Analyst: iPhone stuck with 4-inch screen until at least June 2014; Samsung S4 to take significant market share in high-end smartphone market

It appears that the lower cost iPhone will be a 4-inch screen Retina display, plastic case, Lightning connector, but some of the componentry seems to be a little lower-end, lower NAND content, or memory [storage], lower processor capability, lower modem, but we would expect the phone to be available for China Mobile, for that TD-SCDMA market. For the “5S,” we expect the casing to be broadly similar to the “5,” uh 4-in [screen] as well. We think there’s a chance it could still come in multiple colors, a good chance it gets a fingerprint sensor, and, importantly, we think it’s a virtual lock that you get a better processor and a 12 megapixel camera. We thinka lot of the bumps and changes will be underneath the hood, much like they were with the “4S.”

We don’t see the “5S’ competiting with the [Samsung Galaxy] S4, broadly speaking. The S4 is a 5-inch screen product, the iPhone 5S is a 4-inch screen product, as best we can tell, and we think, broadly speaking, consumers at least, uh, mainly, outside the U.S. prefer larger screens. So, we actually don’t see the two as all that competitive. We think Samsung will take significant market share at the high end of the smartphone market based on that larger screen size. Here is the U.S. we think that Apple will continue to garner what it’s done, which is great market share, ah, but we thinkt he pressure for a larger screen phone will continue to mount as the year progresses and we think on that front, again, Samsung is likely to steal share.