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During previous Google I/O developer conferences the company has announced new hardware, such as their Nexus smartphones or tablets. This year, no new hardware made its way to the stage. But in a twist, Google noted it will soon offer the new Samsung Galaxy S4 unlocked, running stock Android for $649 on June 26th.

Image via The Verge

That new price is much more expensive than its previous pricing of $309 and $359 CDN for its popular unlocked Nexus 4 smartphone in 8GB and 16GB models, but of course that’s because users will receive Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone–without the bloat and instant OS updates. The audience was eager to hear about all of the phone’s details until they saw the price of $649.

Standard android <clap clap>Unlocked device <clap clap>Unlocked boot loader <clap clap>Just $649 <cricket cricket>#GoogleIO

— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) 15. Mai 2013

Google to Sell Unlocked ‘Nexus’ Version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 for $649 is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

T-Mobile is taking seriously its commitment to separating the phone from the service plan. It turns out that starting April 12, you can walk out of a T-Mo store with an unlocked iPhone 5 in your hands and never deal with T-Mobile again – but you’ll have to pay the full MSRP of $650, not the carrier’s discounted price of $580.

As we reported earlier this week, T-Mobile is upending the traditional subsidy-and-contract model, selling you a device at full price but without a contract and without the device fees hidden in most carrier’s monthly rate plans. The result is a more expensive phone, but much cheaper monthly service rates, which ultimately save customers money in the long run.

What’s more, T-Mobile is sweetening the pot further by offering substantial discounts on the full cost of its phones. For instance, an unlocked sans-contract iPhone normally retails from Apple or other distributors for $650. T-Mobile is selling it for $580 either up front or through financing plan, making it a relative bargain. The catch is you have to sign up for one of T-Mobile’s new Simple Choice plans to gain the discount.

But signing up for a plan isn’t that much of a commitment. Remember, T-Mobile has gone contract-free. You can sign up for a single month of service and face no further commitment. If you use T-Mobile’s installment plan, your phone will be locked to the operator’s network, but as soon as you finish paying off your device (which you can do at any time) T-Mo will unlock the device.

T-Mobile, like any wholesale buyer, isn’t paying full price for the iPhone from Apple so it’s passing some of its savings along to the customer – as my colleague Kevin Tofel points out, it will likely do this for other popular devices like the Galaxy S 4. But T-Mobile also doesn’t want to be taken for a patsy. It’s not going to sell discounted phones, which buyers just take immediately to another carrier. It wants to get some modicum of service commitment – even if it’s a mere month – in exchange for that discount.

What’s interesting, though, is that T-Mobile is still selling a commitment-free iPhone for full price even if it doesn’t stand to gain from the transaction as a service provider. T-Mobile is essentially becoming a phone retailer as well as carrier, and I think that has significant implications for the industry.

Why an open device ecosystem is a good thing

If you can just walk into any store, buy a phone and pick your carrier later, then we get a model like that which has developed in Europe, where phone purchases and service plans are independent transactions. That could lead to a whole new retail marketplace in the U.S. where sellers can discount or bundle features with unlocked phones based on other factors besides contracts.

For instance, Samsung, HTC and Nokia could build legitimate businesses in the U.S. around selling phones directly to consumers at lower prices since there’s no carrier middleman to deal with. BlackBerry could sell unlocked phones directly to businesses packaging them with its enterprise email services. BestBuy might give you a deal on a device if you sign up for Geek Squad protection. And of course, the already growing mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) community could get a big boost if there were greater phone portability.

Of course, there are some pretty big obstacles to this kind of model in the U.S. The biggest one is the fragmentation of airwaves and technologies that acts as a de facto lock for most devices to specific carrier networks. Even if you got an unlocked iPhone from T-Mobile, there are only a few other places you can take it, namely AT&T, a few regional GSM operators and a handful of MVNOs like Straight Talk.

Building that independent device market is going to be difficult and it will take a lot of consumer education. Retailers will have to explain carefully which carriers will be supported on specific devices. Luckily device technology is improving. Dual-mode GSM-CDMA devices are becoming more common and vendors are starting to pack more bands into a single device.

Everyone stands to benefit from an open device ecosystem – consumers, handset makers and, according to T-Mobile, carriers — so every step we take in that direction, no matter how small, is good one.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Arcady

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It’s hard to go anywhere but down when you’ve been a senior executive at the world’s largest and most valuable consumer company, but former Apple retail VP John Browett seems to have done pretty well, considering the circumstances: he’s just landed the CEO job at Monsoon Accessorize, a U.K.-based purveyor of inexpensive jewelry and handbags. He moved from overseeing Apple’s 401 stores in 14 countries to 1,000 stores in 74 countries. Meanwhile, his appointment reminds us, the world’s most lucrative retail stores still have no official leader. How can that be?

Well, to begin with, they’re not really hurting as a result. At least that’s what CEO Tim Cook explained during a Q&A session at Goldman Sachs’ analyst conference this week. Cook was effusive in his description of the stores, calling the in-store experience “Prozac” for him when he’s having a bad day.

And it’s not hard to see why they make him so happy. The average stores pulls in $50 million in yearly revenue, he said Tuesday. And the stores make about $6,000 per square foot of retail space — twice what next-closest retailer, Tiffany & Co. does.

And, as this chart from Horace Dediu at Asymco shows below, Apple Stores are more popular than ever:

Cook said there were 370 million people that walked through the doors of Apple stores during 2012 — the most ever. Besides just being a place where shoppers can pick up an iPhone or MacBook, the stores function as showrooms for the Apple experience, customer service centers, and places to educate new iPhone or Mac users.

It’s been almost four months since Browett’s exit, and there’s still no SVP of Retail. Cook has been overseeing the group, while Apple is said to be still actively looking for Browett’s replacement. It needs someone who knows retail, understands the value of Apple’s brand, and has international experience, since that’s where most of Apple’s sales growth is coming from. Apple’s at the top of its game in retail in these respects, but apparently the SVP slot remains an extraordinarily hard position to fill. Apple doesn’t appear to be looking inward: longtime VP of Retail Jerry McDougal recently left the company after presumably being passed over for the position. It appears instead to be looking outside the company again, despite the bad experience last time.

In all, the toughest thing about Apple retail is, as we learned from the Browett episode, that it’s extremely high profile with almost no leeway to make significant change. Whoever Cook brings in will likely have to accept simply managing the model that’s already in place; which for the ambitious type Apple usually hires, is probably a tough sell.

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As consumer advocacy groups recently voiced their opposition to Rogers acquiring Shaw’s unused AWS spectrum, a new analyst report predicts Quebecor will be the next likely seller of its wireless spectrum, according to Scotia Capital analyst Jeff Fan:

“Shaw agreed to sell an option to Rogers Communications Inc. to purchase its Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) licences beginning in September 2014,” Mr. Fan wrote in his latest Converging Networks report.

“We expect Quebecor will eventually do the same with its unused licences in Toronto.”

Back in 2008, Montreal’s Quebecor purchased AWS spectrum covering the province of Quebec and a portion covering a population of 5.6 million in the City of Toronto, for a total of $554.5 million spent for 17 licenses.

Last fall, Quebecor declared it had no plans to build a wireless network in Toronto. Quebecor’s chief financial officer, Jean-François Pruneau did admit they company had received “inquiries” about their spectrum, which he believes “has increased since we acquired it.”

Fan’s report also predicts WIND Mobile will put up for sale now that the company has become completely foreign owned, with the most likely buyers being the incumbents. Just last week sources noted to The Globe and Mail Rogers was a possible candidate to acquire WIND Mobile.

The analyst believes Canada’s population is not large enough to support a fourth major wireless carrier, therefore the federal government will have no choice to approve the sale of spectrum licenses to prevent them from being unused.

[via The Globe and Mail]

Analyst Predicts Quebecor Next to Sell Unused Wireless Spectrum is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

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A couple days ago WIND Mobile announced its parent company, Orascom, would gain 99.3% control of the company and become Canada’s first foreign-owned wireless carrier. The moves comes as WIND Mobile CEO Anthony Lacavera sells his portion of the company to Orascom, and will step down as CEO but continue as an honorary chair.

Does Orascom plan to sell WIND Mobile? According to their industry sources, The Globe and Mail reports Orascom has considered numerous options for its Canadian investment, with one of them being a sale to an existing wireless incumbent, which would be counterintuitive to the federal government’s plan to open up Canada’s wireless industry.

Orascom is reportedly “anxious” to cut its losses in Canada (they said to have ‘regretted’ entering the Canadian wireless market) and looks to sell WIND Mobile to either Bell, TELUS or Rogers, with the latter cited as the most frequently mentioned buyer:

Despite speculation that Mr. Lacavera’s departure from Wind would forge a path to an eventual merger with rival newcomer Mobilicity, industry sources suggest that Wind’s foreign financial backers are anxious to cut their losses and sell their Canadian assets. Sources say that merger talks with Mobilicity have recently run cold as Amsterdam-based VimpelCom Ltd., the majority owner of Orascom, mulls a possible sale of Wind to a Canadian incumbent. Rogers Communications Inc. is the name most often floated as the potential buyer.

WIND’s merger talks with Mobilicity have fizzled because “everybody thinks their company’s worth a lot…nobody can ever agree on valuation” said a source familiar with discussions.

It was just last week Rogers and Shaw announced a $700 million cable deal which included a $50 million purchase option of Shaw’s unused AWS spectrum, purchased in 2009. The source says the close proximity of both announcements is not a coincidence.

The CEO of VimpelCom (Orascom’s parent company), Jo Olav Lunder, was recently asked at an investor day about its Canadian investment and said they are still deciding its future.

[via The Globe and Mail]

Orascom Reportedly Looking to Sell WIND Mobile to ‘Big 3′ Carriers? is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

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AllThingsD reports on an interview with Beats headphones CEO Jimmy Iovine and how the latter once tried to sell Steve Jobs on music subscriptions, but ultimately was unsuccessful, even after three years of pursuing the matter. Universal Music head Doug Morris told Iovine to talk to Jobs:

In 2002, 2003, Doug asked me to go up to Apple and see Steve. So I met him and we hit it off right away. We were really close. We did some great marketing stuff together: 50 Cent, Bono, Jagger, stuff for the iPod — we did a lot of stuff together.

But I was always trying to push Steve into subscription. And he wasn’t keen on it right away. [Beats co-founder] Luke Wood and I spent about three years trying to talk him into it. He was there, not there … he didn’t want to pay the record companies enough. He felt that they would come down, eventually.

I don’t know what [Apple media head] Eddy Cue would say — I’m seeing him soon — but I think in the end Steve was feeling it, but the economics …he wanted to pay the labels [for subscriptions], but [the fees were] not going to be acceptable to them.

Apple has been rumoured to launch an ‘iRadio’ streaming music service similar to Pandora, and if anyone is going to get a deal done, Cue talking with Iovine and his connections could definitely help get something up and running.

Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine Tried to Sell Music Subscriptions to Steve Jobs is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

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Apple will launch a fully fledged iBookstore in Japan this year, Japanese newspaper The Nikkei reports [paywall, only a snippet is free]. While iBooks has been available there since 2010, Apple and other e-reading companies faced reluctant publishers. Now, with Kindle , Kobo, Google  and Sony all selling ebooks in Japan, Apple reportedly has agreements with Japanese publishers Shogakukan, Kodansha and Kadokawa.

The timing of the launch is unclear. While The Nikkei says it could happen as early as this month, AllThingsD cites sources who say that’s “far too optimistic.”

Japan has been slow to embrace ebooks, with manga dominating the ebook market and publishers reluctant to digitize books in fear of cannibalization of print sales. (Publishing Perspectives has a lot of good coverage of the ebook transition in Japan.) But the arrival of other Western ebook retailers in the country should grease the wheels for Apple.

Instagram’s co-founder, Kevin Systrom, has published a long and detailed letter on the company blog explaining how they will not be selling your photos. The note was written after the Instagram community was up in arms over their recently changed terms of service:

Advertising on Instagram From the start, Instagram was created to become a business. Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business, but not the only one. Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.

Earlier today we created a poll to ask if you were quitting Instagram over their recently changed terms of service. Here are the results as of writing:

If you’re using any free service on the web, your information becomes part of the service and is out of your control. With Instagram, many may have made knee-jerk reactions to delete their accounts prematurely, but it was the new language in the terms of service that caused people to react that way.

What do you think? Has the damage been done? Are you going to be reinstating your account if you’ve already shut it down? I mean, if you’re on Facebook still…your information is probably at greater risk compared to photos of what you had for dinner last night.

Instagram Clarifies “It Is Not Our Intention to Sell Your Photos” is a post from: iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

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Apple is rolling out the iPad Mini to retail stores today, and all eyes are glued to Apple’s moves, since this is the first 7.9-inch tablet in their product line. Analysts and enthusiasts
alike are anxious to see how well it penetrates the market amongst the fierce competition. Could the next headline be, “iPad Minis are selling like hotcakes”?

style="text-align: center"> class="aligncenter wp-image-107199" title="ipad-mini-pre-orders" src="http://www.technologytell.com/apple/files/2012/11/mini-121024-2.jpg" alt="ipad-mini-pre-orders" width="512" height="466">

The price of the iPad Mini was quite surprising, as most pundits and analysts expected…

Continue reading Apple expected to sell 1.5 million iPad minis this weekend

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Starting Wednesday, San Diego-based mobile app maker MeLLmo is unveiling a new feature of its mobile enterprise hit Roambi. The software is no longer simply a tool for creating cool, interactive data visualizations or real-time business intelligence reports that your boss or colleagues will read on their iPhone or iPad. Now Roambi is becoming something of a mobile app development and publishing service with a new feature called ESX Platform.

With ESX Platform, companies that use MeLLMo’s Roambi software to create and publish visualizations and reports that are heavy with interactive charts and graphs, will be able to publish those reports publicly on Apple’s iOS App Store. That way, companies that specialize in information can sell reports or case studies created with Roambi as one-off apps without having to hire an application developer — Roambi will do that for them.

The reports that are published as apps will have both brand names, Roambi’s and the company’s own. But the revenue from the app’s sale through Apple’s App Store will go to the company — with Apple taking its traditional 30 percent App Store cut. The customer can customize the app’s splash screen so it feels as close to their own brand as possible when someone buys the app and views it on their 9.7-inch iPad screen. But then once inside the app, they’ll see the Roambi view of content. “Users will feel like it’s an application experience designed around their content,” explained Quinton Alsbury, CEO of MeLLmo.

MeLLmo is volunteering to act as your app development shop — for pay, of course, but the pricing is still to be determined later. Said Alsbury:

For a lot of companies, if customers purchase info from them, the delivery mechanism is an email with a Powerpoint, or and Excel spreadsheet. Now they can package it up into whatever visualization they want from the available suite and have it be their app, and they can sell it or they can give it away.

But what Roambi is doing isn’t just emblematic of how mobile is changing how we do business and consumer information. It also illustrates the iPad’s progression as an enterprise tool. First it began popping up in the executive suite (subscription required) as a tool for individuals who were a little ahead of the tech curve to check their corporate email or read spreadsheets. Then apps came out that turned the iPad into terminals for accessing companies’ internal networks and data, which was especially brilliant for remote workers — and IT departments started getting on board.

Now one of those, Roambi, known for its innovative way of using the iPad to present data that is helpful to how they do business, is helping companies look outward. In this way its customers are not just using the iPad to view and consume data, but Apple’s mobile platform as a way to distribute data.

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