“Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook promised China Mobile Ltd.’s 763 million subscribers ‘great things’ after customers in Beijing asked him whether the iPhone maker was developing devices with larger displays,” Bloomberg News reports.
“Cook was at China Mobile’s headquarters store as the world’s largest carrier started selling the iPhone, concluding six years of negotiations with Apple. As Cook handed out autographed iPhones with carrier Chairman Xi Guohua, people asked him about bigger screens and the use of flexible displays,” Bloomberg News reports. “‘We never talk about future things,’ Cook said. ‘We have great things we are working on but we want to keep them secret. That way you will be so much happier when you see it.'”
Bloomberg News reports, “The iPhone maker faces challenges because many Chinese customers prefer to have one large-screen device for checking e-mail, browsing the Web and watching videos. Every other fourth-generation smartphone offered by China Mobile has a display at least a half-inch (1.27 centimeters) larger than Apple’s 4-inch models. Apple may introduce two larger-screen iPhone devices this year, Cleveland Research analyst Benjamin Bollin said in a note dated Jan. 13.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote earlier this week:
If the high-end wants larger phones (and if our polling is any indication, the high-end most certainly does), then Apple should already have larger screen iPhones available. This is Tim Cook’s mistake. He’s left money on the table. Fortunately, contracts run out every day. There’s still time to for Apple to offer proper choice to the mid- to high-end customers that Apple actually wants. One size does not fit all.
And, many Chinese customers do not “prefer” to have one device, one device is generally all they can afford. This is the case in many markets around the world. Apple needs to provide choices to quality customers everywhere. The 4-inch iPhone simply isn’t cutting it for far too many people.
If Apple needs iPhones with larger screens – and they do, because in some places, quality customers are still somewhat economically challenged and therefore try to do it all with a phone versus owning an iPhone and an iPad and, in every market, healthy percentages of quality customers simply prefer more screen real estate – then Apple should release iPhones with larger screens ASAP.
Apple is late on this, but there is still time to recover. Release the Kraken, Apple!
Related article:
Apple’s China push threatened by popularity of big screens – January 15, 2014