Apple's next-gen iPhone coming in June
Image via CrunchBase
Apple Inc Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs will address the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, a sign Apple may be planning to unveil the next version of its iPhone, analysts said.
“Given Apple’s track record, the most likely scenario is that they’ll introduce new hardware, in this case the latest iPhone,” William Kreher, a St Louis-based analyst at Edward Jones & Co, said in an interview.
Jobs will kick off the five-day meeting, which starts on June 7, the Cupertino, California-based company said in a statement. Apple typically introduces products at the event, known as the WWDC.
Since releasing the iPhone in June 2007, Apple has offered a new version every summer. The iPhone 3G, which added support for third-generation wireless networks, went on sale in July 2008. An upgraded version followed in June 2009.
Analysts Brian Marshall of Broadpoint AmTech, Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley and Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray & Co have said they expect a new model in June or July.
The newest iPhone will probably have improved battery life and a front-facing camera, said Charlie Wolf, a New York-based Needham & Co analyst. Jobs will probably show the device during his keynote address, Wolf said in an interview.
The iPhone was Apple’s top-selling product last quarter, taking in $5.45 billion in sales, or 40 per cent of revenue. The Macintosh computer represented 28 per cent of sales, while the iPod media player accounted for 14 per cent.
Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller introduced the iPhone 3GS at last year’s event because Jobs, 55, was out on medical leave. Jobs, a cancer survivor, had a liver transplant during his 5 1/2-month leave and returned to work at the end of June 2009.
An unreleased iPhone prototype, lost by an Apple engineer at a bar in March, was disassembled and photographed by technology blog Gizmodo.com last month. If the prototype turns out to be the next iPhone, customers can expect a model that adds a front-facing camera, camera flash, higher-resolution screen, bigger battery and boxier design than the current iPhone 3GS, according to Gizmodo’s analysis.
The WWDC sold out in eight days to more than 5,000 developers, Apple said.
