SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Apple chief executive Steve Jobs showed off a next-generation iPhone on Monday that features the ability to shoot and edit high-definition quality video and a crisp higher-resolution screen.

"We are going to take the biggest leap since the original iPhone," Jobs said in a keynote speech at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference here.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. - Steve Jobs reminded all of us how far Apple Inc. has come in the last 13 years or so since he came back to the company he co-founded.

At the All Things Digital D8 conference, the chief executive of Apple (nasdaq: APPL) was asked about how it felt when its market value recently topped that of Microsoft Corp. (nasdaq: MSFT).

All of the built-in apps on iPad were designed from the ground up to take advantage of the large Multi-Touch screen and advanced capabilities of iPad. And they work in any orientation. So you can do things with these apps that you can’t do on any other device.

 Safari

iPad is the best way to experience the web. View whole pages in portrait or landscape on the large Multi-Touch screen. And let your fingers do the surfing.

 Mail
There’s nothing like the Mail app on iPad. With a split-screen view and expansive onscreen keyboard, it lets you see and touch your email in ways you never could before.

 Photos
A vivid LED-backlit IPS display makes viewing photos on iPad extraordinary. Open albums with a tap. Flip through your pictures one by one. Or play a slideshow and share your photos.

Videos
The 9.7-inch high-resolution screen makes iPad perfect for watching HD movies, TV shows, podcasts, music videos, and more.

YouTube
With the YouTube app designed specifically for iPad, videos are even easier to find. And on the amazing iPad display, they’re more fun to watch. Especially in HD.

 iPod
Reach out and touch your songs. View your album art full-size. iPad makes music look as good as it sounds.

 iTunes
Millions of songs, thousands of movies and TV shows, and so much more. Browsing and buying are just a tap away.

 App Store
You’ll find more than 200,000 apps on the App Store, and iPad can run almost all of them. Including everything from games to productivity apps.

iBooks

Reading is a joy on iPad. Text looks crisp and bright. Pages turn with a flick. And you can buy new books from the iBookstore. Just download the free iBooks app to get started.

 Maps
See more of the world with iPad. Find locations easier than ever with street view, satellite view, or new terrain view — all using Google services.

Notes
With its large display and onscreen keyboard, iPad makes it easy to jot down quick notes and keep important information on hand. You can even email yourself reminders.

 Calendar
Work, home, and everything in between. Your schedules are easy to read and easy to manage on iPad — even all at once.

Contacts
With Contacts on iPad, you can see much more than just names and numbers. And you can do more with them, too.

 Home Screen
With just one press of the Home button, you have access to every app on your iPad.

Spotlight Search
No matter what you’re looking for, Spotlight Search can help you find it.

 Accessibility
Universal access is built into iPad. So right out of the box, Apple makes it easy for people with disabilities to enjoy all that iPad has to offer.

 iWork
The iWork productivity applications that you know and love on the Mac — Keynote, Pages, and Numbers — have been completely redesigned for iPad.2 So you can create great-looking presentations, documents, and spreadsheets. All using just your fingers. And while they’re easy to use, they’re also the most powerful productivity apps ever built for a mobile device.

 Keynote
Create a presentation with custom graphic styles, elegantly designed themes, stunning animations and effects, and powerful new features designed just for iPad.

Pages
Pages has everything you need to put your words into beautiful documents. Including Apple-designed templates and easy-to-use formatting tools.

Numbers
Numbers includes over 250 easy-to-use functions, an intelligent keyboard, flexible tables, and eye-catching charts. So you can create compelling spreadsheets in just a few taps.

The airwaves are groaning under the deluge of wireless data. For consumers, it’s getting cheaper. For carriers, it might be the start of a very big problem.

Three years ago, a small research firm in Toronto set out on a simple quest. It wanted to discover how much it would cost a mobile-phone user in Canada to download one gigabyte of wireless data – roughly the amount required to transmit a two-hour film.

No cellphone plan in 2007 envisioned the need for such capacity, so analysts at the SeaBoard Group consultancy had to include penalty fees for exceeding capped limits. The cost for one gigabyte was a staggering $2,600.

Today, downloading the same amount of data can cost as little as $5. Even that number is dropping – fast – as new companies push into Canada’s wireless market with flat-rate, unlimited plans that are driving prices lower.

For consumers, plunging prices are great. For wireless carriers, though, new pricing pressures constitute a brutal challenge. They are being forced to deliver ever-increasing amounts of data over their networks for less return, even as revenue from people talking on phones declines.

 

“It’s kind of ridiculous when you think about it, because AT&T’s only job is to just let me make calls. ”— Andrew Pierce, frustrated customer

 

The effect of cheap data plans is being magnified by the soaring popularity of smart phones, which are designed for videos, music, games and other bandwidth-heavy content.

Wireless companies are at a crossroads: They must either take unpopular steps to clamp down on the traffic created by devices such as the iPhoneand new iPad or watch their profit margins wither.

On Wednesday, AT&T (T-N24.780.451.85%) the second-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., eliminated unlimited data plans for smart phones, phasing in a tiered pricing system for data with capped limits. Other carriers may follow suit as they wrestle with the so-called “iHog dilemma” caused by the iPhone and other advanced smart phones. Apple Inc.’s device can eat up to seven times more bandwidth on a network than a regular voice phone. Even more voracious are the iPad and other tablet computers, which chew through at least twice the network space as the iPhone.

 

 

As networks in the U.S. struggle to cope with the new devices, a data crunch is resulting in dropped calls, spotty access and slowed download times.

Canada hasn’t seen the data crunch yet. But problems loom as consumers’ insatiable demand to download more data jams up the carrying capacity of the system. “The fact that we trail the rest of the world means we’re going to see it a little later,” says Dawood Khan, a Toronto-based telecom consultant.

U.S. users like Andrew Pierce provide a glimpse of what may lie ahead. The frustrated 21-year-old student in New York sometimes has to try three or four times before AT&T’s network connects him. He puts up with two or three dropped calls each day.

“It’s kind of ridiculous when you think about it, because AT&T’s only job is to just let me make calls,” Mr. Pierce says. “They’re having problems keeping up.”

Frustrated with the “runaround” he got from the company, Mr. Pierce joined Operation Chokehold, a consumer protest. At noon on Dec 18, 2009, he and thousands of others agreed to simultaneously run bandwidth-hogging applications like Ustream, hoping to clog the network – and bring wireless services crashing down.

AT&T got the message. About a month later, it announced it would invest $2-billion (U.S.) in upgrades for its strained network, then followed up by abolishing unlimited data plans.

Canadian carriers may be headed in the opposite direction. Dvai Ghose, a telecom analyst at Canaccord Genuity in Toronto, believes competition is pressuring the industry to cut data prices and offer unlimited packages.

Last December, Wind Mobile introduced Canada’s first unlimited data plans for $35 (Canadian) per month. The plans have led to unprecedented usage rates. Wind’s heaviest user reached 118 gigabytes in one month, roughly the equivalent of downloading four full-length movies each day.

But if there is network congestion, Wind Mobile slows download speeds for users that exceed five gigabytes in a month. This type of network “traffic management” will become even more crucial as devices become more powerful and users become conditioned to use more data.

Mr. Ghose believes the established giants will eventually take over the upstarts and readjust prices. But acquisitions can’t occur until at least 2014, when a government prohibition on such takeovers expires.

Until then, a data crunch seems likely in high-traffic areas. “Let’s say, around Union Station, around King and Bay, or Front Street and Spadina [in downtown Toronto] … Wherever you have a high concentration of people in a small area all doing data-intensive things, you definitely will see some congestion,” says Ronald Gruia, a telecom analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “The good thing is that we’re not as bad as the U.S. But we’re not far from that, either.”