The iPhone 3G blog

We all knew it was just a matter of time before the milestone was reached, but several app analytics sites are reporting the number of apps that have been approved for use in the App Store have surpassed 100,000.

There hasn’t been any official announcement from Apple yet, though it is possible we could hear something from them at any time about this. It seems a hefty enough milestone to at least mention somewhere.

Naturally this is a great deal ahead of any other mobile OS out there, by an astronomically large margin. Given the fact that most other platforms based their app stores on the one found on the iPhone, this is no surprise by any means.

But it is something worth celebrating. The fact that there are so many different apps available to allow you to customize your iPhone virtually any possible way you’d like, is what makes the iPhone so unique and has brought in such a large and loyal following around the world.

Is there a ceiling to how many apps can be supported in the App Store? It’ll be interesting to see the evolution of the Store over the coming years.

世贸天阶-iPhone

Apple’s iPhone went on sale in China for the first time on Friday night. China is the world’s largest mobile phone market and crowds of shoppers eagerly answered the call to buy Apple’s newest gadget.

The iPhone also went on sale at 2-thousand stores around China, even as far as Tibet.

Apple’s local service provider, China Unicom, hopes the iPhone will give it an edge against rival network, China Mobile.

Liu Xinling, Iphone Customer, said, “I’ve always liked this mobile phone and I’ve always thought of buying it. I think this phone is very good and it is definitely worth the wait.”

Some news reports say Unicom hopes to sell 5 million iPhones in three years. The company declined to confirm that.

Song Limei, Deputy General Manager, Personal Comm. Dept., China Unicom, said, “We not only provide the hardware such as mobile phones, but we also provide our customers with all-round after-sales support and a full support system for the Iphone. This is an all-round service. We believe that our customers will have an excellent user experience and the iPhone will have good prospects in the market.”

But analysts fear the iPhone’s higher-than-expected price tag could hinder its reception in China.

Unicom’s prices for its 32-gigabyte iPhone 3GS range from 4,999 yuan to 6,999 yuan for the high-end.

China Mobile has launched its own brand Ophone. China Telecom has confirmed it will introduce a new Blackberry handset from Canada.

Tonight we get a first glimpse of whether Chinese cell phone users bite when the iPhone (finally) officially goes on sale here. The iPhone’s star power could draw crowds to the launch events tonight – which are being held separately by Apple and China Unicom in Beijing. But as for sales: many die-hard iPhone fans already have the handset, and given the high prices being charged, it’s going to take real die-hard fans to buy the Unicom iPhones.

We wrote about the price issue in today’s Journal, but here’s a more detailed breakdown of what prospective Chinese iPhone buyers are looking at: China Unicom is offering three models of the iPhone. Without being bundled with a service package, the phones will go for 4,999 yuan ($732, for the 8-gigabyte iPhone 3G), 5,880 yuan ($861, 16-gigabyte 3GS), and 6,999 yuan ($1,025, 32-gigabyte 3GS). China Unicom is offering 8 levels of third-generation wireless service packages, ranging from 126 yuan ($18) a month to 886 yuan ($130) a month, which will allow users to download data at higher speeds and run applications like streaming video. Read more… »

disney-app

The Walt Disney Co. is releasing an iPhone application that rewards users for poking through the Disney.com Web site and could one day offer exclusive bonuses for activities such as shopping at Disney Stores.

The free app, which debuts in the iTunes app store Wednesday, offers bonus animations to users who follow clues to take cell-phone pictures of characters from movies such as “Up,” “G-Force,” “Ratatouille,” and “Wall-E” on the Web site.

Taking the correct picture unlocks an exclusive video and downloadable content such as frame images that can be overlaid on photos, or wallpaper images for cell phone screens. Disney is calling the feature “Click2Life,” because it makes characters captured in photos appear to suddenly become animated in one’s hand.

In the future, the family entertainment company said it could allow bonus content to be delivered to phones based on their location, pinpointed with GPS coordinates, such as inside a Disney Store. Future photo keys could also include movie posters to drive interest in the company’s upcoming releases.

Jason Davis, vice president of Disney.com, said the main purpose of the app was to deepen fan relationships with Disney characters, rather than just drive traffic to stores, theaters and online.

“We treat it just as a unique content experience,” Davis said.

The app also corrals all of Disney’s 17 apps together in one place, allowing users to shop for other programs and manage ones they have already purchased, some of which sell for $4.99.

The app is unrelated to a so-called “Keychest” technology that Disney is developing to give consumers access to movies across multiple devices with one purchase.

Verizon is still interested in selling the iPhone, but the decision is apparently up to Apple. Too bad the company took a pass when Apple came knocking on Verizon’s door well before the iPhone launched in 2007.

Can you hear me now on my CDMA-equipped iPhone? Good, because it doesn't exist.

As AT&T continues to benefit from its exclusive contract with Apple, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has told analysts he is still hoping to sell the iPhone. His comments suggest that Apple isn’t actively courting the carrier—no surprise given recent ad campaigns that are aimed squarely against the iPhone and AT&T’s 3G network. They also sound like so much sour grapes, since Apple originally offered to partner with Verizon for the iPhone before the deal went to AT&T. Read more… »