In this article from eWeek, the author discusses the security issues that IT managers must consider when deploying the new Apple iPhone, Blackberry devices from RIM, or any other smartphones. The article describes one CIO that only allows certain kinds of smartphones on his organization’s network, and even then only allows them to do certian things. It goes on to talk about the iPhone SDK for the iPhone OS 2.0, saying that all applications that will put onto these devices will have digital certificates signed by Apple. If an application is malicious or otherwise considered malware, it can have it’s certificate revoked and it can be removed from the App Store.
Tags: iphone, security, smartphone
Information Week has estimated that in by 2009 the Apple app store will be a $1.2 billion business by 2009. Although this is a best case scenario estimate that estimates about 85 million devices, it could be possible that the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPod touch devices could be a billion dollar money maker in less than a year and a half. This estimate comes from analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, who also put out a more conservative estimate that puts the App Store market at about $770 Million. The main driving force behind all this is expected to be games. Currently the iPhone and iPod touch devices don’t have support for any gaming. And given the fact that the iPhone audience is mostly young and tech-saavy, this could lead to huge amounts of revenues for game and software developers for the iPhone OS. Already, many of the top game studios have announced that they will release games for the iPhone OS by the end of the year. Some of these game developers include Sega, Pangea Software, and Electronic Arts. I don’t know if the $1.2 billion estimate will become a reality, but I believe the App Store will be pretty big. The iPhone has awesome hardware and basic software, and it will only get better when the platform opens up so anybody can write applications for the iPhone OS that consumers can download and use.
Tags: 2009, app store, estimate
This press release from Apple states that since it was released for download on March 6, the iPhone SDK has been downloaded over 250,000 times. Although I think this number might be a little deceiving, it is pretty amazing that a software development kit was downloaded over a quarter of a million times in only about 3 months time. I think that many of the people that downloaded the SDK are small developers and individuals that want to tinker around and learn xcode development. To me, this is a good thing because that means that it is very accesible as wwell as enticing to many different people. Obviously it looks so easy that all kinds of people are downloading it playing around with it.
But I do think that the number of downloads that was announced is a higher than the total number of people that are using the iPhone SDK. Personally, I have downloaded the SDK at least 5 times. The first time I tried it on a G4 mac and it wouldn’t work. So then I downloaded it again on a MacBook. Then each time they released a new version I downloaded and installed that. Just think of all the other people that encountered the same problems when downloading the SDK, and you can easily see how this number is slightly misleading.
At the WWDC today, Steve Jobs announced the new 3G iPhone today, and along with it a hard release date for the new iPhone OS version 2.0. The new version of the OS had been previously announced, but there was no word on the release date for it. iPhone OS 2.0 will provide much more features than the original version, including many features for syncing with corporate environments, as well as the ability to download and install new applications from the Apple App Store. These programs can be downloaded directly to the device either for free or for a fee set by the software developer. Apple will keep 30% of the revenue and they will pay the developer the remaining 70%. Software developers can download the iPhone SDK from the apple website. There is also tutorials, source code and more available from apple.com.
Tags: 3g iphone, 3g iphone launch, iphone os 2.0, iphone sdk
