The iPhone nano rumour has been around for the last couple of years. Every time we get closer to an iPhone announcement, someone begins to speculate about a smaller, cheaper iPhone version—it’s like clock work. This year things aren’t any different. The iPhone nano won’t go away, again.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the iPhone nano in a way that almost makes its release a forgone conclusion at this point: “Apple Inc. is working on the first of a new line of less-expensive iPhones and an overhaul of software services for the devices, people familiar with the matter said, moving to accelerate sales of its smartphones amid growing competition.” According to the same article, the phone would be half the price of the iPhone 4, as well as half the size, a move that could give carriers the ability to entirely subsidize the iPhone nano.
But the rumors don’t end there. According to Cult of Mac, the iPhone nano could see storage memory disappear from the device entirely. That means no hard drive, and complete application and media streaming to the cloud. So, that takes us complete circle to MobileMe and the datacenter in North Carolina. If this turns out to be true, it could be the first major step towards a streaming iTunes, free MobileMe, and possibly even a fully hosted operating system.
What’s hard to understand is why Apple would roll this out asynchronously, when they have an opportunity to make it available in all of the next generation iOS devices at once. Apple could roll this out in the iPhone 5, iPhone nano, and iPad 2 at the exact same time. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from FaceTime, it’s that a gradual rollout can be pretty limiting when it comes to adoption.
Article and Image Via Cult of Mac
