A claim made that an Apple iPhone exploded in France is the first such report involving an iPhone, after several have been made about the company’s iPod since it was released. Marie-Dominique Kolega says her 18 year old son was struck in the eye after his girlfriend’s iPhone started hissing, and shattered. She has threatened to file a complaint against Apple over the incident.
“My son was frightened but he did not lose an eye,” Kolega, of Aix-en-Provence in southern France, told AFP. US television station KIRO recently did a report on a number of cases of exploding iPods that have led to injuries or property damage. The station claimed that Apple’s lawyers had tried to prevent it from getting access to 800 pages of documents from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in California.
In the pages were information about 15 burn and fire-related incidents that have been blamed on Apple’s iPods. The documents put the blame on overheating lithium-ion batteries, and stated that reports dropped off when Apple changed the batteries in use.
Electronics do bad things on occasion, but if you compare the number of reported iPod exploding cases, which would appear to be a low number, against the millions that have been sold, the chances of becoming victim to an exploding iPod - or iPhone - are probably extremely low, it just makes for good TV for a station like KIRO.
Result for: Son
In another challenge to Amazon’s Kindle, Sony has decided to do away with its proprietary software and instead convert all of its e-book store into the ePub industry standard format. Sony made the move to “allows Sony to make its e-book store compatible with multiple devices and its Reader devices open to multiple sources for content,” according to the Japanese consumer electronics giant.
It said that converting its e-book store to ePub is an effort to take the confusion out of the digital book formats. Instead of using its proprietary copy protection software on the Sony Reader, it will use an anti-copying solution that has been developed by Adobe with multi-platform support.
“Consumers should not have to worry about which device works with which store,” Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division, said in a statement. “With a common format and common content protection solution they will be able to shop around for the content they want regardless of where they get it or what device they use.”
The International Digital Publishing Forum backs the ePub format, which was developed by a group of 60 companies and organizations.
Result for: Son
According to Sony Corp. CEO Nobuyuki Oneda, manufacturing costs for the PlayStation 3 have dropped 70 percent since the console’s launch in 2006, leading to more speculation that a price cut is coming soon.
“The cost reduction since we introduced the PS3 is very substantial and this is on schedule,” said Oneda, via GI.biz “We don’t disclose how much of the PlayStation 3, specifically the cost deduction, was achieved during the past two years. But that is on schedule.” When asked for exact figures, he added: “About 70 percent, roughly-speaking.”
At launch, the console cost, (unconfirmed), $800 USD per unit, meaning Sony was losing a substantial amount of money on each console shipped.
As of January 2008, costs had reportedly fallen 50 percent to $400 USD and now, according to the latest report, the console will cost $265 to manufacture, meaning Sony is actually making money on hardware sales, finally.
The 80GB model of the console retails for $400 USD.
