Mobile Apple Phone Coming Soon
Mobile Apple Phone Coming Soon
Apple Computer has requested a set of trademarks for a mobile telephone service featuring music, video, email, and Internet functions, according to applications at the US Patent and Trade Office.
The maker of the iPod music players filed this month to trademark the name ‘Mobile Me,’ for devices and services combining features of the iPod with Motorola’s ROKR telephone and the Blackberry portable communications device.
Appled has asked the patents office to lock in the ‘Mobile Me’ name for handheld devices as well as accompanying mobile telephone service, according to the trademark applications. The telephone service would provide ‘digital music from local or global communications networks’ as well as online databases ‘in the fields of music, concerts, videos, radio, television news’ and more, the applications state.
Of course we can’t in any way, shape, or form vouch for the validity of these shots, but an anonymous tipster mailed in (and also apparently hit up our pals at TUAW with the same material) about having a friend who came over to show off his new cellphone (pictured), a one-in-fifty test unit for trying out Apple’s Mobile Me service, which is apparently an Apple MVNO slated to run on Cingular and to be launched in February — hey, that’s the story, we’re just passing it on. So apparently this friend heads to the throne and our tipster snaps up the friend’s Samsung SGH-X497, pops off the battery, and grabs the given blurry shots of the Apple-branded SIM, which was apparently stamped with:
xx/50 Test Unit [digits written in sharpie]
Apple Computer
Internal Test MM1.3.a
“We believe this is further indication of (Apple’s) strategic direction to extend its iPod + iTunes and Mac franchises into new business areas including smart phones, value-added mobile content services, and the broader consumer electronics space,” American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu wrote in a note on Thursday.
If Apple chooses to make its own phone, it will likely contract out much of the engineering to a firm that specialises in mobile phones, said Ed Snyder, a stock analyst with Charter Equity Research. One Company tipped to pick up the contract are BenQ an OEM manufacturer that recently aquired the Siemens brand. during the recent CES event in Las Vegas a senior BenQ executive did admit that they were talking to Apple about OEM manufacturing. Snyder doesn’t see an Apple phone as a threat to Motorola or other established mobile phone makers. “The mobile phone business is enormously complicated,” he said. Phones are primarily sold through carriers. Carrier/manufacturer relationships can be tricky. Lin also said he didn’t see an Apple phone venture as a threat to Motorola: “I think Motorola would view it as positive.” Apple might market an MVNO in tandem with a Motorola phone. And Motorola is likely looking for a better outcome from its Apple relationship than it has gotten from the first Rokr phone, Lin said
Apple made the filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on January 5.
There has long been speculation that Apple would ultimately introduce an iPod that also works as a smart phone, extending its brand and functions as more content becomes digital and mobile. In addition to music, one model of the iPod also now plays videos and purchased content such as TV shows.
The areas that the trademark covers include computing devices, mobile devices, and mobile services including digital music, video, games, e-mail, and messaging across Internet, intranets, extranets, television, cellular, and satellite networks, the filing shows.
But like it or not, the Apple MVNO rumor’s back: the Chicago Tribune attributes one American Technology Research analyst as saying he thinks Apple “will have a device and an MVNO,” so there. Frankly, at this point we won’t really be surprised either way; just don’t act too surprised when Applephone service comes out with over-the-air downloads at the industry’s current unacceptably expensive rates leashed to a so-so / seemingly-noncommital Moto musicphone.
If Apple chooses to make its own phone, it will likely contract out much of the engineering to a firm that specialises in mobile phones, said Ed Snyder, a stock analyst with Charter Equity Research. One Company tipped to pick up the contract are BenQ an OEM manufacturer that recently aquired the Siemens brand. during the recent CES event in Las Vegas a senior BenQ executive did admit that they were talking to Apple about OEM manufacturing. Snyder doesn’t see an Apple phone as a threat to Motorola or other established mobile phone makers. “The mobile phone business is enormously complicated,” he said.
Phones are primarily sold through carriers. Carrier/manufacturer relationships can be tricky. Lin also said he didn’t see an Apple phone venture as a threat to Motorola: “I think Motorola would view it as positive.” Apple might market an MVNO in tandem with a Motorola phone. And Motorola is likely looking for a better outcome from its Apple relationship than it has gotten from the first Rokr phone, Lin said