“Given the rumors and high expectations, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster fears the World Wide Developers Conference that Apple is hosting next week in San Francisco could be a “slight disappointment” to investors,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
• Apple is widely expected to unveil a new iPhone next week. Munster is cautious. “Regardless of whether or not new iPhones are announced at WWDC,” he writes, “we continue to expect a mid-July launch of a family of iPhones.”
• Munster doesn’t believe Apple’s CEO will take the stage on Monday, but he has faith that Jobs will return from his medical leave, as promised, before the end of June.
• The analyst worries that the “near-final release” of Mac OS X Snow Leopard will have “limited wow-factor” and that the demo “may be disappointing.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: People who aren’t wowed by Snow Leopard have absolutely no earthly idea what they’re looking at. Also, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Steve Jobs’ scheduled “end of June” return coinciding with a special iPhone hardware event which, of course, would be standing-room-only even if Jobs had never taken his leave of absence. However, it’s just as easy to imagine new iPhone hardware being unveiled next week at WWDC with a July launch date.
