Apple Inc’s new iPhone goes on sale today with a bigger screen and 4G wireless technology, as the company seeks to safeguard its edge over rivals like Samsung Electronics Co and Google Inc.
The iPhone 5 fulfilled many of the expectations laid out by gadget geeks and technology analysts ahead of its Wednesday unveiling, but offered few surprises to give Apple shares — already near record highs — another major kick.
“There is not a wow factor because everything you saw today is evolutionary. I do think they did enough to satisfy,” said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of wealth management company Destination Wealth Management.
Apple shares ended the day up 1.4 percent at US$669.79.
The latest iPhone comes as Apple faces competition beyond current key competitors Samsung and Google. Late entrant Microsoft Corp is now trying to push its Windows Phone 8 operating system as an alternative to Apple and Android, the most-used smartphone operating system in the world.
SALES FORECASTS
Analysts have forecast sales of 10 million to 12 million of the new iPhones in this month alone.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook opened the event in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center, but it was marketing chief Phil Schiller who introduced the iPhone 5 and took the audience through the new phone’s features.
The iPhone 5 sports a 4-inch “retina” display, can surf a high-speed 4G long-term evolution (LTE) wireless network and is 20 percent lighter than the previous iPhone 4S.
It ships starting Friday next week in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Britain. It will hit 100 countries by the end of the year in the fastest international rollout for an iPhone so far.
The stakes are high with the iPhone, Apple’s marque product, accounting for nearly half its revenue. The California company has sold more than 243 million iPhones since 2007, when the device ushered in the current applications ecosystem model.
However, Samsung now leads the smartphone market with a 32.6 percent share, followed by Apple with 17 percent, according to market research firm International Data Corp. Both saw shipments rise compared with a year ago, with Samsung riding its flagship Galaxy S III phone.
Available for pre-order today starting from US$199 with a data plan, the iPhone 5 comes with Apple’s newest “A6” processor, which executives said runs twice as fast as the previous generation. It will pack three microphones — enhancing built-in voice assistant Siri — and an 8 megapixel camera that can take panoramic views.
It will hitch a ride on the three largest US carriers: Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc and Sprint.
One popular enhancement was improved battery endurance — the iPhone 5 can support eight hours of 4G Web browsing, the company said.
While Apple played catch-up on many of the new phone’s features — Samsung and Google’s Motorola already have larger and 4G-ready phones — analysts say the device’s attraction is the way its software and hardware work in tandem.
‘THE EXPERIENCE’
“Where they are pushing the envelope, and where they remain the one to beat, is on the experience those features bring to the consumer,” Gartner Research analyst Carolina Milanesi said. “While other vendors continue to focus just on the hardware — delivering the speeds and feeds and bigger batteries — Apple focuses on pulling the operating system, the hardware and what you can consume on the hardware.”
For the iPhone 5, Apple has done away with the connectors used on previous devices and replaced them with a smaller and more efficient “Lightning” connector. It is also shipping new “EarPods” audiophones, designed after digitally scanning hundreds of ears.
Beyond hardware, Apple telegraphed many of the software changes to expect in iPhone 5 when it debuted iOS 6, its latest mobile operating system, in June.
Upgrades to the software include voice navigation for driving, a feature already available on many Android smartphones, as well as “Passbook” for storing electronic boarding passes, sports tickets and gift cards.
Siri has been improved. In an onstage demonstration, Siri was able to answer questions about the result of a recent pro football game and recite a list of movies playing around town, along with ratings.
Earlier, Cook told the audience that its apps store now has more than 700,000 on tap — the industry’s largest library.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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