Analysts, bloggers and reporters flocked from around the globe yesterday to attend Apple’s ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event where the speculation surrounding the new smartphone was finalised. The news that there will not be an iPhone 5 with a new design and 4G connectivity was hard to swallow for the many iPhone fans, who had eagerly anticipated the new phone they had all hyped up in their minds. Disappointment seems to be the general feeling after the intense build-up that has been circulating over the last few months. It is unfortunate that the public’s prediction of Apple’s next move was wrong and that the dissatisfaction may mean that people won’t be all rushing to the shops to trade in their iPhone 4 for the 4S.

The iPhone 4S does have some impressive additional features, and although it is not what most people expected the technology is pretty amazing. So let’s talk about what it does have rather than what it doesn’t and the reasons why Apple are still giants in the technology market …

Siri
Siri is a new feature exclusive to the iPhone 4S, it is designed to deliver information and follow commands that you give it. Siri provides a complete personal organisation system and comes in the form of a robotic female voice that you can change. You can use it for many things like checking the weather; asking for contacts addresses, asking irrelevant trivia, getting directions and setting reminders. The clever voice recognition system brings you your own personal assistant fully operational from your mobile phone. This technology is predicted to be the new sought after feature as Google are currently working on their version, watch the space on this one it looks like it could be the new function in the smartphone battlefield.

The Camera
The new 8 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus brings a new innovative way to take photos from your mobile. It is a whopping 33% faster than the iPhone 4 and you can snap away with the speedy “click” after each photo is taken. The Camera now also features 1080p video, image stabilisation and noise reduction.

Antenna and Speed
Both have massive improvements on the iPhone 4S, with dual antennas data speed is increased, this is the first smartphone that will be able to switch between antennas to transmit and receive data, improving both speed and quality. The HSDPA speed rockets from 7.2 Mbps to 14.4 Mbps. The iPhone 4S has Apple’s A5 dual-core 1GHz processor along with a dual-core CPU; the chipset will make it twice as fast and offer better graphics performance.

Granted Apple have offered an advanced iPhone, but have they done enough to sway people to buy it? Are the new additions something that maybe people will agree are brilliant but never really need to use and would there be any point paying any more money for a phone that looks the same as the last one? There is talk of the iPhone 5 coming out in June next year where there may be a complete redesign and even more artificial intelligence. The excitement and high expectations that have been put in peoples minds about the new product have not done Apple any favours; it seems people were expecting more in the time that Apple took to get it here.

So is it worth the risk? June is a long time off and we cannot really rely on Apples schedule, so if you are interested in the new features you might as well take the chance because with the technology market today, there is always something bigger and better just around the corner.

The story of Apple’s almost mythical white iPhone 4 took another twist this week when the company reluctantly admitted that the release date had slipped again, this time to a hesitantly vague ‘Spring 2011’. The announcement was the latest in what has been something of a PR rollercoaster for Apple. The timeline of the product can be pinpointed with highs and lows – the now-infamous stolen prototype, the fever-pitch first weeks of the release, record opening sales, ‘Antennagate’ snowballing, the ‘Antennagate’ explanation press conference and free case program, ‘Antennagate’ losing momentum, more record sales, and now, the news that the white iPhone will be delayed yet again.

The latest white iPhone 4 announcement throws up five questions that go to the heart of Apple’s product philosophy, PR and ultimately brand identity.

1) Why has it been delayed so long?

Apple isn’t saying anything officially further than unspecified “manufacturing difficulties beyond its initial expectations”, but the rumour mill has generated one or two reasonable suggestions.

An early but enduring rumour spoke of rapid discolouration of the white plastic used in the phone. While the iPhone 4 body has a glass front and back which would protect against grubby fingers, surfaces and pockets prematurely aging it from the outside, the rumour spoke of components heating the unit to the point where discolouration occurred from the inside out.

A more recent, and perhaps more feasible suggestion online talks about the white plastic compromising photography performance by allowing excessive light exposure on the lens. Either way, the “difficulties” have obviously proven to be especially difficult, hence the stretched-out delay.

2) Will anyone want one now?

A white iPhone 4 has an immediate visual appeal, with a clear reminiscence of the earliest, most beautiful iPods, so there was a definite market of buyers ready and waiting with open arms.

However, the established product cycle of the iPhone is a clear twelve months, with an early summer release taking place since the very first version. So, with Apple now saying it’s on for a spring launch, the white iPhone 4 will have at the very most three months as a top-of-the-line product. Being unavailable for nine of the twelve months in which it is most desirable is catastrophic. Assuming the pricing stays premium there will be a vastly reduced number of buyers willing to part with the cash to buy one, with a new model just around the corner.

3) Why has Apple got the PR so wrong on this?

Apple’s PR machine, equally respected and derided, is without a doubt one of the most successful media operations going, in any commercial industry. A press event earlier this month, which revealed the relatively modest new MacBook Air models and an incredibly limited preview of next year’s OS update, sent the tech press into speculation meltdown in the seven days between the initial announcement and the event itself. The reason for this is because Apple is a past master of creating buzz, hype and even mystique around the products it creates. Apple events are just that – ‘events’, no matter what they ultimately result in.

So, with such mastery over the art of essentially controlling both press and public opinion, why has Apple’s handling of the white iPhone 4 degenerated in such a way? Well, it’s worth remembering that Apple hasn’t lied. A release date slipping, even to this extent, isn’t exactly unheard of in the consumer electronics industry. The official reason for the delay, despite being infuriatingly hazy, is an indisputable fact – manufacturing difficulties are clearly the cause. The problem, in essence, is that there is seemingly such a high demand for a product that is unavailable to buy. This would still be the case if the company explained the hold-up in more detail, it wouldn’t change the fact that you can’t buy the thing.

Effectively, Apple has fallen victim to its own hype machine.

4) How will it play out?

At this point in time there seems to be two possible outcomes to the white iPhone 4 tale, neither of which will be remotely palatable to Apple. Scenario one; the phone is released next Spring with the hobbled sales potential of a product that appears a few months before its successor. Scenario two; Apple admits defeat and publicly cancels the device. The latter is the more intriguing of the two.

With the ‘Antennagate’ press conference in July, Apple (or more specifically, Steve Jobs) demonstrated how an out of control backlash could be turned into something of a PR win. A public culling of the white iPhone 4 couldn’t possibly have the same potential, so a similar staged ‘performance’ wouldn’t be expected. A more likely outcome in this scenario would be a carefully-phrased press release, perhaps even distributed around the same time as some positive news to dampen any backlash.

5) Will there be a lasting effect on Apple?

Put in perspective, the white iPhone 4 delay is a minor affair. It of course wasn’t the sole model of the iPhone 4. It wasn’t even expected to be the most popular of the two models. Anyone who wants an iPhone 4 can buy one, just not in white – hardly a deal-breaker. Sales figures of over 14m to date tell their own story.

However, the delay may have damaged the brand in some subtle ways.

For a company that prides itself on technological innovation, the fact that simply making a product in white has proven to be such a headache should be highly embarrassing, whatever the reason turns out to be. It’s mildly ironic that the colour white has created a stumbling block for Apple. The modern generation of the company was effectively reborn with the iPod – originally a white device – and white casing has become a signature appearance on the flagship MacBook and iMac computers. White really shouldn’t be such a mystery to Apple at this stage.

The incident may also dent the aura surrounding Apple’s live events and the unquestioning way in which Steve Jobs’ proclamations are received by the public at large. When Apple products are showcased in such a desirable fashion, it naturally leads to urgent demand. Demand that needs supply. If there’s a chance that any future super-devices announced at these events could be delayed in such a way, then the allure of the whole process begins to fade a little. Losing the ‘magic’ of the live events would be the first step to subduing the hype, which Apple can’t really afford to happen.

The tech press was abuzz this week with rumours from seemingly well-placed sources that social network giant Facebook was developing a mobile phone designed to compete head-to-head against Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 offerings.

Facebook attempted to quash the story early on with a curiously-specific statement of; “we are not building a phone”, which only served to add fuel to the rumour as it followed a similar tone to Google’s claims during the development of the now-established Android mobile OS. The inference being of course that Facebook could still be preparing some sort of an assault on the mobile market with third-party device manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung doing the actual phone ‘building’.

With Facebook’s dominant and constantly-growing position on the social networking scene and 500m+ registered members already sold on the web, a mobile OS based around the service would certainly make sense to a vast number of people.

While it remains to be seen whether there’s any truth in the Facebook-phone rumours, the story adds yet more weight to the viewpoint that mobile is the key area in which the major players will battle for the foreseeable future.

Although smartphones have been around in some form for a number of years, it’s only now that they’re finding their way into the pockets of the average mobile user, and they’re certainly not limited to the tech-savvy corner of the market as previously. The functionality of the latest batch of competing smartphones – full internet, html email, apps, GPS, HD video recording and playback, hi-res digital cameras, music, video calling, organisers and of course voice calls – underlines just how far the technology has come, along with how many other areas it is successfully invading.

The landscape of the mobile market these days means that the decision for the consumer isn’t as simple as choosing a phone anymore, it’s more often than not a 24 month commitment to a company and its operating system, and everything that comes with it… and it’s not hard to see why Facebook would want their share of that.

The humble subject line has long been an overlooked element of email marketing, often taking a back seat to design, copywriting, imagery and call-to-action refinement during the development of a campaign.

Yet, despite its lowly status on this list of specialist areas, the subject line has actually always been an important factor in email marketing. A good subject line, basically, can make the difference between an email flyer being opened and acted upon or ignored altogether. You can have the best looking email marketing in the world but without a decent subject line to back it up it’s never likely to fulfil its potential.

Now, with mobile devices becoming ever-popular, the subject line is more important than ever to email marketing because of one simple fact;

Smartphone inboxes only display subject lines and from fields.

No images. No preview panes. It’s all down to your subject line. So it better be good.

With the explosion of smartphone use in recent years – the ubiquitous iPhone and Blackberry, along with the rapidly phenomenal Android OS phones (which grew 350% in the last quarter here in the UK) – more and more of us are accessing our emails on the move, or even opting to use smartphones as in-office business devices due to their ever-increasing performance benefits. Smartphones aren’t the preserve of business or the technically-minded, they’re for everyone. And it seems everyone has got one.

Microsoft, which has stayed on the fringes of the smartphone market for the last few years, is moving closer to the launch of its “Windows Phone 7″ operating system – a hi-spec platform that will doubtlessly be backed up by a gargantuan marketing budget when it emerges before 2010 is out. The new Windows offering will present users with yet another super-capable handheld option – and it’s only going to get bigger.

Of course, email on the move simply presents yet another way to use email marketing to communicate effectively and efficiently with your target market. So it’s unquestionably a good thing.

But next time you’re crafting a campaign that will spring into life on iPhones, Androids and as yet unimagined super devices, make sure you don’t forget the importance of the element that has been around from day one of email – the subject line.