Apple Confirms Oct. 4 iPhone Event

Mark Long, <a href='http://www.newsfactor.com'>newsfactor.com</a>

Apple confirmed Tuesday that it will host a news conference Oct. 4 to discuss its iPhone product line. Apple is expected to unveil its newest flagship model, together with some previously unannounced capabilities featured in iOS 5.

"With every new version of iOS Apple has previewed most of the new features, but has reserved some hardware-specific features for the hardware announcement," said Piper Jaffray analysts Gene Munster and Andrew Murphy.

"We expect [this to be the case] again this year -- perhaps with more in-depth voice-recognition features," Munster and Murphy added in an investor note released Tuesday.

Let's Talk iPhone

The invitation card released by Apple on Tuesday features four icons showing the date, time, location and phone-oriented subject of the event, followed by the key phrase "Let's talk iPhone" at the bottom. With respect to prior Apple invitations, the card's key phrase has typically served as a hint about the nature of Apple's coming presentation.

"We believe one of the unannounced features of iOS 5 may be voice-recognition technology leveraging Apple's April 2010 acquisition of Siri, a voice-recognition app and service," Munster and Murphy said.

Piper Jaffray expects that Apple's redesigned iPhone 5 will feature a larger screen and thinner form-factor. Though Apple's new flagship model is expected to be sold at carrier-subsidized prices in the $199 to $299 range, a refreshed iPhone 4 may also be introduced at a price as low as $99, the firm's analysts said.

For 2011 overall, Piper Jaffray expects Apple's iPhone shipments to rise 81 percent in comparison with shipments last year. Shipments of iPhones in the second half of 2011 are expected to rise 55 percent from the same period in 2010.

Pent-Up Demand

Heightened consumer demand for iPhones among U.S. wireless subscribers who do not yet own one should help drive sequential unit shipment growth in the final three months of 2011. According to a recent Piper Jaffray survey, 74 percent of Verizon's customers -- as well as 53 percent of AT&T's subscribers -- who said they do not currently own an iPhone but plan to buy one, said they were specifically waiting for the iPhone 5.

Pent-up demand for the next iPhone at Verizon, for example, may drive numbers higher than the 4.4 million units that Piper Jaffray expects Apple to sell through Verizon in this year's seasonally strong fourth quarter.

"We are modeling for 22 million [iPhone unit shipments] in the September quarter and 25 million in the December 2011 quarter," Murphy said in an email Tuesday. "We don't model Sprint yet [because the rumored deal is] not announced."

The uncertainty concerning Sprint is one of the reasons why Piper Jaffray's current expectation of 25 million iPhone shipments in the fourth quarter may prove to be a conservative estimate. Among other things, Apple's rumored deal with Sprint, if correct, would give Apple fresh access to Sprint's 33 million CDMA customers.