Today is July 11th. There is no iPhone in Puerto Rico. Apparently some people were upset enough with that to start sending emails to Tecnetico and he had to write a ‘editorial’ about the subject. In this editorial he (Wilton Vargas) explains that it was just rumor and speculation and that it sucks that he didn’t get it right.

Trying to show some proof that he has actually researched the subject of the iPhone in Puerto Rico he has posted a email ‘conversation’ between him and Patricia del Carmen Ramirez at America Movil (Claro) and she reinstates what I had said in my previous post about the subject.

Claro has no say about the iPhone in Puerto Rico because AT&T has the contract for ‘The United States and its Territories’. End of the story.

It is interesting that Tecnetico has chosen to update his site the way he has. Making the words ‘I am proud that our track record is still untouched’ bold Instead of highlighting his new September prediction, also from ‘sources of entire credit’.

So there you have it, Tecnetico reporting rumor and speculation leaves their track record intact, they are now rumoring and speculating that September will be the new date.

Since Wilton Vargas is a radio and television personality and apparently his ‘sources’ are about as reliable as my sources. I will now rumor and speculate the following:

• The iPhone 3G will be released in Puerto Rico at some point within the next year.
• The iPhone 3G will be on AT&T’s network
• The iPhone 3G will work just like it does in the United States (it already does >.>)

There you have it. They are the only 3 things I know for a fact. The reason why this is such a problematic issue is that AT&T is huge. There are various departments that are involved in bringing a product to Puerto Rico and therefore there is a lot of rumor, speculation and in the end delays.

AT&T representatives in Puerto Rico have been awaiting the iPhone since it’s launch last year. The iPhone has had various launch dates internally and something always goes wrong in the last minute. I am sure that Apple’s revenue sharing also came into play. There is really no competition for a phone like the iPhone in Puerto Rico. Sure all the big carriers are down there, but most people are still on the regional carriers like Centennial who’s phones are just now getting color screens (NOTE: this is obviously hyperbole, but seriously their phones suck). This means that AT&T expects to get a flood of sales when it finally launches.

I am sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but that is the state of the iPhone right now. AT&T is getting ready, it might take a while.

Thank you to everybody who emailed me about the Tecnetico story.

Update 1 (7/11/08) :

An example of a news bit is the first comment on this thread. According to ‘Obsessed iPhone 3G Researcher’ AT&T is ready to take orders (Which would be weird since they did not do this in the states) and will launch it a week from today, July 17th, 2008. If this turns out to be true, you heard it here first people . Thanks for your comments everyone!

Update 2 (7/18/08) :

As expected, there was no iPhone launch today in Puerto Rico. I just wanted to point out how these rumors get started and show that by leaving your sources unnamed you are basically taking responsability for what you say.

Update 3 (8/18/08) :

El Nuevo Dia has posted a date range ( September – December 2008)

I got to play with her iPhone for a little bit to show her how to do things without really using that much effort, for instance, having the phone application be in contacts before closing it, that way she can press the home button twice and have it go there automatically (granted she is not playing music at the moment). Then she said she missed her Blackberry and she did not understand the iPhone hype.

That’s when it dawned on me. The iPhone itself is an extremely boring device. It has a nice style to it and it is certainly well made, but honestly applications make the iPhone. The fact that you don’t have an instant messaging application, multimedia sms, direct access to the address book and that you still have to sync through iTunes… Its just painful for those who don’t care about music and videos and just want a serious business device.

Now, Apple has been working hard to solve this. They have included exchange support to the platform and will finally bring address book search to the production model (they’ve shown it off in presentations before, but never actually made it out). This will certainly appease a few people, but not all. Apple never set out to create a smart phone, they never set out to create a platform. This is best seen when you see how they divided their company, Mac (OS X based devices), iPhone (Moile OS X based devices), Music (FairPlay based services).

What does this all mean? It means that Apple has been guiding everybody along. They changed the rules of the game last year when they introduced the iPhone. They then helped people update their websites to fit within wireless standards and just declared the iPhone resolution as the resolution to be. This helped many web developers get their websites up to date and running on mobile devices, which is something that Android users will benefit from later this year. That is all well and good, but everybody knew at one point the iPhone would have to be open to developers, even while Steve claimed they couldn’t open it because it would be a risk to AT&T’s network. Like clockwork, once they were convinced that websites would still create mobile optimized websites, they moved to the SDK.

That day is now, when the application store opens it will be a completely different game. The iPhone will really shine and people will be able to see that the iPhone is all about the applications. You might just shrug and say that Blackberry has had applications for years, and you would be correct. This is not a new concept, creating applications for phones, the shift is in who has these phones and what the software will be focusing on.

Let me put this into perspective, if you go to the Blackberry Application store right now these are the ten best selling applications for the Blackbery Pearl:

1. Ringtone Megaplex for Blackberry ($19.95)
2. eOffice – Document Production & Attachment Editing: MS Word and Excel ($69.95)
3. BBSmart Email Viewer ($29.95)
4. IM+ All-in-One Messenger for Blackberry ($49.95)
5. RepliGo Professional (1 Year) ($79.95)
6. e-Mobile Today ($19.95)
7. IM+ for Skype ($29.95)
8. WorldMate Live Gold Membership ($99.95)
9. PDF and Office Graphical Attachment Booster for Blackberry – DocHawk Platinum – One Year ($)
10. SplashID for Blackberry ($)

Are you bored yet? Oh, yeah, there’s also games. and they all look like they were created years ago for the Palm and were ported by a monkey that didn’t quite understand what he was doing. Those are $9.95~ on average. I think you understand how, apart from games, nobody will pay those prices for software outside of the corporate world. Specially if the software is just a one year subscription. There’s even some software that I don’t understand there. BBSmart Email Viewer allows your emails to be more readable? You mean Blackberry knows they have a problem where the emails are kind of hard to read, but they refuse to fix it?

Early reports about the Apple App Store place most software between free and 9.99. Which means more people will be willing to just buy an app because they like the idea, than because they need it.

Considering the iPhone can already read PDFs, Excel and Word documents you will only be needing a chat application from that list, and perhaps the e-Mobile which gives you a dashboard view of everything that is happening.

This is the true power of the iPhone, connecting normal people to their everyday lives. The eBay application is the first one I will download. Bloggers will now have TypePad on their phones to blog away at their hearts desire. TomTom already mentioned they were going to bring turn by turn navigation. This is all opt-in. You do not have to buy an application you do not want.

You do not have to pay AT&T for their television service, but I am sure an application will come along that will let you access it.

All in all, I believe that when the Application store opens you will see why all the tech geeks hyped the iPhone so much and why we are disappointed that in Apple’s second incarnation of it, they decided to just refine their original, rather than push the envelope again.