Apple’s worst kept secret: Bigger iPhones in 2014

“The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is testing various screen sizes, ranging from 4.8 inches to 6 inches, and KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts that Apple will increase the iPhone screen size from 4 inches to 4.5 or 5 inches next year,” Dan Farber writes for CNET.

“TrendForce estimated that Samsung sold 71 million smartphones through its distributors in the second quarter of 2013, including 23 million Galaxy S4s with a 5-inch screen,” Farber writes. “Apple sold 31.2 iPhones in the same quarter, including a good portion of the aging iPhone 4 and 4S models with a 3.5-inch screen.”

MacDailyNews Take: Estimates vs. actual sales. How many of those Samsung phones were really “smartphones,” not just glorified feature phones? Likely a healthy portion of them. Yes, Apple should offer a larger screen option for those who want it, but don’t act like supersised screens the only type phone selling because they’re not. 3.5-4-inch iPhones easily outsold the 5-inch Galaxy S4s.

Farber writes, “In an informal survey, CNET asked readers what size screen they would want in an iPhone. Just 21 percent of the respondents were satisfied with the current 4-inch screen, and 60 percent preferred screens larger than 4.7 inches.”

MacDailyNews Take: What is a “CNET reader,” exactly? And, after years of CNET sucking on the MS teat for ad dollars, it’s likely that the average CNET reader is predisposed to be anti-Apple, thereby answering informal surveys with items they know Apple does not/will not offer. Likely many of the CNET Windows sufferers also clamored for SD cards, parallel ports, and other assorted unnecessary anachronisms.

Samsung went big because it was the only point of differentiation they had and because Android’s inefficiencies required a larger battery (they still run out way to soon each day). Those big screens in Samsung phones are actually battery camouflage.

Farber writes, “Apple’s engineers have had enough time to figure out how to eliminate the unwanted trade-offs in having a bigger screen. And, there is plenty of market demand to go bigger in the second half of 2014, when the next round of iPhones is likely to debut.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Apple tests many things, screen sizes included. All of the sizes the WSJ mentioned this week have already been extensively tested by Apple prior to iPhone’s 2007 unveiling. No other tech company tests and refines products as thoroughly. Apple didn’t suddenly wake up in 2012 and say, “Gee, what about a 5-inch iPhone?” Apple had a 5-inch and every other size iPhone in the lab long ago. iPad came before iPhone. Apple just released iPhone first (very nice training wheels for iPad).

So, long before iPhone was revealed, Apple determined the proper smartphone display size for the majority of users when Apple invented the smartphone with iPhone. That is why iPhones have 3.5 to 4-inch (diagonal) screens today.

Again, if Apple wants to diversify the product line and offer larger screen models for the portion of the market that wants them without sacrificing quality, battery life, fragmentation, etc., then by all means, they should do it. Arguably Apple should already have done so by now, but it’s not as important as Farber and others seem to think.

Make no mistake: Apple’s iPhone 5 easily outshines every other so-called smartphone ever made.

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