Apple’s high margins on the iPhone could allow the company to discount it for a short period of time when the holiday shopping season officially kicks off the day after Thanksgiving, according to analyst Ben Reitzes. Will that actually happen? Probably not, but it’s not entirely out of the question.

It’s an interesting scenario that could prompt a flood not seen since biblical times — of shoppers to Apple’s retail stores. After all, even though much of the world is mired in economic troubles, Apple’s device is undoubtedly at the top of a lot a people’s holiday wish lists. $199 (the base iPhone’s cost in the U.S.) isn’t a completely restrictive price — just look at what video game consoles are going for these days — but, at $149, it’d be a lot more attractive. (Especially given the fact that you have to sign a contract with it.)

At $99, it would sell out in about 3 seconds.

The reason that I note that an iPhone sale isn’t completely out of the question is that it appears Orange will be cutting the price of the device in France in time for the holidays. An advertisement recently popped up on the Internet, showing a 99 euro price tag for the device, a 50 euro savings (and the equivalent of just $126).

Apple also has a history of doing 24-hour sales on Black Friday both on its website and in stores. Usually these sales are around $100 off laptops and desktops, and lesser savings on devices like iPods.

I say above that a discounted iPhone would cause a flood to Apple’s retail stores and not its online stores, because the company still doesn’t not technically sell the device through its website.

When Apple removed a third-party application that allowed you to use your iPhone’s data plan on your computer (also known as “tethering”), it should have been no surprise that AT&T was working on its own solution. After all, the company offers similar plans for other phones. The company recently confirmed that such a plan would launch sometime in 2009, and a source has given some supposed details to the blog MacBlogz.

According to their source, the details are as follows:

• 5GB Data Cap (just like Blackberry users) - AT&T will automatically turn off your tethering connection if you use too much bandwidth. Of note, the 5GB cap might get sliced for all users, not just iPhone users, in order to accommodate all new tethering plan customers (bandwidth demand).
• Initial connection through iTunes? (not sure if this is every time you connect, or just for initial setup)
• Expected speeds: GPRS: 30k - dialup speeds / EDGE: 110k - ISDN speeds / 3G: 1000k - slow broadband.
• You’ll want to disable auto-updates for everything, so as to not go over usage limitations.
• Will be +$30/month, new iPhone plans may be rolled out with tethering rolled in.
• Do not pro-rate tethering/bandwidth, it can become a nightmare, instead wait until new billing cycle.
• For unlimited bandwidth, AT&T will tell you to get a wireless PC card.
• No idea on a launch date.

While $30 a month may seem like a bad deal, consider that most separate 3G data plans meant for computers are around twice that price a month. The problem lies in the fact that there is a cap on the data. Apparently, for unlimited data you’ll want to get the 3G PC card.

And of course, $30 a month is a bad deal compared to NetShare (the third party tethering application Apple removed). I was able to get the app before Apple removed it, and it works well — but, as you might expect, it quickly drains the iPhone’s battery.

Bandwidth usage on these “unlimited” plans is apparently becoming more and more of an issue. A report just yesterday suggested an Internet radio app was rejected from the App Store because of bandwidth concerns.

Can AT&T be more than a “dumb pipe” — can it go beyond providing infrastructure for phones, cable television and internet services? Its forays into content continue today, with its official launch of its video aggregator site VideoCrawler.com.

The site, which has been live for a few months, aggregates user-generated videos from YouTube and other sites around the web, using a white-label service provided by a startup called Divvio. You can watch videos, or create your own “channel” of videos that you can watch in one consecutive stream. VideoCrawler also aggregates music, internet radio, games and ring tones — although those aren’t in evidence on the site, at this point.

The VideoCrawler interface, which one might describe as spartan, lets you drag and drop windows, like the video player or the channels feature. You can also create your own channel of videos, or watch others channels, including a channel of videos that are getting watched the most. You can also embed videos on other sites.

Of course, Google Video and many other video aggregation sites have been around for years. So what’s new here? Divvio says it has indexed more than half a billion video clips from thousands of sites using its proprietary technology, including videos in Flash, Quicktime, and others — it doesn’t host videos itself. This means it might be able to surface more videos that users will find interesting, and help a site like VideoCrawler stand out for the quality of its clips. The startup also provides what it believes is superior video search and video traffic analytics, as well as copyright compliance technology that identifies when a video has been plagiarized.

Menlo Park Calif.-based Divvio says it has other clients of similar size to AT&T, and envisions being a back-end platform providing a wide range of online multimedia services to other companies. It was founded in 2006 by former AT&T chief technology officer and chief information officer, Hossein Eslambolchi, and has raised more than $2 million (that we know of) Allegis Capital, Presidio STX and angel investors.

AT&T also plans to grow VideoCrawler through marketing on sites like MyYearbook.com, and integration with its media content site. At this point, VideoCrawler is clearly in its experimental stages. AT&T is collecting data about user behavior to see where the traction is, and the company is thinking about how it might roll out the service across mobile and cable, eventually.

One of the first applications to be removed from Apple’s App Store was NetShare. The app, which lets you tether an iPhone 3G to a computer (that is, use the phone’s data service to access the web on a computer) was thought to be in violation of AT&T’s terms of service. Still, seeing as AT&T has tethering options for other phones, it was odd that the company would strictly prohibit it with the iPhone 3G. Soon, that will change.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit today, AT&T Mobility chief executive Ralph De La Vega said that an official way to tether an iPhone to a computer was coming soon, reports MobileCrunch. This is in line with earlier reports of Apple and AT&T talking about such a plan. That report supposedly came from none other that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs himself.

While NetShare was a deal at $9.99 (I still have it on my phone and it works well), you can be sure that AT&T is planning to charge a premium for tethering. While it might give an app away for free, you should probably expect a monthly charge for accounts that wish to use it. De La Vega gave no indication about how much it would cost.

Of course, you can also jailbreak your iPhone (hack it to be able to use unapproved third-party applications) and get any of a number of tethering applications for free. But having an official way to use the data you’re already paying for, the way you want, is a nice option as well — provided it’s not too much extra.

[photo: flickr/symic]

AT&T has acquired Wayport, a company that built out about 8,000 WiFi hot spots including in places like McDonald’s, for $275 million in cash. The move is another signal that AT&T intends to become a WiFi access point giant — the company now boasts 80,000 points world wide.

The purchase of the Austin, Texas company, which comes at a time when acquisitions have slowed to a trickle, is significant because it reflects how mobility technology investments remain hot.

Indeed, well-known technology analyst Mary Meeker gave a presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco yesterday (see slideshow below) that was outright depressing, with the exception of mobile, which is showing strong growth because of the adoption of ever-smarter phones that can offer customers more due to improving wireless broadband networks. Keep in mind that this doesn’t necessarily mean mobile advertising will be robust in the short-term, merely that the mobile infrastructure is being built out and devices sold (so some people like AT&T might win, but others, such as mobile applications hoping to profit from advertising may not).

AT&T said it will use the acquisition to build out its network of free WiFi access points, which with Wayport’s network add up to nearly 20,000 in the U.S. alone. Wayport built its network through 2004, but was forced to slow in recent years because of saturation and questions about how to make money from them. AT&T in February signaled its intent to become a giant in the sector when it stole Starbucks away from T-Mobile as hotspot partner.

Wayport hot spots also included Wyndham, Marriott Vacation Club and Four Seasons hotels; HealthSouth and Sun Healthcare locations.

Overall, Wayport investors clearly didn’t make money on the deal. Venture capitalists invested $137 million since 1996, with the most recent funding taking place in 2004. Considering that the rule of thumb for any investor is to double their money in seven years (and venture investors typically look for much more, namely around three times their money, because of fees and other considerations), this company was a long slog. VC firms backing the company include Scale Venture Partners, GC Technology Fund, Invesco Private Capital, Lucent Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associate, Sanders Morris Harris, Sevin Rosen Funds, Star Ventures and Trellis Partners.

No doubt, the economic downturn probably lowered Wayport’s expectations for its future, and so AT&T is likely to have seen this as a great deal.

“We’re seeing exponential growth of WiFi-enabled devices — such as smartphones — combined with a continued dependency on 24/7, anytime, anywhere Internet access across business and consumer market segments,” said John Stankey, president and CEO, AT&T Operations in an announcement. “Now is the right time for AT&T to affirm our commitment to WiFi leadership. By acquiring Wayport, we’re giving consumers more ways to stay in touch and building a more robust network management solution for businesses.”

Here are the arguments that AT&T used in its announcement to explain the significance of mobile:

1. Nearly 300 million WiFi-enabled devices were shipped in 2007. Nearly 1 billion are predicted by 2012.
2. With the surge of WiFi-enabled devices, such as smartphones, portable computers, gaming devices and cameras, more consumers can enjoy the benefits of anytime, anywhere access from the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network.
3. A broader and deeper AT&T WiFi network means more free connectivity for millions of AT&T customers, including select AT&T smartphone customers, AT&T LaptopConnect customers and AT&T High Speed Internet (including U-verseSM) subscribers.

AT&T also said the deal is meant to help business customers as well. Those customers can use WiFi hotspots for their own internal networks. Wayport already provided back-office management for AT&T’s WiFi hot spots, and AT&T said the acquisition will allow customers to deal with a single provider: AT&T.

The transaction is expected to close as early as the fourth quarter of this year.

It appears AT&T has finally made good on its promise to give iPhone owners free access to Wi-Fi service at its hotspots around the country. I say “appears,” because we’ve seen this before — at least twice — and both times the service was promptly yanked from existence.

About six months ago I was in a Starbucks with my iPhone. I was automatically connected to their AT&T Wi-Fi, and when I opened up my web browser it took me to an AT&T page asking for my iPhone phone number. I put it in and was granted free Wi-Fi access. A great deal, right? The next day I went back and it was gone.

A couple months later, a page on AT&T’s site trumpeted the arrival of free Wi-Fi for iPhone owners. This wasn’t just at Starbucks, but any of AT&T’s over 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. The only problem? The service wasn’t actually deployed yet, and the page was taken down.

Now, over three months after that, AT&T looks ready to go with the option. Several iPhone users have received text messages about the free Wi-Fi service, which directs them to this page, which reads:

AT&T knows Wi-Fi is hot, and FREE Wi-Fi is even hotter. Which is why FREE AT&T Wi-Fi access is now available for Apple iPhone at thousands of hotspots nationwide, including Starbucks*. Users can relax and access music, email and web browsing services with their favorite blend in hand from the comfort of their nearest location.

I have no idea what took AT&T so long to implement this service, since I was actually using it six months ago. Hopefully, this time, AT&T actually does know what’s hot: A promised service that actually works.

Here’s the latest action:

Moore’s Law gets a life extension — Researchers at McGill University claim to have discovered a new state of matter, a “quasi-three-dimensional system,” that may extend the famous trend of tech companies being able to pack twice as many transistors onto computer chips every two years.

AT&T income up; company surprised by iPhone payments — AT&T has lifted its net income 5.5 percent over the same reporting quarter last year, but its stock price dropped. One possible reason: Investors were surprised by the massive $900 million sum the company had to pay Apple for iPhone sales.

Bill Gates’ secretive new company — The Microsoft co-founder has a new company called bgC3, which appears to be a sort of think tank or lab intended to spin out ideas to Microsoft and others, according to brand-new Seattle tech blog TechFlash.

General Electric raises stake in A123 to $55 million — GE has placed a follow-on investment in electric car battery maker A123 Systems, which would likely have had an IPO by now if not for market conditions.

Malware growing, energy companies at high risk — Corporate nets are at an increasing risk of backdoor attacks carried out through employees, according to ScanSafe. Energy companies are at a 189 percent higher risk than those in other sectors.

Comcast offers doubled broadband speeds for 10 million — By the end of 2008, a segment of Comcast customers will be able to buy broadband services as fast as 50 megabits per second, around eight times faster than most high-speed DSL service. Of course, the higher access speeds will also mean higher pricing.

Yahoo’s Inquisitor reaches Firefox, Internet Explorer – Inquisitor, a personalized search tool released earlier this year for users of the Safari web browser, is now available on the two mass-market browsers.

RackSpace buys two cloud companies — In a bid to compete with Amazon’s cloud services, hosting company Rackspace has bought Slicehost and Jungle Disk.

Samsung pulls bid for SanDisk — The question is, why? SanDisk shares dropped precipitously after Samsung announced that it was pulling its $5.85 billion bid, which some never thought was serious. Various theories on the WSJ Deal Journal.

Geothermal companies get 190 million acres to play with — Energy companies generating electricity from heat far below the planet’s surface have had a massive amount of federal land in 12 states opened for their use.

Zvents, a San Mateo, Calif. company that has been building an events-based search engine for several years, must be on the right track: It just raised $24 million from a set of investors including Nokia Growth Partners, AT&T and NAVTEQ.

What makes Zvents a bit different from other events sites — last year I profiled it along with its biggest competitors, Eventful, Going.com and Upcoming — is that it’s not an events calendar or social networking site. Instead, the company is working on an advanced search engine that’s optimized just for looking through time-based listings.

That type of search, developed for the Internet, is also turning out to fit well with the mobile industry. “A lot of the industry still thinks mobile search needs to be separate and distinct from the Internet,” Paul O’Brien, the company’s chief marketing officer, told me. But a basic events search is the same for either the Internet or a mobile device — the person using it is just in a different place.

Events,  by the way, can range from concerts and festivals to sales and celebrity appearances. A person out on the town with a mobile device will likely be interested in knowing about those things, which is why carriers are becoming interested in Zvents (as evidenced by the AT&T investment). Location-based applications are also proliferating, and they all need data of the sort that Zvents has.

Finally, publishers can also benefit, both by porting their own event listings into the database and by having acces to others. Zvents partners with several hundred publishers, including big ones like MSN City Guides, and less prominent ones like small town newspapers. O’Brien says that Zvents has a significant set of listings in about 2,000 cities in the United States, and several large cities overseas.

Mobile is where Zvents expects a large portion of its business to be in the future, but O’Brien wouldn’t say whether the company is profitable yet. For now, it’s making money off of enhanced listings. While anyone can add an event for free, businesses like department stores will often want to add information like coupon codes or videos, which they pay Zvents a small fee for. In the future, they may be able to pay for greater prominence.

In addition to the investors listed above, Zvent’s previous investors came on for the round, including VantagePoint Venture Partners and Red Rock Ventures. The company has taken $32 million to date.

Just when I thought I had my fill of Android related stories for today, I found a couple things of note to reinvigorate my interest. Or at least my anger: Text messages and bandwidth caps.

After all is said and done (meaning after your two year contract is up), T-Mobile’s new G1 Google Android phone is about $380 cheaper than a roughly comparable iPhone 3G, Wired nicely lays out. The reason? The absolutely ludicrous price AT&T charges for text messages.

Regular readers will know my hatred for the cost of text messaging. It’s a tiny bit of data, yet companies like AT&T get away with charging customers $5 a month for 200 text messages, $15 a month for 1500 or $20 a month for unlimited. Mind you, this is on top of the $30 you’re already spending for supposedly unlimited data.

T-Mobile seems to have rates that are significantly better since it includes text messaging in your data plans which are $35 for unlimited data. Imagine that, including text messaging — which is data after all — in your unlimited data package.

Basically, you’re saving $15 a month on unlimited texts through T-Mobile. After two years this works out to — get this — $360. Almost the exact same amount that the G1 beats the iPhone 3G in price.

But T-Mobile has its own problems as well. Hidden within the fine print of your unlimited data agreement is the ridiculous clause that says all bandwidth used after the first gigabyte of data is transfered will be limited to 50 Kbps (Kilobits per second) or less, according to dslreports.com. Google and T-Mobile spokespeople apparently denied the limitations, according to GigaOM. But sure enough, it’s right there on the G1 website for T-Mobile. (See the screenshot at the bottom.)

Even though the carriers in the U.S. are evolving thanks to pressure from the likes of Apple (with the iPhone) and now Google (with Android), it appears they’re still trying to nickel and dime us.