Apple confirms that the iPhone 12 release is running late, but now it seems like the wait is going to be longer than the company indicated.
This news comes from the 2020 breakout Apple insider Jon Prosser, who reports that the iPhone 12 launch event could be as late as a month, with pre-orders and delivery postponed until November for iPhone 12 Pro models. If correct (and Prosser has a 100 percent release record this year), it would expose the recent comments by Apple CFO Luca Maestri that the new iPhones are running “a few weeks later [than usual]” as overly optimistic.
The Chinese Roadblock
Apple’s iPhone 12 release has another serious roadblock that could hit sales by up to 30 percent. Speaking to reporters on Friday, President Trump confirmed his intention to ban transactions between US companies and Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat.
Although the former gained more attention, the latter may be far more harmful to Apple. China is a $44BN market for the company and is responsible for up to a third of iPhone sales worldwide, but 95 percent of Chinese respondents in Bloomberg ‘s survey said they would rather give up their iPhone than WeChat.
The software is almost ubiquitous in China and does much more than texting, with online shopping, mobile payments, gaming and official company pages all built-in. For websites like Facebook , Google, Twitter and YouTube blocked in China, it’s a must-have technology. Responding to the possible business effect of the WeChat ban on Apple and iPhone sales, Trump responded “Whatever.”
What’s New
Apple may well have a last minute surprise for the iPhone 12 upgraders with a big change to their camera tech above and beyond their expected integration of the LiDAR sensor. New patents filed by Apple reveal that the company is working to develop the dot projection technology of its current Face ID sensor for both 3D map gestures and faces.
Apple calls this “in-air gesture” with plans to expand help first into the iPhone, then later into in-car control systems. Seeing that the front-facing dot projection has been part of the iPhone line-up since the iPhone X, it would be important to see if this feature can be retroactively added to the line-up as well. Either way, it looks a lot more exciting than a half-baked attempt by Google.
In response, Apple announced that it had opened pre-orders and delivered 14 of its last 15 iPhones in September and that pre-orders had traditionally opened a week before the phones were released. “A few weeks later” will not turn into shipments in November at any point. Except maybe one of them.
Prosser says sales of entry-level iPhone 12 and (newly renamed) iPhone 12 Plus will launch in mid-October (pre-order week 42, shipping week 43). As a result, Maestri may have been trying to ease concerns by referring to only half of the new collection.
But is the iPhone 12 range worth the wait?
Perhaps . Although upgraders can look forward to new display sizes, including the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 and 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max, multi-generation performance leap, stunning new styling, attractive pricing and 3D camera mapping technology on the Pro models, there are concerns. The biggest potential deal breaker is their surprisingly small batteries, while their high refresh rate displays have been canceled and the deal looks increasingly bad in 2020.
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