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To say that Apple’s iPhone is rapidly spreading around the world is now an understatement. Today comes word that Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) and mobile partners are the latest to strike a deal with Apple to sell the device, according to Reuters. This will put the device in four new countries: Singapore, India, Australia and the Philippines.

This follows recent word of the device coming to Canada, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. Other countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay may be on board as well thanks to Apple inking a deal with America Movil.

While this deal still won’t bring the iPhone to the world’s most populous country, China, nabbing the number two, India, with its over 1.1 billion people isn’t too shabby. Bharti Airtel Ltd, the SingTel associate which will handle the service in India has access to just about 60 million users. By comparison, AT&T, the United States carrier, has access to just over 70 million, so this is potentially very big deal.

These countries will get the iPhone later this year. Presumably that will be the 3G version of the device which should be released shortly — though probably not as shortly as some presume.

The map below doesn’t include all of these latest additions but is an update of the one from the post on Friday. The artist has reworked it a bit as well so it’s easier to see (countries in red have, or are getting the iPhone) — and looks even more like the board game Risk.

[Photo: CdnPhoto - used with permission]

The hype and speculation around the 3G iPhone are mounting quickly. Yesterday, it was uncovered that an “Enable 3G” button was part of the latest beta firmware update for the device. While Apple has yet to officially comment on the rumored-to-be-impending release, this is certainly one of the clearest signs that it is definitely coming soon. But how soon?

Rumors are flying around the Internet that Apple will launch the device earlier than expected — with some now even pointing to this month. There are a couple reasons behind this.

The first is that iPhone shortages are cropping up. Various parts of the U.S. and U.K. are out of stock (the device is completely sold out in New York City), with seemingly no refreshment in sight. Now, even Apple’s own online store is out of the device.

This, when added to the earlier rumor that Apple would release the 3G iPhone in May and save its WWDC convention in June for the announcement of a different, new device, have some speculating that we may see a very quiet roll-out of a 3G iPhone within the next couple weeks.

But let’s take a step back. We know that AT&T is circulating a memo to employees telling them not to take vacations between June 15th and July 12th. Unless this rumored new device was also utilizing AT&T in some way, it seems a lock that the 3G iPhone will be released in that time frame.

Also, unless Apple considers the 3G compatibility to be an incremental update, would the company really do a low-key Tuesday morning roll-out of the device without some large event? Several supposed first-hand accounts of the device suggest it will not simply be a small upgrade to 3G technology, but that the device will be completely reworked with several new features such as GPS and video capabilities.

Perhaps most telling, however, is that the iPhone 2.0 software is not due until June. Does anyone really think Apple is going to launch the 3G iPhone without the new software to utilize some of its features?

The most likely scenario here is the principle of Occam’s Razor. To paraphrase: All things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. The original iPhone is probably nearing the end of its life-cycle. Apple may have slightly miscalculated the number of first generation iPhones it would need prior to the launch of the second iteration, which, if they are to come out in June, are clearly now being manufactured.

If that is true, it would also suggest once again that if AT&T is going subsidize the price of the iPhone down to the rumored $199, it will be the 3G model and not versions of the older ones, which are most likely no longer going to be sold.

The buzz around the 3G iPhone is already pretty amazing. I’ve received no fewer than five emails this week from non-tech friends and family asking for anything I know about the device. With so much rumor and speculation floating around it’s hard to know much of anything for certain. Still, I would stick by the assessment that we won’t see the device in May and that instead it will be unveiled by Steve Jobs during his keynote at the WWDC on June 9. He’ll then probably announce its availability within a few weeks, and the lines outside AT&T and Apple stores will begin to form.

It has been known for a while that Microsoft’s Zune is the number two or number three digital music player (depending on the market) in the United States. However, just how far behind the number one device, Apple iPod, has not always clear since Microsoft has been slow to release its sales numbers. Now we have some.

Since its launch in November 2006, the Zune has sold 2 million units. For comparison, Apple sold 10.6 million iPods last quarter. That equates to right around 3.53 million iPods sold a month. Since its launch in 2001, the iPod has sold, get ready: 140 million units. For the Zune, the phrase “distant second” comes to mind.

Yet there is hope for Microsoft. iPod sales really didn’t start taking off for Apple until 2004 — almost three years into its lifespan. It took a full two years for sales to surpass 2 million, Microsoft beat that time, but the portable music world is quite a different place nowadays. When the iPod launched, most people were still listening to portable CD players.

The Zune also now has J Allard, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Design and Development, Entertainment and Devices Division (how’s that for a mouthful?), overseeing the strategy for the device. Allard is one of the key figures behind Microsoft’s successful Xbox gaming console.

Microsoft also recently revealed that popular hobbyist games will be coming to the Zune soon.

[photo: flickr/raybdbomb]

Remember the game Risk? You know, the one with the world map where you battle other players to gain the most terrain and literally take over the world? Yeah, fun game. Apple may think so too, and thanks to a new graphic (below) made by a commenter in The Mac Observer Forums (and found by Apple 2.0), you can really see it.

All of the areas in red are where Apple has or will soon penetrate the market with its game-changing mobile device. This red area is expanding quickly as Canada, Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey have all been added recently. Likewise Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay all may be on board thanks to Apple inking a deal with America Movil. And don’t forget about the rumored Spain and Poland expansion.

Incidentally, the two countries perhaps most associated (at least in the past) with being “red”, China and Russia, are not yet red on this map. Expect both to succumb once the 3G iPhone hits.

[Photo: CdnPhoto - used with permission]

On June 9 (or June 15 — or sometime before July 12), a lot of first generation iPhones may magically turn into plain old iPods. I say this because while the majority of people I have talked to who don’t own an iPhone plan to buy the second iteration of the device, every single person I’ve talked to who already owns a first generation iPhone plans on buying the second one. (Well, except our own Eric Eldon, who had the misfortune of buying one a few weeks ago.) Assuming those people aren’t going to both set up new accounts with AT&T and maintain their old ones, this is going to create a plethora of older iPhones that aren’t used as phones.

While it would be incredible if Apple and AT&T offered some sort of trade-in incentive for old iPhones, this is probably unlikely. After all, how many times has Apple updated one of its iPod lines mere months after a previous update while leaving those first adopters to sulk in their outdatedness?

So what will become of these old iPhones? Well, as one friend tells me, the iPhone is still hands down the best iPod they’ve ever owned. With the combination of Multi-touch technology and the software enabling very smooth CoverFlow action (the view you might know from the iTunes software where you pick songs based on album covers), I’d have to agree. So why not just keep it as a nice second (or fourth, in my case) iPod?

On the other hand, if you have a second generation iPhone, do you really need another iPod? Certainly some people buy the smaller versions, the iPod Nano and the iPod Shuffle, for activities such as going to the gym, but the iPhone is comparatively bulky for something like that. Likewise, some people buy what is now known as the iPod Classic (formerly known as the plain old iPod), which is bulkier but can store up to 160 gigabytes of data, simply for storage of their entire collection of music, photos and movies. For most people, the 4 or 8 gigabyte (or even 16 gigabyte if you have the newer version) iPhone simply does not have enough storage to act in that capacity, especially with Apple’s new emphasis on video content.

So what to do? Well perhaps we will see a mini-economy pop up around the buying and selling of first generation iPhones on the cheap. However, if the second generation version is really going to be only $199 after an AT&T subsidy, these devices (which were once $599) are going to have to be sold only a year later at a huge loss.

Perhaps the first generation iPhone can make for a good hand-me-down or re-gift — provided AT&T makes this easy. Or maybe it’ll be a nice charitable donation. We’ll probably also see some lawsuits from early adopters claiming the device wasn’t meant to last through their 2-year contracts with AT&T.

One thing is certain — come July (or whenever the 3G iPhone is released), there are going to be a lot of iPhones out there on the streets. Whether most are used or unused is up to Apple and AT&T.

We’ve contacted Apple for a comment on any upgrade policy; something tells me they won’t have anything to say…yet.

When Apple announced deals with all the major movie studios to bring rentals to its Apple TV device, it turned the device from a dud into a potential player in the living room. “Potential” is the keyword there. It’s a nice device, but it still lacks that certain something that could put it over the top. That something could be DVR functionality, more computing functionality (such as a native web browser, instant messaging, or the ability to run something like Google Earth), or perhaps gaming. A new patent uncovered by AppleInsider suggests Apple is looking into that last possibility.

Yes, we’ve heard this before. Rumors of Apple entering the gaming market are nothing new, but some of the best of those rumors suggest Apple should team up with Wii-maker Nintendo do create something for a living room. Well, it doesn’t appear a partnership between the two is coming, but this patent looks like Apple is more or less “borrowing” some of what has made the Wii a great console.

The images below probably look very familiar if you’ve seen a Wii (to be fair, the patent, which was just uncovered, was filed in November 2006 — right when the Wii was first coming out). You have a remote control-like controller that allows for full movement. A sensor placed near the television uses infrared technology to translate that movement in three dimensional terms.

While it is certainly possible that Apple is just working on a point and click remote to make navigating the Apple TV more intuitive, it did flat out state in the patent that: “the absolute x- and y-positions of [the] remote control can be used, for example, in video games to position a user’s character or to otherwise track the movement of the remote control in a user’s environment.”

AppleInsider also notes that this 3D remote technology could be used to mimic some of what Apple is doing with its software via Multi-touch technology. For example instead of pinching with two fingers to zoom a picture in or out, simply moving this remote forwards or backwards could have the same effect.

While Apple may be working its way into gaming, Nintendo may be working the other way, towards more of an entertainment console.

[photo: flickr/nicolasnova]

Having just moved into a new place, I have no television yet. Normally I’d turn to iTunes to catch my favorites, but the problem is that many of those shows are on NBC — the same NBC that famously cut ties with iTunes six months ago. Instead, I visit the NBC and Fox’s free video streaming site Hulu, which is exactly what NBC wants. So why does the company keep teasing us with the possibility of a return to Apple?

For example, NBC is now offering iPhone users the ability to stream select shows for free to their devices, Silicon Alley Insider has uncovered. When it actually works, the quality is awful, but still, why the olive branch to Apple supporters?

Another example: Yesterday, it was revealed that NBC was offering several of its shows on the UK version of iTunes. If you’re attempting to take a stance against iTunes, does it really make sense to partner up with the service again, even if it is in another country?

Back in January, when the writer’s strike was still going on, NBC chief executive Jeff Zucker told the Financial Times that NBC wants to be back in business with Apple. Everyone assumed that comment meant it was a forgone conclusion that the two would get back together, yet all we get are teases.

To add insult to injury, NBC also announced yesterday that it was teaming up with Microsoft to bring its content to the Zune portable media player. The per-episode price? $1.99, the same as iTunes. (Though, unlike Apple, Microsoft is reportedly open to shifting the price based on varying content.)

I fully expect to see NBC content back on iTunes at some point this year, but I have to wonder why the two are dancing around it. You can have NBC content on iTunes, but not in the United States. You can have NBC content on your iPhone, but not on iTunes. NBC doesn’t like Apple’s pricing structure, but then sets the same exact price with Microsoft for the Zune store.

Perhaps NBC is waiting to see how successful the Apple TV device will be with Apple’s new movie studio deals in place. Or perhaps Zucker just wants to make Apple chief executive Steve Jobs squirm a little more as the Hulu’s positive reviews keep coming in.

[photo: NBC]

If Apple intends to sell 10 million iPhones before the end of the year, it is certainly going about it the right way. First, it is releasing a newer, sexier version that will run on the faster 3G network (I have yet to talk to someone who says that they aren’t getting one, especially if it really is $199). Second, it is rapidly expanding into new countries — which of course means new customers to sell the device to.

The iPhone’s trek around the world (which may or may not happen in 80 days) continues today with word that the largest mobile network operator in Latin America, America Mobil, will begin selling the device in Mexico and other parts of that region later this year. The company offers Apple potential access to over 152 million subscribers in 16 countries.

But wait, there’s more. Another report claims French telecom Orange is in discussions with Apple to sell the device outside of France (where is has sold the iPhone since earlier this year). Two countries named as candidates in this expansion are Spain and Poland with others being possibilities as well.

These countries would join Canada, Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey as recent additions to Apple’s roster of countries that are iPhone compatible. Still no word however on a deal with the real jewel in Apple’s eye, China.

[photo: flickr/anselm]

Last year, before the launch of the iPhone, AT&T employees were sent a memo instructing them not to take vacations from June 15th to July 15th, due to the possibility increased traffic because of a new product. The iPhone eneded up launching on June 29th, right in the middle of those dates. Today, The Boy Genius Report has uncovered a new letter detailing dates that shouldn’t be used for vacations: June 15th to July 12th. Ladies and gentleman, we have a launch window.

You’ll note this date is a little later than the previously rumored June 9th date, but it is perfectly reasonable to expect that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs would announce the 3G iPhone at the Apple WWDC event on the 9th and state that it would be available in the following week or two.

There is no guarantee this is for the 3G iPhone (no specific product is mentioned), but given that AT&T did the exact same thing last year for the initial iPhone, I’d say odds are pretty good we know what it is talking about — and it’s probably not a new green nylon carrying case for your BlackBerry.

Here is the full text of the letter:

AT&T Mobility

Vacation Schedules

To: All Employees

Last year at this time we asked that all vacations be scheduled before June 15 or after July 15, to ensure adequate store staffing and to give everyone an equal opportunity to benefit from an exciting product launch. Thanks to your hard work, we experienced excellent sales during the mid-summer period. This year, the numbers you produced in 2007 will be hard to beat; but as a business, we must rise to the challenge, and make every effort to exceed last year’s sales results. Your management team is counting on you!

We’ll meet the challenge “head-on” by providing an exciting Summer Promotional Launch to enable your sales to soar. We again anticipate heavier than normal customer traffic in our stores, providing an excellent earning opportunity for every front line retail sales consultant (RSC) in company owned retail stores.

To ensure proper staffing during this period, Sales personnel planning to take approved time off are encouraged to schedule their vacations before June 15 or after July 12 to participate in the heavy selling period

Previously approved vacation will be allowed where voluntary rescheduling is not feasible

No additional vacation will be approved for 6/15 – 7/12

If customer traffic is manageable, there may be an opportunity to approve vacation toward the end of the period. Managers will communicate updates as they become available.

So there you have it. June 15th to July 12th is the likely launch range for the 3G iPhone, with an emphasis on the earlier part of that range as AT&T says that vacations may be allowed at the end of the period if “customer traffic is manageable.” Don’t expect that to be the case if the 3G iPhone is really going to be only $199.

[Note: The Boy Genius Report first erroneously reported the dates for the launch could be April 15th to May 15th. They simply read the letter wrong.]

[photo: flickr/jurvetson]

The world’s largest mobile phone seller, Vodafone, today announced that it has a deal in place with Apple to sell the iPhone in 10 new markets around the world. These are: Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. This major push continues Apple’s global expansion for the device following announcements of a launch in Canada, and evidence that the company is working hard to get to the device into the Chinese market.

There is something else interesting in today’s news. While Vodafone will sell the iPhone in Italy, another carrier, Telecom Italia, will as well. This marks the first time that Apple has allowed more than one distributer of the iPhone in any given country. Vodafone apparently does not want to share revenues on the device in Italy because it is concerned about how it will sell, according to Times Online.

This has been a concern in other European countries as well. Given that many of these countries already have advanced mobile devices, it’s probably a safe bet that it will be the upcoming 3G version of the iPhone. The new version, almost certainly coming this summer (possibly as early as June), would be out in time for a roll out to these countries later in the year.

Rumors are starting to circulate that Apple may be reconsidering its one carrier stance in the U.S. as well. It seems a bit odd that AT&T and Apple would allow the 3G iPhone to be subsidized after not allowing that for the first version. One thought is that AT&T is doing that in an attempt to gain as many customers as possible before Apple back away to sell the device on multiple carriers — or simply sells it completely unlocked.

Here’s the latest action:

Another Google exec heads to Facebook – Elliot Schrage, Google’s vice president of global communications and public affairs will become the vice president of communications and public policy at Facebook, BoomTown’s Kara Swisher has learned. “This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness, and honest internal communications,” Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a memo to employees.

Schrage becomes the latest in a string of Googlers who have left for Facebook. As one commenter joked on FriendFeed earlier: “Facebook now imports Google execs…” Valleywag caught wind of Schrage’s interview at Facebook first.

Mosso to add more storage to the cloud — The cloud computing division of hosting provider RackSpace will be launching a new online storage service called CloudFS later this year, according to CNET. Developers will have access to almost limitless amounts of storage at the cost of 15 cents per gigabyte. This will compete against similar services from Amazon and eventually Google.

AP launches news site geared towards iPhone — The Associated Press and the 100+ newspapers it services will allow owners of the device to type in their zip code and get personalized news. Apple gave the service pointers about how to best build such a site. So you know the integration is good.

Sun gives developers OpenSolaris, wants apps in return — Sun Microsystems gave away OpenSolaris, the open source version of its operating system, at the CommunityOne developers conference on Monday. Sun hopes open source will help it regain relevance in the within the community, according to CNET. The main rival here it thought to be Linux.

Nine Inch Nails keep the free music coming — The rock band has a new album, The Slip, which is it giving away entirely for free on its website. There is no catch, it’s simply a gift for the fans, frontman Trent Reznor explains. Users can choose between a variety of formats and quality. This follows the band giving away the first part of its Ghosts I-IV album and other bands such as Radiohead and Coldplay giving their music away for free over the Internet. The album can also be streamed right from the social music site iLike.

LiveProcess Corp. takes a $3.62 million series A — The Verona, N.J.-based company is a provider of an online application to manage a hospital’s disaster preparedness plans and response. No institutional investors were disclosed, according to PEHub. The company says it’s the only disaster preparedness software endorsed by the American Hospital Association.

EA fires back at Activision — The world’s two leading video game publishers continue to go at it. Activision’s chief executive said that EA “did a very good job of taking the soul out of a lot of the studios it acquired.” EA’s response in an interview with Newsweek’s LevelUp blog: “The truth is, everyone laughed.”

TomCruise.com launches — And thank God. The actor is celebrating the 25th anniversary of his first starring role in Risky Business. Luckily the site has nothing to do with Scientology and everything to do with movies (though there is an interview with Oprah where he discusses the controversial religion). This site can be my wingman anytime.

Remember Lycos? Of course you do. Remember when you last used the site? Of course you don’t. Perhaps that’s exactly why the company’s taking the site in a new direction: video on demand (VOD) rentals.

Started as a Carnegie Mellon University research project in 1994, Lycos was one of the first web search engines. By 1999 it was one of the most visited sites in the world, then Yahoo and Google happened. While it still maintains respectable traffic worldwide, Lycos, now owned by Daum Communications Corp. (the second largest portal in Korea), is more than an after-thought in the web 2.0 world.

In 2005 the company decided to shift its strategy away from search to online communities and broadband entertainment. That transition continues today with the launch of Lycos Cinema.

An online video on demand service, Lycos offers both free and premium content. The free content is ad-supported, while the premium content takes a new approach: fees based on the number of “seats” — that is, how many people you want to watch the film with.

That’s the key component Lycos Cinema feels will set itself apart from the competition: social interaction. When you load up a movie, a chat room appears on the left hand side. Here, you can invite and interact with friends about the content you’re all watching. It’s a cute idea — in theory at least.

In reality there are problems. First, the content. To be frank, it’s awful. It’s not that I haven’t heard of all of the films (only most I hadn’t heard of…), it’s that there’s no way I would pay to watch most of them.

The second problem Lycos Cinema has is the competition it faces. In the growing field of VOD you have Apple’s iTunes movie rentals, Amazon’s Unbox rentals and Netflix’s Watch-It-Now, among others. All of them offer much better content at similar prices with a much better experience. Even the free stuff on Lycos can’t begin to compare with what the NBC and Fox-backed online video site Hulu offers.

The third problem, unfortunately, is that the site throws errors left and right. About half of the time most pages don’t load at all and instead spit out a code error. Even if I wanted to rent a movie, I might not be able to — it’s a total crap shoot.

If you are able to get to the featured rentals promo page, you’ll notice a top section that looks quite a bit like iTunes movie rentals’ CoverFlow view. It’s really kind of pathetic.

Lycos sold to Spain’s Terra Networks in 2000 for $5.4 billion. It was resold in 2004 to the aforementioned Daum Communications Corp. for $95.4 million. At that rate it’s due for another sale this year, priced to own.

With a population of nearly a billion and a half people, the Chinese market is any mobile device builder’s dream. Even landing on just one of China’s mobile networks could yield hundreds of millions of new subscribers. Apple is well aware of this — and today we have more proof in the form of Chinese handwriting recognition built into the iPhone 2.0 software.

The feature, uncovered by Chinese site Wretch.cc (translated by MacRumors), would allow users to draw characters and have the iPhone suggest four possibilities of what it could be on the right side of the screen. One would assume that these characters are drawn with a finger rather than a stylus (which the iPhone does not have), but the character lines seem awfully thin for a finger stroke.

There is no support for English handwriting yet in the iPhone 2.0 software, which will be available to consumers this summer. As MacRumors notes, Apple’s popular Newton PDA device from the 1990s made great strides in digital handwriting technology. Apple has been hiring in this field recently as well.

China will no doubt be a focal point of expansion for the iPhone the rest of this year and next. Who knows how long it will take given that Apple just recently reached a deal to get the iPhone to Canada later this year.

[photo: via wretch.cc]

Last month, I wrote that Sony was crazy to think Blu-ray sales would increase to half of the digital movie disc market by the end of the year — it’s a hard sell because many people are still perfectly content with their standard DVDs. Now research and sales figures appear to back that up, according to The New York Times.

Simply put, Blu-ray is not selling quickly at all. Many assumed that its win over rival format HD-DVD would pave the way for Blu-ray domination, but as we’ve noted there will be some road bumps.

The first is simply price. While many very good regular DVD players can be found for well under $100, most Blu-ray players still cost over $300. It’s obvious but still worth stating that when Blu-ray players come down in price, they will sell more units.

The second obstacle is convincing users to see a real difference in quality. While more and more people are getting HD television signals in their homes, most rightly note that it’s simply not that substantial a quality upgrade from DVD quality on their big screens. Most consumers do not realize it, but not all HD is created equal. Blu-ray actually is a much nicer high definition picture, but unless a consumer is at a store looking at a direction comparison between Blu-ray and DVD, it can be hard to tell.

The third problem is digital downloads. While this is still a relatively young market and most companies are still trying to gain a foothold for their living room devices, things are evolving rapidly. Earlier today, Apple announced that new films from almost all of the big studios would be available on the iTunes digital movie store the same day they are released on DVD. If Microsoft can pull off a deal with Netflix to get its movies streaming to the Xbox 360, that would be a big win for digital distribution as well.

All is not lost for Blu-ray, however. There is still a wild card out there, and it’s a big one: the Playstation 3, which is also a Blu-ray player. While the PS3 struggled to a third place finish in the gaming console wars last year, signs point to it overtaking the Xbox 360 in sales this year (it is likely to still trail Nintendo’s Wii). The Playstation 3 also happens to be the most advanced Blu-ray player — and one of the cheapest.

Its predecessor, the Playstation 2, sold well over 100 million units. If the PS3 can get anywhere close to that number, a lot of people will have Blu-ray players in their homes. And people with Blu-ray players tend to buy Blu-ray discs.

Blu-ray is also trying to come up with ways to partner with other hot technology.

The question is whether the transition from DVD to Blu-ray can happen quickly enough to hold off digital downloads for a few more years.

[photo: flickr/skippy13]

When Apple revealed that it had signed up all of the major movie studios to distribute films via the iTunes store in January, lost in the fine print was the fact that most new releases would still have a waiting period before they were available online. This was simply because Hollywood was afraid of cannibalizing DVD sales. It’s the same reason why movies don’t come to HBO until a few weeks or months after their DVD release. That is about to change.

Apple is set to announce agreements with almost all of the studios (aside from MGM) to release movies to iTunes on the same day they are released to DVD, according to The Hollywood Reporter. This immediately makes the Apple TV, from which you can purchase and rent movies via the iTunes store, more desirable.

It also gives Apple TV an edge on competitors such as Amazon’s Unbox movie service (which has a partnership with the digital video recorder, TiVo) and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console (from which you can also rent movies). In fact, Microsoft may feel more pressure to strike a deal with Netflix to bring its streaming service to the device — if such a partnership isn’t already in place, as has been rumored.

In recent weeks, users may have noticed Apple and the movie studios testing out launching films on iTunes the day of their DVD release. It’s been seemingly random, but many popular movies have been available from day one, even though it was previously stated that they wouldn’t be.

Brick-and-mortar movie rental chains such as Blockbuster, may be in even more trouble now.

This is an important step in the shift to digital film distribution. It should help erase doubts about Apple competing in the movie business as it has in the music business. Now, if only iTunes would implement a rent-before-you-buy system.

Steve Perlman, the man behind tech incubator Rearden, is a serial entrepreneur with more than 30 years’ experience in the tech industry. He built his first computer from a kit during high school in 1976. He developed graphics at Atari and worked as a principal scientist at Apple, leading the development of a variety of multimedia technologies, including QuickTime. His string of start-ups includes General Magic, Catapult Entertainment, WebTV (sold to Microsoft for more than $500 million) and Moxi Digital. Since 2000, he’s been investing in new technologies at Rearden. The company, named after the company Rearden Steel in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” novel, is working on a wide range of R&D in a variety of fields and spins out start-ups as the R&D approaches commercializaton. Perlman believes that swinging for the fences, solving deep problems through years of research, and learning from mistakes is the only way to keep Silicon Valley moving forward. I was happy to have a chance to sit down with him at Web 2.0 and find out more about his business.

VB: How exactly does Rearden work?
SP: Rearden is an incubator. We’ve been around since 2000. What we do is take a look far forward into the future. We see a need for a technology or a production technique. We set out how to solve a problem. At that early stage, we won’t know how to solve it and won’t know how big the market will be when it’s solved. So, unfortunately, at that stage, you can’t bring in outside financing. We fund the companies ourselves. Most of the things we’ve tried have worked. A few don’t. But that’s fine. We learn from them. It very often takes years before we can show the technologies work. At that point, we build a large team and bring in outside funding. Then we move to product release. Some businesses stay within the Rearden fold and operate as cash businesses. We also cross-pollinate across all of these different companies. It’s not just ideas but people transferring from one company to another. A lot of the R&D that is gained from one company feeds into another.

VB: Can you give me an example of that cross-pollination?
SP: Ice Blink Studios did the art work for four feature films. That could be low tech. But those films were high-tech. They were “War of the Worlds,” “Monster House,” “Polar Express,” and “Beowulf.” We learned how to develop techniques for very large-budget films. We learned about the film business, like how they are financed, developed, distributed and sold. All that feeds into basic technologies we developed, like Contour Reality Capture, which is used to capture faces with our Mova start-up.

There were a lot of things we tried that worked for faces but were not optimized for the way people work on a production set. We had to learn about how almost all of the cost for traditional motion capture of faces and bodies for animations in films came from cleaning up the data that you captured. We had to make sure that whatever we did was as automated as possible in cleaning up the data. That seems obvious now. We came up with something that made it easier for the actors. We applied phosphorscent make-up to their faces. The cameras could capture every dot on the actors’ faces. It was comfortable enough. Now we don’t have to clean up a lot of inaccurate data. Then we talked to the video game folks, who are right behind the film folks in special effects. We bring high-quality stuff from films that is applied to games. Right behind the game people are web people doing Flash animations on web sites. These Flash animations are moving forward and you used to be able to only do them on a video game machine seven or eight years ago. You see a trailing effect. Rearden Studios does audio and visual editing. Mova does motion capture with Contour.

WOA.TV (Women of Action TV) is a community service site with videos of athletic women like Jackie Joyner-Kersee or Florence Griffith Joyner. But it is also a technology site. It was one of the very first sites with high-definition video being distributed on the Internet. As people used that site, we saw how well it ran on different machines. We looked at the algorithms. WOA TV was a complete test bed for us and a cool site for something that wasn’t covered enough, like women in sports.
VB: How do you bankroll all of this?
SP: I was at Apple early on. I did reasonably well there. I was also at General Magic. Did reasonably well there. Same for Catapult Entertainment. WebTV did reasonably well. I’m lucky in the sense that every start-up I’ve done produced liquidity. Given how many I’ve done and how many start-ups reach liquidity, it’s an unusual record. The ventures we’ve done within Rearden continue to feed back in and bankroll us.
VB: And how do you manage the funding for your startups?
SP: The companies are funded internally in early stages. As the companies evolve, the outside companies fund the [internal] companies, pick up the costs, and then they can move forward. They bring in capital, they operate, they are sold or do an IPO. We haven’t had an IPO yet. The Ice Blink Studios team became part of ImageMovers Digital at the beginning of 2007. ImageMovers Digital built their office around our office. Moxi Digital merged with Digeo. Rearden Studios and Mova are still part of the family. Other companies are unannounced. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs likes to wow the crowd during his keynote addresses with his “boom!” moments and then saves the best for the end with: “One more thing…” This summer, potentially at the WWDC conference, he may have two perfect candidates. The “boom” would be the 3G iPhone. The “one more thing” could be its price: $199.

Yes, you read that right.

When the 3G iPhone is released this summer (and we are saying “when” and not “if” at this point), AT&T is ready to shave as much as $200 off the cost of the phone, according to Fortune, which says it has a source familiar with the matter. This discount would be applied when customers sign a new 2-year agreement.

If true, this is big news. Plenty of people out there were planning on buying the 3G iPhone at $399, $499 or even $599 if need be. If the device comes in at $199 and $299 after the discount, the saying “flying off the shelves” may have to be redefined.

Rumors have been around for a while that Apple and AT&T would discount the current crop of iPhones when the 3G model hit, but this is the first time anyone has said that the companies would be willing to lower the price of the new 3G version.

It wasn’t even a year ago that the iPhone was launched to the public at the steep price of $599 (the 4GB version, which no longer exists, was only $499). There was some public outcry because AT&T was not subsidizing the cost of the phone even though purchasers had to sign a 2-year contract with the company. A few months later Apple decided to slash the prices by $200, and now we’ll have our subsidizing — making for a very affordable $199 iPhone.

The newer 3G (the cellular broadband network, faster than the current network, EDGE) iPhone models are expected to come in the current capacities of 8GB and 16GB. However, the larger, 32 GB capacity which Apple uses for the iPod Touch, should not be ruled out either. The older models would be discontinued.

If this price-cut is in fact intended for the 3G iPhone and not the older models, BlackBerry and other smart phone makers are in big trouble. Not that they weren’t already.

The Fortune piece goes on to say that the new iPhone will be 2.5 mm thinner than the current version (which goes against the reports from a few days ago), will have a GPS chip (which has long been rumored) and interestingly, “other location-based services.”

update: I was just chatting with a friend who shied away from buying an iPhone last year and wasn’t sure about getting one this time around. When I told him about the new potential $199 price, without hesitation his reply: “I’ll be getting one then.”

[photo: flickr/William Hook]

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) can see the writing on the wall. No doubt already concerned about some of the new business-friendly functionality (Microsoft Exchange support for example) coming to Apple’s iPhone with the 2.0 software release in a couple of months, now comes word that Apple will be entering RIM’s own home turf, Canada (RIM is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario). As such, the company has an interesting Apple-centric job listing that was uncovered by AppleInsider today.

The details are pretty sparse and border on cryptic:

“As part of a newly-created team, you’ll influence the development and design of BlackBerry software. This is a very confidential brand new team and a senior position within RIM so I can’t provide too many details. I guess you can figure out what it might be about though.”

The other details ask for existing experience with Mac development, Cocoa, Objective C, UI design, JavaScript, XML, and Mac Sync Services.

AppleInsider takes from this that RIM may actually be working on a native iPhone application. That would be a huge surprise considering that the two are direct rivals. The BlackBerry is the number one selling smartphone in the United States while the iPhone is number two — and quickly rising. Worldwide, BlackBerry is number two while the iPhone is number three (Nokia is number one).

It would seem more likely that RIM is working on a next-generation BlackBerry with features and functionality comparable to the iPhone — and who better to help out with that than developers who have experience in developing for it and the Mac in general? The company was recently forced to delay the launch of its 3G BlackBerry for AT&T (also the provider for the iPhone) until late summer. This will be a huge blow if Apple is able to get its 3G iPhone out the door first — which is expected.

With bet