People should not expect Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iWatch to be available soon after their event today, Nomura telecoms analyst Stuart Jeffrey told CNBC in an interview.
The comment about the much-rumored Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) smartwatch comes as the company is expected today to unveil its latest smartphone, the iPhone 6, and bare plans for what is being popularly called the iWatch.
“We think there is an announcement [about the iWatch] but it doesn’t sound like production started yet so it looks like it will come out maybe next year. The smartwatch is quite hard to engineer in terms of the user interface and the apps so I think they need to announce it a long time in advance to get the application developers on board,” Jeffrey said.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is expected to debut two versions of its hot-selling smartphone: one with a 4.7-inch sapphire display and one with a 5.5-inch sapphire display. Furthermore, reports leading up to the event today in California have pointed to the possibility that the iPhone-maker will debut a smartwatch at the launch of the newest iPhone.
According to the analyst, the expectation is that the larger iPhone may be priced $100 more than the traditional price of a new iPhone. The smaller iPhone is expected to retain traditional pricing for new iPhones, he said.
Meanwhile, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has to figure out how it launches its payment processing platform if ever it does launch a system like this today, Jeffrey said. He noted that Android phones with Near Field Communication (NFC) did not succeed in the past because people needed to carry their wallets still because this is where they kept their identification cards and cash for places that do not take cards.
What Apple needs to do is to figure out a way to get a cut of the money made during processing payments as a 30% cut from credit card companies will not work and merchants will not want to charge more for people using Apple’s payment processing system, he said.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) shareholders includes David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital. The hedge fund reported about 9.45 million shares in the company by the end of the second quarter.
Disclosure: None
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