iPhone set to ring up big profits
Workers at Apple’s call centre in Cork were inundated with calls yesterday as the company launched its innovative iPhone.
It is understood that staff at the centre were dealing with calls from American customers making inquiries regarding the new iPhone, which will hit the US market in June.
The iPhone has caused huge excitement among technology enthusiasts when it was unveiled at the Macworld Conference Expo in San Francisco yesterday.
The company is claiming that the new phone will “reinvent” telecommunications.
Apple employs around 1,400 people at its European headquarters in Hollyhill, Cork.
The company took in more than $10bn (€7.7bn) in revenue in the first half of the 2006 fiscal year. Shares in the company jumped by 6% when the phone was unveiled yesterday.
At just 11.6 millimetres thick, the iPhone maintains the sleek style that made the iPod a huge seller in the past few years by using a large touchscreen instead of conventional mobile phone buttons.
And it has a 3.5-inch widescreen — bigger than the video iPods available at the moment — and users will be able to download and watch TV shows, videos and movies on the phone.
The iPhone also makes it much easier to navigate the internet on your mobile phone and features wireless technology, while Yahoo! will provide web-based email on the phone and Google will supply maps.
It will be the end of the year before Irish mobile phone enthusiasts will get their hands on an iPhone and it is not known exactly how much they will cost, though the lowest American price comes in at 383. The iPhone is available in four-gigabyte or eight-gigabyte versions.
As well as functioning as a music and video player, it offers new services such as “visual voicemail”, which shows users a list of their messages so they can go straight to the ones they want to listen to most.
A full touch keyboard is available for text messaging and there is a built-in two-megapixel camera for high-quality images.
The hi-tech phone also features special sensors which automatically deactivate the screen and turn off the touch pad when the device is raised to the ear.
