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Apple Betrays iPhone Faithful For Long-Term Success

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As the reveal of the iPhone 7 family of smartphones approaches, Apple's 2016's iteration of the smartphone is looking more and more like a stop-gap than a true leap forward. Apple may have the ability to create the strongest human connection possible to a slice of silicon, but it cannot alter the insatiable demand for a new phone every 12 months. At best it can bluff and prevaricate while it works on the real game-changers that can take up to three years to arrive.

If you were to implement all the leaks and rumors from the supply chain you would expect Apple to have one of the best smartphones on the market this September. It would shave a curved display, a bright and vivid OLED screen, a glass chassis between two more glass panels at the front and rear, an invisible home key, 3D touch with tactile feedback, quad-stereo speakers, lightning headphones. That could put to shame many Android-powered devices.

But all of these features are targeted not at 2016's iPhone 7 but the tenth-anniversary iPhone that will arrive in September 2017.

No doubt Apple will take to the stage in September and Tim Cook will anoint the iPhone 7 as 'the best iPhone we have ever made', and he would be right. The cheat is that Apple has the technology to make a better smartphone than the one it is making (and similar technology is available on competing handsets). No matter the platitudes and digital inches highlighting the new features, there is something better in the offing.

In an idyllic world, I do not think that Apple would release the iPhone 7 this year. The technology is only iteratively better than that available on the iPhone 6S, and it's clear that Tim Cook's team believes that the big changes are not ready to be offered to the customer base.

It's not that kind of world. It's a world where the average mobile contract lasts two years so a new handset needs to be available as the contract ends to satisfy the network demands to retain customers and the manufacturers' need to keep customers from switching ecosystems. It's a world where two quarters of falling sales signals the death knell of the company, irrespective of the obvious long-term plans.  And it's a world where the iPhone 'S' models are a barely concealed fudge to satisfy the short-term hunger of sales and Wall Street with the need to extend the development time of 'the next changes' out to two years.

Now it looks like the technology required to advance the iPhone 6 to the iPhone 'next generation' needs another twelve months, forcing the turnaround time out to three years between notable models. That timescale does not meet the expectations of today's cut-throat mobile industry.

Which leaves us with the iPhone 7 - a handset that has a few token updates in the hardware and the usual increase thanks to Moore's Law in the chipset specifications. The demands to 'do something' every year, to satisfy sales projections and quarterly demands, to be seen to be 'thinking different' and rejuvenating the industry every year is a herculean task. It's one that Apple struggles with just as much as the next manufacturer (which is likely Samsung).

Apple cannot pull the focus of the market away from the 12-month cycle, and the iPhone 7 is a symptom of a market that simply does not fit Apple's way of working. I'm happy with the idea that Apple needs three years to develop its next iPhone. So, apparently, is Apple. Unfortunately everyone else demands a new handset every year.

So let's get ready for the iPhone 7, Apple's obligation to the marketplace.

Now watch what we know about 2017's iPhone

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