Ming-Chi Kuo, a renowned KGI Securities’ analyst, who has a respectable track record of predicting about Apple’s unreleased products, has shared a note with the investors outlining his expectations of new smartphones coming from Apple in the year 2016.
In his new note to investors, Kuo claims that Apple’s plan to launch a 4-inch iPhone variant is still in the pipeline. He believes that the 4-inch iPhone model will resemble an iPhone 5s, but with better internals. He notes that since iPhone 5s was more popular than the iPhone 5c, Apple has a greater chances of launching an upgraded version of its previous popular smartphone.
Talking about the 4-inch iPhone specifications, Kuo said that the upgraded version of iPhone 5s will come in a metallic body, feature an Apple A9 processor, and will be launched in the first half of the year 2016. The analyst believes that this new 4-inch iPhone model will not feature 3D Touch to differentiate it from the high-end iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus and to keep the price low.
Kuo also believes that while the trend is moving towards smartphones with larger displays, but there is still huge demand for a 4-inch iPhone. He notes that the number of units shipped for the device, which will launch in the first half of 2016, will be between 20 million and 30 million units by the end of 2016.
Kuo also talked about Apple’s next major iPhone hardware revision i.e. iPhone 7. He notes that the iPhone 7 will be launched sometime in Q3 of the year 2016. He anticipates that both the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone 7 variants will feature an all new Apple A10 chip. However, the two variants will differ when it comes to RAM. Kuo expects the 4.-7inch iPhone 7 to offer 2GB of RAM module as found inside the current iPhone 6s variants while the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus will feature 3GB of volatile memory.
The analyst believes that Foxconn will be the sole manufacturer of the 4-inch iPhone 5s upgraded model and TMSC will be the exclusive supplier of both the Apple A9 and A10 chips. He didn’t comment regarding the rumors suggesting the iPhone 7 to feature a new dust and waterproof design.
[Via MacRumors]