New Products Reinforce Apple's Appeal

On Wednesday,

Improvements to the iPhone with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus include water resistance, 20% more battery life, double the storage, twice the speaker volume, improved camera technology, a 40% faster processor and 50% faster LTE connectivity (all versus the one-year old iPhone 6s). The 7 Plus has a dual lens camera which, when combined with enhanced software and processing power, may start to encroach on professional-grade photo quality. Admittedly, none of these features, in isolation, will likely drive a wave of phone upgrades, particularly versus the 6s. However, these enhancements start to add up when compared with the two-year old iPhone 6 (Apple’s biggest smash hit device) and older iPhones (twice the processor speed, three times faster LTE speed versus the iPhone 6, for example). Further, we saw little that leads us to believe iOS users will have good reason to flee the ecosystem, so we continue to expect Apple to profit from future iPhone upgrades over time.

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