Presumably, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) will be unable to convince consumers that the iPhone 6s, rumored to be released this week, will be better enough than the iPhone 6 to generate mammoth sales. The concern is reflected in Apple’s share price. Apple might have to hang on until it can build an iPhone 7 with revolutionary features.
Source: courtesy of Apple Inc.
The press has made a number of assumptions about the iPhone 6s. It may be a bit thicker than the iPhone 6, which will allow it to be “bendable.” Why this feature is attractive is difficult to understand. Smartphones have always been rigid. A device that will bend a millimeter or two does not qualify as a quantum leap. Neither does the better camera the iPhone 6s is supposed to have. Very few consumers can tell the difference between an excellent smartphone and one that is more excellent, unless it is much more excellent.
The iPhone 6s may come in a rose gold color. That might be attractive, but will people pay a few hundred dollars to buy it, or order new cellular service plans as a means to upgrade?
Even the “Apple press” reports that changes will be modest. Editors of MacWorld wrote:
Apple’s next-generation iPhone is expected to be an iterative upgrade, mainly improving cameras and performance while incorporating upgrades from other products, such as Force Touch.
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Also:
iPhone 6s is expected to include pressure-sensitive Force Touch technology borrowed from Apple Watch and MacBook multitouch trackpads, a first for the smartphone line. This allows new control options, like invoking contextual menu pop-ups, depending on the force applied to a screen press.
So, what would the iPhone 7 need to have? A camera as good as the standalone ones sold by companies such as Minolta. It has a mid-range product that costs $200. It works better in poor lighting than the current iPhone does. It has “half-stop increments” and is an industry leader among modest-priced cameras for allowing users to make a series of settings in advance of shooting.
The iPhone 7 will need better speakers, perhaps ones that pop out from the side. These will have to be as good as the Bose Soundline speaker III. This has a price of $300 and allows for an iPhone plug-in for music, which sharply improves the quality of the sound. Apple will need to have an iPhone 7 with speaker quality that does not require buying a Bose product or something similar.
As for Siri, the new version will need to do better than just finding a dog pound in the area. It will have to, at least, tell an owner how to land a 747 in bad weather conditions.
The iPhone 6s will not show that Apple has moved rapidly ahead of the balance of the smartphone field. It will need to do better with the iPhone 7.
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