About a month ago we started to see the first indications that there was potentially an issue with what the iPhone might actually be. There were multiple rumors claiming a better display (retina), NFC, better WiFi, and more. The rumors were not quite meeting up with the realities that were coming from the companies that were making the parts though. This inspired a series of articles that stated rather plainly that the iPhone 5 had to be a stellar success or Apple could stumble badly. Looking at what Apple is showing off with the new iPhone we do not think it is going to be that stellar success.
What makes this even more likely (that the iPhone 5 will not trump the other iPhones) is that Apple has already been caught in a lie told during the presentation. Apple claimed that the iPhone is the World’s thinnest smartphone… it is not. The iPhone 5 measures 7.6mm, but there are multiple phones that are smaller than 7.6mm and a couple that are down to 6.2mm Now we know that Apple would never lie to anyone so we are sure this was simply a mistake on the part of Apple’s Senior Vice President of World Wide Marketing, Phil Schiller. OF course a little “mistake” about the thickness of the iPhone 5 will not kill sales for many, but it might hurt sales to those people that paid attention to the recent Samsung V Apple trial. Perhaps some of them are looking at the trial, the verdict and the aftermath (where Apple is still trying to Ban products that were found not to infringe Apple’s patents) and now taking this slip into consideration.
We said when the trial started that Apple would end up in a position that they did not want to be in. They had an awful lot of information about their practices exposed to the market. Everything from market research done by Apple about why people by Android Phones to information about the way Apple deals with their partners. It was something the secretive company fought to keep sealed, but lost that fight. Right now Apple is in the spotlight more than usual because of that trail. Remember they claimed that they are the ones that innovate and others follow… Where is this shown in the iPhone 5 other than the new connector? Apple did not do much innovation here. They are playing catch up to the rest of the market. They are just now releasing LTE, just now releasing an app similar to Google Wallet and are still behind in other areas which is sort of contradictory to what Tim Cook and Apple claim.
The iPhone 5 will still do well, there are enough people that are blindly loyal to Apple who will buy it and even enough to make it a pretty big success. We also expect that some will stick to the iPhone simply because of the investment they have in iTunes Apps and music. Of course many of those people might just stick with their older iPhone and not spend the extra money. It will be interesting to see just how this launch plays out and what effects it might have on Apple especially with a couple of complaints against them with the ITC over LTE…
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