WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.
Latest iPhone 5 rumors. Verizon hints Q4 2012 launch.
iPhone will have a thinner screen using in-cell technology from display makers Sharp, Japan Display and LG Display. The screen is thinner because it does without a touch-screen layer that is about a half a millimeter thick. That improves the quality of the images. The screen will also be larger, measuring at least 4 inches diagonally, compared with 3.5 inches all of the iPhone models.
The phone will boast the new operating system, iOS 6, which Apple says comes with 200 new features,
including enhancements to “voice assistant” Siri;
a new 3-D maps service with turn-by-turn navigation;
integration with Facebook; a “Do Not Disturb” feature to avoid unwanted messages at night;
and a new app called Passbook organizes loyalty cards, tickets and boarding passes to display the right card when needed.
A5X processor
Release date:
Last year’s iPhone 4S launched on Oct. 14. There are lots of rumors on the release date — a blog called Know Your Mobile, for instance, says it “can exclusively reveal” the date will be Aug. 7.
As anyone who follows Apple releases know, most rumors tend to be false. In any case, all the major carriers are expected to begin selling the iPhone at launch.
Verizon CFO Fran Shammo, who hinted at the possible timing during the company's quarterly conference call today with a vague reference to a major phone the carrier expects to launch in the fourth quarter, and with the ability to tap into the faster 4G LTE network.
In a note Thursday, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray said he thinks investors are generally expecting iPhone shipments in the 25 million-to-27 million range for the June quarter, though he thinks the number could be in the 28 million-to-29 million range. In any case, that’s down from the 35.1 million units shipped in the March period.
Earnings results from Qualcomm QCOM +0.11% late Wednesday give some indication as to what the industry is expecting. The company, which makes modem chipsets used in the iPhone and several other wireless products, gave a lowball forecast for the September quarter, citing that it was still working through an industry-wide shortage of 28-nanometer chips. But the company predicted a “strong December quarter” as it expects to settle the supply issue, and also cited plans for new device launches in that period, as reasons for its optimism. It said nothing about the iPhone specifically, in keeping with the tight-lipped policy that Apple strictly imposes on its suppliers. However, James Faucette of Pacific Crest noted that Qualcomm’s shares are rising, as “the mother of all handset pauses” has now been built into the stock. He believes Qualcomm could sell 40 million chipset units for the new iPhone alone. “iPhone 5 is going to be huge,” he wrote, maintaining an outperform rating on Qualcomm’s shares, which were trading up more than 4% to $58.43 by early Thursday afternoon.
