Wal-Mart (As If It Was Necessary) Confirms That They Are To Sell iPhones

Wal-Mart on Friday formally announced plans to begin carrying the iPhone later this week but will not be selling the device at rock bottom prices as once rumored.

In total, nearly 2,500 Wal-mart stores will carry the Apple handset, selling the 8GB model for $197 and the 16GB model for $297 with a new two-year service agreement from AT&T or qualified upgrade.

Wal-mart also announced that its price match policy allows stores to match the price of any local competitor’s advertised store price on the iPhone should one of its rivals announce lower pricing.

“We are delighted to bring customers this ground-breaking mobile technology,” said Gary Severson, senior vice president, Entertainment, Walmart. “Our electronics associates have been preparing for many weeks for the arrival of iPhone 3G. We are excited to now help new customers learn more about the features and services that make the iPhone unique.”

Once inside a Wal-Mart store, customers can find more information and assistance at the Apple iPhone 3G kiosks located at the Walmart Connection Center in the Home Entertainment department.

Word that Wal-Mart would join Best Buy as the only other third-party US retailer to offer the iPhone first surfaced in October.

Apple Patent Reveals Interesting Multi-Touch Swipe Gestures for iPhone’s Virtual Keyboard

More iPhone Nano Rumors - Concept Rendering

Recently there have been allot of rumors and posts about an iPhone Nano that Apple is supposedly working on behind closed doors and is planning to unveil at the 2009 MacWorld Event on Jan 5th 2009. The rumor really took off last week when an iPhone accessory manufacturer stated that it had gotten a mold of the new iPhone Nano and later published renderings of the mold.

The latest bits of leaked info or just a really nice rendering of the iPhone Nano done by someone other than Apple has surfaced and it shows the iPhone Nano next to its big brother the iPhone 3G. You can easily see the difference in size. The iPhone Nano in this rendering is about the size of a credit card (if opened in photoshop and the iPhone 3G is scaled to actual size), which makes sense to me.

The iPhone Nano is rumored to have less features than the iPhone 3G, forsaking 3G and GPS to allow it to be cheaper and smaller. The timing of such a device is a heated debate, and here is my personal take on this.

I think the possibility of Apple introducing an iPhone Nano are very good. There is a HUGE segment of the market that cant afford the iPhone 3G and who don’t have access to 3G and probably will never use GPS and allot of the storage of the high capacity iPhones. In other words they don’t need a smartphone, they just want an Apple iPhone, and one that’s smaller. Something the size of a credit card that they can access the internet via EDGE/Wifi, play/download apps from the AppStore, play/download content from iTunes and that will have cheaper data/call packages from supported carriers (maybe even an unlocked version for worldwide domination).

Also with iPod sales down and most people carrying their music and video on their phones, Apple may be looking at a smaller more portable, cheaper way to carry music, and communicate. I think it will have the same multitouch interface and qwerty, maybe a scaled down landscape keyboard and hopefully landscape typing in Mail and SMS.

This comes at a time also when Steve Jobs is looking to make a quiet graceful exit from the front of the stage at Apple. This is the perfect time for someone new to take the stage on behalf of Apple and introduce a great new addition to the iPhone family (along with a new iMac and MacMini hopefully).

At a time when Apple stock [AAPL] is lower than expected, the mobile phone market flooded and as cut throat as ever, with some handset manufacturers doing very badly, maybe Apple can do the unthinkable and drop a new product into a different segment of the market and do ingredibly well. Sounds to me like something only Apple can do.

[Images via AppleInsiderx & MacRumors 2]

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Flash on the iPhone via Mobile Safari plugin iMobileCinema

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Rolando for the iPhone/Touch is now Available in the AppStore

Rolando for the iPhone is finally availabe for the iPhone, Click here to get it from the AppStore.

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Could Apple’s Macworld Pull Out Mean Something More…?

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, one of the most outspoken figures on all things Apple, told clients on Wednesday that Steve Jobs’ absence from this year’s Macworld Expo signals “the beginning of a shift in leadership roles” at the company.

“Steve Jobs remains CEO of Apple, however, yielding this year’s Macworld keynote to Phil Schiller, along with the participation of Tim Cook and Phil Schiller at the October event is, in our view, a clear message that a leadership shift is underway,” he said.

In addition, Jobs’ decision not to deliver his high-profile speech has rekindled speculation on the part of some industry watchers and investors that his health may be deteriorating — a scare which has sent Apple shares into a mini spiral, shedding more than 7 percent of their value since the news became public.

The Apple co-founder is a cancer surviver, having undergone successful surgery in 2004 to remove a malignant tumor from his pancreas. His company, however, remained secretive about the matter until the operation was complete and he was forced to take a leave from his daily duties as chief executive.

While Munster believes that Apple could have easily diffused speculation over its leader’s health by having him keynote next month’s expo, he doesn’t believe the move is necessarily a sign Jobs’ condition has taken a turn for the worse. However, “we do believe that it is a sign that we are in the early stages of changing roles in Apple’s management structure,” he told clients.

Like many Apple watchers, the analyst acknowledged that Jobs is the “irreplaceable face of Apple.” That said, he argues that the company’s product innovation has come from an entire organization of dedicated people spearheaded by an executive team “who share a collective track record of consistently outpacing their competitors in terms of hardware and software innovation coupled with robust product marketing and financial discipline.”

“We believe that Apple’s executive team is one of its competitive advantages,” he added. “This management team, along with Steve Jobs, has been responsible for Apple’s product innovation.”

With Phil Schiller delivering this year’s Macworld keynote, Munster and his team are no longer expecting the event to reveal any revolutionary products. Some remaining possibilities may include an updated iMac or redesigned Mac mini, he said.

“We continue to expect a new form factor iPhone in the March quarter,” the analyst told clients. “We initially thought there was an outside chance that a new iPhone could be announced at Macworld, the news regarding the keynote leads us to believe that a new iPhone at Macworld is less likely.

(via AppleInsider.com)