Rumors for Apple’s WWDC Include iPhone and a Netbook
For eager Apple fans, it’s an excruciating seventy-three days until the much-anticipated Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) opens at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. The wait won’t be much easier for tech journalists, who face 10 weeks of stubborn silence from the Apple press office and a rumbling herd of rumors to track down.
The main categories of rumors are well defined, in descending order of likelihood: Mac OS X Snow Leopard, a new iPhone, CEO Steve Jobs, and the as-yet-mythical Apple touchscreen netbook. Many of the rumors constitute a wish list for fans and journalists alike, but at least a few are grounded in practical realities: Apple’s consistently higher prices, relatively small market share, and somewhat uncertain corporate future, given Jobs’ forced sabbatical for health reasons.
Need versus Preference
Undoubtedly, there are many things that Apple would like to announce at the upcoming WWDC, but the much more interesting question from the tech industry point of view, is what Apple needs to announce. Put another way, when developers and journalists fly home on Saturday, June 13, what is the most important thing they will have heard?
Greg Sterling, an industry analyst and founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, listed two possible answers to that question.
First, he said, “Apple needs to announce upgraded iPhone hardware that adds new speed and perhaps video and/or other capabilities, beyond the 3.0 software upgrade that was already unveiled.”
The iPhone has proven enormously successful, even more than Apple predicted. Consumers have purchased 17 million iPhones in a little more than a year. However, Apple’s smartphone accounts for just eight percent of the smartphone market, with Nokia (43 percent) and RIM (17 percent) both ahead by comfortable margins. And Apple will face growing pressure from Android-based phones in the months to come.
Additional iPhone features, some of which…
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