As iPhone 6 Rumours Start, How Can Apple Keep Its Edge?

The latest smartphones to hit the shelves, Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One, have both received rave reviews, and now all eyes have turned towards tech giant Apple, to see what the company has up its sleeve for this year.

Rumours of a new iPhone (iPhone 5s/iPhone 6) have started doing the rounds, and speculated features range from fingerprint sensors and a new home button to display and keyboard projectors and a transparent skin.

This video highlighting possible iPhone 6 concepts has received close to 60,000 views on YouTube. (Story continues after video)

While Apple is expected to announce details of the new phone in June, one thing is certain – the company has to stun to succeed.

Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company was “hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services that we can’t wait to introduce this fall and throughout 2014 in exciting new product categories.”

“Apple will most likely respond with a new iPhone this year,” predicted Ashish Panjabi, COO of Jacky’s Group.

“Samsung hasn’t been benchmarking the Galaxy S4 against the iPhone 5 as they know this isn’t going to be Apple’s flagship device this year. Rather whatever next iPhone comes from Apple will be the product that will be benchmarked against the Galaxy S4 so the ball is now in Apple’s court to come back and make us go WOW!,” he said.

With the smartphone market getting overcrowded, phone manufacturers have started scrambling desperately to win more customers. Almost every new release is eagerly anticipated by loyal fans, who look for innovative and creative new features.

Samsung beat Apple last year to become the world’s number one smartphone maker, and enjoyed a 32.4 per cent marketshare as of the first quarter of this year, according to Tomi Ahonen Consulting Analysis.

Apple, which had a 17.6 per cent smartphone marketshare in Q1, announced its first quarterly profit drop in a decade this year. The company’s Q1 profit fell 18.1 per cent to $9.5 billion, down from $11.6 billion in the January to March period last year.

Following the news, Apple shares dipped below $400 on April 17.

Reports of Apple’s waning supremacy began to appear and analysts expressed serious concerns about the lack of any new product launches.

But according to Panjabi, the company has never focused on the short-term.

“If you look at it, the iPad was actually in development before the iPhone but came out three to four years later. In fact looking at Apple’s track record, every major innovation came out with a gap of a couple of years,” he explained.

“Unfortunately most shareholders have become impatient and expect innovations within months and not years which is unsustainable,” he added.

While the world awaits the new smartphone, Apple may have many more new and futuristic gadgets in store.

“We’ve heard of televisions and watches but there are other trends that we could see emerge or categories that Apple creates going forward,” said Panjabi.

“Wearable technology has been a buzz category whether it be the Google Glasses or Nike’s FuelBand. We’ve yet to see Apple refresh their Macbook lineup and even though Microsoft introduced touch on their Windows 8 platform, I have a feeling Apple may go a step further where they add something like voice recognition or gesture control alongside a touchscreen functionality in their MacBooks,” he added.