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This Week in Lumps
#47 [15/04 - 21/04]

·You may have seen in the news this week that mobile phone giants O2 are slashing the price of the smaller version of Apple’s iPhone by £100, amid fears that sales of the popular device have stuttered, especially now that Apple are preparing to launch a better version over the summer. The “basic” 8GB version of the phone - which can store roughly 2,000 songs - will be £169, compared with £269 when the device went on sale in the UK just before Christmas.

O2, which sells the phone in the UK, and T-Mobile, the German distributor, are said to have significantly overestimated the number of first version iPhones that would sell in Europe. The best excuse Apple could come up with?

“…This price cut is not a reactive move but part of a well thought out strategy of maximising the success of the iPhone in the UK.”

Okay, so it’s a ‘promotion to maintain momentum’, no harm, no foul. Firstly, there’s two ways to look at this; you may think that those two ways are 1) get it now or 2) wait for the updated model, but that really only matters right now if you’re on o2 already; the real two ways are for everyone who is on another network, because that’s the business they’re trying to attract. In all honesty, is a £100 price drop really going to tempt you over? Lets not beat around the bush, the £100 is just the cost of the phone, the minimum contract is £35 a month for at least 18 months, which if you take your shoes and socks off to count, really adds up to a lot. If you’re paying this already, then it might not notice too much of a blip in the bank account, and, to be honest, you may have already decided to get it. If, like the majority of us, you prefer to save you money for the necessities in life, then this may not appear like the best of deals right now, especially if you’re not using 500 texts and 600 minutes every single month.

Rumours are that the updated device (which we wont know for sure about until June) will have a “radically different” appearance to the current device. Among the possibilities are flip version, which would enable the screen to be larger, and a sliding model with a regular qwerty keyboard - as opposed to a touchscreen one. This update may also usher in a change in the way Apple strikes distribution deals, with a possibility that Apple will eventually break with its policy of favouring one network to be the exclusive distributor of the iPhone in a given territory. That meant that from June next year in the US — October next year in the UK — Apple would be selling the iPhone to other carriers.

So, if you’re on o2 and on a similar contract, it may be up your street, however, for everyone else, it’s not really an affordable option. Plus, unbeknownst to most, there are many other options, some much better, currently on the market, or due to be soon. The bottom line is, if, like me, your contract is running out, don’t go for the big deal, hunt around, and you may find something you really wanted, and you might save yourself a few quid too.

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· Heroes is back, and thankfully, it’s back on the Beeb. Hurrah. No adverts, which is a blessing we shouldn’t take for granted. Now, I don’t want to spoil anything, nor do I want to give too much away, as I plan to review the season when it’s finished over here, so, for now, here’s the BBC preview:

Four months after Peter went nuclear above New York city, new Heroes are emerging. Alejandro and sister Maya are on the run, armed with a deadly power and looking for answers. Hiro’s landed in feudal Japan, but who has he found? A strange symbol is causing problems for Molly and also Kaito Nakamura - who may have just 24 hours to live.

The 11 episodes of season 2 will begin on Thursday, not Wednesday. Season 3 wont begin on US TV until September, so it won’t be until this time next year that we’ll get it.

Still, fingers crossed that it’s twice as good as what I hope.

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· So, as you’ll probably know by now, GTA IV’s arrival is imminent. Come next Tuesday, many fans will be rushing out to buy the game, including me, and experts are predicting around £200 million to be taken in the first week alone- a record for video games and what could turn out to be the biggest debut ever for an ‘entertainment product’. That would floor the previous sales record, which is currently held by last year’s Halo 3. Great news for the video game empire then, however not so great news for other forms of media, mostly the film industry, it seems.

That will have to include Iron Man, the film based on the Marvel Comics legend, which is due out on the 1st May. Starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges, the film is eagerly anticipated by comic fans, and is just the latest in a plethora of films adapted from the pages of comics, which will also include The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight later this summer. Some people are already saying that one will dent the others revenue, and Mike Hickey, the same guy who put 2 and 2 together and made 7 with regards to last years‘The Heartbreak Kid‘, which cost Ben Stiller $60 million to make, and only collected $14 million on its opening weekend, the same weekend as many of the 18-to-34 demographic were playing Halo 3. His quotes this time round were:

“We anticipate the video game release of GTA IV on April 29 could dampen the potential from Iron Man’s theatrical release. The last significant video game release, Halo 3, generated over $300 million in sales from its first week in the market,” he added. “Halo 3 was released on just one platform, the Xbox 360, and attached nearly 50 percent of the installed base. GTA IV will be released on both the Xbox 360 and PS3, which have both significantly increased their installed bases since the release of Halo 3. A GTA IV 25 percent attach rate to a combined Xbox 360 and PS3 installed base at its April 29 release would imply 5.8 million units sold or roughly $360 million in retail sales the first week of the game’s release.”

Other comparisons between the two genres seem to break down at this point; For example, last summer, the third ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ broke loads of box office records, with a £200 million worldwide haul in its first six days, but while ‘Pirates’ was only three hours out of someone’s time at an average cost of about £7, the new GTA is a £45 investment that provides many more hours of content, and, overall, fun.

So you may be thinking that Iron Man is doomed before it’s even been released; you think that despite the $50 million marketing campaign soon to begin, no-one is going to be able to put down GTA, just like Halo and The Heartbreak Kid. Well, that’s probably not going to be the case. THBK didn’t flop because of a popular computer game, it flopped becuase it was awful, panned by not tens, but hundreds of reviewers worldwide, and the release of Halo 3 was nothing but a mere coincidence. This time round, however, Iron Man is still going to be popular, not because of the money poured into advertising by Marvel and Paramount Pictures, but because its the right film at the right time, riding on the success of films such as X-Men and last years Transformers. Yes, okay, the film won’t solve the film industry’s problems right now, and it probably wont be an immediate boost in movie goers, and I doubt that will happen until ticket prices fall (as they are planned to do just to keep up), but movies aren’t in deep trouble as you’d think by this reaction. As long as the movies are solid, then tickets will sell.

So hopefully that means no more Ben Stiller films for a while.
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That was the week in lumps, a week in which: a hamster killed a man (okay, so the actual story is that women sued a pet company after her husband died after receiving an organ from an infected woman who got the virus from a hamster she got at a pet store… but it isn’t a very good headline is it?), Boffins at Glasgow Uni create a 500TB chip, My plan to review Pushing Daisies has been hit yet again because ITV dropped the 2nd episode just because of the impending football tournament, masturbation reduces the risk of prostate cancer, I stumbled upon a guide on how to make a rather sweet looking USB drive, Pageflakes has been aquired by LiveUniverse, I got full marks on this National Geographic test, Digg and Facebook unite in mysterious ways (well, okay, just mini-feed updates), and finally, a guide on how to beat the Rubix Cube in just six seconds.

Congratulations are in order for everyone who stars and works on Gavin and Stacey for their BAFTA success, it is indeed a great show, and I’m now off to enjoy the last episode of this series. Fingers Crossed for a 3rd.

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