Minority Report: What's in store for the iPhone?

COMMENT

When it comes to predicting Apple product launches, Seb Janacek admits his track record is patchy. But he's sure major iPhone developments are in the offing - just a little hazy on the detail.

Remember 12 months ago when you couldn't get hold of an iPhone for love nor money? It's funny how little has changed. Just 12 months ago the device hadn't been launched - these days Apple and its UK retail partners have simply run out of stock.

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The Apple web store is showing both models as unavailable and the Carphone Warehouse has also sold out of both versions. When asked when it might be restocking, a spokeswoman for the anachronistically titled firm told silicon.com: "Not any time soon. We're reviewing plans."

Meanwhile, Apple's UK mobile operator O2 confirmed it has sold out of the 8GB version with no mention of restocking. It recently slashed the price of the lower storage-capacity iPhone by £100 to shovel units out of the channel and had trouble meeting demand soon after. It has since replenished stocks of the higher capacity 16GB version.

It's ironic that less than a month ago, reports were foretelling that Apple and its retail partners were likely to be faced with huge, unsold piles of Edge iPhones following the expected release of its 3G sibling.

It's not just the UK. The company's US online store is reporting that both versions of the iPhone are currently unavailable.

Whether it's a rather deft bit of marketing by Apple to remove devices from the channel as anticipation builds for the 3G model at the San Francisco Worldwide Developer Conference next month, or a slightly clumsy bit of inventory management, the result will be much the same. By June, potential iPhone customers will be slavering at the bit for the faster model.

In the meantime, a month of very limited device availability might worry investors and analysts. After all, Apple set itself an ambitious target back in June 2007 of selling 10 million phones before the end of 2008. To endure a month without any sales might put a dent in that aspiration.

That the 3G iPhone will be announced by the Worldwide Developer Conference on 11 June is a no-brainer. Both Apple and AT&T have confirmed the device will be released.

A recent AT&T memo to staff forbade the booking of leave between 15 June and 12 July. The Apple Worldwide Developer Conference ends on 13 June.

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Just enough time between Jobs announcing the 3G iPhone during the 9 June keynote and the 15 June AT&T-enforced holiday hiatus to flood the channels with inventory. An almost identical memo was leaked last year around the first launch of the iPhone, incidentally.

Meanwhile, the kind of people who enjoy digging around in the firmware of Apple products for clues about future releases found references to 3G network settings in the guts of the latest iPhone SDK release.

It also included the interesting system message: "Using 3G loads data faster but decreases battery life." One of the reasons Apple stated it hadn't put the 3G chip in the first iteration was battery life.

Mac fans are unlikely to be sated by the Developer Conference, which is likely to focus heavily on the iPhone SDK released in February and the fruits of the initial developer effort - which are likely to be exciting.

Anyone who's messed about with a jail-broken iPhone will have realised the potential on offer. Have a search on YouTube and you'll find dozens of examples of truly innovative applications designed for the device's touchscreen.

So what lies in store for the iPhone other than 3G over the next month? The addition of a GPS chip is a popular suggestion. The ability to purchase songs direct from iTunes is another.

Others have called for a smaller form factor - the iPhone nano? Probably unlikely, one of the biggest gripes about the iPhone is how tricky it is to type on the virtual keypad, a smaller device would surely make it unusable to all but the most diminutive of woodland folk.

Unless there's a significant change in the form factor. This leads us on to an interesting report in The Times recently, which quoted sources claiming that the new iPhone could sport a "radically different" appearance.

Would Apple change a winning formula? It did with the iPod mini and the results were stellar for the company's sales.

According to The Times story, the "possibilities" include a flip phone - resulting in a slightly increased area of screen to be used - and the real surprise, a sliding version of the iPhone featuring a regular Qwerty keyboard.

This keyboard would represent a significant change in direction for the company. In January 2007, Jobs spent a fair portion of precious keynote time and slide real estate illustrating what a pain in the proverbial a Qwerty keyboard on a smart phone was and what a waste of space the tiny keys represented.

The tactile elements of the iPhone's interface have been at the centre of most of the company's marketing over the past year, not to mention the word of mouth. The interface is the phone's defining feature.

Certainly not its USP, as the convergence of three devices into one is as significant. But adding a physical keyboard to it now would be tantamount to a step back. The Reality Distortion Field would have to be turned up to 11 to pull that one off.

Not that Apple isn't adverse to a bit of humble pie occasionally. When the Apple TV was relaunched recently, Apple admitted having got a few things wrong with version 1.0. You can't see the same thing happening with the iPhone.

After all, sales are healthy, it's becoming available in an ever-increasing number of territories and everyone's talking about it, from people in the street to the chief executives of mobile operators.

Apple would certainly sell more iPhones if it offered a version with a physical keyboard. So why doesn't it? Is Apple stupid? Hell, no. Is it stubborn? Hell, yes.

But more than that, it has a true zeal when it comes to its design aesthetic. The company isn't against the evolution of its products but it is against compromising its vision.

With the accumulated confidence of someone with a truly abysmal track record of predicting the company's next product iterations the verdict on the physical keyboard has got to be 'no chance'.

So, bearing that track record in mind, you can probably pre-order your sliding, swivelling, Qwerty-keypad 3G iPhone just a few minutes after Steve Jobs announces it on 9 June.

Happy swivelling.