In an ambitious blitz of new products, Apple Inc. AAPL -0.04% unveiled a pair of larger-screen iPhones, a sleekly designed smartwatch and a new payment systemallowing users to make store purchases with a smartphone.
The new iPhones will have 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays, larger than its current four-inch screen. Apple said it expects the new phones—to be called iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus—to go on sale on Sept. 19.
"Today, we are launching the biggest advancement in the history of iPhone," Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said.
Apple said it plans to sell the larger 5.5-inch model starting at $299 with a two-year carrier contract, higher than the $199 price for its current high-end iPhone 5S. The company said the 4.7-inch iPhone will start at $199 with a contract.
The company said the new phones come with many hardware improvements, including a sharper display, better battery life and improved camera performance.
The most noticeable upgrade for phones is the larger displays. Apple has stuck with a smaller display for its iPhone, even as competitors started making larger screens a standard feature for high-end phones. The feature is especially popular in China and other emerging markets where the smartphone is replacing the PC as the primary computing device.
The absence of a large screen was becoming a liability for Apple as it tried to maintain its dominant hold on the high-end smartphone market. Phones with screens larger than 5 inches accounted for nearly 40% of global smartphone shipments in the second quarter, up from 21% a year earlier, according to market researcher Canalys.
Apple's main smartphone rival Samsung Electronics Co. has pushed aggressively into larger-size smartphones, using the bigger screen as a key differentiator from the iPhone. For smartphones with screens of 5 inches or larger, Samsung is the leader, with 34% of the market, according to Canalys.
Apple pushed the price of its high-end iPhone higher, even as other manufacturers feel pricing pressure on smartphones. Apple's iPhone is already more expensive than nearly all of its competitors. Before the price increase, research firm IDC estimated that the world-wide average selling price of an iPhone will be $657 this year, compared with $254 for phones using Google Inc.'s Android operating system.
The price increase comes as U.S. carriers wean customers off upfront discounts that masked the real price of the iPhone. Instead, carriers are pushing subscribers to pay the full price of the iPhone in installments. This approach, however, could help Apple in the short term because subscribers can get new phones without paying any money down.
In a note published on Friday, Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimated that the new iPhones will sell 182 million units in Apple's fiscal year starting in October, marking an estimated 9% increase from the prior year. Mr. Sacconaghi said he expects a "more pronounced upgrade cycle with the iPhone 6 than Apple has seen historically."
The iPhone announcement comes as Apple is trying to prove that it can still deliver the type of groundbreaking products that vaulted it from the brink of bankruptcy to become the world's most valuable company by market capitalization. It established itself as a leading innovator by redefining the mobile phone in 2007 with the iPhone, and the tablet computer in 2010 with the iPad.
Apple also unveiled its first wearable device—a smartwatch—accompanied by new services around health care, home automation and digital payments. It is the type of new-product wave that Apple fans have been waiting for since Mr. Cook succeeded Steve Jobs in August 2011.
By revealing new hardware products together with service offerings, Apple is trying to show how it can create experiences that can't easily be replicated by competitors, to keep users loyal at a time when Google's Android mobile-operating system runs about 85% of smartphones.
Mr. Cook started raising expectations for a wave of new products in October 2013, when he told investors they would see "some exciting new products from us in the fall of this year and across 2014." In April, he said he felt "really great" about forthcoming products. Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president in charge of online services, recently said Apple has the "best product pipeline" he's seen in 25 years at the company.
Source : via wsj.com
Source : via wsj.com
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