WWDC Keynote highlights

There were two things shown during the WWDC Keynote today. The first was new software. This software will be available to everyone who has an iPhone, new or old in July and available to iPod ouch users for $9.95 (which will probably be about £7.99 in the UK).

The second was hardware: the iPhone 3G was announced. It’s pretty much the same device – it has two differences however.

There’s a 3G radio in there allowing access to the UMTS/HSDPA networks. This will step down to GSM/EDGE if 3G is not available which provides a decent fallback. One big advantage of the 3G radio is that it can be used at the same time as taking a call – something that has proved to be an iPhone annoyance – you can’t browse the web while on the telephone! HSDPA supports download speeds from 0.9 Mbps to 14.4 Mbps so until we get more information, it’s going to be anyone’s guess.

The second hardware difference is GPS. Gone is the ‘yeah, you’re somewhere in this town’ and now it’ll pinpoint you right down to your street position and follow you around. That’s what a GPS is for. It’s not going to read instructions to you so it’s not like your Tom-Tom but on the plus side I’m not going to have to buy maps for every inch of the planet if I go travelling.

Let’s face it – unless you’re a real geek, you’re likely going to be happy with current iPhone hardware and won’t need the iPhone 3G at all. You’ll just be able to take advantage of the hundreds of new apps that will be available for free (and for pay), you’ll get the new calculator, better attachment support (now it does iWork documents, Word, Excel and Powerpoint!), the new integration with ‘mobileme’ and other stuff they thought wasn’t interesting enough to cover in a keynote.

Apple said they had already sold 6 million iPhones in the first year while only being released in half a dozen countries. They’re going to be launching in 60 countries….and the price is down to $199 (£120 or so) for the 8 Gb version (the version I paid £269 (over $500!) for.

Price is likely the biggest sticking point with the iPhone. Not so any more.

Steve Jobs wanted to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. He sold 6 million at the old price in 1 year. Do you think he’ll sell 4 million more at the new price? Yeah, obvious huh?