Apple’s newest iPhone to have big screen, big price

Details of the new phones were found in publicly viewable code contained in the so-called sitemap of Apple’s website, which was subsequently removed. The coding did not give details or prices of the new phones, but Apple will likely blast further past the $1,000 mark set by the 10th anniversary iPhone X last year. The first publicly traded US firm to achieve a market value of over $1 tn, Apple needs to hike prices to sustain revenue growth from its signature product, even as global demand for smartphones levels off.

“There’s no real game-changer on the table,” said Hal Eddins, chief economist at Apple shareholder Capital Investment Counsel. “It’s a matter of getting people to keep moving up.” The new top model, XS Max, is expected to have a 6.5-inch (16.5-cm) screen with an edge-to-edge display and an OLED display with richer colors, and Wall Street is targeting a price of $1,049 or $1,099 Vs the current $999 base price for the iPhone X. A second phone, the XS, with a 5.8-inch OLED display, would be similar to the iPhone X but with an improved processor.

The third expected model, the Xr, with a 6.1-inch display, is expected to use lower-cost LCD tech, but look more like last year’s iPhone X than the iPhone 8, which itself looked similar to phones going back to 2014’s iPhone 6. That fresher profile could help lure price-conscious Apple customers with 3 and 4-year-old phones into an upgrade, said Eddins. Apple is also expected to unveil a gold-colour option for the two new OLED-screened phones.