by Glenn Chapman
Chief executive Steve Jobs said the price for the mobile device will start as low as 199 dollars, half the cost of its predecessor.
"We've learned so much with the first iPhone. We've taken what we've learned and more and created the iPhone 3G," Jobs said Monday as he demonstrated the new mobile device at the opening of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
"It's incredibly zippy," he said, in his characteristic savvy sales pitch that has become a standard Apple event with each new product release.
The company will begin rolling out new versions of the sleek smartphone devices July 11 and make it available in 70 countries. The first-generation iPhone is available in six countries.
"The next time you are in Malta and need an iPhone, you will be able to get it," Jobs said.
IPhone's software update features "many new languages," including two forms of Japanese and two forms of Chinese, one that lets users draw characters on the device's touch-screens.
Japan's number three mobile cellphone operator Softbank Mobile announced Tuesday it will introduce the phone on July 11, as rival NTT DoCoMo said it had no plan to offer the handset.
Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), Southeast Asia's largest telecoms firm, said it will be among the first in Asia to have access to Apple's newest phones but did not provide a launch date.
The San Francisco crowd cheered when Jobs announced the iPhone 3G will sell for 199 dollars with eight gigabytes of memory. Apple will charge 299 dollars for a model with 16 gigabytes of memory.
"It is a very aggressive price point and it is going to do some damage to the other players in the market," Gartner analyst Van Baker told AFP, listing BlackBerry and Nokia among competitors in iPhone's crosshairs.
"It is clearly moving iPhone from being noticeable in the market to being potentially a market leader."
The eight-gigabyte iPhone 3G will work twice as fast as its predecessor, according to Apple.
Jobs also said iPhone's second-generation software will let business users send and receive Microsoft Exchange email, in a direct shot at rival BlackBerry.
The iPhone software update is aimed at a business market that is currently hooked on BlackBerry devices made by Canada-based Research In Motion.
BlackBerry handsets have long let people "push" work email to the devices using the Microsoft email system.
"The only surprise is the thing is not ready yet. It came across like Jobs didn't have it together."
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