Once again, Rumor Roundup will boldly go where speculators, pundits, analysts, and other types of fabulists have gone before, and try to separate out the wheat from the chaff among the various rumors. This week, we have claims that Samsung is calling it quits on its own Milk Music service (which, interestingly, it only half-denied); that a new four-inch iPhone (currently called the "iPhone SE" after several previous attempts at a name) will tick overall iPhone sales upwards by as much as ... gasp! ... two percent; and finally that iPhone Plus owners should expect to feel inadequate in a year or two, because an even bigger iPhone is said to be on the way.
As a brief update for those who listened to our most recent
MacNN Podcast, it is still the case that we have not
received our invites for the alleged March 21 event, which you'll remember was
"pushed back" from March 15. While this does not mean the event won't happen, it is unusual for Apple to give journalists less than two weeks notice, though there was at least one occasion when we got it just 11 days prior. We've also been checking the usual halls and venues where Apple tends to hold events, and all of them (except Apple's own, smallish Town Hall auditorium) are booked around the 21st and 22nd, the two most likely "conventional wisdom" dates.
The event that we are waiting to hear from Apple on is said to offer a revamped four-inch iPhone model to replace the currently-sold iPhone 5s, thought (rather skeptically) to be called the "iPhone SE;" a new 9.7-inch iPad model that will inherit features from the iPad Pro (and may take some kind of "Pro" moniker in the new incarnation); and allegedly some new bands, accessories, and possible new partnerships for the Apple Watch. While much of it seems likely, the date would leave very little time in the March quarter (10 days or less) for these products -- all designed to boost sales -- to have any impact on what Apple has already advised will be a poor quarter.
Not that we know better than Apple or even the average rumor-monger, but it seems to us that it would make more sense for these products -- if they exist -- to appear near the beginning of the next quarter, so as to help create an upswing on sales during the traditional "dads & grads" season, and ahead of what we hope will be pro-class upgrades ahead of June's Worldwide Developers Conference.
We feel confident that Apple is likely to mark the first year of the Apple Watch in some manner, but that's in April. There is also the matter of forthcoming software updates to iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS that seem likely to come out later this month -- but whether new items will appear to go along with them, or the updates will set the stage for future product updates, is unclear.
Unrelated to Apple directly, we might also know by that time whether the rumors about Samsung's Milk Music are true or not.
Variety claimed late last week that Samsung could
pull the plug on the streaming service, two years after creating it, with other rumors claiming that Jay-Z's struggling Tidal service has plans to partner with or be acquired by Samsung. While the
Variety report says Samsung will not exit the streaming business altogether, a spokesman later specifically denied that it was in talks with Tidal for anything -- but did not deny the claim about a possible shutdown of Milk Music and its related service, Milk Video.
We have commented before on the seeming absurdity of putting out a report on how many units of a product Apple will sell before Apple has even acknowledged that the product exists, but this has never stopped Those Daring Young Men and Their Flying Spreadsheets from trying. We reported last week that KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo was predicting that Apple will sell 12 million of the four-inch iPhone model across 2016, which he thinks will be priced around where the current four-inch iPhone 5s is -- somewhere between $400 and $500 off-contract, with the iPhone 5s being retained and selling for even less.
There is now a
second sales prediction, this time from analyst Amit Daryanani of RBC Capital Markets. As with the KGI estimate, Daryanani believes sales of the new device will add around $5.5 billion to Apple's coffers across 2016, though he differs with Ming-Chi on the exact number of units (10 million compared to 12 million) and selling price ($550 versus $400–500).
Considering the amount of speculation and press this rumor has gotten, the estimated sales and revenue on this alleged new iPhone would, in a best-case scenario, add just two percent to Apple's sales for the year, and 23 cents to the company's yearly earnings per share. It could also lower the Average Selling Price (ASP) of the iPhone overall, something Apple would not be likely to want to do
Daryanani bases his prediction on the income reports of one known Apple supplier -- Dialog Semiconductor -- which has reported an expected single-digit percentage rise in revenue for the year. Apple is believed to account for 70 percent of the company's revenues, though CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly warned investors that any single point of reference is a bad way to gauge or predict Apple's sales, since it uses multiple suppliers and shifts orders around among them. RBC is maintaining an "outperform" rating (which means it expects AAPL to outperform the market average for the year) and a target stock price of $130, near its all-time high.
Fans of the idea of a new four-inch iPhone -- which might include women (or men) said to have smaller-than-average hands -- might be dismayed to hear of another rumor, this time stemming from the often-unreliable
DigiTimes trade paper of Taiwan. A new report from it claims that Apple is looking to build
an even larger-screened iPhone Plus type device -- this time with a 5.8-inch OLED screen that may or may not
have a "wraparound" feature that would extend to the sides of the device -- for launch in 2018 (but maybe 2017 -- their crystal ball is a bit hazy on this), meaning the paper thinks this could be the iPhone 8, jumping ahead of the iPhone 7 expected this fall, and possibly even past the iPhone 7s.
There have been various rumors that Apple is planning to switch more of its mobile products to OLED screen technology over the next few years, as it currently uses on its Apple Watch, so certainly it is plausible that over time, given some further technical improvement, OLED could hit the quality, power-saving, and pricing marks Apple wants to use it for larger products like the iPhone. The idea that
DigiTimes has any actual insider information on this, rather than just making an educated guess however, is pretty laughable given their track record. As the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
The origin of the "wraparound screen" portion of the claims appears to stem from the fact that Samsung's latest Galaxy smartphones use something similar in its Edge variants, taking advantage of the fact that OLED screens are more flexible than traditional displays. While the more-curved displays Samsung uses have a certain visual appeal, consumers have not really found them to be a significant advantage or selling point thus far. Ming-Chi has stated that his sources say the iPhone is unlikely to go OLED before 2019 -- that would be the iPhone 8s, for those of you keeping track.
'Edge' displays cause a lot of accidental app launches
The upcoming iPhone 7, thought to sport an all-new design -- as is typical for even-numbered years -- has also gotten its fair share of rumors. We have previously discussed the possibility of Apple dropping the analog headphone jack in favor of wireless and all-digital (through the Lightning port) options, and that perhaps Apple has found a way to hide the ceramic bands needed for quality radio transmission and reception in the next model.
Other reports range from expected (the presumed iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will be based on a new A10 Apple-designed chip) to very plausible (bumping up the RAM to 3GB, wireless charging), to likely (a dual-camera system that provides for some limited optical zoom) to possible (bumping up the top level of storage to 256GB), to improbable (totally waterproof). You can also count on at least one analyst -- as they do every year -- to claim that this will be the year Apple will bring out the iPhone 7 two to three months earlier than normal.
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