Happy New Year🎉 And welcome to your Apple TLDR for January 4th. It looks like OLED technology is finally coming to the iPad, iPhone 14 Plus sales are down and new 3nm tech could be headed to the iPhone 15. You can also check out the video edition of this newsletter below.
The iPad goes OLED
According to display analyst Ross Young, demand for mini LED technology is starting to drop. That’s because apple is planning to transition the iPad line over to OLED technology in 2024. That’s not surprising because OLED offers some great benefits. These include much deeper darker blacks and you don’t get the blooming issue that you typically find on mini LED displays. Now if you recall, the iPad Pro 12.9 inch transitioned over to mini LED technology a couple of years ago. but the 11-inch model still retains LCD technology. Apple has also used Mini LEDs in the MacBook Pro and again, these displays look so much better than LCD but they just can’t compare to OLED. It’s great to see that apple is heading in that direction.
Further supporting this story is a report from Digitimes. It claims that Apple’s key supplier of mini LED displays is starting to see a downtick in the number of orders that it’s receiving. That’s actually a great win for consumers in my opinion because OLED is far superior tech and I’d love to see it come to the iPad. I think when we see it on the iPad and eventually the Mac, it’s going to be great. Apple’s management of OLED and colour shift has been truly exceptional and I really look forward to seeing this on much larger displays in the future.
Apple Watch Stress Detection
As reported by myhealthyapple.com, the University of Waterloo in Canada has completed some research that has revealed that the Apple watch is able to accurately predict when your body is in a state of stress. And this is really great news as currently, the Apple watch is able to help you to manage stress through apps such as the mindfulness app. But what it can’t do is reveal the current stress level of your body unless, of course, you know where to look…
The Apple Watch as it so happens records a piece of data called heart rate variability which is a really great way to understand your body’s current level of stress. It does this by measuring signals in your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and you can find this information located in the health app and then by searching for heart rate variability.
Now according to the University, its model uses a mixture of heart rate variability data, ECG data and heart rate data. Using this information it has created an AI model that is able to demonstrate when a person is in a state of stress. Let’s just hope that Apple takes some of this research on board and has plans to implement this into the next version of watchOS. Competing fitness wearables have been able to do this for some time and the Apple watch is lagging behind in this particular area. The accuracy and reliability of the Apple watch’s data sets are far superior so I think that this is a missed opportunity for Apple that is just waiting to be plucked. let’s watch the space.
iPhone Production Capacity Up
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple’s iPhone production line is now starting to return to normal capacities. Towards the end of 2022, China introduced regional lockdowns. Some of which had a big impact on Apple’s assembly lines. But according to this report, production has now increased back up to around 70 to 80 per cent of its usual capacity. That’s good news for Apple because customers that were trying to get hold of an iPhone 14 Pro or 14 Pro Max over the festive period, were mostly out of luck. But it looks like the supply chain is starting to return back to normal and hopefully, affected customers will be able to get hold of a shiny new device soon.
Unfortunately for Apple that increased production capacity hasn’t come quite soon enough. In a report from Trend Force, Apple apparently lost around a trillion dollars in revenues last year due to iPhone production issues. That’s not great but of course, we won’t know the full extent of the damage until Apple releases its earnings report later this month.
3nm tech heading for the A17 chip
Key iPhone chip supplier TSMC has unveiled its next generation of chips based on 3-nanometer technology. The current A16 chip used in the iPhone 14 pro and 14 Pro Max is based on 4-nanometer tech. Oddly TSMC refers to 4-nanometer as 5-nanometer plus…I’m not quite sure what that’s supposed to mean. In any case, the lower the number the more transistors you can pack into the same area and therefore see increased performance or improvements to things like battery life without having to increase the die size of the chip.
Now, these 3-nanometer chips will enable according to TSMC, even greater optimizations for performance and efficiency. But this time the focus will be primarily on efficiency in battery life. It’s just down to Apple to decide how to take advantage of that. I can’t imagine that Apple won’t want to do some kind of performance improvements this year. The competition is always heating up.
iPhone 14 Plus sales down
As reported by MacWorld, a user on the Chinese social media site Naver has shared some details claiming that Apple is seriously concerned with sales figures for the iPhone 14 Plus. We’ve been hearing some rumblings about this over the last week and I think it’s fair to say that this is quite likely to be true. The iPhone 14 Plus while still a great phone, realistically is a mid-range phone but priced at a premium price point. It’s priced at £899 here in the UK and that’s bumping up pretty close to the price of the iPhone 14 Pro. If you consider the differences and the features that you get with the Pro models, why wouldn’t you just pay that £150 upgrade if you have the the money to do so?
I think Apple has just got the pricing strategy wrong here but what do you think? Let me know if you think there’s another reason that the iPhone 14 plus just isn’t selling. I do think that the 14 and the 14 Plus are compelling phones…but not at the price points that they’re currently sold at. I think they should be maybe £100 to £200 pounds cheaper than they currently are. Probably £200 pounds if we’re being completely honest but in the current macroeconomic climate, Apple likely isn’t willing to absorb all of those costs. Then again, Apple is using last year’s A15 chips in the iPhone 14 Plus. You would like to think that there are some cost savings that could be passed on to consumers.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out for the iPhone 15 but expect to see totally different iPhone lineup this year. Will we get the mini back? I hope so. I know there are lots of consumers that really like the smaller form factor. We’ll just have to wait and see what Apple has planned and has in store for us