“It looks like Apple has a few tricks up its sleeve for 2016,” Chris Smith reports for BGR. “According to a new report out of the Far East, the company has plans to launch a new, completely redesigned iPhone next year.”
“According to the Economic Daily News, AUO has inked a deal with Apple to supply 4-inch displays for an upcoming ‘iPhone 7c,'” Smith reports. “The company will ship the screens starting in the first quarter of 2016, which would suggest that Apple plans to release the iPhone 7c alongside the other two iPhone 7 models later in the year.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, no 4-inch iPhone for two years (2014 and 2015), but it’ll reappear in 2016?
Seems weird, but as we explained last month:
Today is our fourth week with Apple Watch. Our iPhone usage is way, way down and, consequently, our iPhone battery life is way, way up (from about 40% left at the end of a typical day to over 65%). We put our Apple Watches to bed every night with about 30-35% battery remaining.
One additional thing to consider: We have iPhone 6 Plus units. 128GB. We are Day One iPhone users for every new model. We’re now using the iPhone (directly) so much less often that any Apple Watch-compatible iPhone might suffice. The next iPhone will need to offer something(s) might attractive to get those who’d normally jump to the latest and greatest iPhone, but now find a lot of their attention has shifted from iPhone to Apple Watch, to make the leap.
Of course, we’ll get the next flagship iPhone as usual, but it’s not a stretch to think that Apple Watch might impact serial iPhone upgraders. At this point with Apple Watch, a smaller model iPhone already looks much more attractive to us. So, we’re (again) seeing a raison d’être for SMALLER iPhones: You can just squirrel it away. Apple Watch use will very likely affect iPhone buying decisions for many going forward.
In a nutshell: Before Apple Watch, we used our iPhones all the time and wanted the largest display and longest battery life possible. After Apple Watch, we use our iPhones less and size/weight (easy to carry) have become much more important to us; a smaller iPhone battery wouldn’t hinder us now with Apple Watch.
Luckily for Apple, only some 20% of U.S. iPhone users have currently upgraded to iPhone 6/Plus (and there are millions of potential Android switchers coming off contracts every day), so there is a lot of headroom for iPhone 6s/Plus sales this fall and for a long time thereafter.
It’s rather amazing how dramatically the Apple Watch has affected our iPhone usage after just one month. Eventually, Apple Watch will likely change the dynamics of iPhone model sales.
SEE ALSO:
Apple Watch increases iPhone battery life significantly; likely to affect future iPhone purchasing decisions – May 22, 2015
AUO said to supply 4-inch ‘iPhone 7c’ displays – April 21, 2015
Analyst: No 4-inch iPhone coming – May 12, 2015
Analyst: Apple’s next-gen ‘iPhone 6s’ add rose gold option, Force Touch, 2GB RAM, 12MP camera and more – May 12, 2015
No 4″ iPhone with the same features as the bigger phones?
I’ll stay with the 5s thank you.
Plus WATCH SPORT of course.😃
I recently was in Japan, saw many iPhone 5s and iPhone 6 on bullet trains and subways. Obviously, Japanese loves iPhone.
But according to orandy your WATCH SPORT is a piece of useless junk! MDN must be lying😱💥⌚️👀🚀😜
If you want to pay Apple $350-$17,000 for watches with and without gold values ranging from $80-$1200 to manufacture… and for a watch that poorly replicates features already available on your phone, then be my guest.
Everyone else on this planet recognizes that as a monumental RIPOFF.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Some day I have got to watch that movie.
Definitely, Thelonious, definitely. 🙂
“Everyone else…” Yeh right!
Millions of happy customers?
Orandy?
Millions?
Orandy?
I just don’t know who to believe!!!
@John Smith
Fine.
If the Apple Watch is truly the resounding success you all believe it to be, then why are you so worried?
I believe I know the answer to that question… that’s because in your heart of hearts you all know this product is a ridiculous example of overpriced, psuedo tech, JUNK!!!!!!!!
Junk sit on shelves, and in warehouses unsold: Android phones and Android Wear watches are examples of this. Apple sells all the phones and watches they can produce. 21/2million watches on the wrists of customers so far, another 51/2million sold and being produced as quickly as possible to satisfy demand. The number of watches on the wrists of customers is multiples of all the Android Wear watches sold to date. Watch preorders started on April 10th of this year, less than two months. Apple doesn’t make junk. 🖖😀⌚️
Are you the other Zuntang?
No, ZuneTang was funny. This guy’s just a drooling idiot.
… And still no SamsTang around yet?
Sad creature, orandy. We are not worried. Unlike you, we are not monumentally emotionally invested in what happens with the Apple Watch. Interested – yes. Wishing Apple well with their great product – yes. Worried – no. Because we have lives.
@John Smith
Ah yes… but it’s those so called “lives” that I’m calling into question.
You are free to walk around holding Tim Cook’s scrotum for him, while buying his exhorbitantly priced Macbook with a single worthless port and a super slow, cut-rate microprocessor!
Free to sink hundreds to thousands of dollars on a half-baked, cheaply made, unnecessary, outrageously priced, soon to be outdated, iPhone accessory.
Tis the life of an idiot… a charmed life it is not.
Goodnight JOHNBOY!
“If three guys tell you you’re drunk, sit down.”
Methinks you never learned basic economics, which means you must also be a liberal.
A product that they’re making millions of as fast as they possibly can which nevertheless remains scarce is NOT and overpriced product.
If you do not understand this, then you should disqualify yourself from ever again weighing in on matters which require some amount of economic acumen.
@beanbagbob
Because something is selling it can’t be pointless and an overpriced ripoff… got it!
Bernie Madoff had the most popular investment program on the eastern seaboard. Why don’t you ask some of his former investors how that worked out for them, that is, the ones who didn’t kill themsleves or aren’t living in cardboard boxes.
George W. Bush was selling compassionate consevativism, but as soon as we dropped the soap, we all got a 15-inch, Patriot Act butt plug!
Jim Jones promised his followers utopia and paradise, all you had to do was drink his Koolaid. Wonder how that tasted.
Now Tim Cook promises us a new age of wearable technology, but you can’t have a tattoo, you have to patient because the apps are slow, components may fail so you may have to send it back, it may scratch easily, you may have problems with the band and battery life, and the markups are obscene… where do I pre-order?
😝
You’re comparing a Ponzi scheme, a foolish political slogan, and a death cult suicide to the AppleWatch.
You’re logical is unassailable, and you’ve just singlehandedly rewritten the basic economic principle of supply, demand, and pricing dynamics.
How awesome is that?
I now stand corrected!
The AppleWatch IS overpriced, and it’s all because of Bernie Madoff, George Bush, and Jim Jones!
Ladies and Gentlemen…
…we have a genius here at MDN!
@beanbrain
You left out the fact that all of the aforementioned guys (at least at one time or another), enjoyed better credibility than Tim Cook.
😳
If a fact is not relevant, then I didn’t “leave it out.”
Oh! Randy!
A valiant effort at defending the indefensible (hate-speak and insulting arrogance, “everybody else is wrong,” etc., but ultimately—it’s a fail.
But, I do agree with you regarding the Patriot Act. It hurts!
orandy’s shining example of success must be Android Wear watches. Android Wear hasn’t sold in over a year what Apple has sold in less than two months. Android Wear will become a rounding error before long. 🖖😀⌚️
You’re missing the point. Even if it costs $80-$1200 to manufacture (to say nothing of the combined centuries of man-hours to design) it’s only because this is an massive Apple rollout. No company out there could build a comparable watch with the kind of ecosystem integration the Watch has. It simply wouldn’t exist.
But what do you care, Orandy? Apple Inc. is not twisting your arms to buy one. I won’t heckle you for how you choose to spend your own money.
As long as Apple commands a large flock of compliant sheep who baa whenever a shiny bauble is dangled before them, they will gather much revenue. That’s good business. Let’s face it, mate: people don’t use their brains much. Instead they respond to marketing and social stimuli. Yes it is irrational but that’s the species in a nutshell. Reasoning doesn’t work, it only worked once, back with the ancient Greeks, but it has fallen on hard times ever since.
Hundreds of millions of Mac customers. All compliant sheep. Yehhhh. Suuuuurre they are. You just carry on with that delusion.
Sales figure would suggest you are wrong, not that a little thing like facts will get in the way of angry hate that you are sailing against the wind and tide.
MDN’s reasoning for different iPhone sizes, may well be how the canibalinzation of Apple’s devices by new product, weans and assures the continuing perpetual demand, longvevity and manufacturing of all models.
This is and amazing marketing feat and igenius marketing ploy or acheivement…depending on whether you believe it was conceived/contemplated or the result of genius contemplated design. Apple continues to think different and ahead of the curve.
Remember the patent for two screens on opposing surfaces with flexible connection. Clam shell flip phone. Totally awesome!!!
iPhone 7 Pro
Liquidmetal
TouchID in the screen
4″ all screen no bezel
Thin as hell
Pro will be 5.5 inch.
hi Nerd Beautiful.
yes. exactly. great specs, great build quality.
smaller screen, same same experience.
this is indeed a fon to be called Pro.
precisely because of it being able to deliver the same experience in a smaller package.
very apple.
thanks for thinking differently.
i don’t think others see it like we do, however.
I would like to see Apple offer a non Cell version of the iPhone for VoIP use based upon the iPod Touch chassis with a phone positioned Microphone.
Plenty of us could replace landline phones with OTT Telephony over IP as well as many businesses that use them. My Hospital has adopted IP phones for certain staff and they work very well on the secured in house network.
Seems Apple could make more than a few enterprise sales with an IP iPhone.
Good to hear. Some of us do not work in an office and are constantly on the go and the smaller size is perfect for that. Besides I use my current 5s as an ipod at the gym and while jogging. I like the smaller size and it would compliment the watch.
My second phone will be the 6 plus/ipad mini replacement, the 4″ 7 will my primary phone.
If true then the old saying that one cannot teach an elephant tap dancing holds good. It is unfortunate that Apple has become an elephant and takes its own sweet time to turn around.
Other companies have too many products and are faltering, in case of apple they have too many variants of a particular product and are still ahead because of the amazing momentum built up under Steve Jobs. Apple needs to cut down the variants and ship the best in class product. That is what they stood for. 56 iPad variants, 35 iPhone variants and half a dozen more in developing markets is not being the best, it is being stupid and greedy. Apple watches, seriously is just an ego trip just like Nokia or Blackberry reacted when iPhone was launched. I surely am not excited about apple product launches like I was just a couple of years ago and am ready to get off.
Ok
“am ready to get off”
Have fun in Winblows and Androcrap land. Don’t let the door hit you… etc. etc.
Geez.. I knew people would understand, nice when that happens.
actually, if you’re talking about future usage, the best combination would be:
a voice (phone call) enabled watch + iPad Mini
If any 4″ (32 or 64 Go) iPhone comes around in 2017, i’ll definitely go for it and give my 5s to my wife, who’ll give her 5 to my son, who’ll sell his 5c to a friend, who will dump his Samsung… 😀
While I understand that the watch is a different beastie, I still find it ironically amusing that MDN has gone from being gung-ho on a large screen phone, to wanting a small screen phone because a tiny screen watch makes the large screen unnecessary.
Dyed-in-the-wool Apple lambs may think themselves fiercely independent, but they respond emotionally to the shepherd’s call.
It isn’t any different with politics or any group what-have-you. There will be talking points. There will be persuasive sermons. There will be social benefits. There will be a semblance of rational thought and decision-making but in the end it will come down to instincts and group conditioning.