Battery Boosts iPhone Life

Wu does not hold Apple shares, and his firm does not perform investment banking services for Apple.

The news comes about two weeks before the iPhone is scheduled to hit the shelves of Apple stores. The company has reshuffled its engineering resources to make sure the iPhone's June 29 debut would suffer no delays, especially as the company's stock has risen on growing expectations for device sales.

Conservative figures peg iPhone shipments at between 2 million and 5 million this year, and more than 10 million in 2008. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster forecasts 45 million units shipped in 2009. That would dwarf sales of Research In Motion's (RIMM Quote)BlackBerry, which have just begun topping 1 million new subscriber accounts on a quarterly basis.

A shorter battery life would limit the iPhone's utility for business users who have come to rely on the durability of Blackberry, which endures days of active use without recharging. The iPhone in some ways is starting behind the Blackberry because it lacks a feature for immediate email delivery.

Apple also decided against including a Blackberry-like keyboard to make its screen as large as possible for surfing the Web and watching videos.

Extending the battery life can help the iPhone maintain its appeal as a multimedia device for general consumers, and keep it on target to meet sales forecasts even if business users stay faithful to their BlackBerry.