Ping: Think Amazon, not Facebook

Many speculated that Apple might use its September event to roll out a fully cloud-based music service. Indeed, I’ve noted previously that the iTunes interface took on a decidedly more Web-like appearance with iTunes 9, and the acquisition of Lala by Apple hinted that Apple might move further in that direction.
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Waiting To Exhale

Given all the outlandish rumors circulating around Apple’s forthcoming announcement on Wednesday, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the purported Apple tablet can become transparent and levitate. Indeed, it is otherwise difficult to explain how the device was able to hover above the CES show floor, invisible to everyone’s eyes but prominent in everyone’s imagination.
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AT&T Upgraders Ignore Subsidy iPhonomics

Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 3G S may have twice the speed and, at its 32 GB size, twice the capacity of today’s high-end iPhone 3G, but it is also at least twice the price now that the 8 GB iPhone 3G will drop to a mere $99. Of course, that’s with a new contract and a two-year commitment to stay with AT&T.

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Wireless at Walmart: The iPhone’s potential impact

Apple creating a stripped-down $99 iPhone for Walmart would be more than just counter to the way that technology products, particularly cell phones, usually proceed in the market. It would be an unprecedented move for modern-day Apple, which has avoided retailer-exclusive SKUs except those in its own Apple Store (the Project Red iPod) and has historically striven for simplicity in its product line. Particularly with the iPhone, Apple has been so focused on preserving the level of user experience that it went weeks with low or no inventory of the original iPhone model leading up to the launch of the iPhone 3G.

There’s little doubt as to why Walmart would want to carry the 3G iPhone. NPD tracked the device as the best-selling handset in the U.S. in Q3, surpassing the Motorola RAZR in a dramatic consumer embrace of Web-savvy smartphones. Recent smartphones such as the T-Mobile G1 and Blackberry Storm already represent the second wave of would-be “iPhone killers” following advanced touchscreen feature phones that appeared earlier in the year.

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