No iPhone 3G for me

Rogers yesterday announced its iPhone 3G pricing, and unfortunately as some had predicted, their plans leave something to be desired. The details for both Rogers and Fido are as follows:

$60/mo: 150 anytime min, unlimited evenings/weekends, 400 MB data
$75/mo: 300 anytime min, unlimited evenings/weekends, 750 MB data
$100/mo: 150 anytime min, unlimited evenings/weekends, 1 GB data
$115/mo: 150 anytime min, unlimited evenings/weekends, 2 GB data

While the plans include unlimited received text messages and some sent text messages, note that these prices don't include Caller ID or the $6.95 system access fee. On top of this, a 3-year contract is mandatory, "evenings" start at 9 pm, and data costs 50¢ per MB if you go over.

An average user might want the 2nd plan:

$75 for voice and data
$15 (or $7?) for Caller ID
$6.95 for System access fee
$0.50 for 911 emergency access fee

Total (depending on cost of Caller ID) would be:

$89.45 ($101.08 including tax in Ont.)
or $97.45 ($110.12 including tax in Ont.)

No thanks Rogers.

iPhone 3G: On both Rogers and Fido.

Rogers Communications (along with Apple) is really going after the Canadian market with the 3G GPSiPodphonePDA. Instead of limiting the iPhone 3G to Rogers alone (like it has done with some other phones in the past), Rogers has decided to offer it on both its brands, Fido and Rogers Wireless, starting July 11. These two brands represent the only two major 3GSM providers in Canada, both running off the same HSPA network.

iPhone 3G will operate on Rogers’ High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) wireless network, the fastest mobile network in Canada. HSPA is nationally available in the top Canadian urban centers from Vancouver to Halifax, covering more than 60 percent of the population. iPhone 3G will also operate on Roger’s coast-to-coast GSM/EDGE network, proven to be the country’s most reliable wireless network. More details on pricing and availability will be available soon.

The question now is how much they will charge for the iPhone ($199 for the 8 GB model?) and contract (two years?), and most importantly, the data plan. The iPhone 3G represents an excellent hardware and software update, but much of the benefit of this speedy new unit may be lost to the masses if the data plan is not reasonably priced. Rogers and Fido both have a $7 unlimited data plan, but it is likely that this plan will not apply to the iPhone.

Japan's SoftBank announces iPhone

Japan's SoftBank Mobile Corporation today announced that they are getting the iPhone in 2008:

SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp. today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple® to bring the iPhone™ to Japan later this year.

SoftBank Mobile supports both Japan's PDC 2G technology, as well as 3G UMTS, the latter of which has long been the rumoured technology to be used in the 3G iPhone.

Rogers in Canada to get iPhone in 2008

Not a big surprise, but Ted Rogers, CEO of Rogers Communications, has finally confirmed that the iPhone will come to Canada this year. He was tight-lipped on timing though, and there are still eight months left this year.

I suspect Rogers may launch with a 3G model, as it has a strong HSPA network, and the 3G iPhone may be announced by WWDC. I'm not optimistic that Fido will get the iPhone at all this year however, despite the fact that Fido is a subsidiary of Rogers, and uses the same network.

Apple buys semiconductor company P.A. Semi

Apple has purchased the fabless chip design company P.A. Semi, for a rumoured $278 million. This alone is interesting, but what is doubly interesting is the fact that P.A. Semi designed the dual-core 64-bit PowerPC CPU that some had thought Apple could have used for a new Mac laptop (although Apple had already announced the switch to Intel).

It's not clear what Apple will do with this purchase. Right now in 2008, this 14 Watt 2 GHz dual-core chip seems inappropriate for most of their current products, although it's possible a derivative could be used in products like AppleTV (and theoretically a low power laptop), or other products that have not yet been announced. The benchmarks of this chip are listed below:

At 2 GHz, each core achieves a SPECint2000 score of 1,000 and a SPECfp2000 score of 1,500. Running SPEC benchmarks, each core dissipates around 7 W max; a SPECint/W of 142.8, about four times more power efficient than a Core 2 Duo processor.

Those speeds roughly are equivalent to about a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 and a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 Extreme for SPECint2000 and SPECfp2000 respectively, for each core of the PA6T-1682M.

Forbes postulates that Apple intends to use in-house chips for the iPhone (and iPod) platform, and I would agree that is a strong possibility, especially since the acquisition was led by Tony Fadell, Senior Vice President of the iPod Division. It would take a new chip design for this purpose, but it's plausible that P.A. Semi already has some such low power designs in progress, also based off the PowerPC architecture. It's of note that the founder of P.A. Semi had his roots in the design of very low power StrongARM microprocessors. Another notable piece of trivia is Apple helped develop the ARM architecture and put an ARM chip in the Apple Newton.

This news comes the day of the Apple earnings call, which will occur after the market closes. So far AAPL is up to $163 in pre-market trading this morning, up from a close yesterday of $160.20.

[Update 2008-04-23]

EETimes says Apple doesn't actually care much about P.A. Semi's chips.

P.A. Semi customers were told the acquiring company was not interested in the startup's products or road map, but is buying the company for its intellectual property and engineering talent.

No more AAPL for me

I divested myself of AAPL on Monday afternoon, at $167.02. It had a great run up in the last few weeks, and closed at $168.16 on Monday. However, with all the various Wall Street analysts increasing their estimates for the quarter recently, I had become less optimistic that Apple will wow investors in their earnings call on Wednesday.

I hope for Apple's sake and the sake of its investors that Apple does blow past earnings estimates and provides better than expected guidance for the coming quarter. If so, AAPL should see a nice increase after hours on Wednesday. However, if they only meet (the new) expectations and provide very conservative guidance, it's quite possible that AAPL will drop in the short term by quite a signficant amount.

In the meantime, I will watch with interest... from the sidelines.

AAPL opened on Tuesday at $167.41, and as of 10:04 am was $163.81.