A slice of iPhone 3G owners have said they are experiencing 3G connectivity issues such as weak signals, dropped calls and devices that revert from a carrier’s 3G network to its EDGE network, eclipsing the device’s much-ballyhooed 3G advantage. That’s true in the United States, where AT&T Mobility exclusively carries the device, but also in other countries where other carriers are getting a taste of Apple backlash.
And some customers, if you believe irate online postings, are returning the device. (Meanwhile, in New York City, would-be owners continue to line up to get the device, which is frequently out of stock, one New Yorker attested.)
Denizens of the blogosphere – from the United States to The Netherlands, from Britain to Australia – have echoed these complaints since the device’s launch on July 11 and in the past week their rhetoric reached a boil, spilling over into mainstream media headlines.
The essential facts remain unknown. How big a slice of Apple customers are experiencing the problem? What, exactly, is the cause? And how soon will it be addressed, acknowledged or fixed?
Apple Inc. is indulging in its usual habit of saying nothing. AT&T Mobility spokesman Mark Siegel has said that reception on the carrier’s 3G network can be affected by location and physical surroundings, but is handling iPhone-related traffic just fine and most iPhone 3G owners are happy. Siegel added, however, that iPhone owners should frequently update their device.
That advice may well be the key to how the various parties are handling the situation. Regardless of the cause of the problem, media reports support the view that Apple currently appears confident it can deliver a software fix via a routine update over its iTunes service. And if that fix comes swiftly, Apple CEO Steve Jobs may feel there’s no need to acknowledge a problem publicly.
It should be noted that glitches are somewhat common to advanced handset launches and that over-the-air device management software routinely delivers solutions – often unbeknownst to the user – to fix such problems. Typically, however, those fixes are for glitches that are not as disruptive and frustrating as the iPhone 3G connectivity issues appear to be, nor as high profile.
Naturally, theories abound in a vacuum, especially when the topic is the hottest mobile phone in the world, courtesy of swaggering Apple.
Stories published Friday in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal suggested that the problem originated with Infineon Technologies AG’s RF and baseband chip. The reports said the Infineon 3G solution was “custom” for Apple and that Infineon, based in Neubiberg, Germany, was staying mum. (The Times suggested that a fix was “weeks” away.)
The Wall Street Journal reported that “Apple believes the problems are related to a chip inside the iPhone 3G made by Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG, people familiar with the matter say.”
A Swedish engineering publication, Ny Teknik, performed tests that also pointed to the Infineon 3G solution, according to the Associated Press.
Pointing fingers?
But two analysts who study mobile chipsets – meaning the silicon and related software stack – assured RCR Wireless News that the Infineon 3G chipset inside the phone tested very well in a lab prior to production.
“I’m confident it’s not a chipset problem,” said Mike Thelander, principal at Signals Research L.L.C. “We tested Infineon’s 3G solution in a lab in February and it was rock solid. I think it’s more of an implementation issue.”
(One perhaps significant caveat: Thelander’s tests were in the lab, not in the field.)
In other words, for some reason, Apple’s design, integration and/or manufacturing processes may have led to some underperforming handsets. And a whole lotta noise on the blogosphere.
According to David Carey, president of Portelligent Inc., a teardown house that analyzed every physical component of the iPhone 3G, a “custom” Infineon 3G baseband chipset for Apple is unlikely.
“I’d be surprised,” Carey wrote in an e-mail. “It’s expensive to make a baseband solution for a single customer, unless you have the scale of Nokia, although Apple may well be Infineon’s first volume user for this chipset.”
Carey said when his company dissected the iPhone 3G, it found a baseband of “two-chip construction,” inside a single package. One chip was a familiar, 2G baseband chip from Infineon. The other was a 3G processor the company had not seen before. Combined, however, the packaged component had all the external attributes of Infineon’s HSDPA/W-CDMA/E-GPRS baseband solution, part number PMB8878, deftly branded as the X-GOLD608/XMM6080.
“I’d lean more toward a theory of ‘teething pains’ with new, but non-proprietary 3G chips and software, along with what may be a newly loaded 3G network infrastructure” said Carey. “There are so many potential layers to these alleged performance issues that I’m not about to point any fingers.”
Brand impact?
Alan Siegel, a principal at Siegel + Gale, a New York-based public relations consultancy, said that the blogosphere opened a new area of exposure for major brands and that if Apple’s fix is swift and easy for consumers, the hoopla will blow over.
“There are many discerning people writing about new products such as the iPhone and it does have a major impact on companies’ brands,” Siegel said. “Public relations people at major corporations tell me they now spend as much time with bloggers as they do with traditional media. And they monitor the blogs.”
The virulent strains of devotion to Apple, apparent from bloggers remarks, on the one hand, and schadenfreude over its missteps, on the other, is “just human nature,” Siegel said. But he noted, just as in the past rumor and innuendo were exploited to damage competitors and opponents, the blogosphere may increasingly be used by competitors to damage their rivals.
“My sense is that it’s hard for Steve Jobs to acknowledge a problem,” Siegel said. “That may be arrogance. My guess is that he’ll fix this with a software update.”
The bigger issue, in Siegel’s view, is whether Apple and other smartphone makers can solve the battery power issue. Having promised him connectivity to his critical e-mails, Siegel said, his own iPhone (last year’s model) has run out of juice on-the-go, leaving him out of touch with clients accustomed to swift responses.
If there are lessons in this latest dustup, one may be that Apple and its handset platform are no different than industry incumbents – which, in itself, could be a blow to Apple’s image as a swaggering, disruptive force.
As one analyst noted in an e-mail: “S*** happens.”
