Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Apple
    • Apple
    • Mobile

    Apple iPhone 6 Plus Arrives Late to the Screen Size Competition

    By
    Wayne Rash
    -
    September 13, 2014
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin
      iPhone 6 Plus2

      Apple is finding out that its soon-to-be-shipped iPhone 6 Plus is in even higher demand than the company thought it might be. The new phone, which is being offered at a higher price than the standard iPhone 6, has still sold out well in advance.

      Reports are coming in from all over the United States about month-long delays in promised delivery times for the 6 Plus. Meanwhile, the regular iPhone 6 can still be ordered for delivery on the first day of availability.

      The reasons for this lack of availability seem to be complex. Apparently, the company had supply problems in the larger size, which meant that fewer were made in advance of the Sept. 19 release date. In addition, it’s possible that the company simply didn’t realize how many people wanted the larger, phablet-sized iPhone.

      And make no mistake, the iPhone 6 Plus is a phablet. Its screen is only slightly smaller than the Galaxy Note 4 that Samsung is set to ship soon. The Note 4 is marketed as a phablet, just as the earlier iterations of the Note were.

      For whatever reason, the iPhone 6 Plus is being marketed simply as a phone. But what’s really more important is that Apple has finally caved and offered a screen size that its customers wanted.

      It’s worth noting that Apple is years behind Samsung in offering larger screen sizes, something that may explain the company’s lagging sales numbers, compared with Android devices, many of which have larger screens. So why does Apple seem to be so far behind the curve?

      Part of the answer, of course, is that Apple only really launches one phone a year most years. Last year, it was the iPhone 5S, which was physically little different from the previous iPhone 5. It’s hard to keep up with the light-speed changes in the phone industry when it takes a company a year to make a substantive change.

      Apple’s arch-rival Samsung, on the other hand, seems to have an inexhaustible supply of new phone types and launches them to fill any conceivable, and some inconceivable product niches.

      But it could also be due to Apple’s established culture of doing only what the company believes it needs to do, regardless of what customers may indicate what they want. The concept of limiting customer input into the design of Apple products was part of the legacy of Steve Jobs, who fostered the idea that Apple knew best.

      In reality, of course, customers know best about what they want and need, and it seems that Tim Cook recognized this and is taking steps to pay closer attention to what customers demand.

      Apple iPhone 6 Plus Arrives Late to the Screen Size Competition

      But it takes time to change the direction of a large company, and Apple is no exception.

      Making matters worse (at least, in a sense) is that Apple doesn’t do anything halfway. While the iPhone 6, for example, may not have the gee-whiz features that Samsung puts into its phones, they are beautifully engineered. And I’m not sure that some of those features, such as having the phone watch your eyes to see if you’ve nodded off while reading, are really in demand.

      But there needs to be at least some attention paid to what customers really want. Screen size is a perfect example. When I bought an iPhone 5 some months ago, I quickly returned it simply because the screen was too small to use when browsing the Web and much too small for my hands. Phones with larger screens, such as the BlackBerry Z30, worked much better for me.

      Obviously, they worked a lot better for a lot of users, as demonstrated by the hot sales of the Samsung Galaxy S smartphones. Now that Apple has a phone with a larger screen, initial sales of that model are already outpacing production.

      But there’s an underlying problem here. Given the pace of change in the wireless device market, can Apple afford to wait years for significant developments?

      Phones with large screens have been out for a while now, yet Apple is just now releasing its first. As time goes on, the pace of development will increase. If Apple stays on this once-a-year refresh cycle, how long before the company drops hopelessly behind?

      Already, there have been any number of online jokesters suggesting that the iPhone 6 is the best new phone of 2010, and while that’s not true, the fact remains that Apple seems to be bringing up the rear in many technology features.

      Right now, many of those features found in competing phones are of dubious value. For example, ultra-high-resolution cameras in a smartphone are of questionable value. But that’s not true of everything.

      So the question has to be, how long can Apple afford to take such a leisurely development pace before some other manufacturer, whether it’s Microsoft or Samsung, arrives with some compelling feature that it will take Apple a year or more to deliver?

      At the current state of development, that could be too long. Apple needs to find a way to pick up the pace, or it could be permanently too late to the game.

      Avatar
      Wayne Rash
      Wayne Rash is a freelance writer and editor with a 35 year history covering technology. He’s a frequent speaker on business, technology issues and enterprise computing. He covers Washington and is Senior Columnist for eWEEK. He is the author of five books, including his most recent, "Politics on the Nets". Rash is a former Executive Editor of eWEEK and Ziff Davis Enterprise, and a former analyst in the eWEEK Test Center. He was also an analyst in the InfoWorld Test Center, and Editor of InternetWeek. He's a retired naval officer, a former principal at American Management Systems and a long-time columnist for Byte Magazine.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×