“The new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus hit stores on Friday, with dozens of people – and a robot – queueing in Sydney to kick off a global sales cycle that will be scrutinized for signs of how much juice Apple Inc’s marquee product has left,” Pauline Askin and Julia Love report for Reuters.
“Analysts expect 12 million to 13 million phones to fly off the shelves in the first weekend, up from more than 10 million last year when the hugely successful iPhone 6’s launch was delayed in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market,” Askin and Love report. “Among the first to pick up the new iPhone 6s in a cold, rainy Sydney was a telepresence robot named Lucy, operated by marketing executive Lucy Kelly. ‘I obviously have my work and other things to attend to and can’t spend two days lining up so my boss at work suggested I take one of the robots down and use it to stand in my place,’ she said via an iPad mounted on top of the wheeled robot.”
“Fans from San Francisco to London to Sydney have camped out for days prior to the release, and Apple said earlier this month that pre-orders suggested sales were on pace to beat last year’s first-weekend performance,” Askin and Love report. “After a dramatic redesign last year in which Apple enlarged the iPhone’s screen and added mobile payments, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus boast more modest improvements.”
MacDailyNews Take: Wrong, actually, but Apple brings this upon themselves by naming the product as if it’s a mere iteration. 3D Touch is not a “modest improvement.” It can be argued that 3D Touch is the biggest leap to come to iPhones since the iPhone was launched. All other iPhones are immediately rendered antiquated by the launch 3D Touch iPhone 6s/Plus.
“The only thing that’s changed is everything (so let’s not name it to reflect that fact; let’s instead handicap it and our marketing efforts by misnaming it as if pretty much nothing has changed. That way we can ‘bristle’ when we repeatedly read and hear misinformation like ‘the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus boast more modest improvements.'”
“Lackluster offerings this year from rival smartphone manufacturer Samsung Electronics Co Ltd also will help Apple stand out in the marketplace, analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy wrote in an email,” Askin and Love report. “‘Over the long haul, the 6s will eclipse the 6 as Apple is even more competitive versus Samsung in emerging regions and is gaining share in traditional regions,’ Moorhead wrote in an email. ‘Samsung didn’t bring a whole lot of compelling features to consumers with their new lines of phones.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Did you get yours, yet?
SEE ALSO:
The Pixar iPhone: It is time to start questioning the iPhone ‘S’ cycle – September 21, 2015
Apple, enough with the stupid iPhone ‘S’ naming already – September 16, 2015