Odds shorten that next Apple product will be cheaper iPhone

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A cheaper iPhone would allow Apple to lay siege to the pay-as-you-go market. Photograph: The Asahi Shimbun/The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Imag

Apple will not release a large-screened "phablet" phone to compete with arch-rival Samsung this year, according to analysts, as the odds narrow that the technology group will release a cheaper iPhone to capture the pay-as-you-go market.
Speculation over Apple's next big move is rife as a number of potential candidates – such as Apple TV or the iWatch – fall by the wayside. Having bought time from investors with the announcement last month of a $55bn (£35.3bn) share buyback, the company is expected to take a less radical development route by focusing on a cheaper, rather than larger, iPhone.
"The odds this year of a larger iPhone are zero," says Neil Mawston, executive director of the analysis company Strategy Analytics. Describing the new product as the iPhone 5S, he added: "That's what we're hearing from our supply chain sources in the Far East. It seems the iPhone 5S will be pretty similar to the iPhone 5."
About 25m "phablets" – defined as smartphones with screens of more than 5 inch diagonal length – were sold in 2012, according to IHS iSuppli, which forecasts that sales will hit 60m this year amid strong demand for Samsung's Galaxy Note. That compares to forecasts of total smartphone sales of 908m in 2013.
However there is growing anticipation that Apple will offer a cheaper iPhone to attract new buyers unable to afford the top-end devices. Steve Brazier, chief executive of Canalys, says Apple would benefit by offering phones in different designs and colours – as it did with the second generation of its best-selling iMac desktop computers in 1999. "Why should business people carry the same phone as teenagers?" Brazier asks. "Kids don't want the same phone as their dads."
With the smartphone market growing less rapidly than it has, analysts also question whether there is enough demand for a high-end Apple phone as prices are driven down by cheaper phones using Google's Android operating system – Samsung's main platform.
The Chinese smartphone market has taken over from the US as the world's largest and is the main location of growth. But most of the buyers there are opting for cheaper phones, and the iPhone's data system is not yet compatible with China Mobile, which has over 700 million subscribers.
Yet even a fast-selling "cheap iPhone" would not have a dramatic effect on Apple's gigantic revenues and profits, according to estimates by Benedict Evans, a technology and telecoms analyst for Enders Analysis. In a note to clients seen by the Guardian, he calculates that a phone priced at $200 which sold 40m in a quarter – effectively doubling Apple's phone sales – would generate $8bn of revenue and $2.4bn in profit.
That though would only have raised first quarter revenues by 8%, and profits by 4.5%. "In other words, a blockbuster new Apple phone that almost doubles unit sales and blows a hole in the middle of the Android market might only add 5% to Apple's gross profits," he said.
While Apple has stayed silent on its plans, and declined to comment for this article, analysts see change to its product line as inevitable.
Brazier says: "They have been slow to react to the fact that the market has changed. It gives them a huge advantage in economies of scale to build just one model, but they could have four or five. Look at the Mac [computer range] – they have those in all sorts of different sizes and shapes and configurations."
Horace Dediu, who runs the Asymco consultancy, reckons that Apple is more likely to offer a phone priced around $100 or $150 – to minimise "cannibalisation" of its top-end range – and observes: "Apple is happy to expand its portfolio in the Mac, iPod and iPad. Why should the iPhone be exempt?"
Apple's strategy may be glimpsed at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco in June, when it will unveil the look and feel of the next generation of its iPhone and iPad software, iOS 7 – said to be codenamed "Innsbruck" inside the company.
The June launch will for the first time carry the imprimatur on the software of Jonathan Ive, the 46-year-old who has for nearly two decades been in charge only of the hardware design at Apple, heading the iMac, iPod and iPhone design.
But since the firing of retail chief John Browett and iOS chief Scott Forstall last October – the latter apparently over the Maps fiasco – Ive has been put in charge of the "human interface" of the software too, making him one of the most powerful people at Apple.
That has already led to changes. Forstall loved "skeumorphism" – making virtual objects appear like real-world ones – as seen when he demonstrated iOS 6's "Passbook" software for storing virtual tickets at WWDC in 2012. He showed how you'd delete unneeded ones: by putting them through a virtual shredder. Similarly, the "Find Friends" app (for locating phones) had faux stitched leather, and the Podcasts app displayed reel-to-reel tape – a technology that predates many iPhones' owners.
But an updated version of the Podcast app removed the tape, replacing it with data about the episode being played. Ive is expected to "flatten" and simplify many other aspects of the iOS software.

 

Facebook folly: what if social networks don't understand estrangement needs?

Simple algorithms that make 'friend' suggestions don't cater for complexities found in human relationships, especially families

Do social networks have too narrow an idea of our family dynamics and relationships? Photograph: H Armstrong Roberts/ ClassicStock/Corbis

My mother popped up on Facebook a few months ago as a "suggested friend". Her smile came up on the side of my screen, and I couldn't help but let my mouse gravitate to her name and linger over it.
With most people, if their mothers are already on Facebook then they're already "friends". But I became estranged from my parents half a decade ago, and hadn't exchanged words with my mother for over four years.
At a time when there's so much discussion about a "right to be forgotten" and methods to delete your digital life, I've done a lot to digitally forget my parents, and delete them from my digital life. I'd rejected invitations to connect from their work colleagues and friends so that snippets of their life wouldn't flash incidentally into mine and tempt me to linger.
Yet within seconds of my mother's profile flashing up on the screen, I found myself wading through my parents' most recent social occasions. It was exactly as I feared: they appeared absolutely fine. Dad was wallpapering in socks and sandals in a house in Coffs Bay, smiling. Mum had commented underneath: "my hero wallpapering". Next they were sat on a grassy hill, holding up glasses of white wine, beaming in the sun. That particular album was labelled London 2012. Image by image, I saw them posing outside the monuments in our capital and my current home.
I know – you're expecting the film script trajectory: the images lead me to end the estrangement, the family is reconciled, and in a faraway office Mark Zuckerberg smiles and rings a bell as another angel gets its wings.
Sorry. Not so. Instead, my reaction was to think: how could they just turn up and smile in a city where they knew that their daughter is living, breathing and working? I slammed my computer shut. I knew too much.
It was the resolute happiness that was shocking, and my mum's profile picture continued to nag me all week. Then it hit me: if she ever saw my profile then I'd be smiling back. My page is a savvy edit of my best happenings – picnics, festivals, and holidays in Barcelona. There are no posts about the sleepless nights and awkward moments where I struggle to explain to people why I don't "have a family". I didn't post a screenshot of the letters I sent them, trying to discuss our feud rationally and asking the questions that were natural to ask.
Perhaps I've been quietly coerced into thinking that positivity is the currency in which our online profiles trade, and so I instinctively stay away from the sombre. This illustrates the dichotomy inherent to social networking: the digital world allows for "togetherness" in which we "share our lives" with people around the world - yet conversely it can distance us from friends' fully dimensional experiences of life.
This permanent state of online happiness, as projected by a profile, can be mentally destabilising for those with discordant relationships. Dr Joshua Coleman, a psychologist based in San Francisco who is a specialist in estrangement, and author of When Parents Hurt, observes: "We have never in our history been as accessible to our family and friends. Social media, on the one hand, allows us to connect quickly to those we love. On the other, it allows those that we love - or once loved – enormous power to reach us and hurt us from almost anywhere in the world."
He explains one easy way of doing that: "announcing critical events such as weddings, while not letting the family member know directly, and tormenting the person in isolation by posting photographs of events where they were absent."
It seems this issue is amplified by the prolific use of images. For me, the photographs I gazed at alluded to my parents' satisfaction in isolation, yet at the same time allowed me a vicarious experience of that happiness. For a few minutes I was really with them in London, experiencing their wonder and excitement – only to remember soon after that I wasn't really welcome, not with my questions.
This could be an issue with privacy, as my mother's photographs were all accessible without our being online friends. The question remains: should social networking sites step up and offer to help those who don't wish to be reminded of their estrangement? Facebook claims to have the advantage of being able to block users, whereas you wouldn't be able to block a person if you encountered them on the street.
Yet privacy settings on sites such as Facebook have long been documented as difficult to manoeuvre. You could argue that that's only really an issue for older users who might not be as web-savvy. But there was no way I could have prevented my mum from popping up as a "suggested friend" until it happened. She was linked to me through others. I had her old email stored in an old account. It was, in a sense, inevitable.
Then again, my experience is by no means definitive. Such gaps in privacy can allow others the glimpse of a life they may actually yearn to know about. In cases where an adult child becomes estranged, parents may see new grandchildren through profile pictures, keep tabs with their child's musings via Twitter, and celebrate job success through LinkedIn.
Yet estranged individuals can find that the primary advantage of social networking sites is that they offer a less intimidating route to reconciliation. Kevin Allan [not his real name] used them to overcome the anxiety of getting back in touch with his estranged family. He told me: "the action of adding someone [on a social network] isn't like calling [on the phone] or turning up on a doorstep. It's less confrontational." As a result of adding his father as a Facebook friend, Kevin was able to see parts of his life and they decided to meet.
For some, being a Facebook friend is enough to qualify as being in touch with their family, defying the stigma that surrounds estrangement. For many, the complexities of the relationship are what lead to the estrangement in the first place. Coleman says: "It's useful to remember the positive aspects to a person when thinking about reconciling with a family member. This will give us a better chance of seeing the process through. Social media may give an easy entry into a conversation by providing real-time achievements, events and points of shared interest." If social media can facilitate such positivity, albeit about career or personal life, it could be seen as a useful tool in developing the mindset needed for the reconciliation process itself.
Estrangement is a loss, and a unique loss. For the five years before my mother was a suggested friend, I knew my parents were in the world somewhere. But only through social media did I find out exactly where. I asked Coleman if it is ever really possible to be estranged from your family when online culture is so prevalent. His answer seems straightforward: "Yes. But you need to stay off your computer."
It's a tall order. I work in a world that demands an online presence, and there are many like me who can't work without those tools. I can't delete my digital life. It seems my only option is to wait anxiously for another reminder of my parents' denial and my difficult childhood to rap loudly at my digital door, wrapped in a smiling suggestion that we hook up. Except the computer that has mediated the meeting has no concept of life or its complications - only tables in a database that have found a match.
Becca Bland worked on the BBC Radio 4 series The Digital Human. For more about estrangement in the digital age visit the webpage for 'The Digital Human'