Apple confirms discontinuation of iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS has officially been discontinued by Apple, the company confirmed on Thursday, and has been replaced by the iPhone 4 as its free on-contract handset.
The iPhone 3GS has officially been discontinued by Apple, the company confirmed on Thursday, and has been replaced by the iPhone 4 as its free on-contract handset.
The final build of iOS 6, and presumably the same version that will be publicly released next Wednesday, is now available to members of Apple's development community.
With the launch of the iPhone 5, the 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S will drop to $99 with a two-year contract, while an 8-gigabyte iPhone 4 will be available for free.
The arrival of a new iPhone model will push existing models down to lower price points, while the iPhone 3GS will no longer be offered by Apple, according to a new report.
For the first time since it launched last October, Apple's iPhone 4S was not the top selling smartphone in the U.S., as the newly released Samsung Galaxy S III took the top spot in the month of August.
Pictures claiming to show Apple's next iPhone continue to surface ahead of an expected Sept. 12 announcement, with a new series of shots showing side-by-side comparisons with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.
AT&T on Wednesday published a public letter defending its decision to block FaceTime calls over 3G for customers who have not switched to its new shared data plans, arguing that its policy is in compliance with the FCC's net neutrality rules, because AT&T does not offer its own competing preloaded video chat application.
China Telecom announced this week that it added 8.35 million users during its second quarter, an increase credited mostly to the launch of the iPhone 4S.
Sprint is now giving a $100 pre-paid gift card to new iPhone 4S buyers, and Business Insider has confirmed that Apple will be matching the deal by offering an Apple Store credit for the same amount.
Google told reporters today that the future of web search looks identical to Apple's Siri, admitting, "if we are going to build the search of the future, we will have to solve difficult technology issues like speech recognition and natural language."
Domestic shipments of Android-based smartphones declined year over year in the second quarter, while Apple saw its iPhone sales grow by 2 million units.
Though Apple is tight-lipped about the profitability of its individual products, a court filing in the company's ongoing lawsuit with Samsung has revealed that the carrier-subsidized iPhone has margins north of 50 percent, nearly twice as high as the iPad.
While competitors AT&T and Verizon saw their total iPhone sales decline sequentially, Sprint announced on Thursday that it sold 1.5 million iPhones last quarter, matching the number sold in the previous frame.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said Tuesday he believes that if his company continues to strive to make the best smartphone in the world, carriers will remain motivated to provide the iPhone to their customers.
One Wall Street analyst has reiterated his expectation that Apple sold 30.9 million iPhones in the June quarter, a forecast bolstered by strong iPhone activation numbers from AT&T.
Nearly three quarters of all smartphones sold at AT&T in the second quarter of the company's fiscal 2012 were Apple's iPhone, the carrier announced on Tuesday.
Half of all mobile subscribers at Verizon Wireless, the largest cellular provider in the U.S., are now smartphone users, thanks in part to sales of 2.7 million iPhones in the second quarter.
New, higher-resolution versions of graphics for Apple's online store have been discovered, indicating the company is preparing to improve the website for devices with Retina-branded displays.
iPhone 4S users running the latest beta of iOS 6 have encountered an error message that has led to speculation that AT&T and other carriers could begin charging users to access FaceTime video chat over cellular data networks.
Users of the iPhone 3GS, a handset first released by Apple in 2009, may have access to the new Shared Photo Streams and VIP Mail features after all, as support has been added in the third beta release of iOS 6.
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