iCell in the Works?

SirWraith writes "Ars Technica is running a story speculating on the possibility of an Apple cellphone." From the article: "At last week's CES, Motorola officially dumped Apple with its new ROKR E2 phone and its new iRadio digital music service. ... After the ROKR's lackluster launch, speculation abounded that Apple was saving the 'good' iTunes phone for itself, and the new 'Mobile Me' trademark lends credence to that line of thinking. At this stage of the game, it looks like Apple is moving in the direction of launching its own cellular service complete with its own lineup of phones (or phone, as the case may be)."

Is there not enough Apple news today already...

[Any Web Loco]

That we could dispense with the rumours?

Re:This wouldn't surprise me....

[garcia]

Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in?

personally, I'd prefer they be seperate -- but that's me. It's kind of difficult to use your phone while using your iPod, isn't it?

The iPod was successful because the design and interface was clean and "sexy". Do you think that by adding phone, camera, and whatever other capabilities to the device that they will be able to keep it "clean and sexy"? I don't.

Re:This wouldn't surprise me....

[Professor_UNIX]

Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in?

I want a phone that has crystal clear voice and never drops a call and has an 8 hour talk time and a 2 week standby time. I don't want it to have a camera, web browsing, a PDA, mp3 player, or any other garbage and I want it to be as small as possible while still being sturdy. For mp3 playing I'll use my iPod.

Not Really Apple's Business

[necro81]

Don't get me wrong, I think that Apple can produce a winner in any tech area if it set its collective mind and resources to it. But, in my opinion, I don't really think this is something Apple would want to try. Apple has no technological experience in cell phone technology, other than what it might have learned from Motorola during their brief collaboration. The market is already awash in cell phones. Granted, few of them have the panache of the iPod, and they are bloated in pointless features that could be done much better. The profit margins for cell phones are much slimmer than the iPod, even for something high-end like the RAZR. Could Apple produce something with both iPod and cellphone technology crammed into it, and still charge a reasonable market price for it?

When Apple hit the mp3-player scene in 2002, there were some competing products from mostly small companies that had limitations due to the necessary tradeoffs. But, mp3-players were a nascent luxury item at the time, whereas cellphones are now, more or less, a commodity item. Almost nobody at the time had experience in mp3-player design and manufacture, whereas cellular phones are a mature product. Consider the players in today's cellphone market: Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, and about a dozen others that aren't as prevalent in the U.S. In comparison to the mp3-player market of 2002, the cellphone market of today is a cut-throught, kill-or-be-killed, Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"-like world filled with a bunch of predators.

Even if Apple were to make an iCell, what would it do with it? Without a service provider to back it, the phone is dead-on-arrival. Will the allure of Apple's logo and the iPod brand be enough for service providers to risk the wrath of the other cellphone manufacturers? I don't know.

I guess if a convergence between the iPod and a cellphone is inevitable, then I'd prefer Apple to take a crack at it first (and don't cite the ROKR as a counterexample, that thing was a kludge of competing interests). Steve Jobs has often said that cellphones are poorly designed - trying to get the feature list make up for the fact that they aren't better thought out. Still, is this something that Apple really wants to be a part of?

Apple/Motorola

[revery]

I wonder if the Motorola deal will come back to haunt Apple. If the impression that other copmanies come away with is that Apple held back on the Motorola deal so they could launch a better deal for themselves, that could hurt future relationships.

OTH, I realize that in business dealings you very rarely get both sides of the story and Apple may be able to sit down with future partners and easily allay any fears they might have. Business is funny like that and has a lot more to do with confidence than with money.

Just my 2 cents.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:This wouldn't surprise me....

[pr0nbot]

Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in?

I'm holding off buying an iPod cos I want a phone with a decent integrated mp3 player. (So far the thing that's holding me back is that it's still cheaper to buy separate devices.)

I don't want to carry around a zillion gizmos, each with their own quirky interfaces, cables, memory formats, sync apps, drivers etc.

Actually when it really comes down to it, what I really want is to have my PC with me at all times, in a form factor round about that of a phone. But that's a few decades off, even assuming anyone wants to build one.

Re:This wouldn't surprise me....

[syncretist]

segue. not segway. +2 for knowing the right word though.

segue = transition.
segway = expensive scooter.

1/2 the population

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people called "women" carry their phone inside a luggage device called as "purse". They need the phone to *ring* to know someone is calling them.