WIRED is right:
“Apple historically has never held a press conference amid a flurry of negative press.”
So expect the unexpected.
Stay tuned.
Follow live the conference here or here.
California: 10 AM
New York: 1 PM
London: 6 PM
Paris: 5 PM
Moscow: 9 PM
Tokyo: 2 AM (July 17)
Apple shares?
Down as expected.
Time to buy them.
From a story about the prospects of today’s iPhone 4 press conference:
Nine paragraphs, yes nine!, ending with the same “music” written by YUKARI IWATANI KANE and NIRAJ SHETH.
The nine “familiar” endings:
1. Apple Inc. released its newest iPhone despite internal concerns about its antenna reception, and gave wireless carriers far less time to test the phone than is typical, according to people familiar with the matter.
2. The Cupertino, Calif., company has called a news conference at its headquarters to discuss the issue Friday. Apple doesn’t plan to recall the phone, a person familiar with the matter said.
3. Apple engineers were aware of the risks associated with the new antenna design as early as a year ago, but Chief Executive Steve Jobs liked the design so much that Apple went ahead with its development, said another person familiar with the matter.
4. The electronics giant kept such a shroud of secrecy over the iPhone 4′s development that the device didn’t get the kind of real-world testing that would have exposed such problems in phones by other manufacturers, said people familiar with the matter.
5. The iPhones Apple sends to its carrier partners for testing are “stealth” phones that disguise a new device’s shape and some of its functions, people familiar with the matter said.
6. Apple gave its carrier partners far less time to test the iPhone 4 before its launch and gave them significantly fewer devices to test than other handset makers, people familiar with the matter said.
7. As development on the iPhone 4 proceeded, field testing would have been limited because of Apple’s emphasis on secrecy, said people familiar with the matter.
8. The testing process usually takes a minimum of 14 weeks. However, Apple flies in the face of this norm, handing over iPhone prototypes to carriers with much less time, people familiar with the matter said.
9. Later versions, including the iPhone 3G that was launched in 2008 and the iPhone 3GS last year, also didn’t hold a signal as well as other phones and experienced more dropped calls, people familiar with the matter said.”
Oh, by, that’s a world record.
Editors and real sources needed!
Bad news?
Send any press release or held a press conference on Fridays…
That’s the PR tradition.
So Apple not very active PR department (the fans do the work for them) announced the iPhone 4 press conference… for tomorrow Friday.
Why?
My feeling is that not because they want to hide the bad news (they are right now everywhere) or because they need to give time to the press to come to Cupertino (in less than 12 hours any American, European or Asian journalist will be able to show up in California) but… because they are trying to gain as much time as possible in order to fix the problem, organize any refund, respond to any recall or to have the supply chain ready with the new phones.
The press conference is going to be at 10 am (California time), so the markets in New York (2 pm) still will be open, and able to react to the news.
This is my take:
If the news were BAD, they will had organize the press conference AFTER the closing of the markets in Manhattan.
But because there will be GOOD news, they want Apple shares going up as soon as possible as the best response to the iPhone 4 crisis.
Right now the shares are going down, like in the past few days: from $261 on July 8 to less than $247 today.
So this is my advice: buy Apple shares tomorrow morning BEFORE the press conference and cash them in the evening.
And buy a new fixed iPhone 4.
Reading this post about the “silent recall” of an iPhone 4, an old true story came to my mind.
A friend in Barcelona (Spain) bought a 1954 Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn Sports Saloon like the one in the picture above.
One day, the huge and imposing car stopped and my friend left the Rolls-Royce in the street, called to London and a nice voice just asked him about how to locate the car and his private address.
“Don’t worry, in a few hours one of our engineers will be in Barcelona and will fix the problem”
Oh, boy! That was good service.
Two days later he got another nice call from London and the message was: the car is ready in front of your home.
Our friend went to the street and there it was.
Shining, like a new car… and working.
Well done!
But as he was waiting for the bill for many months, he decided to call again to London, asking for the bill.
To his surprise, another nice voice said to him without any doubt or consultation:
“A broken Rolls Royce? In Barcelona? I’m sorry Sir, but we don’t have any record that any Rolls-Royce, anywhere in the world had ever any problem. Thank you for your call.”
So perhaps Steve Jobs has decided to follow the old Rolls-Royce tradition.
BP was late to respond, and now its shares are 40% down.
APPLE was late to respond to complains about the new iPhone 4 and now its shares are going down…
Here I am: being a fan of these two brilliant brands (I have been a longtime subscriber of CR and I am now a Which? one, that is the CR version in the UK), I am confronted like many people with this dilemma: who is right, who is wrong?
Well,I don’t ant doubt.
APPLE is wrong.
So, Steve Jobs, you better react quickly with a massive recall or you and your investors will suffer bigger losses.
This time, believe me, arrogance will cost APPLE a lot of money.
Don’t underestimate the power of Consumer Reports.
Independent consumer journalism rules!
As Barron’s Erik Savitz writes in his blog:
Keep in mind that what was so damaging about the review was not just the fact that Consumer Reports won’t recommend the phone, but that they also took Apple to task for apparently not being fully forthcoming about the issue. The magazine wrote that its findings “call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4’s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software.”
My take: expect a radial response from APPLE in less than 48 hours.
Via Buzzhunt.
Next: the INNOVATION’s Rubber iPad.
Bill Gates on the iPad:
“It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’”
The Times and The Sunday Times are ready to charge for access to their online editions.
A bold move.
Typical of Rupert Murdoch.
Like the typical trashing that he gets in the last few years regarding his fight against the “free for all”
Well, very soon we will know.
And… what if Rupert Murdoch is right?
I will suspend my judgement.
He loves newspapers and is taking big risks.
So I will not be surprise if, again, he right.
UPDATE:
Watch here Rupert Murdoch on the iPad, Apple and Steve Jobs.
I just got the first registration list from the INMA/INNOVATION Oxford Tablet Summit (May 17-18, 2008) with almost 140 people!
Well, the good news is that the 100 limit has been exceeded and now due to the number of late registrations, the Summit is making space for only 10 more participants.
So if you are interested, before the Oxford Tablet Summit is sold out, register right now here.
And let me summarize what you can expect from this first Oxford Summit:
1. The big picture: how print media started on paper and is heading to digital mobile tablets.
2. How do you reorganize your newsroom for the Tablet Age. Expect examples.
3. Why New Digital Narratives are the best way to tell stories with the tablets. Expect examples.
4. What are the best Navigation Guidelines for the new tablets. Expect examples.
5. What are the best Design Guidelines for these tablets. Expect examples.
6. How must we change our Editorial Teams and their Workflows to make tablet content. Expect examples.
7. Why this is The New Age of Digital Reading for News. Expect examples.
8. How we go from iPad to iPaid. Expect examples.
9. Key Concepts of Paid Content and Advertising on Tablets. Expect examples.
10. The INNOVATION Bible on the iPad. A complimentary copy of our Confidential Newsletter with a Special Report on the Tablet Revolution.
And 150 people willing to learn and to share with all of us their first prototypes, strategies, experiences… and a lot of examples.
No lectures.
No theory.
No bla, bla, bla.
Cases, models and guidelines.
The good and the bad ones.
And, yes, lessons too from the first mistakes…
This Summit wants to be a “reality check”.
So it’s not for Apple fans or enemies but for publishers, editors, visual journalists, marketing and advertising executives that are visionaries, pioneers but also practical doers.
INNOVATION