there may be a waiting list?

June 12th - Gizmodo were informed that’s when their iPhone would be available by a Cingular rep.

June 11th to 22nd - AP contacted eight AT&T stores to obtain this range of dates

So what does this prove? As we said at the beginning of the post no one really knows and more importantly your local AT&T certainly doesn’t appear to know either! So we can all continue guessing when the launch will be or get back to doing something slightly more rewarding ;o)

As an aside, the opening paragraphs of the AP article

Shares of Apple Inc. rose Friday after a media report stated the company’s much-anticipated iPhone will be released June 20.

Apple shares added $1.83 to $112.52 in afternoon trading. Apple’s shares have been rising steadily over the past year, hitting an all-time high of $115 on Wednesday. Growth in recent months has been fueled by speculation and consumer excitement over the hybrid phone and media player.

At least everyone has made back their losses from the tumble a couple of weeks ago.

With the launch date of the iPhone rapidly approaching here’s the latest report in the hype from DailyTech. If you’re living in the USA you’re going to have to stroll on down your your nearest AT&T supplier to get hold of one of Apple’s latest gifts to the world. The boys at AT&T have snaffled up exclsuive US distribution rights for the next five years. OUCH! Rivals Sprint and Verizon are gonna be smarting after that maneuver.

And smarting they are with Sprint getting dirty

In recent full-page newspaper ads, Sprint has lately been dumping on AT&T by name, taking swipes at the quality of its wireless network.

and so AT&T replies

In full-page ads, including one in USA TODAY, AT&T shot back that “15 times more people choose AT&T than Sprint.”

Now, now boys, wait until your father gets home. Anyway back to the main point, AT&T use the GSM mobile standard and so current Verizon and Sprint customers who want an iPhone will have to jump the fence to AT&T as Verizon and Sprint networks use CDMA technology and not GSM.

It’ll be interesting to see what the iPhone competition come up with over the next few months as I’m sure Verizon and Sprint will want to hit back with iPhone-destroyer product! Watch this space!

Source: DailyTech, USA Today

Never underestimate the power of the blogger. Engadget posted about an internal email at Apple stating that the iPhone and Leopard launches were to be delayed to October and next January respectively. Later Apple stated that the original email was a fake and the product launches are still on track.

Despite there only being twenty minutes between engadget’s post and the response, Apple’s share price fell by 2.2 percent. Needless to say Apple investor’s would have been none too pleased at the power of the blog.

However there’s an interesting follow up article at the Inquirer regarding a post at Information Week. The post suggests that engadget behaved irresponsibly and it was naive journalism to post about the email without checking with Apple first.

Lessons learned in Journalism 101, however, would have prevented the debacle.

The post at IW seems to be confusing journalism with blogging - sure there are many similarities but a blog tends to be an opinion rather than a ‘news items’. They try to blame engadget for the share price dip yet surely that was more due to the nervousness of the shareholders than anything else. Also this is not the first time a company’s share price has moved due to rumour or speculation - in fact the markets thrive on such movements.

No, as far as I’m concerned engadget did the right thing reporting information as they discovered it.

As an aside the Apple share price currently stands at $109.44 - over a dollar up from where it stood PRIOR to the fake email post. If I was a Apple investor (of the less nervous variety) I would be cracking open a cold one right now and saying ‘Go, go, engadget’.