14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has held a media event today at its HQ in Cupertino, California, announcing a new iPhone OS version, while confirming everyone's expectations as to what the new software brings and does. Good news for developers too, who get an updated version of the SDK, and a developer beta of the new software as soon as today.
Greg Joswiak kicked off today's presentation, with the Apple-specific routine of revealing that the iPhone is now in 80 countries, with over 17 million iPhones sold, while there are currently over 30 million iPhone OS devices (iPhone + iPod touch). The iPhone makers have seen over 800,000 downloads of the free iPhone SDK, with over 50,000 companies and individuals joining the iPhone Developer Program, noting that over 60% of them had never developed for an Apple platform before.
There are now over 25,000 apps available in the App Store, according to Joswiak, with over 800 million app downloads thus far. 96% of the submitted apps have been approved, he pinpointed. Also, the App Store is coming to 15 more countries, bringing the total number of states open to the App Store to 77.
Following these announcements, Greg Joswiak and Scot Forstall, senior vice president, iPhone Software, took turns in announcing more new stuff, mostly for developers. One hour into the event, the company behind the Mac operating system hadn't really revealed anything too exciting for the Apple community.
However, all that was about to change when Scot Forstall took the stage again to announce in-app purchase, peer to peer, accessories, Maps, push notifications, cut/copy/paste, landscape, MMS, Voice Memos, Calendar with support for CalDAV, new Search functionality and more.
"And these are only a few of the hundred new features. We're really excited about this. It is a major update. And I can't wait until you get your hands on it," Scot Forstall, senior vice president, iPhone Software, added.
As noted above, the developer beta of iPhone OS 3.0 is available as of today. As for the new OS, Apple is releasing iPhone 3.0 to the public in summer. It will be a free update to all iPhone users, while iPod touch owners will have to pay the usual $9.95 for the upgrade. Also noteworthy is that, due to hardware differences, features such as A2DP and MMS won’t be available on the original iPhone.
We will be detailing every one of these announcements, and more, very soon.
