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The new iPhone is too big, it is too heavy and it is too difficult to use one-handed.
I predict these will be the main criticisms of the new iPhone 6 models after Apple finally announces them tomorrow. They were also the main criticisms of the original iPhone when Apple launched it in 2007. Apple got away with it then and I’m convinced Apple will get away with it this time – but for very different reasons.
Whereas Apple led a form factor revolution in 2007, it now follows. Samsung is the undisputed driver of big screen smartphones and arguably the inventor of the so-called ‘phablet’. Apple critics are licking their lips, ready to bash the company with its famed ‘Think Different’ slogan. Meanwhile many long time iPhone users are concerned Apple has gone too far too late.
4.7-inch ad 5.5-inch iPhone 6 dummy units
The latter is a perspective I agree with. A gradual size increase as seen on Android and Windows Phone handsets would have made for an easier transition, but I also think Apple has backed itself into a corner with no choice but to go big on going big . This is why:
Market Demand – Bigger Is Better
While big screen phones polarise opinion, it is clear the majority are in favour of them. Data released by analyst IDC last week shows year-on-year growth of phablets (defined as 5.5-inch to sub-7-inch devices) will increase by 209.6% in 2014 compared to just 12.8% growth in regular smartphones. Projecting this to 2018, IDC still sees phablet growth at 16.6% versus 3.2% for smartphones.
Growth markets are Apple’s focus. In the last 20 years it has hopped from desktop computers to laptops to MP3 players to smartphones to tablets and tomorrow will come big screen smartphones and a phablet. Apple’s business model requires high volume and high margins, the latter of which is eroded in mature, commodised markets. Big screen smartphones and phablets look set to avoid that stage for the next four years at least.
Changing Usage
Market demand may be the answer, but the more important is the question: Why? And it all comes down to changing usage.
Way back in June 2012 UK carrier O2 noticed something rather startling: making calls was only the fifth most frequent activity on a smartphone. Ahead of it came web browsing, checking social networks, playing games and listening to music. Just behind making calls came emails, messaging, watching video, reading eBooks and taking photos – all enormous growth sectors in the subsequent two years.
In short: big phones are most inconvenient for making and taking calls, but if that is on the decline and the majority of what users are now doing most often will be improved (arguably taking photos and listening to music aside) the trade-off is worth it.
So yes, Apple knows super-sizing iPhones will make some activities less convenient but it is banking on the majority getting better.
The iWatch Companion
Unfortunately big screen phones have other major downside: inconvenience. This isn’t about functionality, but physicality. You need trousers with bigger pockets, you need new muscle memory, you will stand still more often using a big screen phone – all odd but true.
Read more: iPhone 6: Owners Must Adapt To 5 Big Changes
Those on the bleeding edge will put up with this, the aforementioned benefits are worth it. But for more traditional users they only see hassle and frustration where none lay before.
Step forward the iWatch (or whatever it will be called). The smartwatch done right is the ultimate big screen phone/phablet companion because of its simple reason d’etre: making you take your phone out your pocket less often for small tasks.
Samsung has already pitched its various smartwatches as companion devices for Galaxy Note users and Apple will hope to hit two birds with one stone by announcing the iWatch alongside the iPhone 6: two new entries into major growth categories, each promoting the need for the other.
Cook’s Innovation Moment
After a shaky start Apple CEO Tim Cook has begun to impress the doubters. From a business perspective he has largely maintained strong sales, made sensible, long awaited incremental changes to both hardware and software and recently pushed the company’s share price to new heights. But Steve Jobs’ earned his legendary status not from these achievements, but in making them feel like inevitable consequences of his industry changing innovation.
Whether you agree with that or not (Jobs was arguably as much a refiner of existing technologies as a purveyor of new ones) is not the point. The point is this perception built the Apple brand and a loyal customer base like no other. Tim Cook has yet to do that. Rightly or wrongly he is seen as following in Jobs’ footsteps – copying his belief system.
With the iPhone 6 this will change. Jobs’ mocked bigger phones more than once. Apple made a commercial (below) showing the value of phone screens that matched the natural reach of your thumb and Jobs’ first head designer last year claimed “smartwatches are stupid”.
As such tomorrow’s event – for better or worse – will be Cook’s event. There have been hints (dropping skeuomorphic design, firing Jobs’ favourite Scott Forstall) but this will be the clearest example yet that Cook isn’t starting each day asking himself: ‘What would Steve do?’ Because Steve was highly unlikely to do this.
Pull it off and Tim Cook finally reassures fans and investors alike that he isn’t simply following a secret Steve Jobs roadmap that will soon run out. This is new Apple, different but every bit as good as what went before.
And Yet
Despite all this the fear remains of an Apple strategy that is ‘too much too late’, primarily because it is completely valid.
Read more: iPhone 6 Given September 9 Launch Date. Here's What To Expect
It has long been the Apple way not to be sentimental. Floppy disks, CD drives, innumerable legacy connectors and even the iPod have been mercilessly sidelined in Apple’s drive to stay ahead of the curve and now it seems the philosophy behind seven generations of iPhone is about to be sidelined as well. There have been no leaks to suggest a 4-inch version of the iPhone 6. The best it seems fans of the smaller handset can expect is for the iPhone 5S or iPhone 5C to continue being sold for another 12 months.
Furthermore does Apple have enough experience in making big screen handsets to go all-in with the iPhone 6? Leaks show Apple has kept the large home button which has long been discarded by more experienced big screen phone makers who see it as a waste of space, iOS 8 appears to make no concessions for users to press what will be a hard to reach back button in the top left corner and there are fears of weak battery life, iPad Mini cannibalisation and inflated price tags.
4-inch and 4.7-inch versions of the iPhone 6 would have been the more sensible, more conservative first step. Perhaps that is what Steve would have done. Perhaps in looking back at Apple’s lack of historical sentimentality and forward at his vision of a new Apple is why Tim Cook will not do the same.
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