ENCASED IN TITANIUM
Bloomberg News has reported that the device is expected to be the most significant upgrade since Apple added 5G to the phone three years ago.
The new model will make use of a manufacturing technique – “low-injection pressure overmoulding” – that allows for the bezel around the screen to be smaller than ever, getting it close to a truly edge-to-edge display. It will run on a faster chip, and the camera upgrade will be significant. And it will all come encased in titanium, so it will smudge less.
Will that be enough to have people heading out in droves to upgrade? It’s a big ask.
We are in the midst of a broader slump in sales of mobile devices. Earlier this week, Qualcomm, a big maker of smartphone chips, warned of waning demand. “The smartphone industry is tough in the US right now,” acknowledged Apple CEO Tim Cook on Thursday, speaking to CNBC.
Consumers are feeling the pressure of inflation on their everyday spending. That could make a new phone a luxury too far, particularly since the device will be Apple’s most expensive yet. That’s an often overlooked factor. In 2017, when Apple announced that the iPhone X would be a whopping US$999, many wondered whether consumers would turn up their nose at such an expense.
They didn’t, and the phone was a smash hit. Yet while people are prepared to spend that kind of money on a device they use many times a day, one knock-on effect of the higher price point has been a reluctance to upgrade as often. An estimate from analyst firm Wedbush says of the roughly 1.2 billion iPhones out there today, around 230 million haven’t been updated in at least two years.
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