An hour ago Apple’s co-founder, CEO, Steve Jobs, announced the highly anticipated Apple iPhone 3G during the keynote speech at the WWDC 2008 in San Francisco. It will be available July 11, 2008 in 70 countries around the world.
The announcement had some surprises; confirmation of built-in GPS. All in all were information that many of the rumor sites had already published: 3G radio, longer battery life, multiple colours (Black and White) and lower price. What was missing, that I had hoped for was video conferencing or Mobile iChat. Well there is just over a month before the actual release date, may be there is another higher version at the USD399.00 price point: more storage 32GB and video conferencing to be announced before the date.
Yes, Apple lower the price of the 8GB version to USD199.00 and the 16GB version to USD299.00. Making one to speculate there may be yet another model at the original USD399.00 price. I think I may hold out for that.
The most interesting is that it showed up on Apple HK’s Store, but when I try to follow the “Find a store” link within the page, it gave me a “Page Not Found” error. I guess Apple forgot to put up a “Coming Soon” page for this. As Hutchison Telecom had already announced last week that it signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone 3G through is “3″ mobile brand. I just hope that it is not the only carrier that will carry the iPhone 3G in Hong Kong.
During the keynote, Steve Jobs failed to offer any details of Apple’s business arrangements with these mobile carriers in the 70 countries. It is already know from the various mobile carrier press releases in the past several weeks, there are more than one carrier in a most of these 70 countries that will be selling the iPhone 3G.
The Apple Stock had a roller coaster ride during the 2 hours of the keynote, taking a dive of almost USD4.00 during the 3rd party application demos; which most have seen during the announcement of the iPhone SDK in January, then rising to a high of USD184+ when the 3G iPhone was (”confirmed”) announced by Steve Jobs. It then drop a USD6.00 dollars when everyone realize there’s no “Just One More Thing” announcement.
I think both the market and myself was expecting Steve Jobs (Apple) to detail their future business arrangements with the mobile carriers in these 70 countries. Being a shareholder myself (full disclosure), hopefully Apple will release more details as we get closer to the actual release date of July 11th.
The one other surprise and rumor confirmation was the announcement of MobileMe, which is the next generation of .Mac for Macintosh computers, Windows computers and iPhones. To put it simply, it is a Web 2.0 refresh of (the over due revamp) .Mac service. Although, given its compatibility with iPhones (equipped with 2.0 firmware), I may again have a use for this service. Given I can install version 2.0 of the iPhone firmware on my current hacked iPhone 2G.
[Update: June 10, 2008]
Thank to the reader, AC, I just checked Apple’s “Find a Store” link and it is now pointing to a page where it lists “3″ as the mobile carrier to purchase the iPhone.
It is reported that the first of Hong Kong’s mobile carriers: CSL (with two brands 1010 and One2Free), People (recently purchased by China Telecom), Sunday (recently purchased by PCCW), Smartone-Vodafone (with a partnership involving the mobile giant, Vodafone) and Hutchison Telcom’s Orange and 3. The latter is where Hutchison announced that they will resell the Apple iPhone later this year in Hong Kong and Macau.
Recently Apple shows signs of changing their business model for the iPhone partnerships with carriers. When Apple is predicted to make their announcement of the next generation iPhone, at the keynote speech of the WWDC, there will be multiple carriers selling iPhones for any given country.
With this in mind I am hoping the big brother of Smartone-Vodafone will be reselling the iPhone also.
Today there was a report that a staff of the Hong Kong Immigration department accidentally allowed a highly sensitive confidential document to be uploaded onto the P2P network, Foxy. Reportedly, the documented uploaded to the P2P network is a document that contains personal information of individuals who were refused entry into Hong Kong, including the reasons and factors that lead to Hong Kong Immigration department to make such ruling.
It is also reported that the reason this staff of the Hong Kong Immigration took this document home onto his computer, is because he is a new staff and wanted to take some cases home to study the associate procedures.
The Hong Kong Immigration claims that they had since removed this confidential document from the staff’s computer and from the Foxy P2P network. They also claim that the said document can no longer be found on the Internet.
As many of you know, anything uploaded to the Internet will most likely be on the Net forever. Depending on the desirability of the file it could spread like wild fire on the Net. Allegedly this file was named “Private xxxxxx.doc”, which is quite attractive to common users of P2P networks.
One thing going for the Hong Kong Immigration department, is that the Foxy P2P network is popular among Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China citizens. Therefore, even a file with the word “Private” on it, may not draw too much attention among these users.
What I don’t understand is how can something like this happen in a city like Hong Kong. In most cases, Hong Kong is a modern cosmopolitan financial hub. Unlike its homeland, China, does have human rights, free of speech, free press, privacy policies, etc.
The privacy polices in Hong Kong is very lacking. If something is not done soon there may be more cases of confidential information leaked in wild or worst, more prevalent identify thefts.
I found out today, that Privacy laws in Hong Kong is extremely deficient. Although, there are laws to protect personal privacy of every citizens of Hong Kong. There are no laws to hold employees of institutions that manage and handle individual private data/information.
Without this accountability resulted in situations like the one today with the staff of the Hong Kong Immigration department. It is only a few days ago another case of personal data was leaked at the Hong Kong Hospital Authority. Similar case also happened with the Police department.
It is not that Hong Kong government offices are that much more vulnerable than most western countries/cities. There are similar cases in the United States and United Kingdom, both involved respective law enforcement departments.
So what so different in Hong Kong, I believe is the lack of accountability for the front-line handlers of these personal data of individuals. I do believe that it is not the lack of education or awareness of these front-line handlers. These same individuals if it comes to their own personal data, I believe they would be most diligent.
I think it is time for Hong Kong government to revamp the privacy laws, to ensure all parties in the chain-of-handlers are held accountable for the protection of this information they are appointed to handle.
Each year on the third Sunday of Feburary there is a marathon in Hong Kong. Several years ago Standard Chartered Bank took over as the primary sponsor of this marathon. Such that it is now called the “Standard Chartered Marathon”.
Like any other marathon this is a charity event, but to which charity it is raising money for, very few people know or remember. One of the direct results of the heavy emphasis on Standard Chartered the company, bank and what it brings to Hong Kong.
This commercialization has caused it to route the marathon through the heart of the city. Going through the heaviest trafficed areas. Closing down roads to vehicles and pedestrians. Causing thousands of stores to shut their doors until the marathon has passed, which took hours. Cutting into the primary business hours for this location; even on a Sunday.
In Causeway Bay, one of the world’s busiest location, has its major artery closed down. Delivery trucks could not get to make their deliveries. Hundreds of bus routes have to be rerouted. Even pedestrians are forced to go through a round about way, into the mazed of MTR’s (Hong Kong subway) Causeway Bay station, just to cross the street. Along the way no signage of any kind to inform the pedestrians how they can get to where they need to go.
The lack of the organizer’s, Standard Chartered, care for the citizens of Hong Kong is further evidence, by the lack of prepareness of Hong Kong Police and the MTR to deal with the confusion and congestion this closures would cause.
Eventually MTR had to invoke crowd control and ask the police to manage the crowds at the affected MTR exits.
If it wasn’t for the heavy commercialization there would not be a need to route the marathon into the heart on the city. Is this the only way for a city to organize events like this? The answer may be obvious, but I am not sinical, as events like the Olympic and Soccer World Cup can be evidence.
Are there really no more desire for corporations to be caring citizens of their communities? Does it always have to come down to money and what this participating entities will get out of their effort?
I hope all parties concern will see this post and reconsider their plans in future events.
Sorry for the late posting of my findings regarding the most appropriate package(s) to subscribe to from Smartine-Vodafone.
After one and a half month of use, I have a fairly good idea whether my original proposed “Internet Browsing” and “2G/3G Data” plans are sufficient to allow for the freedom of using the iPhone, without worrying about the amount may be charged for the privilege.
Although these packages are not unlimited usage plans, they do provide enough data (GPRS/EDGE) allowance to cover the typical use of an iPhone. This includes features like: Mail, Stock application, Weather application, YouTube application, web browsing and various 3rd party applications that require Internet access.
These Smartone-Vodafone plans are: the HKD38.00/month “Internet Browsing” and the HKD118.00/month “2G/3G Data” plans; both these are non-commitment/contract prices.
As explained in my previous posting, for some undisclosed reason, the “Internet Browsing” plan does not cover all data usage on the iPhone, therefore one needs to also subscribe to a “2G/3G Data” plan. Otherwise you will be charged a data charge of HKD0.06/kb.
My test last month had me using 5.5MB of additional data usage aside from my “Internet Browsing” plan allowance. If I did not have a “2G/3G Data” plan I will have to pay an additional HKD330.00. If I had the HKD48.00/month “2G/3G Data” plan (the lowest available), I will still have to pay an extra HKD100.00.
Therefore I found the HKD118.00 “2G/3G Data” plan is the most economical choice, while allowing me to use the iPhone without any worries of being charged an extremely high data usage fee.
I hope these findings will help my fellow iPhone users in Hong Kong.
On November 12, the German courts ruled against T-Mobile and issued an injunction preventing T-Mobile from selling Apple iPhones requiring a 2 years contract. The injunction also prevents T-Mobile from selling Apple iPhones with the so called “SIM lock” that prevents users from switching the Apple iPhone to any other carriers.
This evening T-Mobile announced that they will be selling the Apple iPhone for EUR999.00 without a 2 years contract and continues to sell the Apple iPhone for EUR399 with a 2 years contract commitment. In addition T-Mobile will remove the SIM lock for any customers who wishes, including any customers who previously purchased the Apple iPhone from them. (more…)
An hour ago Apple’s co-founder, CEO, Steve Jobs, announced the highly anticipated Apple iPhone 3G during the keynote speech at the WWDC 2008 in San Francisco. It will be available July 11, 2008 in 70 countries around the world.
It is reported that the first of Hong Kong’s mobile carriers: CSL (with two brands 1010 and One2Free), People (recently purchased by China Telecom), Sunday (recently purchased by PCCW), Smartone-Vodafone (with a partnership involving the mobile giant, Vodafone) and Hutchison Telcom’s Orange and 3. The latter is where Hutchison announced that they will resell the Apple iPhone later this year in Hong Kong and Macau.
Today there was a report that a staff of the Hong Kong Immigration department accidentally allowed a highly sensitive confidential document to be uploaded onto the P2P network, 
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