iPhone 3G Pricing Plans!

In my earlier post about the paradigm shift concerning smart-phones designed for consumer, rather than business use, I highlighted the industry's pathfinder, the iPhone (and it's carrier AT&T) as the device (and service) which set the standard that all the other handset makers and phone companies are going to refer to when pricing their products and services. I got an email today from a friend working in the tech department of a bank releasing the pricing information for AT&T's iPhone and service. The implications are pretty savoury

AT&T plans to deliver the 8gb model for $199.00 and the 16gb model for $299.00-- with contract. They're also delivering the same models, without contract, for $399.00 and $499.00 respectively. This is obviously a sharp departure from their earlier strategy of not selling the phone at all outside of contract. The phone, which runs on GSM networks only will work on National carriers such as AT&T (of course) and T-Mobile as well as smaller regional carriers like MyCricket.

AT&T's dropped the price of the contract phone in order to attract more customers. They plan on making up for the pricing revenue lost with the *discounted* iPhone 3G by upping the monthly service plan which includes 450 anytime roll-over minutes and unlimited mobile Internet and email from $60.00 to ~75.00. This price doesn't include text messaging and with taxes, that monthly bill's going to hit something close to $90.00.

Some people are outraged at this information. I have to say though, that as much as I'm excited about everyone getting their hands on these phones which can best exploit services like http://www.mshopper.net/, I'm not that upset with the pricing plan.
That said, the pricing sounds pretty reasonable(not too expensive). The upping of the network costs makes a lot of sense given that the new iPhone's running on bandwidth-heavy 3g instead of EDGE and it actually brings the pricing in line with the rest of their smartphones. Compare their blackberry plan for $90 w/ unlimited text messages a month(phone plan + data plan + text messages). The new iPhone charges listed above should come out to $90.00/month which is ~1080 a year in revenue for AT&T. That's how they can drop the prohibitively expensive price of the old iPhone.
AT&T is setting themselves up so that people living in areas covered by the newer phone service companies like MyCricket are going to be discouraged from these alternatives as the serious savings they'd see by using the phone on that network would be nullified by the no-contract pricing. Compare AT&T's monthly service charges with MyCricket's $45/mo for unlimited everything (txt and mms msgs, mobile web, email, talk time (area only). Regardless of whether the consumer buys the 8gb iPhone unit with contract or goes to MyCricket without it, they'll end up paying the same price annually, which would leave most with wanting to stick to AT&T since it's both more well known and has a larger coverage area. These facts will leave many wondering why AT&T would even offer the iPhone outside of contract if they had successfully priced-out regional rival low-cost service competition. What's there to gain? I think the answer lies in the falling dollar.The ability to buy the phone off-contract in the US is going to allow tourists who come to the US this summer looking to spend money yet don't have the option to buy the iPhone in their home country to pick the device up while here on holiday: taking advantage of the falling dollar.

European tourists have a reason to pick the device up on this side of the pond as well. An admittedly not so recent interview with Jonathan Ive, the chief industrial designer of Apple's award winning wares, has revealed that in the UK, the pricing for the iPod isn't simply the US dollar converted to British pounds but rather, the US dollar value simply up-rated to British pounds. While a top of the line iPod in the States will cost someone $400, its seems that in Britain the consumer's paying £400! That means that while Apple will likely move units off the shelves in England by those over there that are willing to pay the price, they're bound to move unit after unit by tourist consumers that see a great deal for a great device over here.

Finally, I'm interested in seeing how other phone companies respond to this iPhone 3G pricing plan. With their pricing on plans for HTC touches and Samsung Instincts...let the consumer smartphone wars begin! Sprint already has a completely unlimited plan cleverly named "Simply Everything" which includes unlimited minutes, messaging, web and email for $9 more than AT&T's w/ tax price. For some, not having to wonder about the status of your roll-over minutes (or having to worry about minutes overages at all when compared to Verizon) for $9.00 more per month on a smartphone like the Samsung Instinct might just be worth it.

What The New Hybrid Electric Cars and Glade(R) Have in Common.

Plug it in, Plug it in! Last week Toyota announced it's plans for delivering a plug-in version of heir hybrid dynamo, the Prius, to United States showrooms by 2010. While this is great news for the carbon emission faithful, it's hardly surprising. For the last few years Toyota has been offering hybrid vehicles (through both their standard and Lexus brands) with the price, performance, a number of offerings that few other car companies could touch. And they haven't been keeping quiet about it. In addition to their Prius, which, if you visit progressive cities like Boulder or San Francisco (and to some extent, NYC), has become something of a Model T in terms of ubiquity, their RS series SUVs and their LS series luxury sedans have been taking advantage of their Hybrid Synergy Drive, allowing a mpg/performance ratio that's a much better solution in terms of carbon emissions than, say, BMW's terribly inefficient Hydrogen 7 initiative. In fact, with the new class of plug-in hybrids, drivers should be able to make it home and back during short trips without using a drop of gas at all. Some of the proposed batteries move cars for a range of 40 miles before the gas engine kicks in, which is more than the average commute in America.

One of Lexus's Hybrid Synergy Drive(R) commercials which aired on the other side of the pond.


As we begin to see a push away from vehicles fueled solidly on fossil fuels, the implications become more pervasive than the lower mpg numbers. Plug-In hybrids are vehicles that have more to offer us. Not only will they drop emissions but they have the potential to supplement the electric grid during peak hours, when demand is high. See, while every day power plants around the country create energy that's gobbled up, every night they create nearly as much electricity that simply goes to waste. The electric grid doesnt really store energy so they make careful judgments on how much to produce given the demand they foresee given extrapolation from historical consumer demand data. In essence, the power grid is like your local supermarket. They produce a highly perishable product based in quantities based on demand. The difference is that when demand becomes outstripped by supply, the prices don't simply go up, blackouts happen.

With new technologies like Vehicle-to-Grid ("V2G"), Plug-in hybrids, when augmented with the proper infrastructure, can give surplus energy BACK to the grid they took it from the night before. What most Americans don't know is that the average car packs a LOT of power; more than ten kilowatts by some estimates, which is enough to power, you guessed it, ten homes. Sounds crazy but when you think of the fact that when we drive we move more than 2000 lbs at an average rate of about 40mph, the machines need all that juice to get the job done. Obviously some manufacturers have moved toward the 'less is more' line of reasoning which states that the lighter you make your car, the more speed you can get for less turns at the fill-up station (as is the case with the chassis of the Lotus Elise) . I'm sure as time progresses, the manufacturers of the GMC Volt and Toyota Prius will take that into account as well. Regardless of whether you're giving back to the grid on a normal basis or you're pulling out your V2G hardware for power-backup during blackouts.

So what do we get from plug-in hybrids that makes them beyond the geek? (1) Decreased fuel consumption, which leads to (2)less greenhouse gas emissions and (3)more independence from foreign oil, (4)fewer $$$ spent on gasoline since the user can charge up at home, and of course, (5)the ability to give power back to the grid, which, I may have forgot to mention, leaves the power company paying YOU.

Coming Soon, the Entire Information SuperHighway (Affordably and Easily) At Your Fingertips

"The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air."

Any geek worth his salt can feel the haunting words of Toklien's Treebeard release a shudder through their bodies the way it must've to the bodies of little Merry and Pippin as they traversed the landscape of the forest, and were enlightened about the oncoming paradigm shift in their world.

Such enlightenment flitters through the many consciousnesses of all involved much as the light of day through an eerie image mounted onto stain glass. Just like that light, the shift contains a dual nature; it's an unknown that creepy as it is educational; an anxiety that's accompanied by a certain dread. It's been dramatic and subtle but ten years ago, the internet matured as a superhighway of information. Five years ago the laptop redefined where we could connect to that superhighway. And in 2008, the new army of consumer-oriented mobile devices is fueling a third shift. Unlimited Data. Anytime. Anywhere.

When Apple, Inc.'s iPhone first came to the market last year it pleased a whole lot of people and yet it spawned resentment in just as many. For some the iPhone was the be-all and end-all of phones. It had wi-fi, a full web browser, multi-touch controls, great application support and operating system updates and the list went on and on. Those opposed sighted that in such an information transmitting device it was close to sinful that the simple function of cut-and-pasting wasn't an option. And that for the price the lack of GPS or 3G support, along with Apple's as-per-usual inability to deliver a device with a user-replaceable battery was disturbing. And so we had the consensus of those who said "wait." There were more than just these two camps though. There was something else there.

Unlike so many handsets this phone wasn't made by Nokia or LG, companies that base most of their revenue via phone sales. Nor was it manufactured by Samsung or Sony, branding giants who's products run the consumer electronics gamut, but by Apple-- a company that is is known for high-end computer devices and the volks-wagen of all media devices, the iPod. The idea that the cell phone market was open to any company with an army of designers and an exclusive contract with a service provider was another one of Treebeard's paradigm shifts.

Love it or hate it though, the device also represented something else to another segment of tech lovers-- the solid feeling that, well, it was about time. Time for a consumer driven (there have been business-aimed smart-phones for ages) device to come along and take a crack at the coveted position of the full fledged Personal Communications Device ("PCD"). PCDs aren't just made for calling someone but really, they're your online presence and informational go-to thingamabob in an emerging world where information recall is as reflexive as clipping yourself into a seatbelt or taking in a huge gulp of air before you perform a cannonball off of a springboard.

With the imminent release of th second generation iPhone, we next-level PCD techies are about to see a wallop of a paradigm shift as consumers have more than just the new, cheaper, Apple toy to play with in the smart-phone market. With Sprint & Samsung's Instinct, the HTC Touch, the cheapening of the Blackberry Curves along with the release of their 9000 model and a growing stock of newly released and up-and-coming devices from all sorts of tech companies (like ones supporting Google's Android), it's obvious that one day literally everybody(and their momma!)'s going to have, at their fingertips, a host of online functionality tools, created for the consumption, transmission, and overall integration of vast quantities of data in our daily lives. What's this mean for our society/everyday life?

Ever since picking up my Blackberry Curve (8310) in 2007 I must say that the first change I noticed in my everyday parlance was the lost of the ubiquitous "THEY." You know the "THEY." O no? Then let me re-introduce you.

THEY haven't made a nuclear powered emission-free car yet.

THEY have a new ice-cream out now made of plastic!

You see my point? The THEY-- that strange force of unknown people that gets things done to make our lives that much more luxurious or whatever-- their mystery vanished. How? Well, via the fact that any answer to nearly any question I had was now not only answerable in seconds, as would be were I hanging out in any wifi hot-spot with my laptop, but completely on the go and out of my pocket. THEY, were all given names as constant questions arose in conversation about what was possible concerning this or that, and specifically, how such random things were accomplished. The THEY went away. Suddenly it became: "Sony's found a way to make a screen/monitor as thin or thinner than a credit card" or "you can totally

Other things that the Shift will affect?

1) As the GPS software on these things gets more and more advanced, you'll be able to pass your GPS information to your friends and family as you see fit. Are you looking for the bar where you're supposed to meet your buddies? Move the blue blip that represents you on your handheld's map to the red blip that represents your party. No more wonky half-drunk directions a la "So do you see that fire hydrant painted like a dalmatian? Yah, it's just to the left of that! "

2) You walk by a convenience store on your way to meet someone and your phone beeps. You look at your handheld and it says A) that it's gonna rain in a few hours, and b) that if you don't have an umbrella already, the convenience store you just passed probably does.

3) You're in the supermarket and you pass by the pineapple display. You want one, but you don't know how to choose a ripe one. So you ask your handheld how to choose a pineapple properly pick one out and in a minute or two, you're squeezing, smelling and testing the top leaves on the lot of them until you've got the best in the barrel.

Some of us are already there. But with the widespread proliferation of consumer-based smart-phone devices, and the very reasonable data and voice plans available in some areas, it's just a matter of time before They're about to have us way more connected than most could have ever imagined.

BMW's introduced a radically different type of concept car at a time when cars need radical change.

I'm not going to go on and on about it-- I'm going to let these images along with BMW's other media provide through visuals and BMW's own commentary the details of this new Bavarian Motor Work. What I will go on to say though is this-- the use of GINA's 'textile skin' rather than the normal metal/plastic autobody shell has meanings that stretch far beyond hte visual cool factor.

Given the energy costs needed to create steel and plastics, the fabric-like shell already significantly diminishes this automobile's carbon footprint. How durable and lasting it is I don't know-- it is after all only a concept car and concerns like these are what keep such things from production.

There's also the obvious fuel economy advantage-- no matter what's under the hood, a motor that doesn't have to do the work involved with moving a metal chassy is a motor that moves just as fast as the next one using less fuel, which means less carbon emissions. While I'm not at all a fan of their Hydrogen 7 push, BMW's concept of less is more with this very attractive, carbon friendly (at least in terms of production) roadster is pretty great.

From a social standpoint, it's a new concept as well. The car is, in effect wearing clothes. From their own media, BMW says that it takes about 2 hours to put the skin on the auto, so should it go into production, depending on your budget, the GINA can change it's look as often as you do.

BMW actually has a series of efficiency technologies in their conventional cars that I'd love to see implemented in vehicles with more modest engines where they'd make a huge difference. Unfortunately, in their pursuit of the ultimate driving machines, the Bavarians aren't known for hybrid-like milage rates and as stated before, their Hydrogen 7 project is as close to Green-Gimmicky as you can get. But that's a story for another posting. You can check out BMW's efficiency initiatives and technologies here.

In an age where companies like Boeing are changing their materials to offset gas costs/add fuel efficiency as is Airbus with their "more efficient than a Prius" A380, it's nice to see Europe's top automaker looking down the road for change. Once again it's a concept car, not for production, but the concepts herein should inspire all manufacturers taking a gander to head back to the drawing board in pursuit of new, efficient designs. Let's hope this is the beginning of something real.

Technology What-Ifs in an Obama World

With Senator Hillary Clintons concession speeches planned for tonight and tomorrow (Saturday, 7 June) Obama's become the Nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2008 presidential election, and thus he's taken some quick steps to secure his hold on the party.

In going ahead with his pursuit of the Whitehouse on the General Election level he's opened certain aspects of his site up to see what the voters think on his proposed policies, including what they think the role of government is on a wide range of technical issues. So

While it's completely unprecedented in presidential electoral politics to tune into technology as a real issue (thereby creating the 'technology card'), this isn't really surprising coming from Senator Obama. Late last year in a stump speech the candidate mentioned his intentions to create a chief technology officer; a role that would include among other things, making the lawmaking process more transparent to, well, non lawmakers. Now he's asking for the public's help.

He's been touting some of these ideas for more than a year now; (1) the aforementioned placement of government data online, (2) computerizing the information aspects of the healthcare system, (3) pushing and developing our more sustainable natural resources like wind and solar power, and the list goes on and on. Over the little while I intend to take a look at just what's possible in the here and now concerning these policies. I intend to use what information I can find to determine whether they're viable at this point in our information technology development as well as whether emerging technologies can be employed for these aims.

The point here is to do more than shoot down what seems unfeasible. It's to see, as is in line with the rest of this blog's message, what we're capable of, and how those capabilities can be applied to more than just the quick buck small gadget consumer.

If you like, you can check out Obama's other proposed tech policies here . You can also contribute your own suggestions or check out a second space which allows you to take a look at previously contributed suggestions and discuss them.

I'm excited about this candidate's open push to use what we know in the ever growing tech sector to possibly promote a social agenda that promotes openness and democracy rather than fear-mongering and the degradation of personal privacy in America. I look forward to Senator Mccain's detailed suggestions on how we can use the current and emerging technologies to make America great again, and will comment on them when they appear.