Apple Intros Speedy iPhone for $199

Written by Steve Donohue

Monday, June 8. 2009 at 03:50 PM EDT Post a comment

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Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) took the wraps off a new $199 iPhone at its Worldwide Developers Conference today, and it slashed the price of its 8-GB iPhone to $99.

In addition to setting a $199 price for the 16-GB version of its new iPhone 3GS (the 'S' stands for speed), Apple is pitching consumers a $299 model that contains 32-GB of memory. Apple and exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) will begin selling both models on June 19.

Apple said the iPhone 3GS sports a 3-megapixel autofocus camera that can shoot both still images and video, and has a "tap to focus" feature that allows owners to touch any object or area of an image to adjust the focus and exposure.

The new iPhone also contains a voice control feature that allows users to access songs or videos through a microphone, and a VoiceOver text-to-speech screen reader that speaks what appears on the 3GS display. It also features a digital compass that displays which way a user is walking or driving.

Among the new iPhone applications rolled out at the conference is a new "Find my iPhone" app. Subscribers of Apple's $99 annual MobileMe service can use the application to display a map showing where their phone is.

Company executives also demonstrated an auto-navigation app from TomTom, an AirStrip application that supplies health-care professionals with data on patients, and a ScrollMotion electronic book reader that will allow students to access textbooks on their iPhones.

Apple also launched a new peer-to-peer gaming application for the iPhone that allows owners of the mobile phone to locate other users nearby using Bluetooth and connect subscribers via a WiFi connection for multiplayer gaming.

Boasting that it has the fastest Internet browser on the market, Apple debuted its Safari 4 browser at the conference, available on both Macs and Windows PCs. Apple said in today's announcement that Safari 4 runs the new Nitro JavaScript engine eight times faster than Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 8 and three times faster than the Mozilla's Firefox 3 browser.

The barrage of Apple news failed to boost the company's stock, which has gained 70 percent in value in the last three months. Apple stock was trading at $142.58 at 3:30 p.m. ET, down $2.09 per share, or 1.45 percent.

While some Apple observers expected that CEO Steve Jobs, who went on a six-month medical leave in January, would make a surprise return at the conference, Jobs did not appear Monday in San Francisco. Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Philip Schiller led the company's presentation. Jobs is expected to return at the end of June.

The Apple news takes some of the spotlight from Palm Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., which began selling the Palm Pre smartphone on Saturday. Analysts say Palm has already sold 50,000 to 100,000 Pre units. The phone gives subscribers access to an application store similar to Apple's iTunes Store and Google's Android Market.

Adult content providers are also looking to make a splash at the developers conference. iPorn launched what it is calling the first Web application developed using iPhone specs. The Website also said it planned to throw a nine-hour after-party at San Francisco's Gold Club.

The developers conference attracted an army of live-bloggers, including a steady stream of reports from The New York Times, CNBC, and MacRumorsLive.com.