“Apple Inc. plans to break with its recent pattern of overhauling the design of its flagship iPhone every two years and make only subtle changes in the models it will release this fall, according to people familiar with the matter,” Daisuke Wakabayashi and Eva Dou report for The Wall Street Journal. “Among other things, those people said, Apple’s newest phones will maintain the current 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays.”
“The biggest planned change in this year’s phones is the removal of the headphone plug, which will make the phone thinner and improve its water resistance, said people with that matter,” Wakabayashi and Dou report. “The Lightning connector will serve double-duty as a port for charging the phone and for connecting headphones, they said. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said he expects the new iPhone, without the headphone plug, to be one millimeter thinner than the current iPhone.”
“Apple plans bigger design changes for 2017, the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone,” Wakabayashi and Dou report. “Those changes could include an edge-to-edge organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, screen and eliminating the home button by building the fingerprint sensor into the display, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“In the past, Apple has introduced new iPhones on a ‘ticktock’ cycle. Apple delivers major design changes every other year—the ‘tick’ years — followed by software improvements and hardware refinements in the ‘tock’ years,” Wakabayashi and Dou report. “It isn’t clear whether this year’s shift is a temporary or permanent departure from this pattern.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Maybe they should name them the iPhone 6ss and the 6ss Plus? Step right up and get yer “Six Excess” and the “Six Excess Plus! We’ve got plenty of stock!”
We believe the iPhone 7 series will be more compelling than described in this WSJ report.
That said: Death to the S!
Apple should strive to execute annual iPhone updates, in three display sizes if the SE is successful (which we think it will be), and drop the off-year “S” model concept. Apple is certainly big enough and rich enough to do a new iPhone family each and every year. Apple should have killed the tock year “S” model idea years ago.
What’s happened with iPhone is painfully obvious: Apple was at least a year (more likely two years) late with properly-sized iPhones. When iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus finally, blessedly materialized, buyers quite literally stampeded to get them. Then, when faced with such a “tough compare” this year, Apple was still sticking with their ill-conceived “S” model concept – making the tough compare much, much tougher.
The “iPhone 7” family – three models with the same case design and all with 3D Touch — comprised of the 4-inch iPhone 7 SE, the 4.7-inch iPhone 7, and the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus — should have debuted last September. That would have taken care of the current tough compare with iPhone 6/Plus. Then, this year, the iPhone 8 family, again with a new case design, but now waterproof, with dual cameras, etc. would debut this September. In 2017, perhaps Liquidmetal and AMOLED will be ready go for the iPhone 9. Etcetera. No more “S” years, Apple. Duh.
Had Apple done as we’ve just described, they’d have sold millions more iPhone units this year and millions upon millions more each year going forward.
Apple’s raison d’être is to delight customers. “S” model “tock” year iPhones do not delight customers in the same way as new “tick” year models. Obviously. They’re still the best smartphones on the planet, but they’re just okay. A bit of a meh. We all know that “S” models exist so Apple can wring out nice margins from existing designs and tooling, not expressly to delight customers. When Apple strays from its main goal is when things get wobbly. Just delight customers, Apple, and the world will beat a path to your door.
If we didn’t work for MacDailyNews, we’d have skipped the iPhone 6s Plus and held onto our iPhone 6 Plus units with no qualms – and we’re the most rabid Day One iPhone buyers you’ll ever find.
Why have an annual iPhone upgrade program, if you’re not going to wow us annually with new iPhones? — MacDailyNews, April 12, 2016
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Apple, enough with the stupid iPhone ‘S’ naming already.
iPhone “S” years usher in hugely significant features, such as oleophobic displays, significant GPU improvements, world phone capability, Siri personal assistant, video stabilization, panorama photos, 64-bit processors, TD-LTE support, Touch ID, and 3D Touch, among other improvements and additions. Each year’s iPhone deserves its own number. By not doing so, Apple is shooting itself in the foot; handicapping iPhones with an “S” every other year. Why Tim Cook or Phil Schiller haven’t put an end to this stupid – yes, stupid – “S” naming is inexplicable. Why don’t you just name it “iPhone No Big Deal This Year,” Tim and Phil?
Here’s what you say onstage and in the press release when there’s no “iPhone 7s” and you jump directly from iPhone 7 to iPhone 8: “The improvements are such that the new iPhone deserves its own number.” Period. Done. Mission accomplished. It’s your naming convention, Apple, and you can correct your stupid mistake at any time. — MacDailyNews, September 16, 2015
SEE ALSO:
Apple likely moving iPhone to a one year redesign cycle – June 16, 2016
Survey: Consumers are more excited about Apple’s ‘iPhone 7’ than they were for iPhone 6s – May 4, 2016