Apple has announced a press conference for tomorrow and the rumours are that the company will use it to respond to criticism of the iPhone 4′s reception issues. Some are even suggesting that it could announce a full recall of the product. This speculation in particular has sent the technology company’s share-price rocketing south.

I’m amazed it has taken Apple so long to get to this stage.

I blogged at the end of June about this growing PR disaster and said that if Apple failed to do something about this quickly, it would be facing an unprecedented public backlash. The company didn’t follow this route (maybe Mr Jobs should subscribe to the Wildfire blog!) and is now in a very tricky position.

Apple is a much loved brand and so, if public reaction to date has seemed muted, then this brand loyalty (and, in some cases, obsession) could be the reason. But brand loyalty only gets you so far and, for many people, it is quickly running out. When this happens, public opinion will quickly turn to anger and the damage to the brand then could be catastrophic.

Apple’s cloak and dagger technique might work for product launches, but when it comes to crisis communications, it’s a very dangerous path.

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Apple is facing intense scrunity that is threatening to overshadow the launch of the latest iPhone.

If you haven’t come across the controversy already, new owners of the iPhone 4 (and I’m one of them) are finding that when certain parts of the outer casing are covered at the same time, the phone loses its signal entirely. This is reported as being a fault with the way the phone is put together, with the ‘groundbreaking’ new design featuring an external antenna that runs around the outer casing of the phone.

Apple’s response to date has hardly been a good example of how to effectively manage a ‘crisis’.

The technology company released a statement, which, albeit quite politely, told users to just ‘stop holding it that way’:

“Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas,” said the company in an official statement. “This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.”

Apple Chief Steve Jobs, who regularly responds to customers that email him on his freely available email address, at first went along with the official line, but then broke away from this yesterday after telling another enquirer “There is no reception issue. Stay tuned.”

This response seems to echo some of the other rumours doing the rounds that the problem isn’t related to the hardware but the software and that a fix is imminent.

If this is indeed the case, then Apple has been extremely economical with the truth and this could come back to haunt them. Rule one in crisis communications is to respond quickly, with as much factual and transparent information as posssible. Apple doesn’t seem to have complied with this.

If however it’s actually a hardware issue after all, then expect this one to run and run and potentially create a significant headaches for the company.

An interesting side story to this cropped up yesterday when the Daily Mail published a story claiming that Steve Jobs had revealed on Twitter that the iPhone was going to be recalled. The source of the story was in fact the ‘fake’ Steve Jobs Twitter account! Oops!

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WWDC – Apple’s annual conference for its developer community – starts today in the US. As always, there has been a ton of speculation and guesswork around what could possibly be announced.

Steve Jobs kicks it all off today at 6pm BST with his opening keynote, where he is widely tipped to announced the latest iPhone iteration. But what else will the conference bring?

Here are my tips (in order of likelihood):

1. New iPhone – it’s a dead cert really, but will the leaks be true and what else will it include? The name is also still tbc – iPhone 4, iPhone HD? And finally, when will it be released?
2. iPhone OS 4.0 – we had the sneak peak in January, so expect the new OS to be packaged up with the new phone and probably for iPhone 3GS users too. iPad owners may just had to make do with OS 3.3 until 4.0 is rolled out later in the year
3. Refreshed Mac Mini, Mac Pro and Macbook Air – the first two are probably more likely but all three models are long overdue a refresh
4. Safari 5 – browser wars are hotting up again and with Apple’s latest fight with Adobe over flash, a browser that includes the latest HTML5 support makes sense. There are also rumours about extensions being added too
5. Itunes.com – Following the acquistion of Lala last December, this has increasingly been on the cards and with the success of Spotify, would make sense. It may be a few months too soon however
6. Free MobileMe – this service has never really taken off, but if it was free, you could expect a lot more people to take it for a test drive
7. iPod Touch - this hasn’t been updated for yonks, so is definitely due for a refresh. Does anyone care though?
8. Mac OS X 10.7 – probably too much to expect the full launch of the next Mac OS, but a sneak peak could be on the cards
9. iPad price drop – unlikely as the launch was so delayed in Europe, but this has happened with other new Apple products in the past
10. One more thing… – Steve hasn’t done a OMT in recent years, but this time round, especially after all the leaks, I wouldn’t be surprised if he something up his sleeve…

Usually you have to rely on text coverage from Gizmodo, Engadget or GDGT and the like to follow the event live, but apparently www.ihackintosh.com and Macrumorslive.com are going to be offering live audio and video streaming from the room.

Anything I’ve missed?

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Last week, Apple pipped Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable technology company. It’s a move that has been reported far and wide by the tech community, but what’s the secret behind the company’s success and what does it mean for the industry?

It’s all about mobile

The Apple success story can be summed up by one word: mobile. It was the company that saw the potential of mobile music in the iPod. It was the company that took mobile phones to the next level and realised their potential with the iPhone. It made laptops into trendy, must have gadgets with the Macbook and Macbook Air. And it will possibly usher in yet another new genre of gadget with the iPad.

Sure, Apple’s obsession with great design, great user interfaces and user experience is also a key component of its success to date, but mobile lies at the heart of it all.

And mobile is an area where Microsoft has really been left behind. Will it ever catch up? Unlikely.

Noticing a trend

Mobile was the trend that Apple picked up on and used to its advantage. Spotting and anticipating a trend that is in sync with consumer behaviour has been vital for the business.

Spotting the next trend will be vital for the company that hopes to be the success story of the next decade. And it’s hard to say what this will be. Google is banking on open standards (think Android and Chrome) and here it really comes up against Apple’s more ‘closed’ environment. Facebook and Google are both gambling on rewiring the social web and maybe that will pay dividends.

It’s all cyclical; who’s next?

If you’d have told someone 10 years ago that Apple would be more valuable than Microsoft, they wouldn’t have believed you. It just goes to show how things change. Google and Facebook will surely be thinking they could be the next companies to wear this particular crown. Or will it be a company that, as Apple was 10 years ago, are off our radar at the moment?

Can Apple demonstrate that it can still be disruptive in the industry or is it content to rest on its laurels?

Is it all over already?

Many – me included – are fascinated to see what the new iPhone announced on Monday will feature. The iPhone 3G was the device that made people – me included – run out and buy. Those people – me included – are now at the end of their contracts and will likely be thinking very carefully about their next mobile purchase. Can Apple do it again and raise the bar or will the Android steamroller roll on?

Whilst Apple will always have a strong share of the mobile market, the company has already been matched and, in some areas, surpassed by Google and Android. The rise of HTML5 web apps will render the app store pointless. Google is already making strides here with the Chrome Web App store – it’s surely the future.

But it would be too soon to write Apple off. The iPad is a sign of its continued innovation, though despite the 2m sold so far, it will take some time to see whether this really is a game changing device.

Apple really is the tech company of the decade, but will it survive? We’ll just have to wait and see…

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This month the government shoehorned its controversial digital economy bill onto the statute books, during the pre-election wash-up period. The government’s bill was supported by the Conservatives and only opposed by the Liberal Democrats and a handful of rogue Labour MPs (including Twitter-politico-guru Tom Watson).

Whilst the bill itself is wide-ranging, the most controversial element surrounds the issue of illegal file-sharing. Under the terms of the bill, ISPs will be required to send letters to copyright infringers (on notification by copyright holders) and, as a last resort, terminate their internet connection.  This upholds copyright law and firmly backs the interests of the music and film industries, but does so at the expense of the public and the ISPs, who will have to become copyright enforcers; many are already saying they will ignore such pressures.

The problem with this aspect of the bill is that it punishes the owner of the internet account rather than the illegal filesharer. Not only that, but those serial and repeat offenders will quickly and easily develop work arounds. The people that will be affected will be those who don’t know that illegal activity is happening on their account – parents, small businesses, hotels etc. Could this even spell the end of free Wifi?

I’m sure that lobbying by the music and film industries has been intense leading up to the reading of this bill, on both sides of the house, but it does seem as though there is general confusion about how the most controversial parts of the act will – and whether they actually can –  work in practice.

There is a more fundamental issue here. This bill tries to enforce old methods to solve problems created by new technologies. Rather than lobbying for unworkable approaches, the music and film industry should be looking at new solutions to these new problems.

There is no quick fix here. Filesharing is increasingly easy to do, but cutting internet connections off isn’t going to stop it happening. The music industry makes little money from streaming services such as Spotify, but machete-like attacks will never solve the problems that publishers face. And the government has been weak in the way it has handled this issue and has bowed to the pressure.

I’m not overly worried about the music and film industry. It has always been thus; disruptive technologies come and the more staid industries they affect react with sound and fury but, in the end, find new and better ways of coping and thriving. There are parallels here for example with the effect of the internet on journalism and even the PR industry.

My main beef here is with the Labour and Conservative politicians who failed to give this bill the proper consideration and debate it deserved and their weak attempts to satisfy the power behind the throne. The sad truth is that no one will benefit from this legislation, but ordinary law-abiding citizens may well lose out – is that really how we want to build the digital economy of the future?

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Mobile World Congress kicked off in style on Monday with Microsoft unveiling their latest mobile operating system – Windows 7. The OS looks really slick with some really nice features including contact syncing with social networks and Xbox integration.

But is this all too little too late? The new iPhone (4.0) is set to hit in the summer and Microsoft don’t expect any Windows 7 phones to reach consumers until the end of the year.

It’s all about the apps

I’m a big iPhone fan, but I really like the Windows 7 UI – enough to make me consider moving, but there is one thing holding me back – the apps.

And this neatly brings me to one of the other big MWC announcements; a number of the leading mobile manufacturers have teamed together to try and bring about the standardisation of mobile applications.

This seems to be a movement that is gaining momentum. The BBC today announced that it is going to be launching mobile apps for parts of its website in the next few month, but launched an attack on mobile manufacturers who are making life too hard for publishers keen to get their content on mobile devices, by forcing them to create separate versions for different operating systems.

Are apps just a stop gap?

Apple leads the way at the moment with the sheer number of apps that are available for the iPhone. And for an iPhone user, this means the temptation to move to another handset manufacturer is fairly low. Sure UIs are great, but in a world where mobile handsets are now more like mini-computers, applications really do make the difference.

But the standardisation of apps could really shake things up. And it would make a lot of sense for the consumer, if not for Apple.

Of course, standalone applications themselves could soon be a thing of the past themselves – how will HTML5 change this space? I had a good tweet-chat with Matt Hopkins on Friday evening about how HTML5 web apps could in fact overtake – take the new mobile web app for Google Buzz as an example of HTML5 at work. This would render the whole compatibility issue a moot point.

So for now, I’ll be sticking with the iPhone, but I’ve still got my eye on Microsoft et al., as the mobile landscape could soon be very different…

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First, a bit of a disclosure: I’m a huge Apple fan. I love my Mac nearly as much as my iPhone and the latter, my friends and family will all tell you, is glued to my hand for most of the day.

So bearing this in mind, you can probably imagine my excitement on the 26^th January, frantically refreshing Engadget’s live blog, as I eagerly waited to see what new gift Apple would bring into the world.

The sheer volume of media coverage for the iPad was, even for Apple, quite amazing. It blew away the entire coverage of the CES trade show earlier in the month and had Nationals and tech mags alike straining for the first picture of the new tablet computer.

So why, with all this media attention and eager anticipation, was I left feeling a bit disappointed when the product launched?

The iPad is a great piece of technology and looks amazing. But there was also quite a bit missing – for example, no new OS, no flash support, no camera. Was I being too fussy? I was left feeling that the surprisingly low price point was the only silver lining.

And then I realised what the problem was: all the months of speculation and buzz had blown this device out of all proportion. I read spectators who were claiming this was the device that would ‘change computing for ever’ – quite a claim, and one that the iPad would never meet.

So was this something that Apple’s PR could have handled differently? Should the media storm before the launch have been handled more carefully to avoid this sense of disappointment?

Apple’s PR is different to many tech vendors and part of this is because of the evangelical nature of the support the company has both in the media and amongst its customer base. Using leaks and a ‘no-denial’ policy, the media storm before any announcement usually reaches fever pitch.

The day after the launch, I was asked to comment on the PR around the iPad for Utalkmarketing. I said that “in the long run this slight negativity is unlikely to have any effect on sales or their brand image.”

I still believe this to be true; the iPad will be very successful, despite its initial failings. Apple has form here. The first incarnation of the iPhone wasn’t exactly perfect. Sure, it was a great device and revolutionary in so many ways, but it didn’t have 3G support, video, or copy and paste – in fact the list of failings was quite long. But the device still sold and the later upgrades more than made up for its initial teething issues.

Therefore I have no doubt the iPad will sell, and sell well. I’m also sure that Apple will continue to encourage the hype and buzz that surrounds its future product launches. The truth is that we all love to speculate and today’s multi-channel, real-time media landscape means that canny PRs have a multitude of opportunities to build moment-by-moment suspense on behalf of clients when the right story presents itself.

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“No, I really, honestly don’t want an iPhone!” I stressed to colleagues recently. To which they all looked at me as though I’d lost my mind and launched into a tirade about all the amazing apps I’m missing out on.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like technology and I’m pretty savvy about what it can do. It’s just that I won’t use or buy it for the sake of it. For me, technology needs to serve a practical purpose – and when it does, I’m hooked.

For instance, I shop online. For everything. I simply can’t face the battle for a parking space, navigating the hoards on the high street or dealing with the self service scanners at the supermarket.

And I don’t think I’ve watched live TV for years. Instead, my trusty digibox gets busy recording lots of lovely programmes while I’m at work so I can watch whatever I want when I get home  (ok, admittedly, there’s a lot of Come Dine With Me at the moment).

VPN and remote PC access means I can work from home a few afternoons a week so I can walk the dog before it gets dark (and it was a life saver when it snowed); Skype is perfect for keeping in touch with friends who live abroad, and Facebook seems to be the only way to get hold of my brother these days.

So it’s not that I’m resisting new technologies – it’s just that I can’t think of any way that the iPhone could make my life easier – or better – than using the laptop, digital camera and other devices that I already have. Cue much gasping from the team and exclamations over what I’m missing.

Checking emails on the go! (hmm,  I drive to and from work).  Catching up with the latest news online! (sigh, what happened to buying a newspaper?)  Having the tube map at your fingertips! (they are obviously not aware of my prowess at playing Mornington Crescent).

The list went on, but I am yet to discover that ‘killer app’ which means that I simply can’t do without an iPhone (or a Palm Pre, Blackberry or iPad). When I do, I can assure you I’ll go out and buy one. But until then, I’ll be spreading the Sunday papers out across the kitchen table, relying on my trusty (paper) diary and curling up on the sofa with a good book.

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Leading analyst firm Gartner has revealed it’s IT and technology predictions for 2010 and beyond.

From social networking and green computing to mobile and marketing, the predictions are wide ranging and varied. Here are the headline findings; more detail can be found in the press release:

• By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets.
• By 2012, India-centric IT services companies will represent 20 percent of the leading cloud aggregators in the market (through cloud service offerings).
• By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization.
• By 2014, most IT business cases will include carbon remediation costs.
• In 2012, 60 percent of a new PC’s total life greenhouse gas emissions will have occurred before the user first turns the machine on.
• Internet marketing will be regulated by 2015, controlling more than $250 billion in Internet marketing spending worldwide.
• By 2014, over 3 billion of the world’s adult population will be able to transact electronically via mobile or Internet technology.
• By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the Web.
• By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.

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At times of extreme weather and travel disruption, the issue of remote working for business owners and workers alike jumps to the forefront of our minds.

GMTV are touting the stat that £600m per day is being lost by the disruption to UK business due to the snow. And research that Wildfire is promoting this week on behalf of our client Citrix GoToMyPC, highlights that while 78% of small and medium-sized business thought they were prepared for the snow, 57% have still suffered.

No one can argue that we don’t have the technology to enable remote working these days. VPNs, smartphones, Webmail, remote access software are all widely available.

So what’s the problem?

Well, it’s often largely down to the culture of the business you work for and the still present lack of trust in employees to actually be productive when bosses aren’t there to keep an eye on them. Or perhaps concerns about security and sensitive data. But until today I wouldn’t have even thought that the ISPs themselves would get in the way of effective homeworking, as the internet is the key enabler of the shift to more flexible working.

But not Sky it seems. After a lot of deliberation, I bundled all my home communications with Sky at the end of last year, and since then have been puzzled why I can’t get access to my VPN, so have struggled through with Webmail. But today I discovered that Sky maintains its service is solely for domestic use and therefore blocks all VPN ports.

WTF?!

For someone who is juggling raising a family with running a business, working from home is an absolute must, so clearly I will not be letting this matter rest. My IT guy is looking for a way round it and today I will be trialing GoToMyPC for Mac (which launches today) and hopefully getting some work done.

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