We’ve officially moved beyond skepticism that Apple would be able to get a foothold into the mobile market to full-on speculation for how the company will follow up the breakout success of the iPhone. According to MSNBC, it will be with the iPhone Nano. Which they make sound like…the iPod Nano. With a phone on it.
Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan, cited people in the supply channel that he did not name and an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office for his report.
Apple filed a patent application document that refers to a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano’s scroll wheel.
Yeah, I’m sure that will be exactly what Apple does. I’m sorry, there’s no way Apple ever releases a product with a click-wheel. The company has sent clear messages that it considers that to be the iPod interface and the iPod interface alone. The iPhone is about multitouch. You don’t get the name otherwise.
The iPhone will quite obviously eat into iPod sales. That’s kind of the point long-term. It doesn’t mean Apple’s ready to roll out a bad product to replace good ones.
Via Digg.
Image via Information Architects
6 responses to “MSNBC Feeds iPhone Nano Rumor Mill”
That shuffel concept is about the funniest thing I have seen all year. But, that aside, I think what he (Kevin Chang) was refering to was the patent for a “virtual” scroll wheel. It changes to numbers or icons ect. I saw a reference to this earlier somewhere. THAT, I could see possible. It would be multi-touch. It could be cool if Apple made it… well… cool, which they know how to do.
Also, I do see them using the “Nano” tag though. And I would bet the Nano would not just be a smaller, less feature rich version (as pictured above) of the iPhone. The iPod Nano isn’t. It has a slightly different form factor, metal, comes in colors. I would suspect the iPhone Nano will have a slightly different form factor too, a slightly different interface, and will probably not have email, video and internet. Just a multi-touch phone/MP3 player. Just my thoughts.
I don’t think it will happen not as proposed by those images above, it wouldn’t work well at all.
The iPhone Shuffle doesn’t have a screen.