Neil HughesShaw Wu with Kaufman Bros. said Wednesday that checks with sources in Apple's overseas supply chain have indicated that the company is working on new iPhone models with both larger and smaller touchscreens. He said those products could launch in 2011, and on new carriers other than the currently exclusive AT&T.
"Our sources believe these likely represent new high-end and low-end iPhone models to complement its current iPhone 4," Wu wrote in a note to investors. "One possibility we are picking up is a "mini" or "nano" iPhone with a smaller candybar form factor leveraging technology in its new mini touchscreen iPod nano."
Though new handsets are typically released in the summer, the progress being made on these new models is far enough along that Apple could introduce new handsets as soon as the first half of 2011, and even as early as the first quarter of next year. Wu said he believes the new phones could become available on U.S. carriers other than AT&T, including Verizon, T-Mobile and/or Sprint.
"We believe Apple moving to a more complete iPhone product line makes strategic sense in that its iPhone 4 addresses only the high-end of the market," he said. "We think Apple should take a page out of its iPod playbook where it has had a lot (of) success with a 3-tier strategy addressing entry-level, mid-range and high-end, making it difficult for competitors."
It's the scalability of iOS, Wu said, that could allow Apple to make a "fuller iPhone product line," allowing it to offer even greater competition against Google Android.
However, the analyst also incorrectly suggested that the new iPod nano runs iOS. While the software on the small touchscreen device looks and acts much like iOS, Apple has said the device runs its own, new operating system.
Rumors of a supposed iPhone nano were quite common years ago, but have mostly died down since. Apple currently offers three iPhone models priced at $299, $199 and $99 in the U.S. with a two-year AT&T contract.
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106 Comments
Ugh, here we go again. Not gonna happen, folks.
Don't see Apple doing this as it does nothing but fragment the iOS market. Different screen resolutions, processor speeds, and memory sizes are what causes problems for application developers. This is what is starting to really hurt Android and what currently hurts everyone, including Apple.
Apple reduces this pain by only releasing one model of iphone per year so developers only have to test on iPhone 4, iPhone 3gs, and iPad to cover all the users. Constrast this to all the other mobile platforms where there are so many different models and configurations that your apps have no chance of running on all the devices.
It makes sense in a lot of ways. Offer more choices, get people to start on a nano-phone (or whatever you'd call it) and move up to the higher end iPhone.
Apple has done similar things with it's other lines: Macbook leads to 13" Macbook Pro to the big 17" version; iPod Shuffle up to the touch...How you would 'scale' iOS is the question. Lower end phones would need to have enough functionality to be wanted... but if they had too much then people might not move up to the high end phone.
Is screen size enough of a difference alone?
I don't know about most people but anything larger then the iphone is just to damn big. My brother has a droid phone, I don't recall which one, but the thing is monstrous to hold and just silly to try and put it into a pocket.
these reports are almost always wrong. Whenever these posts come out, it's always just a speculation, based on what these markets want to see Apple produce soon. Sure people have been posting for years that Apple should make an iPhone Nano, but they haven't.
What I think will be the case, is a further development built on the new iPod Nano line. they may dump the Classic in favor of a model that is between the iPod Touch and the Nano, but with a humongous hard drive like the classic. 120Gb flash memory with a screen size between the Nano and the Touch, but with the Nano User Interface.