Morgan Stanley is predicting in an investor note that around 10% of those who own an iPhone 5 or later will buy an Apple Watch, generating first year sales of around 30M – right at the top end of the 10-30M range suggested by other analysts.
While predicting likely sales of a new product category is always a rather shaky undertaking, and sales of competitor smartwatches may not prove a reliable guide, Morgan Stanley thinks there is one clue to how well the Apple Watch might sell: the precedent set by the iPad … Expand Expanding Close
The Stance compact tripod, Kenu’s latest accessory for iPhone, is one of my favorite gadgets I’ve tried out lately. It’s a tiny, pocketable stand for holding up your iPhone during video recording, FaceTime calling, and more. The Kenu Stance attaches to your iPhone or iPod touch by connecting to the Lightning port where you charge your phone, and it locks in securely for standing up iPhone in either landscape or portrait orientation. Check out my hands-on with the Kenu Stance below… Expand Expanding Close
Cydia creator Jay Freeman (better known as Saurik) has tweeted that the Pangu jailbreak for iOS 8.0 to 8.1 is now “stable enough” for use.
We first saw a developer version of the jailbreak last month, with a user version released a week later, complete with Cydia installer. The installer is Windows-only, but it’s an untethered jailbreak, so once it’s done you won’t need to reconnect to a PC following a reboot … Expand Expanding Close
Apple has released a nice update for the developer-focused iTunes Connect app today. Besides iPhone 6 and 6 Plus support (finally), developers can now login to the app using the Touch ID fingerprint reader on the iPhone and new iPads. This should make it even quicker for developers to check their app submission status and upload new information to their iTunes Store pages. The update is free… on the App Store.
Analysts are predicting that Apple (AAPL) will announce record sales and earnings in today’s fiscal Q4 (calendar Q3) earnings call, reports Fortune.
I’ve got the collected fiscal Q4 estimates of 33 Apple analysts — 21 professionals and 12 amateurs. They are all to a man (and one woman) predicting record Q4 sales and earnings (up 7.1% and 11.9%, respectively).
The analysts also expect earnings per share to be up 12% year-on-year, to $1.32 … Expand Expanding Close
Long-standing complaints that the 2011 MacBook Pro suffered from a manufacturing fault resulting in GPU glitches and failures don’t appear to be going away, as an online petition calling for Apple to fix or replace affected machines reaches more than 18,000 signatures.
To: Timothy D. Cook, Apple Inc
Craig Federighi (Apple Inc) (Apple Inc), Apple Inc
Replace or Fix All 2011 Macbook Pro with Graphics Failure
The petition notes the premium spent to buy Apple laptops, and says that Apple’s only response to date has been to ask owners to pay for an extremely expensive logic board replacement … Expand Expanding Close
Apple’s iTunes Store has just made a little bit of a slip-up (and with perfect uncanny timing): screenshots for the iOS 8.1 iPad user guide have just appeared within iBooks and include Apple’s upcoming iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3. Of course, Apple will be formally debuting these devices tomorrow.
The screenshots confirm that both new tablets will include nearly identical designs to their predecessors and the addition of Touch ID sensors in the Home button. Another new feature confirmed by this leak is a new Burst Mode (first introduced with the iPhone 5s) for the iPad Air 2 (image below).
These images also indicate that the new tablets will be named “iPad Air 2” and “iPad mini 3,” which means that Apple will bringing the numbering scheme for names back to the iPad lineup. Of course, the presence of this user guide means iOS 8.1 (with Apple Pay) is likely to drop tomorrow, too.
Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty has added AAPL to its Best Ideas list of investments, saying that increased margins from iPhone 6 sales see the stock “set for significant upside.”
While Credit Suisse had earlier suggested that margins on the iPhone 6 would be lower than that of the iPhone 5s and 5c, Huberty says that numerous sources are suggesting that more people this time are opting for the middle storage tier, thus pushing up both average selling price and margins … Expand Expanding Close
Ahead of next Thursday’s Apple event, new images purportedly showing parts for the new, full-sized iPad have emerged. Photos re-published by blog apple.club.twshow a full logic board for the new iPad Air as well as parts for the new Home button, glass screen cover, and audio control components. At first glance, the new iPad Air logic board does not reveal too much new, but adjusting the colors of the image shows a fairly unexpected addition: an A8X system-on-a-chip:
To address these claims, several different phones were tested under up to 150 pounds of pressure to see when each model would stop “snapping back” to its original shape. The devices tested were the iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 5, HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and LG G3.
Apple has finally released the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and that means tons of new buyers are now becoming sellers—of their old phones. While it probably would have been best to sell that device a month ago to maximize its value, some people just didn’t have that luxury. The good news, though, is that many merchants are still offering very decent trade in values. My good condition 16 GB iPhone 5 falls between $150 and $200 depending on where I look.
One of those merchants is Amazon, which is claiming values up to $400 for a top condition iPhone 5s. Interestingly, it looks like device trades are really picking up, with the official Amazon tech deals Twitter saying that they’re seeing as many as two iPhone trade ins per minute. If you want to join the ranks among those who are grabbing a couple of benjamins for an old iPhone, head over to Amazon’s trade in page to start the process.
If anyone has more interest than its owner in how well a phone survives accidents, it’s the insurance companies that have to fork out afterwards. iDevice warranty specialists SquareTrade put the iPhone 6 through a series of breakability tests, and found that it was the toughest iPhone yet.
The tests began with ‘grippability’ – how likely you are to drop the phone in the first place – then ran through slide tests, submersion in water and a series of six drops from a height of four feet … Expand Expanding Close
Similar gaskets surround the volume buttons. Altogether, this seems to represent a move toward increased water/dust resistance, and therefore improved durability.
iFixit
How did Apple do? Well iPhone warranty provider Squaretrade was able to dunk both the 6 and 6 Plus for 10 seconds without any real damage. While this is indeed nice to have, especially for those of us who like to take our iPhones with us to the pool, it is by no means a guarantee like Samsung and Sony have on some of their phones.
And then there is the toilet. If you are willing to go after your iPhone 6 within a few seconds, you might actually have a good chance at saving it.
The slightly amphibious nature of the iPhone 6 isn’t entirely new either. Previous iPhones have been able to go underwater for a few seconds (see iPhone 5c below) but as you can see buttons and features rapidly begin to fail. Expand Expanding Close
Reuters is reporting that Apple has now received one of the two licences needed to allow it to sell the iPhone 6 in China. There is no word yet on the second licence required before the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus can be launched in this hugely important market.
Apple Inc’s iPhone 6 received regulatory approval for use on domestic frequencies but still requires one more critical licence before it may be sold in the country, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday […]
Apple still needs to obtain a critical network access licence for the iPhone, after which sales may begin, Xinhua said …
Credit Suisse analysts have estimated that Apple is making a smaller margin on the iPhone 6 than on any previous model – but predicts that the impact will be offset by year-on-year revenue growth of 14 percent, reports Quartz.
The iPhone 6 costs Apple $350.60 to produce, all in. Apple typically receives $599 on the retail price of $649, leaving it with $248.40 in gross profit. That’s 41.5%. Still very healthy, but not at the levels of previous models.
In contrast, the iPhone 5s left Apple with $274.30, giving it a 45.8% margin. The two-year-old iPhone 5 gave Apple $293.70 per unit, or 49% …
The WSJ revealed some iPhone 6 production numbers as Foxconn struggles to meet demand from pre-orders: the company is operating around 100 production lines around the clock, has 200,000 workers dedicated to production of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus – and is manufacturing 540,000 units a day.
“We have been churning out 140,000 iPhone 6 Plus and 400,000 iPhone 6 every day, the highest daily output ever, but the volume is still not enough to meet the preorders,” said a person familiar with the matter …
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will finally be available to the public this Friday, September 19th, but early reviews of the two new devices have gone live this evening from several publications. The iPhone 6 is the biggest iPhone yet, coming in with a 4.7-inch display, while the iPhone 6 Plus packs an even larger 5.5-inch panel. Both of the models feature “Retina HD” displays. The internals of the devices have also been upgraded to include a new second generation 64-bit A8 chip that Apple claims is 25% faster CPU-wise than ever before and 50% faster graphically.
Bloomberg is quoting a report from the major Chinese business paper 21st Century Business Herald that the iPhone 6 may not go on sale in China this year due to regulatory delays. Apple was unable to confirm a launch date in the country.
Apple may have to wait until next year to get approval for new iPhones in China after failing to reach agreement with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology this month, the 21st Century Business Herald reported today, citing an unidentified person close to Apple.
Carolyn Wu, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Apple, said she couldn’t provide a date for the China release. “China is a key market for us and we will get here as soon as possible,” Wu said in an e-mail today …
Apple Pay is likely going to turn out to be one of the most interesting new services the Cupertino corporation announced today, but with the obvious lack of an NFC chip in the older generation iPhone models, many are going to have to upgrade to the new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus to take advantage of it in-store. But if you just recently purchased an iPhone 5s, for exmaple, it appears that Apple is offering a different way to use Apple Pay—and it’s coming in the form of the Apple Watch early next year.
As you can see in the photo above from Apple’s website, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are listed as the two devices that are capable of doing Apple Pay payments by themselves. But the Apple Watch, which was also announced today, will apparently do the job even if you have the iPhone 5 or 5c. How? Apple says you “just double-click the button below the Digital Crown and hold the face of your Apple Watch near the contactless reader.”
While we seem to know all about the features in the new iPhone and the new design, something still left up in the Air are the names of the new phones. While some have long-referred to the new devices as the “iPhone 6” or the “iPhone Air,” no outright claims have been made about the names until a new report today. According to Macotakara, the 4.7-inch model will be known as “iPhone 6” while the 5.5-inch version will be called the “iPhone 6 Plus.” Apple has not used the “Plus” suffix for a product since the “Mac Plus“, so that would be a first for an iOS device. iLounge first presented the Plus name as a possibility in January 2013. This naming convention does not seem incredibly likely, but Macotakara did indeed accurately predict the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c names last fall. Leaning toward iPhone 6 being at least one of the two names is that the camera data shared by the “reviewer” of leaked 4.7-inch iPhone 6 hardware refers to the device as the iPhone 6.
In the final run-up to the official launch of the iPhone 6, we’ve been seeing a number of videos of what appear to be the real thing. With just one day to go, Miaopai has just posted no fewer than 17 short videos claiming to show the Chinese version of the iPhone 6 in use.
We don’t learn anything from them we didn’t already know, but they do give a sense of what the size of the 4.7-inch display is like to use in practice.
French site NWE has also re-posted video of what it says is the battery from the 5.5-inch iPhone 6, showing a capacity of 2915mAh. This is consistent with earlier reports. While it has almost twice the capacity of the 1560mAh battery used in the iPhone 5s, it’s unknown how much of that power will be needed to drive the extra size and resolution of the larger display.
We heard over the weekend that Apple’s long-rumored NFC-based mobile payment system will use tokenization to maximize security, transmitting coded one-time tokens to payment terminals, and that the 5.5-inch model may run landscape apps, giving a more iPad-like user experience.
All will be revealed tomorrow at 10am PDT. We’ll of course be bringing you live coverage and commentary. In the meantime, you can see a whole bunch of the videos below … Expand Expanding Close
The iPhone 6 leaks are coming fast and furious ahead of Tuesday’s event. This latest video is a supposed review of the iPhone 6 in Mandarin. We won’t know how legit it is for another 48 hours but it is certainly convincing.
One notable feature of these latest leaks is the Passbook (which they conveniently failed to open) icon which looks to have a Credit card on top. Update: The Weibo Account owner opened up Passbook and screenshotted (below)
A brief translation of the video from Stan1028 below (more in comments): Expand Expanding Close
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