Jobs’ Macworld Keynote: Minor iPhone Updates, Four Million Sold

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Jobs’ Macworld Keynote: Minor iPhone Updates, Four Million Sold

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I am, in a sense, sitting in the front row of the press section at Macworld, waiting for Steve Jobs’ much-anticipated keynote. But I’m not at San Francisco’s Moscone Center - I’m at BBC Television Centre in London, where Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has assembled some 500 British journalists and others to watch proceedings via satellite feed.

The product rumors: an ultra-thin MacBook, a 3G iPhone, a higher-capacity iPhone, Blu-Ray compatibility and a movie rentals addition to iTunes Store. We shall see…

- Sales: “We have sold four million iPhones to date.” It’s been in retail for 200 days - that’s 20,000 every day on average, Jobs says. He cites Gartner figures on US smartphone sales: RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) (39 percent), iPhone (19.5 percent), Palm (NSDQ: PALM), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), other. “iPhone in its first 90 days of shipping garnered almost a 20 percent market share of the US smartphone market”. December quarter - “we think we’re going to have even better.”

New iPhone features announced, all available today as a free software update..

- Maps with auto-location Actually just a feature of Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps’ latest mobile iteration, but “pretty cool”, Jobs says. This iteration uses technology from both Skyhook Wireless and Google to triangulate a position using WiFi base stations - “and it works pretty doggawn well”

- Webclips: Also “pretty cool”, this gives users the ability to add web URLs as icons on the home screen. But “they can be more than just a website - they can also remember where I’ve zoomed and panned to” - for example, add just the Technology section of the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) homepage to your home screen.

- Custom home screen: Users can use up to nine separate home screens. Home-screen icons can be dragged to custom positions including on the new, additional pages.

- SMS: A fairly rudimentary feature, but iPhone users will now get to send texts to more than one person at the same time.

- Video: Videos watched on the iPhone can now be navigated using “chapters” and can use subtitles and alternate languages if they are available.

- Lyrics: The music player now builds in support for iTunes’ lyrics field - those rare few people who copy and paste lyrics to that field can now tap the artwork on the phone to bring up the words.

- iPod touch new features: Mail, maps with WiFi location, stocks, notes and weather apps. A $20 update from iTunes - the cost drawing critical gasps from crowd members.

There’s no announcement of a 3G version as rumored. And that’s a wrap.