Apple is fast losing its magical hold on the smartphone market. Nothing wrong with its products, the iPhone 4s and 5 are brilliant devices and iOS is as reliable and powerful as ever. However the competition isn’t lagging behind like 2008 – 2009. They have caught up with the full touchscreen era and the Galaxies and Ones are selling well, satisfying the consumers for a much lesser cost. Apple remains a premium player, selling the 4S and 4 for a discount and maintaining a premium with the iPhone 5. However, people are skeptical to buy a 2 year old iPhone 4 (even though it is still great to use!). The faster release cycle and plenty of variety provided by Android works for most.
Apple took more than a year to upgrade the iPhone 4 to 4S and shifted its iPhone recycle date from June/July to October. It is probably time to shift back to the WWDC time it seems. There are plenty of reasons for the same. To begin with an Analyst claim of production for 5S starting in March with a 4.8″ screen, we of course do not believe the latter.
Smartphones are growing faster:
The mobile market, unlike the PC market is growing at a rapid pace. Apple may keep a yearly refresh cycle for its MacBooks, but the same can’t work for mobile. Smartphones are out pacing the entire industry when it comes to growth. Frequent updates are required. Apple in fact itself upgraded the iPad 3rd gen in just 6 months. That may be an exception, but the 5S needs to come soon and it better comes with some good innovation.
Competition:
The competition is more aggressive and fierce than ever before. Apple has seen lot of success with the iPhone in the initial years, but the situation demands that it does better than just incremental updates. At least not make the users wait an entire year for an upgrade. A 9-10 months refresh cycle looks good.
So will the iPhone 6 come early? What do you think?