Apple Inc on Thursday said it would host an event on Sept. 12 at the Steve Jobs Theater on the company’s Cupertino, California, campus, where it is widely expected to unveil new iPhone models.
Analysts believe that Apple plans to release three new smartphones this year, including one with a larger display than previous models.
Analysts also expect Apple to release an iPhone with an edge-to-edge display similar to the iPhone X, but using less costly LCD screen technology.
Apple’s event invitation made heavy use of the color gold, fueling speculation on social media that the company plans to launch a gold-colored successor to the iPhone X, which was made available only in silver and gray last year.
Documents filed at the US Federal Communications Commission unsealed earlier this year showed that Apple had sought approval for a gold version of its iPhone X, but it never released the color.
A few hours after Apple’s announcement, 9to5Mac, a technology Web site, posted photographs of two gold iPhone models stacked on top each other, with a larger-screened model on the bottom. Both models resemble the current iPhone X.
The Web site said the new flagship model is to be called the iPhone XS and that Apple also plans to release a new version of the Apple Watch with a larger display by reducing the edges around it.
9to5Mac told Reuters that the photographs were not mockups and represented Apple’s actual planned products, but declined to say how it had obtained them.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment about the authenticity of the photographs.
The company has for years released its new phone models in the second week of September and often updates other product lines, such as the Apple Watch, at the event.
Apple typically starts selling new iPhones a few weeks after launching them, in time for the holiday shopping season. The iPhone X, priced at US$999 and up in the US, has helped Apple beat Wall Street sales expectations.
Speaking on Thursday to CNBC, investor Warren Buffett said that the iPhone is “enormously underpriced” even when it costs US$1,000, given how indispensable it has become for so many people.
The Berkshire Hathaway Inc chairman and chief executive officer said that his firm has been piling more money into Apple, increasing its stake to 252 million shares as of June 30.
The investment is worth more than US$50 billion and makes Berkshire the third-biggest shareholder in Apple, with a stake of more than 5 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day