Apple Unveils The iPhone

Apple Computer (AAPL) chief executive Steve Jobs has just announced the fabled iPhone.

Jobs also announced The Device Formerly Known as iTV, which is now called Apple TV and which will retail for $299 and hook up to your TV to play movies downloaded from iTunes. The device is to be available in February, Jobs said.

The phone is a sleek, glossy wafer of a thing with no buttons, from the looks of the following screenshot, courtesy of Engadget (thanks, guys!)

Jobs is touting that the device is thinner than Motorola’s (MOT) “Q” smartphone, at just 11.6 mm thick, comes with 8 gigabytes of storage, an amazing 3.4″ screen, and a 2 megapixel camera.

There’s just one button on the face of the device, a “home” button, says Jobs, the rest being controlled by finger-touch.

The machine supports so-called push email from Yahoo! (YHOO), says Jobs, like what you get on a Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry.

For those of you not in front of a real-time quote machine, the Apple shares are up 3.43% at $88.40, while shares of Motorola are down .48% at $18.51, and Nokia (NOK) shares are down 1.27% at $19.39.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: This phone’s got to be a bit unnerving for both Motorola and Nokia.

Incidentally, there were a couple other items worth mentioning at this Macworld. Jobs said the company has sold 50 million TV shows through its iTunes store and over 2 billion songs. Paramount Pictures will be selling movie downloads on iTunes, joining Disney (DIS).

After the iPhone demo, Jobs welcomed on stage Google (GOOG) chief executive and Apple board member Eric Schmidt. The iPhone has Google’s Maps program built-in to allow for lookups of local businesses, and Jobs was even able to show satellite views of the Eifel Tower on the phone’s display. Because the phone also uses Yahoo!’s services, Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang made an appearance as well.

AAPL, MOT and NOK today:

Comments

[Macbth]

I can't wait until my phone contact is up to get 1 maybe 2 or 3.
Here I come ATT. bye V. I didn't like you anyway.

[DavidJackson]

Beautiful.
Does anyone know who's selling components into this phone?

[Manny]

Broadcom may be selling the integrated circuit for the multi touch feature, but for video and audio playback, I wouldnt be surprised if Apple went with PortalPlayer (which is now nvidia). Their SoC microprocessor is currently used in the video ipod and rumor has it that Samsung will be sticking with the other flash based players excluding the iphone.

[Macbth]

rumors for a while said broadcom
-looking at the stock today says yes

[Tom B]

Apple 3.0. We have seen the future.


Anyone out there holding out for a "Zune phone"?