Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive, has offered iPhone owners free cases to try to resolve complaints about the antenna on the iPhone 4.
Mr Jobs made the announcement at a news conference called at its Silicon Valley headquarters to discuss criticism of the iPhone 4. After the jump, read live coverage of the news from our Apple correspondent Joe Menn at the event.
10.05am – Apple starts the press conference with Apple fanboy Jonathan Mann’s iPhone antenna song.
10.06am – Steve Jobs is on stage – “We want to make all of our users happy. We’re going to talk about how we’re going to do that today”
10.07am - “The iPhone 4 is perhaps the best product we have ever made at Apple, we have sold over 3m.”
Mr Jobs says he will take questions after a 15-minute presentation.
10.10am - “The iPhone 4 has had the highest consumer satisfaction ratings ….but this has been since dubbed Antennagate…we started shipping 22 days ago….Apple is an engineering-driven company…we’ve been working our butts off to find out what the real problems are. We’re not perfect, we know that, you know that.
“It doesn’t seem like a good thing [ if you touch the iPhone and the bars go down] …but this is not unique to the iPhone.”
[ Shows video of bars going down when gripping a Blackberry Bold]
“HTC Droid Eris, the same thing, Samsung Omnia, Windows mobile phone, same thing. Most smartphones behave exactly the same way.”
10.15am - “This is life in the smartphone world, phones aren’t perfect, and its a challenge for the whole industry….every phone has weak spots.”
The issue with iPhone is more visible because of the excessive bar display, and the little line on the phone, which shows everyone where to touch to create the weak spot, Jobs says.
[Slides shown of rooms with exotic-looking insulation to show how carefully they test]
10.16am – Apple has 17 special anechoic chambers, a $100m investment made in antenna testing facilities – “We tested it, we knew that if you gripped it in a certain way, the bars would go down a little bit, we didn’t think it would be a big problem…people are reporting better reception with this than they have ever seen before!”
10.20am - Applecare data: from the customer service line, percentage of all iPhone 4 users who have called Applecare about antenna reception or related issues: 0.55 per cent.
AT&T return rates: in the early days of iphone 3gs – 6%…what are they for iPhone 4…you would think at least half the people must be returning their phones, right? says Jobs.
Jobs – The hard data says it is 1.7%. AT&T has given us the early call drop rate information… they log call drops… we can’t give out the absolute number….but they will let us say the additional calls dropped per 100 compared to 3gs… per 100 calls that is….I can tell you, since we are being totally transparent, …the iPhone 4 drops more calls per 100. You would think it must be dropping 50 more per calls per 100….
the iPhone 4 drops less than 1 additional call per 100… we want to drive this lower than the 3Gs, but this does put it in perspective.
10.25am His theory on why the change – there has been a huge drop in the number of people who bought cases this time, only 20% bought cases for the iPhone 4. “I have gotten over 5k emails from users saying their iPhones work perfectly.”
“Having said this, we care about every user and we are not going to stop until every user is happy… this has been blown so out of proportion that it’s incredible.”
10.29am Jobs announces free cases for everyone
10.30am – Every iPhone user is getting a free bumper [case], we will refund if you have already bought one, this holds for every sale through September 30, then we will reevaluate.
Apple is going to source additional cases, because it can’t make enough bumpers. Users can also get a refund within 30 days if they’re not satisfied.
10.32am - “We are tracking some problems with the proximity sensor”… this also affects a small number of users, we will try to get in a software fix, we are bringing the iPhone to 17 more countries on July 30. The delayed white iPhone 4 will arrive at the end of July.
“We love our users, we make some pretty great products and what motivates us is to have them love them.”
Moving to Q&A.
Steve Jobs says a Bloomberg article saying that an Apple engineer warned at an early stage about the antenna problem is a “a total crock”.
Apple executives on stage are asked if any of them have the bumper around their phones. They all pull out iPhone 4s without bumpers.
Steve Jobs says he’s learned that it’s human nature that when a company becomes really big, people try to tear it down.
11.25pm After an exhaustive question-and-answer session, where little new is revealed, the conference ends.
