Apple Will Make A Phablet In 2014, And It Will Be The iPhone 6 [Analyst]

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iphone6

In Apple’s latest earnings call, CEO Tim Cook was suddenly equivocal about whether or not Apple would do an iPhone with a larger display.

“Our competitors have made some significant tradeoffs in many of these areas to ship a larger display,” Cook said on the earnings call. “We would not ship a larger display iPhone while these tradeoffs exist.”

What that hints is Apple doesn’t have a larger screen iPhone in its pipeline yet, but they’re working on one, without any of the tradeoffs of the competition. (What these tradeoffs actually are in Apple’s mind are anyone’s guess.)

A new analyst report suggests that this larger screen iPhone will be the iPhone 6, and it will land in summer of 2014. This year, we’ll just have to deal with an iPhone 5S in a bevy of peacock fan of different color options.

Peter Misek of Piper-Jefferies sent out a research note to clients today, saying that the iPhone 6 would launch with a larger screen making it more directly competitive with broader, beefier devices like the newly released Samsung Galaxy S4. According to Misek, it’s coming in June 2014.

As for what we can expect this year, Misek’s staying uncharacteristically safe in his predictions. He says we’ll see the iPhone 5S come in multiple colors, which is pretty much the consensus analyst opinion at this point and backed by reputable analysts like Ming-Chi Kuo (although Kuo believes the color iPhone will actually be the iPhone 5, which makes sense to me: it’s a good way to cheapen the production of the iPhone 5 to reach a mass audience while also giving it a new dose of sex appeal).

Misek also says that the iPhone 5S will have a fingerprint sensor under the home button, another rumor backed by Kuo. Naturally, there will also be an upgraded processor and better camera.

It’s true that Peter Misek is a complete bozo when it comes to predicting upcoming moves by Apple, but all of his analyst predictions grok this time with other things we’ve heard. Only time will tell, though.

Source: Financial Post

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