We ususally avoid tackling rumors, but when the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Bloomberg are all talking about it, then it’s officially time to weigh in.
The rumor in question is that the next iPhone will have a four-inch screen, instead of the three-and-a-half inch screen that the iPhone has had since 2007. Bloomberg even alleges that this was something Steve Jobs was involved in. That would be interesting, considering he’d previously derided four-inch phones as too large. That. however, was a few years ago. If you take a look at the majority of non-Apple smartphones these days, four inches’ is on the small side. HTC, LG, and Samsung all have phones with four-and-a-half inch screens or larger. Some, like the Galaxy Note, are specialty items at a whopping five inches. However, four inches is what people are now getting used to as a base minimum. Even if Apple does add 4G connectivity to the next iPhone, the smaller screen is a potential turn-off for some. Heck, we saw it with HP — my favorite recent example of failure — while everyone else was trending larger, they came out with the compact HP Veer, a mini-phone that few bought.
There’s also a rumor, albeit less widely reported, that Apple is looking at a smaller screen iPad. While I don’t doubt that there’s a few “iPad Mini” mock-ups on the Apple campus, I doubt this is anything we’ll see in the next year or so. Apple has created and is dominating the 10-inch tablet market. A new larger iPhone and smaller iPad released at the same time would totally cannibalize each others’ sales. Far wiser to come out with a four-inch iPhone as a de facto iPad mini. Apple has shown themselves way too savvy to do anything that suicidal.
Note: That picture is an actual case that you can buy. Neat, huh?
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