High expectations ahead of today's Apple's iPhone 5 event

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Reuters


The new iPhone 5 has to be more than just another smartphone as it carries the weight of Apple Inc.'s future on its slim frame.

Five years after the first iPhone upended the mobile industry, analysts say Apple is looking increasingly defensive as Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd and other rivals have been first to market with phones that sport bigger screens or run on faster wireless networks.

Apple will try to close that gap on Wednesday with the unveiling of the newest iPhone, which is widely expected to offer 4G wireless technology for the first time, and a 4-inch display, up from the current 3.5 inches.

But it remains to be seen if Chief Executive Tim Cook has any surprises up his sleeve, and if he will show off any technological breakthroughs that can put the iPhone 5 head and shoulders above the competition.

"They have been in the crosshairs of a lot of companies for a long, long time," Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said.

"They were the upstarts before," he added. "Now they are more in a defensive role."

Apple shares typically rally ahead of, and sell off after, a major product launch. They have gained 15 percent in the past six weeks to touch an all-time high on Monday.

Apple has grappled with competitive pressure since the first iPhone in 2007, though its rivals have changed as former market leaders such as Canada's Research in Motion or Finland's Nokia struggle, and as Asian powerhouse Samsung has come to the fore.

While no one company has yet been able to match Apple's seamless integration of hardware and software, Google Inc's Android has become the most-used mobile operating system in the world, and Samsung has the lead in device sales.

Wednesday's iPhone 5 launch also comes days after Nokia unwrapped its first phone to run the latest Microsoft Windows software, intended to spearhead a new family of devices.

"It is getting tougher to expand the market share," Gartner Research analyst Carolina Milanesi said.

The iPhone contributes half of Apple's revenue and the majority of its profit, so Cook needs to dazzle both Wall Street and consumers. He is praised for having sustained Apple's breakneck pace of growth since taking over last year, but the jury is still out on whether he has the innovation and marketing genius of the late Steve Jobs in the long run, analysts said.

Weekly options are implying about a 3 percent move for shares up or down between Monday and the close of trading Friday, a marginal fluctuation, said TD Ameritrade chief strategist J.J. Kinahan.

Even though few tech experts expect the new iPhone to mark a sea change in smartphone hardware technology, Wall Street analysts are still expecting Apple to sell 10 million to 12 million phones in September alone.

APPLE'S WORLD

Apple's selling proposition against Android has long been a combination of a sleek hardware design, smooth integration of content between various Apple devices, and larger ecosystem of applications, music, games and other media that are not available or transferable to rival devices.

While Android is open and has a free-for-all approach, Apple's closed system ensures consistency and drives consumer loyalty, which in turn provides incentive to all-important developers to continue to invest in the platform.

But some developers say it's difficult for new apps to stand out among the half-million or so applications in Apple's store vying for attention. Others say they are also eyeing with great interest the emergence of Amazon.com Inc's Kindle Fire, an attractive option because of its iPhone-like ease of payment.

"The biggest single event is when there is a new iPhone," said Ben Liu, chief operating officer of mobile gamemaker Pocket Gems, which owns popular iPhone games like Tap Zoo. Developing for Apple's platform is attractive because of the "stickiness" and "interoperability between all of Apple's devices," he added.

Apple telegraphed many of the software changes to expect in iPhone 5 when it debuted iOS 6, its latest mobile operating system, in June.

The new iPhone will improve on the search capabilities of its Siri voice assistant and will use Apple's own mobile mapping service instead of Google's software. Other additions include turn-by-turn voice directions for navigation, and a new in-house app called "Passbook" that organizes a user's electronic airline tickets, movie tickets and restaurant loyalty cards.

Most of the attention on Wednesday will thus revolve around hardware advancements such as dimensions and screen quality.

In addition to a bigger screen, the new iPhone will come with a 19-pin connector port, instead of the proprietary 30-pin port, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters in July.
Copyright © 2012, Reuters
 

jap

Banned
Apr 6, 2012
542
1
0
Phone 5: 112 grams (20 percent lighter than 4s), 7.6 mm (18 percent thinner), 4-inch display (up from 3.5 inches), 1136x640 pixel resolution (up from 960x640), a fifth row of icons on the screen, 44 percent more color saturation, LTE network compatible, available on Verizon/Sprint/ATT, processor and graphics are 2x faster (new A6 chip).

Battery: will "exceed battery life of the iPhone 4s." 8 hours talk time, 8 hours browsing, 10 hours wifi browsing, 10 hours video, 40 hours music, 225 hours standby.

Camera: 8 mp, 3264x2448 resolution, f/2.4 aperture, 25% smaller, improved low-light quality, panorama feature, 1080p HD video, front-facing Facetime camera updated (720p) and face detection, improved mics and speakers,

Dock and connector:
New connector is called Lightning, 8 pin, reversible (adaptor available for current connector).

Pricing: $199 (on contract) for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, $399 for 64GB. Pre-order Sept. 14, ships Sept. 21. iPhone 4 will be free (8GB), 4s will be $99 (16GB).

iOS 6 adds Apple's own map app, with turn-by-turn directions and a new 'flyover' satellite view. A smarter version of Siri, too. iOS 6 comes out Sept. 19. Will work on iPhone 4, 4s, 3GS, new iPad, iPad 2 and 4th generation iPod Touch.

iTunes 11 makes it easier to manage playlists. Adds a "coming next" button to change the song queue quickly.

iPods
iPod Nano: 5.4 mm thin, 2.5-inch display, new Lightning connector, fitness features built in, Bluetooth, widescreen video.

iPod Touch: 4-inch Retina display (up from 3.5 inches), 88 grams (down from 101 grams), A5 processor, 7x faster, 5mp iSight camera (with Panorama feature), available in five colors. New headphones called Earpods (available now and will come with new iPhones and iPods).

iPod shuffle is $49 for 2GB. iPod nano is $149 for 16GB. iPod touch is $199 (16GB) $249 (32GB), $299 (32 GB) and $399 (64GB).
 

MadFloyd

Member Sponsor
May 30, 2010
3,076
774
1,700
Mass
Anyone impressed?
 

Keith_W

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2012
1,024
95
970
Melbourne, Australia
www.whatsbestforum.com
The first all-new iPhone design since 2010 ... and it looks like an elongated iPhone 4, minus the glass back. Has Jon Ive decided to take a nice long holiday after the iPhone 4?

For the hardware: still no NFC. Screen still too small. Finally gets LTE. Oh, and nice new dock connector and another new SIM standard (Apple only so far). Good points: it is incredibly thin and very light. And being Apple, it will be very well built. New CPU is a bit of an unknown quantity - we won't know how good it is until we see the benchmarks. The new Earpods? They look interesting, but the aftermarket earphone market is saturated with very good products. Not sure if it has GLONASS but probably not.

For the software: no Google maps. Enjoy your Apple maps guys :) Also, no face recognition unlock, no live wallpapers, no skins, no widgets, no shortcuts, can not customize gestures, still unable to change default apps, still the same keyboard (wait till you see Swype), and still the same look as the original iPhone. I am not sure if the phone still relies on iTunes for activation and updates? The competition automatically syncs with the cloud, no PC required at all. Oh, and I can plug my non-iOS phone into any computer, no drivers or special software required, and use it as a USB stick or modem. Not sure if iOS can do that.

Nice marketing at the launch ... it's so well made, so perfect, so engineered, so ... just ... so ... splendiferous!!! I wonder where that Foxconn CEO who was boasting that the iPhone 5 would blow the Galaxy S3 out of the water is hiding right now. Oh yes ... then there are all the people on the forum who said "just wait for the next iPhone!". Well, it's here. And it is really underwhelming. I almost feel sympathy for iOS fans :)
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
Anyone impressed?
I was going to write a long answer and then saw this article: http://www.zdnet.com/i-miss-apples-reality-distortion-field-7000004165/

I miss Apple's reality distortion field
Summary: Without Apple's patented reality distortion field, the company launches a new iPhone 5, but resembles many other tech companies.


Apple's iPhone 5 launch with new iPods and an iTunes overhaul highlights the new era at the company that revolves around incremental updates, design prowess, and control of an entire user experience. But something is missing: The Steve Jobs reality distortion field.

Jobs' showmanship was brilliant. He could take an incremental update---or a feature that has been seen somewhere else before---and make you think it was brilliant, amazing and beautiful. I knew it was a game, but it was one I played willingly. I'm going through Apple keynote withdrawal.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if Amazon does better Apple keynotes than Apple does. This riff isn't a knock on Apple per se, but discipline is lacking. First, Apple saw most of its iPhone 5 features leaked ahead of time. Then, there's a question of editing. Would Jobs have combined an iPhone 5, iPod and iTunes revamp, which happens to resemble Microsoft's Zune service, in one shindig?

Probably not.

Without the showmanship and Jobs' reality distortion field these Apple announcements look like really nice upgrades---for Apple users. A 4-inch screen is nice, but I already have one on my Android device. LTE is nice too, but I have that already. Apple execs today don't have me salivating over the iPhone 5. Jobs would have told me I had to give a crap and I would have.

The mesmerization routine is gone. Apple has solid engineering and gave you the iPhone you should have had last year.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will tell you that the company is firing on all cylinders. And it is. Apple's reality distortion field isn't at 100 percent these days, but the financials are. Apple's lock on an ecosystem is in place too. And oh by the way Apple will sell a zillion iPhone 5 devices around the world.

Cook said at Apple's powwow via CNET:

When you look at each of these, they are incredible industry leading innovations by themselves. But what sets them apart, and what puts Apple way out ahead of the competition is how they work so well together. Only Apple could create such amazing software hardware and services and put them together into such a powerful, integrated solution. Apple has never been stronger, and that's because of the dedication of our employees... they are doing the best work of their lives.

Cook is right to some degree, but he said the one word that makes me cringe: Solution. The word "solution" is what enterprise vendors say all day long. Solution is the word companies to sell you an integrated stack of stuff. Jobs would have never used a word like solution. Solution didn't sell and wasn't magical. "Solution" is used when you can't put in English what your products actually do. In Apple's messaging a word like solution is the equivalent of lobbing a nuclear missile into a force field. Perhaps the force field---reality distortion field in Apple's case---holds, but it'll be damaged."


Combine this with the fact that everything was leaked, this indeed marks a new era for Apple.
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
Looks like sentiments are the same across the board: http://www.zdnet.com/iphone-5-annou...-google-breathes-a-sigh-of-relief-7000004160/

"iPhone 5 announced... Android users yawn... Google breathes a sigh of relief

It's finally here. An iPhone with 4G LTE. Great new video and still photo features. Turn-by-turn directions. Bigger and thinner. Better performance. And the corners are still round (take that, Samsung!). All of which amounts to a big "meh" for the legions of Android superphone users and even for those who have opted for inexpensive Android devices.

Also check out CNET's live coverage of the announcement.
Don't get me wrong. This isn't anti-Apple FUD. My iPad rocks, I'm lusting after a new Retina MacBook Pro (my current MBP is getting a bit long in the tooth), and, given the choice, I'd have an iMac in my bedroom instead of a TV. Apple is going to sell a bajillion of these new iPhones and it's a solid upgrade, especially for anyone who has been riding out a contract on an iPhone 3 or 4. I guarantee my oldest son will be first in line to trade in his iPhone 4 the minute they go on sale, as will countless Apple faithful.

But, unlike the iPad, which has major advantages over 10" Android tablets because of its huge app ecosystem, Retina Display, and aggressive pricing, there is nothing announced today that will make the Android users who have driven Google's mobile OS to market dominance run out, break their contracts, and switch to an iPhone. As CNET's Scott Stein puts it,

Here's the question: which is the killer feature? It feels like the iPhone 5 is more of an overall refinement and re-engineering, as well as offering speed boosts across the board (4G, A6)
One thing that might give Google pause? The iPhone 4 is now free with a contract, meaning that Android OEMs will need to work harder for the low end of the market. However, there are plenty of great free Android phones, too.


Does Google need to keep pushing the envelope on Android? Improving performance? Improving the user experience? Sort out fragmentation issues and start strongarming OEMs and carriers to push updates faster? Get displays that can match the iPhone's Retina display? Keep driving down prices so it can still compete on both price and features? Keep building out its app and entertainment offerings? Keep advancing its own ecosystem around Google Apps, Google Voice, NFC/Wallet, etc.?

Sure it does, but we knew that. So does Google.

What we also know is that the new iPhone is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Google has a few months to breathe and introduce its own new revolutionary features in Android and prepare for the next big innovation from Apple.
 

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