Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on July 02
Apple, and current and former execs are the subject of another lawsuit revolving around the old kerfuffle around the stock options backdating mess that ensnared the company a year or two ago. The latest suit appears to be a second try by some of the same plantiffs show saw their first suit dismissed.
As Information Week tells it, the suit alleges that Jobs, former CFO Fred Anderson, former general counsel Nancy Heinen, and Apple directors Jerome York, William Campbell, Millard Drexler and Arthur Levinson participated in a scheme to file false financial statements in order to conceal executive compensation by backdating of stock options.
I don't know what compensation they intend to argue occurred. Apple has already thoroughly investigated the matter, and found that none of the options in question really benefited anyone, least of all Steve Jobs, whose options were canceled while they were under water and replaced with restricted stock grants.
Meanwhile, how much was actually involved? $84 million was the amount of Apple's restatement, which is, for a $24 billion company the equivalent of a rounding error. The only reason for seeking a shareholder lawsuit at this point, is to wring Apple for a "go away" settlement that would do nothing more than make the lawyers in the case rich. Enough already.
A similar effort to sue Apple, this on by the New York City Employees Retirement System met a similar when a judge said the $42 billion pension fund hadn't suffered any economic harm.
Yet, I'm still going to be really interested when the SEC's case against former General Counsel Nancy Heinen comes to trial. There are, at the very least, differing versions of events.
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on July 02
So Apple called today, a little annoyed with my portrayal yesterday of AT&T's iPhone pricing. The main difference on plans for the new iPhone versus the old are simple: The data plan is $10 more a month, mainly because the faster connection will mean higher data usage; And text messaging is charged separately.
First there's the data. IPhone users are traditionally heavy data users -- mainly because of the iPhone's excellent Web browser, no argument there. Faster pipes will mean even heavier usage, the thinking goes, and I'm inclined to agree on that point. AT&T spent a lot of money to build out its 3G network, and is entitled to make it back.
The other main difference this time around is that SMS text messaging has been pulled out as a separate billing item. Is this a mistake on AT&Ts part? I certainly think so. Charging fees for text messaging outside the usual data charges will only drive users to us instant messaging. There's little doubt in my mind that Apple will bring an iChat client to the iPhone, hopefully sooner rather than later, and AOL has already demonstrated an instant messaging client that should debut soon. Plus there are other options, including Beejive's Web-based application. Dear AT&T: This is a dumb idea, okay?
Everything else, is essentially the same as you would get with any other AT&T phone. The plans are essentially the same.
One other thing that's different, and actually better: AT&T is waiving the fees associated with upgrading from an old iPhone to a new one. If you have a first-generation iPhone and still have 23 months to go on your existing contract, you don't have to pay the usual fees associated with the upgrade. That is better, and I'm told that this is the first time that AT&T has ever done something like this.
But if you just bought a Blackberry on AT&T a month ago? Another story. That's when the higher price for upgrading kicks in, because AT&T still has to be made whole somehow on the subsidy they laid out for the first phone.
All that considered, I still think wireless pricing plans should be greatly streamlined, and this doesn't apply just to AT&T but to all the wireless carriers. Give me a flat monthly fee, or if you must, a selection of three flat monthly fees (for light, medium and heavy users) without a lot of tricky options to consider and weigh, and be done with with it. Here I think the wireless carriers still have a lot to learn from Apple, home of the 99-cent song download, and $129 single-price operating system. Keep it simple!
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on July 01
AT&T finally got around to disclosing all the pricing details around the iPhone 3G today, and while Apple is widely praised for its “simplicity” in all things about the device, there’s not a lot that’s simple about AT&T’s plans.
First things first: There’s the price of the phone. If you’re new to AT&T, you’ll pay $199 for the 8-gigabyte phone and $299 for the 16-GB phone. You’ll walk out of the store with a two-year AT&T contract. But you knew that.
On top of the phone, there will be a credit check – some may be required to put down a deposit -- and an activation fee of $36. No pre-paid service is being offered.
Upgraders with AT&T accounts in good standing will pay the same prices plus an $18 upgrade fee. There are also early upgrade prices of $399 and $499, while a “no commitment” option will be available soon, that will price the phones at $599 and $699.
Voice and data rates will run from $69.99 to $129.99 per month depending on the number of minutes, ranging from 450 minutes to no limit. FamilyTalk plans, which include two lines, will run from $129.99 to $359.99 per month with each additional line costing between $39.99 and $129.99 monthly. And? Data plans on the 3G version cost more than they did on the first iPhone, about $15 more per month.
Then there’s text messaging: $20 a month for unlimited texts, $15 for 1,500 messages, and $5 for 200 message. Unlimited texting costs $30 a month on the FamilyTalk plan. If you don’t get an unlimited plan additional messages will run you 20 cents each. (My advice, if you’re even a marginally heavy text-user, or if you’re heavily into Twitter, get the unlimited plan.)
If you’re going to get the iPhone for your company, the plans get even more expensive and confusing. If you want to connect to a corporate Exchange server, expect to shell out yet another $15 a month. See here. Finally, expect to pay through the nose, as usual, for international roaming.
It all makes my head spin: Why not offer a single, unlimited voice and data plan? And why, oh why aren't text messages included with data? I had an unusually heavy period of text message usage a few months back with my Blackberry on Verizon a few months back. I figured, "hey, it's included in my unlimited data plan!" Wrong. I didn't like my bill that month.
The non-contract pricing has raised some eyebrows, first among investors and Wall Street analysts. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffrary wrote in a research note issued today that he thinks AT&T is marking up the iPhone higher than previously thought. And this changes some assumptions. He’s assuming that Apple will sell the iPhone for an average selling price (ASP) of $425 a unit, including all the AT&T subsidies. Assuming the ASP is actually $500, and assuming Apple hits the 45-million unit mark that he thinks it will by the end of calendar 2009, he says, adds 8% to his Apple revenue estimate for the 2009 calendar year.
This kind of talk did good things for Apple stock today: It picked up $7 or more than 4% as of 3:53 PM. Click here for the latest price.
The news didn’t do so great for AT&T stock however. It traded down 53 cents or about 1.5%.
If you wanted to buy an iPhone off-contract, Erica Sadun over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog notes that it makes more sense to get on with a contract, then cancel the contract. Even after paying the $175 early termination fee, and paying for the first month of service, at about $450, she says, you’re still money ahead versus the $599/$699 off-contract prices. But who’d want to do that? Someone who wants to jailbreak their phone for use on other networks and with unapproved applications, I guess.
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on June 23
Engadget has an interesting screen shot purporting to show a new feature in Safari on Snow Leopard, the next version of OS X due next year. The feature is labeled "Save as a Web Application" and turns sites into mini-applications that launch specific URLs from the desktop or dock. It's similar to Prism an add-on for Firefox, which does the same thing (though personally I can't get it to work on Firefox 3). More here.
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on June 23
Softbank Mobile said this morning that it will release the iPhone 3G in Japan on July 11. Published reports say the phone will cost about 23,000 Yen, and will pay 5,985 Yen for data on top of a 980 yen charge for basic service. Having the iPhone should give Softbank a leg up against rivals like NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, as its the number three wireless carrier in Japan. Here's a link to a PDF file of the official press release,, which is annoyingly short on detail.
Now what I want to know is, when will there be a deal in China? CEO Steve Jobs told CNBC earlier this month that China and Russia would likely be done "later this year."
