Amid reports of weakened iPhone demands and sliding Apple stocks, the Cupertino tech giant is reportedly prepping to launch the successor to iPhone 5 in June/July. According to Jefferies analyst, Peter Misek, Apple is working on an earlier-than-expected debut of iPhone 5S and will begin the preliminary builds of the next version of its flagship product in March, the Street Insider reported.
"Our checks indicate that preliminary builds for the iPhone 5S will start in March for a launch in June/July. As word of the earlier production schedule starts to spread, we believe we could see a slight slowing of demand CQ1 in anticipation of the new product launch and Apple will likely start curtailing channel inventory. Therefore we tweak down our CQ1 iPhone shipment estimate from 48M to 44M, which is still well above widespread fears of shipments in the mid-30Ms," Misek was quoted in Street Insider.
Commenting on the recent rumors of a low-cost iPhone, the analyst said the rumored device would be a concentrated low-cost iPhone rather than a "cheap" one. He said the model will likely feature polycarbonite case with 4" non-Retina display and no LTE.
According to 9to5mac, Misek had predicted back in December that the iPhone 5S will arrive in June with multiple colors. He had also said the device will possibly feature a 4.8″ Retina/IGZO display and will come with improved battery life. However, his latest prediction says there is no additional evidence to believe that the device will feature a 4.8-inch display, but rather the design could be for the iPhone 6.
Finally, addressing recent reports of apparent decline in iPhone 5 component orders, Misek gave three factors behind the order cuts:
- An assembly bottleneck caused component inventories to rise in CQ4.
- New iPhone builds starting in March.
- Demand being in line to slightly below optimistic expectations.
