Really? How about when Apple was asked about making a 5" iPhone, three months ago and Tim Cook panned that idea. He was asked about it again during the conference call; and once again it was panned.
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Ben A. Reitzes – Barclays Capital, Inc.
All right, thanks and Tim my follow-up just for you, just maybe asking you this every quarter in different ways. But I just wanted to you get reaction to what you thought of the 5-inch phone market at this time versus three months ago? And if anything has changed in your view as to that market and it’s placed in the smartphone world versus your 4-inch product? And that’s it for me.
Tim Cook
Yeah Ben, good question. It might continue to be that iPhone 5 has become the best to supply in the industry. And we always drive to create the very best display for our customers. Some customers’ value large screen size, others value cost of other factors such as resolution, color quality, white balance, brightness, productivity, screen longevity, power consumption, portability, compatibility,apps many things. Other – our competitors had made some significant trade-offs in many of these areas in order to ship a larger display, we want to get the larger display, iPhone by trade-offs (inaudible)...(sic).we would not ship a larger display iPhone while these trade-offs exist...(inaudible)
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(Cook basically said the larger screen resolution wasn't good enough with Apple's current technology/operating system)
The reason Apple is panning this is that they have to change their code on their operating system so the screen can be used, and that's the problem. So then, what magic is Apple going to bring to the market? In 2014??
Maybe Apple's problem is really Tim Cook, and what Tim Cook thinks is important.
Let's take a look at Cook. Below is Tim on an Apple Special event on September 12 2012....
http://www.apple.com/apple-events/september-2012/
You just have to watch 90 seconds of it, as Tim Cook waxes on and on about the Barcelona store....
http://youtu.be/zEJun_xFqVA
He said the company had spent 2½ years working on every detail of the store,”getting everything exactly right.” He mentioned that Apple used limestone from a local quarry to restore and modernize the store. “No one would have done this but Apple,” he said. “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”
At last June’s World Wide Developers Conference, Cook highlighted the retail chain at the beginning of his keynote to formally introduce iOS 6. “It has a signature glass staircase and the opening had a signature crowd,” Cook narrated as the slides changed from the store interior to the outside waiting line. ”Our customers in Barcelona loved this store...”
So if Tim Cook got that bent out of shape over the Barcelona store, what is happening to Apple manager's as they are spending $6 billion on their spaceship corporate headquarters??
Apple's idea of innovation is to now take on debt to buy back stock, as AAPL "invests in themselves."
Why doesn't Apple instead invest in a 5" phone?