Apple has had a tough week. It accidentally leaked a major iPhone upgrade in iOS, in France it was fined $27M for deliberately slowing iPhones and now the company’s first new iPhone release of 2020 has been revealed.
iPhone 12 concept render, Apple’s 2020 iPhone will be beaten to market by an all-new model.
BEN GESKIN
Thanks to acclaimed industry insider Evan Blass (aka @evleaks) and the always-excellent Fast Company, we now have both a release date and price for Apple’s next iPhone, the hotly anticipated iPhone SE2 / iPhone 9. And it’s much sooner and much cheaper than you might have expected.
Blass pegs the release date for “mid-March”, telling me it comes from a “source in the wireless ecosystem” and the source has since gained further credibility as the leak also states the Galaxy S20 will arrive in stores on March 6 – a date Samsung confirmed in its official launch today. Building on this, Fast Company quotes its own source as also pegging the new iPhone’s launch for mid-March and states that “parts production for the phone is now ramping up” despite ongoing problems with the spread of the Coronavirus.
Fast Company’s real eye-opener, however, is cost as it says Apple will sell the phone for just $399. Interestingly, this is the same price Apple asked for the original iPhone SE when it launched in 2016 (slightly cheaper if you allow for inflation). But unlike that device, Apple is increasing the screen size to still super-portable 4.9-inches. The design will be a variant of the iPhone 8’s 4.7-inch design, meaning users will get Touch ID instead of Face ID but the same blazing-fast Apple A13 Bionic using in the iPhone 11 range and the same primary camera (though it will be just a single lens).
iPhone SE2 / iPhone 2 render based on multiple leaks
ONLEAKS / IGEEKSBLOG
Given the (inevitably) lower screen resolution at 4.9-inches, the end result will be the fastest smartphone in the world, using arguably the best primary smartphone camera in the world, housed in the most portable premium chassis in the world. All for $300 less than an entry-level 64GB iPhone 11.
Sound too good to be true? Apparently not. Fast Company understands that Apple will still have a profit margin in excess of 50% and its primary aim is to onboard more users to Apple services which have a 64% profit margin. For Apple and its customers alike, this is shaping up to be the very definition of a Win/Win.
[“source=forbes”]
