Lion's AppleWatch

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Apple confirms September 9th special event: "Let's Rock"

Apple has formally issued invitations for a special event that will take place on September 9th -- one week from today -- to usher in a new family of iPod digital music players.

The invites, one of which was obtained by ArsTechnica, feature the iconic iPod silouette along with the tagline "Let's Rock."

Apple has scheduled the event to take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco at 10:00 a.m. local time next Tuesday.

The invites confirm reports of a September 9th event originally waged by Digg founder Kevin Rose. The appearance and wording of the digital documents also suggest the event will be music focused and not serve as a forum for new Mac notebooks, as was recently suggested by AppleInsider, which will come later.

Special Event

7:14:39 PM

Apple added to short-term Alpha List at Piper Jaffray. Investment bank Piper Jaffray on Tuesday highlighted shares of Apple Inc. by adding them to its Alpha List, saying three key catalysts are likely to lead to significant share appreciation in the short term.
Companies assigned to the firm's Alpha L... [AppleInsider] 7:03:19 PM

iPhone talks in China in 'final stages,' state media reports
Things seem to be heating up again for the iPhone in China, according to several press accounts early Tuesday. The most promising was an item in 21st Century Business Herald, a Chinese state-controlled financial paper, which described talks between Apple (AAPL) and China Mobile (CHL), the world's largest cellphone carrier, as in their "final stages," according to AFP.
Meanwhile, both Reuters and Network World carried remarks made by China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou on Tuesday that were only slightly less encouraging.
"Steve Jobs and I hope the iPhone will enter China as soon as possible," Wang told reporters at the ITU Telecom Asia 2008 exhibition in Bangkok. "We are discussing this issue but we do not have an agreement."
Wang declined further comment, citing a non-disclosure agreement with Apple.
A deal with China Mobile would be the capstone of an aggressive expansion program that has brought the iPhone to 43 countries and 660.5 million potential customers in 2008.
China alone has more than 600 million cellphone subscribers, and 415 million of them get their service from China Mobile, according to interim results published last week
Apple has been in talks with China Mobile for the better part of a year. The main sticking point -Steve Jobs' insistence on revenue sharing- was taken off the table in June. It's not clear what's holding things up now. 5:05:26 PM

10 millionth iPhone before the end of September
Apple iPhone: 8 million and counting
. On Saturday, Aug. 30, the daughters of “BillH”¬'bought an iPhone at an AT&T store in Sunnyvale, Calif. The next day, their father, an Apple investor from Minneapolis, reported on The Mac Observer’s Apple Finance Board (AFB) that the so-called IMEI number on the phone was 01 171400 6049xx x (the last three digits X’d out for safety sake).

That number may not mean anything to you or me, but to a group of Apple watchers, it represents a significant milestone — and a sign that iPhone sales may be running significantly ahead of forecasts.

In a joint project of AFB and Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity board, several members have been collecting the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers of every iPhone 3G they can get their hands on and recording them on a big Google speadsheet here.

By tracking the sequence of IMEIs, they can now say, with a fair degree of certainty, that as of Aug. 30, when BillH’s daughters bought that phone, Apple had manufactured at least 5,649,000 iPhone 3Gs. Added to the 2.4 million first-generation iPhones the company reported it had sold in the first six months of 2008, that means that Apple has manufactured more than 8 million iPhones this year.

Moreover, with Apple’s overseas partners reportedly turning out iPhones at the rate of 800,000 units per week, it seems likely that Apple will build — if not sell — its 10 millionth iPhone before the end of September. 4:56:28 PM