The continued dominance of the iPhone and the growth of iPod Touch sales continue to continue. AdMob has released its 2008 Mobile report.  iPod Touch (note carefully that this is iPod Touch working with, mainly, Skype NOT iPhone) traffic for December  was 3.4 times higher than November.

The iPhone, in regards to a percentage of online traffic generated 48% of requests in the United States in December compared to only 9% in May 2008. However, there is also a suggestion that the iPod Touch is beginning to eat away at sales of the iPhone. It will be amazing if the iPhone’s greatest rival turns out to be another Apple product.

Meanwhile the rumor mills are at it about the iPhone 3.0 firmware. Apple only upgraded it two months ago but that is long enough to get the rumor mills rolling.

Apple, but of course, has not said a word but a lot of sites report that the reliable sources — some day, some one is going to have to clearly define that term —  say there will be multi-core support in the 3.0 firmware which should accompany the next iPhone. This should greatly speed up processing for the iPhone and its applications.

Could there be any truth in this? Perhaps. Possibly. Maybe. Imagination Technologies is announcing a multi-core GPU that might be very suitable for iPhone use. Apple, who happens to be an investor in Imagination Technologies, presently uses a less powerful version of their PowerVR GPU in the iPhone and iTouch.

On the other hand perhaps not. Reliable sources, again, suggest the most likely candidate for the new iPhone’s CPU, however, is a derivative of the ARM Cortex A9 multi-core processor. The ARM Cortex has excellent power efficiency (which extends  battery life which anyone who had an  iPhone will applaud. In that respect it is far better than  Intel’s Atom offerings.

Should the iPhone hardware  be upgraded to use the quad-core processor then it becomes the most powerful handheld device on the market.

There is a feeling — no more than that — of Apple moving the iPhone and the iPod Touch into a slightly different, broader spectrum market. Which would mean the camera would be improved as would, perhaps, the screen resolution. What we need is an informed source to tall us all about it.

Related:

iPhone 3GS users cause 400% spike in mobile YouTube uploads

Gray market iPhones appearing in Asia

New Apple iPhone could be shrunk in size, price, features

iPhone 3G sold legally in Russia - better than the black market?

iPhone’s mobile market share hits 1.5 percent

Entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 4:29 am under iPhone, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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