“Shares in Apple touched another record high on Friday, as anticipation builds for this week’s iPhone launch,” Tim Bradshaw and Paul Taylor report for The Financial Times. “Hints in the artwork of the invitation to the launch event in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center suggest that Apple’s latest smartphone will indeed be called the iPhone 5, which was one of the world’s most popular search terms in 2011 despite that year’s launch of the iPhone 4S.”
“Yet the leaks and rumours coalescing around the new iPhone suggest that it may not be the huge leap forward that many Apple investors and customers long for,” Bradshaw and Taylor report. “The device is expected to have a thinner profile with a longer screen that is nonetheless still smaller than Samsung’s Galaxy S3 or Motorola’s latest RAZRs, launched last week. The iPhone 5 is almost certain to be faster, with an upgraded processor and 4G cellular data connection, using the same LTE technology as the latest iPad and most other new smartphones.”
Bradshaw and Taylor report, “The iPhone launches into a more competitive mobile market than ever… IHS Screen Digest predicts that Windows Phone will grow 140 per cent in 2013 but remain “a distant third” behind Apple and Google’s Android-based smartphones. If Windows and Nokia remain unlikely to derail the new iPhone, a more immediate threat is from Google itself. IHS forecasts Google’s Android smartphones will retain a huge lead over Apple by the end of this year, with 550m active smartphones globally compared with 250m iPhones.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bigger isn’t better. Quality of display, operating system, one-handed usability, pocketability, aspect ratios, and other factors are more important than a diagonal size number. If you can’t read on a 4-inch Retina display, your next step is a visit to your eye doctor or your nearest Apple Store for an iPad (or, soon, perhaps, an iPad mini).
Fact: Even if the only changes are a taller screen (with a significant screen area increase of nearly 20%) and 4G LTE (and we know iOS 6 including a significantly improved Siri are also coming), the iPhone 5 will break all smartphone sales records – just like every single iPhone model before it.
As for market share, that’s nice. How did Android ever manage to achieve that? After all Android only infringed on Apple’s design patents, it’s slapped into 1,000+ models, they count phones so removed from “Android smartphones” as to be unrecognizable, they are constantly sold under “Buy One, Get X Number Free” promotions, etc.).
Profit share is better: Apple rakes in 71% of the world’s smartphone profits – September 8, 2012.
Naysayers, AAPL shareholders thank you – any lowering of expectations ahead of Wednesday only helps Apple.
Related article:
It’s official: Apple invites media to iPhone 5 special event on September 12 – September 4, 2012
Considering how the name iPhone 4S wasn’t announced until October last year, it’s really not surprising that iPhone 5 was one of the most searched terms.
What if…
All the rumors are a diversion and the new phone looks totally different. Mr. Cook said Apple was “doubling down” on secrecy. Was that wishful thinking or is Wednesday going to be a lot of fun?
I’ll bet Wednesday will be a lot of fun either way! Can’t wait to place my order!!!
I met a guy at a remote project site I was supervising a couple of months ago. He was 7’8″ tall and had hands so big he could palm a basket ball.
He had that huge Android cell phone with the attached stylus. It looked small in his hand.
So, I figure Android has the NBA and the European and South American basket ball leagues covered and Apple will take care of the rest of the Smartphone needs.
The iPhone is a computer that you can carry around in your pocket. It is the ultimate form of personal computing. Past a certain point, perhaps reached with the 4S, it’s hardware and design are (say it with me) Absolutely. Fucking. Irrelevant.
The ADHD afflicted can mewl and carp and birch and moan. Their concerns are irrelevant. Apple isnt making devices to entertain blog writers and self-described tech saavy putzes on message boards. They area making devices to sell to consumers, and the more that one can do with this device, the more effective, the more useful, te more valuable that device becomes.
So you may be a huge Apple fan, but if you are obsessed by some idiotic notion that Apple needs to completely and utterly reinvent the iPhone every year to satisfy some childish need of yours to be entertained by New! Shiny!, I suggest you put a sock in it.
Yeah, I still chuckle… When all of these same people were bitching about Apple’s ‘stupid’ one button mouse, what did Apple do? Apple upgraded them to a no button version. I’m sure it delighted Apple to no end knowing that it was going to piss them off. Ditto with antennagate. Folks, that basic external design is not going away any time soon. They’ve done their homework, heels have been dug in… bitch all you like.
“… may not be the huge leap forward that many Apple investors and customers long for.”
” May”? Now there’s a gutsy, incisive call.
“Huge leap forward”? Who’s expecting that? These guys are making up hyper expectations for the iPhone 5.
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The leap forward huge or otherwise can occur in subtle ways. I know it’shard for some journalists to believe that Apple will sell more than a dozen new iPhones but I am pretty sure sales will exceed that.
The changes will be under the hood and in the ecosystem and updated apps.
It would be super if Apple decides to use it’s supply chain leverage to price the prepaid iPhone agressively and also make entry level memory 32 GB instead of 16. That would be a fine leap forward.
I hope they have enough in the supply chain to meet the demand.
By and large, iPhone owners don’t want different device size options and big hardware re-designs each year. The beauty of Apple’s iPhone hardware design spec is that it is basically a great ergonomic device, and thus, becomes a known constant. The materials are first class, the fit and finish are first class. With that in mind, the spectacular changes then come with new software updates, not radical new hardware. The basic iPhone design is classic and big changes aren’t necessary or needed.
OK, maybe the durability could be improved to reduce breakage when dropped, but that’s about it for me.
Anxiously awaiting the iPhone 5…
I don’t think that new iphone 5 will be hit, the main reason is that we already know what it looks like thanks to internet. I can’t see any innovation or design revolution at all comparing to iphone 4S whatever. it seems that they only changed screen size, made it little thinner, added 4G LTE, and iOS 6 (obvious). but Samsung & HTC will sue apple for LTE patent. I can’t wait to see how apple will severely be suffered from phone sale around the world. plus, I don’t think that apple will catch high demand by Toshiba, Sharp whatever. they actually don’t have any capacity to supply parts. pity.
the “5” stands for 5 products that get upgarded
i.e. IPHONE , IPOD TOUCH , IPOD NANO, IPOD CLASSIC , IPOD Shuffle.
Im looking forward to the Apple maps app.
Hope it’s got Siri integration!
Won’t be getting the iPhone 5 as I’m on a 2yr upgrade cycle.
Wouldn’t want to carry the Android brick in my front pocket. Wouldn’t mind just a teeny bigger if the size need for the majority is real, but let’s not go overboard.
Regardless of features, I need a new phone! My 2-1/2 year old 4 is on its last leg. So I’ll take a new iPhone.
And perhaps the “5” means 5 new products are being introduced (iPods).
Hype rarely lives up to expectations that are sometimes unrelistic.