Prudential Vs. Kevin Rose – who is right about the iPhone?

Ya know, sometimes I think the guys at Prudential are worse than us bloggers about speculating on Apple products. Apple Insider has a report from Prudential analyst JesseTortora:

From the article:

“Apple has mentioned several times that music experience is its top priority and that it would not do anything to comprise that,” the analyst wrote. “We believe that the music phone will be true to these statements and should be considered a music player that has phone capabilities rather than a phone with a built-in music player.”

Tortora said the iPhone device, which he calls a “slim music phone,” will pack camera functionality and be GSM/GPRS network compatible. Meanwhile, he said Apple is also working on a smart phone device with a larger OLED-based display and a sliding keyboard that will be WCDMA compatible to allow for higher bandwidth.

“The smart phone will contain camera functionality along with additional features that the slim phone does not have such as wi-fi and video capabilities,” he told clients. He added that those additional features put pressure on battery life, which Apple is still working to address.

Jesse goes on to say that Apple is unlikely to take take the MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) route because the “risks outweigh the advantages”, and phones will be limited to T-Mobile and Cingular due to the fact that they will be GSM/GPRS and WCDMA compatible.
He goes on further, throwing in the following:

Tortora also told clients he expects volume production of a widescreen iPod to begin in the first quarter of 2007 with availability shortly thereafter. “This device will have a larger screen than the current version, specifically designed for viewing downloaded movies and video clips,” he wrote.

I don’t know, off the top of my head Prudential’s track record in calling these things (and if you do, please leave the numbers in the comments section), but something about this doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe it’s the fact that this report that was an “extensive research note”. This report is basically regurgitating the speculation that has been online for months (years?) about the iPhone and the “True” Video iPod. The description of the slimmer iPhone even matches an artists rendition what the iPhone might look like that was on MacRumors in September.

I think that Kevin Rose, of Tech TV and Digg fame, is a much more trusted source on this – primarily because he “called” the iPod Nano, among other things – and his version of what the iPhone will be like doesn’t seem to jive well with what Prudential is saying here.

In Kevin’s version, it sounds like the primary difference between the two models will be the storage capacity (Flash memory: 4GB for $249, 8GB for $449), with both models having a slide out keyboard and possibly a touch screen.

To me, this makes more sense than Prudential claim that the smaller iPhone is basically an iPod that makes phone calls. I’m not sure why I’d want that. It would essentially be a ROKR with the ability to hold more songs…and we all know how well the ROKR turned out.

Kevin also danced around the fact that Apple was doing some things that you wouldn’t expect with the iPhone, while Prudential is basically telling us that Apple is doing exactly what we expect to see with the iPhone.

Who’s right? My money is on Kevin Rose, but I could be totally wrong.

I’m sure we’ll know for certain on Jan. 9th 2007.