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When Apple launches its much-anticipated 10th anniversary iPhone this fall, it will offer an unwitting lesson in how much the smartphone industry that it pioneered, has matured.
The new iPhone is rumoured to include new features such as high-resolution displays, wireless charging and 3-D sensors.
Apple’s relatively slow adoption of new features both reflects and re-inforces the fact that smartphone customers are holding onto their phones longer.
Old version in use
Timothy Arcuri, an analyst at Cowen & Co, believes more than 40 per cent of iPhones in the market are more than two years old, a historical high.
That is a big reason why investors have driven Apple shares to an all-time high. There is pent-up demand for a new iPhone, even if it does not offer breakthrough technologies.
It is not clear whether Apple deliberately held off on packing some new features into the current iPhone 7, which has been criticised for a lack of differentiation from its predecessors.
Still, the development and roll-out of the anniversary iPhone suggests Apple’s product strategy is driven less by technological innovation than by consumer upgrade cycles and Apple’s own business and marketing needs.
Apple is close-mouthed about upcoming product features, but analysts and reports from Asian component suppliers and others indicate that high-resolution displays based on OLED technology – possibly with curved edges – are likely to be part of the anniversary phone. A radical new design is not expected, according to analysts.
Some of the anticipated new technologies, notably wireless charging, remain messy. Samsung Electronics phones, for example, feature wireless charging but support two different sets of standards – Qi and the AirFuel.
Apple recently joined the group backing Qi. But there are still at least five different groups working on wireless charging technology within Apple, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
As to 3-D sensors, there is already one hiding in the iPhone7. The front camera features what is known as a time-of-flight sensor, which helps it autofocus and is used in numerous phones including the Blackberry, according to techInsights, a firm that examines the chips inside tech devices. That sensor could be upgraded to a higher-resolution version that could handle 3-D mapping for facial recognition, said Jim Morrison, Vice-President at techInsights.
Some analysts also speculate the company could remove the phone’s home button, placing it and a fingerprint sensor beneaththe front display glass, based on patents the company has filed.
Slow growth
Global smartphone sales were up only 2.3 per cent to 1.47 billion units in 2016, according to IDC. Apple will likely make a heavy marketing push around the 10th anniversary. In 2015, the last year it disclosed the figure, Apple spent $1.8 billion on advertising, up 50 per cent from the year before and nearly four times the $467 million it spent in 2007 when it first released the iPhone.
And the company continues to excel at selling higher-priced phones. Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri attributed the most recent quarter’s record-setting 78.3 million iPhones sold to the iPhone 7 Plus, which for the first time included a new dual camera feature not found in other models.
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