Anticipation surrounds release of Apple’s newest iPhone

Apple’s newest iPhone is likely to hit the market Sept. 10, reports CNBC. (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/16/apple-hints-at-september-10-announcement-for-iphone-11.html)

Apple has held its fall press event around this time in September for the past four years.

Analysts don’t expect the iPhone 11 to be a huge change from previous models. Barclays semiconductor analysts wrote in May that they anticipate Apple’s 2019 iPhones will offer “relatively few design changes” while the more substantial update will come in 2020.

J.P. Morgan Chase analysts agreed in a July note that major updates would come in 2020.

Apple’s iPhone business has struggled with trends such as weakness in the Chinese economy and the
fact that customers keep their devices longer than they used to before upgrading. For Apple’s third fiscal quarter, iPhone revenues made up 48 per cent of total revenue. It was the first time the segment made up less than half of all revenues since 2012.

Still, Apple has found new areas of growth such as wearables, like the Apple Watch and HomePods, and digital services, like App Store sales, Apple Music subscriptions and iCloud storage.

The Trump administration also alleviated any worries that the iPhone would be subject to new Chinese tariffs that were originally set to go into effect on Sept. 1. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative said this week that the tariffs would be pushed back to December, sending Apple shares up four per cent on Tuesday.