CUPERTINO, CA. – In an ambitious blitz of new products, Apple Inc. unveiled a pair of larger-screen iPhones, a sleekly designed smartwatch and a new payment system allowing users to make store purchases with a smartphone. Apple said the new products would go on sale Sept. 19.
The new iPhones will have 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays, larger than its current four-inch screen. The new phones will be called the iPhone6 and iPhone6 plus.
Apple said it plans to sell the larger 5.5-inch model starting at $299 with a two-year carrier contract, higher than the $199 price for its current high-end iPhone 5S. The company said the 4.7-inch iPhone will start at $199 with a contract.
The company said the new phones come with many hardware improvements, including a sharper display, better battery life and improved camera performance.
The most noticeable upgrade for phones is the larger displays. Apple has stuck with a smaller display for its iPhone, even as competitors started making larger screens a standard feature for high-end phones. The feature is especially popular in China and other emerging markets where the smartphone is replacing the PC as the primary computing device.
Apple’s main smartphone rival Samsung Electronics Co. has pushed aggressively into larger-size smartphones, using the bigger screen as a key differentiator from the iPhone. For smartphones with screens of 5 inches or larger, Samsung is the leader, with 34 percent of the market, according to Canalys.
Apple pushed the price of its high-end iPhone higher, even as other manufacturers feel pricing pressure on smartphones. Apple’s iPhone is already more expensive than nearly all of its competitors. Before the price increase, research firm IDC estimated that the world-wide average selling price of an iPhone will be $657 this year, compared with $254 for phones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system.
