News

Add analyst Brian Marshall to the chorus of iPhone owners, CDMA fans, speculators, AT&T haters and Apple shareholders clamoring for an iPhone on the Verizon Wireless network. Marshall, who works for Broadpoint AmTech, has noticed that Apple is moving towards a multiple carrier business model in several countries.

His analysis? The company will do the same thing in the United States. Completely ignoring the Motorola Droid and its associated anti-iPhone campaign, Marshall believes the iPhone will come to Verizon in the second half of 2010.

Several new features and refinements have come to iTunes 9.0.2, now available from Apple as a free download. iPhone users will find improvements in app sorting and media syncing. Users can add or delete home screens and arrange apps directly in iTunes.

Apps purchased on your computer or iPhone will sync automatically. iTunes 9.0.2 will also provide options for syncing individual artists, genres, podcasts or television shows.

If your iPhone is jailbroken and/or unlocked, iTunes 9.0.2 will not interfere. However, users syncing to iTunes with a Palm Pre will find that Apple has disabled this functionality (again).

The deal was a long time coming but the iPhone has now officially been launched by Apple in China. By some estimates there are 2 million grey market iPhones in operation within the country already.

High prices and the lack of Wi-Fi on Chinese models may have shortened lines. The 32GB iPhone is retailing for the equivalent of $1,025 with no service contract.

Right now 93,395 iPhone applications are currently available on Apple's App Store, but there are almost 9,000 more that have already been approved. This means that any day now the App Store will surpass a magic number of 100,000 apps for sale.

Too bad only 0.176% of those can be installed on the iPhone at once. Just one month ago Apple announced that there were 85,000 applications available via iTunes. One year ago there were 10,000 apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

After selling a record 7.4 million iPhones last quarter, Apple is setting up to meet high demand during the holiday season. Inventories have been low in many countries as the iPhone 3GS has been flying off the shelves.

Apple will also be selling the iPhone on several new carriers in the coming months which could further reduce supplies. Carriers that will carry the iPhone as early as next month include Orange and Vodafone in the UK, Telus and Bell in Canada, and China Unicom.

Now Nokia is taking Apple to court for patent infringement. Ten different patents, to be precise. Nokia claims Apple has neglected to license Nokia's technology including the GSM and UMTS communications standards the iPhone uses.

Nokia along with other companies such as Samsung and Ericsson have invested billions in the development of the two standards. Nokia alone claims to have invested $60 billion in the technology and has licensed the patents to 40 different wireless device manufacturers.

Apple's incredible success in moving iPhones could be due to one statistic. According to pollster ChangeWave, a whopping 99% of iPhone users call themselves "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their device. In fact, those reporting "very satisfied" made up 74% of respondents.

This blows away RIM, with only 43% of users reporting they are "very satisfied" with their BlackBerry. Apple has jumped from holding 17% of smartphone market share one year ago to 30% today. The iPhone is hot on RIM's heels, as the BlackBerry has 40% of the smartphone market.

The latest version of the blackra1n jailbreak has hit the streets. RC2 will even jailbreak brand new iPhone 3GS models running 3.1.2 from the factory with a "tethered jailbreak."

This means when restarting your jailbroken iPhone the device must remain connected to your computer to properly boot. Apple thwarted the “24kpwn” exploit used by Geohot and iPhone Dev-Team in the latest firmware release on new iPhone 3GS models, making the tethered jailbreak method necessary.

With all of the anti-iPhone advertising coming out of Verizon lately you'd think the company had no interest at all in dealing with Apple. Apparently this is not the case, considering the words of Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg during a third quarter earnings conference call.

Seidenberg explained that the decision to launch an iPhone on Verizon's network is "exclusively in Apple's court. Obviously we would be interested if they thought it would make sense for them to have us as a partner."

The day has finally come for fans of the TomTom iPhone car accessory. The device, which acts as a dock for your iPhone can be ordered through the Apple Store. Unfortunately the product will not ship for another 2-3 weeks.

For a price of $119.95 and free shipping, the TomTom car kit will provide an external speaker for turn-by-turn GPS navigation. It plugs into the car with a cigarette lighter adaptor to provide power to the iPhone.