During yesterday’s presentation of the iPhone 4S, which deceived the expectations of many users, the price of Apple shares on the stock exchanges fell by more than 3.5%, although it later adjusted to a drop of 0.5%. This is unheard of for Apple, whose shares have risen in price every time after the release of new products. According to analysts’ forecasts, the 5th version of the iPhone will appear no earlier than LTE technology (Long Term Evolution, mobile data transmission technology) in 4G format will be able to work on smartphones.
Agence France-Presse notes that investors also expected Apple to release a new device, not an updated version of the iPhone 4. But some industry experts have defended Apple.
Will Stross, president of the Forward Concepts research company, notes that Apple acted prudently by postponing the release of the iPhone 5 until the release of the LTE mobile version. It won’t happen until next spring. And it’s not Apple’s fault. There was no way the new chips could have appeared this fall, as they are too big for compact smartphones so far.
Other experts agree. “The iPhone 4 is too small to put an LTE chip there as well. Now this can be done either by reducing the size of the battery, or by thickening the phone,” says Anand Shimpi, CEO of Anandtech. “Qualcomm‘s MDM9615 chip should be released in the second quarter of 2012. It will be smaller and with support for new voice technologies. Apple and other companies will be able to use it only when the chip is the appropriate size for smartphones.”
However, when expectations did not coincide with reality, many were happy to engage in criticism.
Christer Holloman, in his column for Sky News, said: “We have just witnessed that bankers also loved the iPhone, and they are also disappointed. Cook did nothing wrong at the presentation, but also nothing good. We have become hostages of our expectations.” Chris Natall from the Financial Times said that he uses a “Googlophone”, and the iPhone 4S did not dissuade him from making the right choice.
The Guardian newspaper writes that Apple pinned hopes for an increase in profits with China and India. But local manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, HTC are likely to dominate there. Some of them already have devices with bigger screens, higher performance and a lot of nice and useful features. At more gentle prices.
We, the users, are already used to expecting only breakthroughs from the company, and the bar is very high. But Tim Cook said at least twice back in April this year that the first generation of LTE microprocessors would require big compromises with device design. They are clearly working in this direction. So time and the development of related technologies will show how well Apple has done by releasing only an improved version of its main “cash cow” so far.