Optus breaks 8 million customers thanks to Apple iPhone

THE number of mobile customers at Optus has broken through 8 million, with users up 10.5 per cent on a year ago helped by consumer demand for "smart" phones.

The telco's parent, SingTel, which reports its first-quarter financial results today, said 213,000 new mobile and wireless broadband customers signed onto Optus in the June quarter, including 139,000 post-paid customers.

The company said the growth was underpinned by demand for the Apple iPhone, other smart phones and plans including unlimited calls and text messages in Australia.

Optus' 3G customers rose to 2.76 million in the quarter.

The telco also confirmed yesterday that its D3 satellite, which will allow television broadcasters to increase the number of channels they offer, will be launched on August 22.

The satellite will enable Optus to provide more services to its customers, including pay-TV provider Foxtel which has already said it will launch more than 25 new channels and a range of interactive services around October.

Optus' satellite director Paul Sheridan said the new satellite would increase Optus' satellite capacity, "support existing customers including Foxtel and Sky New Zealand and enable the development of new business opportunities for broadcast television and the direct-to-home market".

The satellite, which is Optus' ninth, is scheduled to be launched from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, off the north coast of South America.

It is expected to provide services for more than 15 years.

Optus has invested more than $600 million in the "D" satellite series, with D1 launched in October 2006 and D2 a year later.

In May, Optus signed a $100 million agreement to provide satellite services to the ABC for eight years.

Its main rival, Telstra, will also report its full-year results to the market today.

SingTel shares rose 3c, or 1.12 per cent, to $2.70. Telstrashares closed up 1c at $3.61.

U.S. company to offer digital textbooks on iPhone

U.S. digital course materials supplier CourseSmart announced on Tuesday that it is making its more than 7,000 college "e Textbooks" available on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

     With a free application on Apple's online App Store, students in the United States and Canada can buy their textbooks in electronic form at about half the price of print versions. They can also use iPhone or iPod Touch to quickly reference their e-textbooks in the classroom and even browse their notes, the company said.

    "We've seen significant demand from student customers for the ability to get required textbook content in electronic form on an iPhone or iPod Touch," Frank Lyman, executive vice president of CourseSmart, said in a statement.

    "We see incredible potential for iPhone and iPod Touch applications in education," he added.

    With the new free application, students can benefit from the advantages of mobile learning, "leaving their backpack and laptop behind," CourseSmart said in an introduction to its program.

    Founded in 2007 and located in San Mateo, California, CourseSmart is the largest digital course materials supplier in the United States and has partnered closely with major U.S. higher-education publishers.

    According to CourseSmart, college students on nearly 6,000 campuses in the United States and Canada are using its electronic textbooks.

Best of the Best iPhone Apps: New Book Rounds Them Up

It's one of the world's most successful retail launches in recent history: the Apple App Store. In only a year since its debut, the App Store now offers some 65,000 different apps. Apple claims more than 1.5 billion apps have been downloaded from its virtual shelves.

Granted, many are useless while others are silly and senseless; a couple of competing apps make fart noises. One could write a book that cuts through all the clutter-in fact, that's exactly what Josh Clark did in his Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders (O'Reilly, July 2009, $19.99).

[ Check out the hottest mobile apps for theBlackBerry and iPhone for summer travel, CIO reports. Learn valuable tips on how tocare for your iPhone. ]

The notion of a printed guide book covering something as dynamic as apps in an online app store that run on a deliciously digital device like the iPhone seems a bit outdated. It's akin to buying a two-day-old newspaper for a buck when you can get all the breaking news for free online.

That was my initial thinking when I picked up the guide book and read it over the weekend. But I quickly understood its value and Clark's reasoning behind its creation. There is an irony with longevity in a medium that changes by the minute: Only a handful of apps are really any good-and the good ones have staying power.

Clarks' guide breaks out 200 popular apps in seven categories: At Work, On the Town, At Leisure, At Play, At Home, On the Road, and For Your Health. I've listed some of Clark's choices in each category below.

The big criticism I have of Best iPhone Apps is that, in many cases, Clark doesn't go far enough in detailing the shortcomings of some apps.

For instance, one of his favorite apps for editing office documents is Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite (which happens to be mine, too). He adequately describes the main functions of the app, offers lessons on how to use the app in fairly non-technical language, and provides the app's logo and iPhone screen shots.

But the app has a major flaw, which Clark addresses in a mere two sentences: "Alas, the app can send but can't receive files by email (Mail won't let it read attachments, an unfortunate limitation.)" This means you can't edit received documents in Quickoffice (although you can view attachments in the iPhone's native mail app) and send out a new version. Yet this app bills itself as enabling iPhone users to edit office documents.

Another irksome quality of the guide: Some of the app descriptions, especially with games, read more like advertisements. So you don't get a sense of why this particular app was ranked the best in the category.

The many app logos throughout the color-coded guide should bring a smile to iPhone users. Many logos are familiar, and so users will get some satisfaction knowing that they chose the right apps for their iPhone. The many categories and familiar apps also show just how far the App Store has come in a year-and how quickly the iPhone has impacted virtually every area of our lives.

In addition to the best apps, the guide includes honorable mentions, which helps date the book. That is, if a hot app doesn't appear as the best app or didn't receive an honorable mention, then it's likely the guide was published before the app hit the App Store or became popular.

Here's a sampling of some of the best apps in each category:

At Work: Things, Goal Tender, reQuall, Jobs, Google Mobile App, Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite, iThoughts, Bento, Print & Share, Skype, Vlingo, Air Mouse Pro, Jaadu VNC.

On the Town: Urbanspoon, OpenTable, Wine Steward, Yelp, Loopt, Park 'n Find, Now Playing, Artnear Pro, Local Concerts.

At Leisure: Facebook, Twitteriffic, BeejiveIM, Stanza, Dictionary.com, USA Today, Sportacular, Bloomberg, Instapaper, Shazam, Photogene, Postini, Brushes, TV.com, Koi Pond.

At Play: Rolando, Blue Defense1, Guitar Rock Tour, Monster Pinball, Topple 2, WordJong, Sudoku Unlimited, Texas Hold 'Em, SimCity, Deep Green Chess, Let's Golf, Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles, X-Plane 9.

On the Road: FlighTrack Pro, JetSet Expenses, AAA Discounts, Lonely Planet City Guides, Talking Phrasebooks, Google Earth, Rest Area.

For Your Health: Lose It!, iFitness, Breath Pacer, RunKeeper, GolfCard, Cychosis, Trails, AccuWeather.com

On call: Why we haven't lowered the iPhone 3G's rating

The iPhone 3G still warrants an excellent rating.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

When you review an Apple product, you can be sure that readers will say one of two things: either you didn't rate it high enough or you rated it way too high. Rarely, if ever, is there any middle ground.

Just take the review of the original iPhone, for example. Soon after we posted it last June, letters from CNET readers started pouring in. As veteran Apple reviewer Donald Bell had predicted, the letters fell into the aforementioned camps. However, after some time, I noticed that most readers felt we were too hard on the iPhone, which received an "excellent" rating of 8.0 (or four stars out of five). From our perspective, the rating was justified: although the iPhone was a gorgeous device with a fantastic display, a great user-friendly interface, a top-notch media player, and a breakthrough Web browser, it suffered from variable call quality and a lack of basic cell phone features. That's why Donald and I withheld the CNET Editors' Choice award.

Now fast-forward a year to our review of the iPhone 3G. Since the second-generation iPhone brought a host of added features and better call quality, we assigned a higher rating--an "excellent" rating of 8.3, which also equals four stars under CNET's new rating system. This time, however, we left the possibility of an Editors' Choice award on the table and decided to wait for full battery testing results to make that decision--on the first day of use, I had noticed the battery depleting too quickly while using the 3G network. So we posted our review and waited.

While we waited, I got a different set of letters. As concerns about the iPhone's dropped calls, battery life, and shaky 3G connections grew louder, I received many letters complaining that we had been too easy on the iPhone 3G. Readers asked me to reconsider the rating because of the problems that were affecting so many iPhone customers. Of course, the problems concerned me, but I wanted to see them for myself before I took action. (It would be irresponsible and a disservice to CNET readers if I adjusted the rating based solely on reports I had heard from other people.)

It took a while to put our review iPhone 3G though the battery drain paces and get it back from CNET Labs, but once I did, we performed more usability testing. And gradually, we did notice a few problems. Dropped calls on our phone remained rare, but the 3G connection issues were apparent. Specifically, I noticed the weak connection and the sloppy hand off between the 3G and EDGE networks. Also, while the official CNET Labs battery testing results fell within the promised times, our iPhone's battery came close to running out after a long day of heavy multitasking. I added the new observations to the iPhone 3G review and spent time questioning whether they warranted a rating change.

Ultimately, we felt the issues that we experienced on our review device weren't reason enough to reduce the iPhone's 3G's rating. We are, however, withholding the Editors' Choice award once again. We agree that these problems are significant, but the iPhone 3G remains a landmark product in many ways. It still offers a great design, the interface and display are no less lovely, the music player and Web browser remain top-notch, and we admire the App Store. Even the sometimes-frustrating Microsoft Exchange e-mail support merits a few points. But more importantly, we want to see whether Apple successfully fixes the problems, as the company said it is planning to do on Friday, September 12 with the 2.1 software update. If the problems continue to persist over the next few months, we'll revisit the issue.

Kent German, CNET's cell phones guru, answers your questions about cell phones, services, and accessories and reports on the state of the industry. Send him a question.

Does Apple Really Want To Be An Internet Censor?

I am sure that the folks in Cupertino thought the whole idea of the App Store for the iPhone would be a great idea, and in fact it has proven to be a great money maker. At the same time though it has also turned out to be one of their biggest headaches that just doesn’t seem to want to go away. While some developers have been making money hand over fist others have been dealing with long approval wait periods or just having their applications pulled. Often those being pulled are being left in limbo as to why and what needs to be done to get back on the marketplace.

The most recent incident of an application being pulled though is raising the specter of Apple censorship; or at least applying their own moral judgment of whether an application can be listed. Such is the case of Infurious Comics and their Comic Reader that was meant for easier distribution and reading of Web comics on the iPhone. They got in hot water with Apple because the application comes with a free issue of Infurious’ Web comic Murderdrome an admittedly dark and bloody comic.

The big problem I have with this whole thing is that I am torn on how to re-act to this kerfuffle because on one hand Apple is totally within their legal right to have pulled the application. As the company states right in the iPhone SDK:

Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.

Apple is going to have a really hard time with this because of the ambiguity of the statement. Who is going to decide what is obscene or offensive? Does Apple in its role as a hardware and software provider have the right to dictate what a third party creates for sale with their software to be played back through their hardware which they have sold. I am sure that one could say that as the provider of the store by which these applications are sold they have the right to set the conditions of any sale.

That said though, the only reason that the Comic Reader application was pulled was because of the free comic that came with it. so in all reality, Infurious Comics could put the application back for sale but without the comic and it should be acceptable. However, this is where we come to the second part of the problem – the distribution of the comics produced by Infurious of which I imagine Murderdrome would be one of many. From what I have gathered, once the Comic Reader is installed, the user would be able to buy more comics from the iTunes store but this would then raise the possibility of the comic being banned from there as well.

During all this Apple is also having to deal with people who are not happy about the idea that the company has built in a kill switch into the iPhone software that would allow them to remotely remove software on the iPhone for whatever reason they deem fit. Now you tie in this possibility of becoming a censor of material available via iTunes and Apple could be facing some serious backlash from its customers. Especially considering as pointed out by Philip Elmer-DeWitt in his post Apple 2.0 on Fortune that iTunes already carries movies that would technically hit this censorship wall the same way that Infurious has:

By Wednesday morning, the post had drawn dozens of responses — all sharply critical of Apple — and PJ Holden’s cause had been picked up by half-dozen sympathetic bloggers (see Techmeme).

Murderdrome’s most energetic defense was posted by blogger Mike Cane, who rattled off (with live links) several equally violent works of fiction published without fuss or warning on the iTunes store, including South Park,Reservoir Dogs and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

I can understand why Infurious ran afoul of Apple this way and why in some ways Apple is totally within its right to do what they have done, considering the language of their SDK, but are they really ready for the reaction? On top of that, if they do stand by this action without finding a workable solution to the problem are they setting themselves up to become an Internet censorship board? All I know is that this isn’t a position that I would want to find myself in.

Breaking News: Google Announces Android Market, Tackles Apple

Today Google (NSDQ: GOOG) announced its competitor to the iPhone Apps Store, the Android Market. The market will be a place where content developers can publish applications for Android phones, and Android users can go to discover and download them to their devices. Booyah!

I have been waiting for news such as this. Today, the Android Developers Blog posted an update that provides details about its version of the Android Apps Store, called the Android Market.

I'll let Google do the talking:

[The] Android Market [is]an open content distribution system that will help end users find, purchase, download and install various types of content on their Android-powered devices. The concept is simple: leverage Google's expertise in infrastructure, search and relevance to connect users with content created by developers like you.

Developers will be able to make their content available on an open service hosted by Google that features a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube. We chose the term "market" rather than "store" because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available. Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it. We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings.

I also wanted to share some early details to help with planning your efforts so that you can be ready as our partners release the first Android-powered handsets. Developers can expect the first handsets to be enabled with a beta version of Android Market. Some decisions are still being made, but at a minimum you can expect support for free (unpaid) applications. Soon after launch an update will be provided that supports download of paid content and more features such as versioning, multiple device profile support, analytics, etc.

Wow. Too cool. This will really energize developers and end users alike to get behind Android. The momentum is really building now!

New iPhone business apps: designing for usefulness

When Apple launched its new App Store earlier this summer, the assumption was that scads of businesses would develop applications for their iPhone-toting customers. Although there are more than 60 apps in the App Store's Business category, virtually no big-name companies have bothered to cough up one of their own. Since Apple plans to make at least 40 million iPhones in the next year, many of which will no doubt end up being used in the workplace, what's the holdup?

Nick Halsey, vice president of marketing at business intelligence (BI) vendor Jaspersoft, says it's simply not worth the bother. "Our business users are using Safari to deliver JasperReports to them on their iPhone. While the effort to write the 100 lines of Java code to build an iPhone app is minimal, it's just not needed."

Halsey says Jaspersoft would be willing to create an iPhone app in response to customer demand, but there hasn't actually been any yet. However, he says it's likely that someone from within the user community will choose to make and submit an app on his own "as a fun project."

Chuck Dietrich, VP of Salesforce Mobile, says his company, Salesforce.com, has a different take on the usefulness of iPhone apps. Realizing that mobile professionals won't want to take the time to haul out a laptop and boot it up simply to look up a customer's order history, Salesforce Mobile provides the same information-and more-with less hassle.

Before launching its app, the company prioritized feedback and ideas from the user community to develop one that includes more than 60 percent of the features customers want most. While users can still access client information via the iPhone's native browser, Salesforce Mobile is a targeted app designed specifically for the mobile professional. "[It] allows iPhone users to access Salesforce CRM applications and more than 70,000 Force.com custom applications right from their iPhone," says Dietrich.

Dietrich sees iPhone apps as part of the natural evolution of mobile devices in the workplace. "From a historic standpoint, the mobile revolution began in the'90s with the mass adoption of mobile phones as a primary means of communication.

Soon, mobile e-mail became a way of life in the enterprise. As consumers and professionals became more familiar with mobile devices, and as mobile devices became more like mobile laptops, end users increasingly desired and expected to be able to do everything from the mobile devices that they could do from their desks."

BI firm Oracle also couldn't pass up an opportunity to design an app specifically for the iPhone. Oracle Business Indicators lets users access their company's business performance information and manipulate the data based on what's most convenient for them.

Lenley Hensarling, general vice president of application development at Oracle, says, "It's not meant to replace a dashboard and analytical apps that have a whole bunch of drilldowns, but rather to give you handy access to core sets of metrics. We wanted to make usage and availability ubiquitous, and let users tailor the information to exactly what they want to see."

Indicators also makes use of the iPhone's native tools. "Since we support [the iPhone's] alerting mechanisms, you don't have to go hunting for information. You'll get alerted when data crosses a threshold that you or someone else has set."

Although Apple is famously picky about who gets access to the iPhone Software Developer Kit (SDK), Hensarling says developing an iPhone app was easy as pie. "The cool thing is that you're actually developing in Cocoa and the Mac OS environment, so in terms of the development environment, it's very mature and complete." He says they also never felt constrained during the development process because rather than try to shoehorn an app made for the desktop onto the iPhone, the team instead built Oracle Business Indicators from the ground up.

Salesforce's Dietrich agrees that building an iPhone app is a smooth process. "Thanks to the iPhone's robust development environment, we were able to develop, test and deliver Salesforce Mobile for the iPhone, all in less than three months," he notes. In fact, the process was so painless, the company plans to develop additional apps in the coming months." Salesforce.com and Apple will continue to work closely to iterate and expand the breadth of functionality of Salesforce Mobile for the iPhone to expand the ways that enterprises can use Salesforce CRM and Force.com applications to improve the way they work."

Still, Jaspersoft's Halsey remains unconvinced. He says there is a greater demand for Web apps that can be accessed anywhere, regardless of device or browser. He points to the growing trend toward cloud computing as evidence. "What's more interesting to us in the enterprise, and where we see customer demand, is for Web 2.0 tools for reporting and analysis as well as for collaborating on making BI tools better," says Halsey.