Pat Dollard

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All I have to say about this is, dude…

Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave the Apple faithful and the business community what they wanted Monday: a new, faster and much cheaper iPhone.

The new, slimmer models will feature GPS satellite-tracking chips, third-generation (3G) cellular Internet access, better audio, metal buttons and a regular flush headphone jack.

The 8-gigabyte model will retail for $199, its 16-gigabyte sister for $299 — and the latter variation will also come in white.

The online Apple Store had gone “dark” worldwide a few hours earlier, with variations on “We’ll be back soon” greeting potential customers.

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That wasn’t news to anyone wanting an iPhone — Apple stores, both online and offline, ran out of the devices more than six weeks ago.

Jobs, looking noticeably thinner than usual, bounded onto the stage of the Moscone Center in San Francisco began his keynote address at the start of tech firm’s Worldwide Developers Conference by listing the number of companies that had tried out the iPhone’s enterprise software.

Apple hopes to take a big chunk of the giant, lucrative corporate smartphone market with the iPhone.

Right now, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices dominate that market the way Apple’s iPods dominate the MP3 player market — there simply isn’t any worthy competition.

According to Jobs, 35 percent of Fortune 500 companies had tested the software, as had the U.S. Army.

After a jargon-heavy presentation detailing the technical achievements of Apple’s software development kit for the iPhone, a brand new batch of third-party applications were debuted.

Several games, including Sega’s “Super Monkey Ball,” that used the iPhone’s own motion sensor to substitute for a four-way joystick, were demonstrated.

“These graphics look unbelievable compared to anything we’ve seen on a cellphone before,” commented Engadget’s Ryan Block on his Web site’s live event blog. “Seriously, these are [Nintendo] DS-quality graphics, easily.”

The next-generation iPhone will likely feature 3G wireless technology, allowing much faster Internet access.

That means users, especially the crucial European ones, won’t be as disappointed about the time it takes to check their e-mail.

It’ll be like “going from dial-up to broadband,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told USA Today in an article published Monday.

Perhaps even more significantly, several well-regarded sources said the handset’s price would be cut in half, to $199 from $399.

The Financial Times, in an article published Friday, said Apple would be making a “tacit acknowledgement … that its previous sales strategy was not sustainable.”

Most cell phones sold in the U.S. are heavily subsidized by the carriers, which then make back the money on service charges and add-ons.

Apple tried to buck that trend, selling the iPhone initially for the high price $499 and $599 depending on the storage capacity, while AT&T offered relatively inexpensive voice and data plans to go with it.

After two months, Apple cut the cost by $200. Early adopters howled in outrage that they’d been ripped off, ignoring the fact that rapid price cuts are common in the cell-phone industry.

Both that discount and the one expected Monday are signs that Apple is trying to adapt to the cutthroat price wars among cellular carriers, and is having to join the herd in eating part of the cost of its own devices.

Apple aims to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008, a goal that it’s only about halfway achieved after a year of the device being available.

There was no indication yet that AT&T would raise its subscription rates to offset the lower handset price.

The new iPhone is expected to be available in mid-June.

(Fox)