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Tim Cook finally takes Apple into new terrain

CUPERTINO (California) — After three years of incremental changes to products created under Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook finally delivered on his promise to take the world’s most valuable company into new categories including wearables and payments, crystallising his vision for the firm.

Mr Kevin Lynch, Apple’s vice-president of technology, introducing the Apple Watch to an audience in Cupertino on Tuesday. The smartwatch will be sold only in the United States and it will have to be paired with an iPhone to work. Photo: The New 
York Times

Mr Kevin Lynch, Apple’s vice-president of technology, introducing the Apple Watch to an audience in Cupertino on Tuesday. The smartwatch will be sold only in the United States and it will have to be paired with an iPhone to work. Photo: The New
York Times

CUPERTINO (California) — After three years of incremental changes to products created under Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook finally delivered on his promise to take the world’s most valuable company into new categories including wearables and payments, crystallising his vision for the firm.

Apple on Tuesday revealed a smartwatch with health and fitness capabilities and smartphone-like features such as maps and messaging. The company also introduced new bigger-screen iPhones, along with ways to use Apple’s latest gadgets to make payments at outlets such as McDonald’s, Target and Subway.

The moves showed how Mr Cook is leading Apple — already an entryway into digital entertainment and communications through its iPhones, iPads and App Store — further into how people pay for goods and how they care for themselves and exercise. He called the new products the next chapter in Apple’s story.

Mr Cook’s strategy is an extension of the one started under Jobs: To make Apple the digital hub of people’s lives for music, pictures, apps and more —because once they are tied in, they are likely to remain loyal customers.

“This was his biggest event,” Mr Richard Doherty, an analyst with technology consulting firm Envisioneering Group, said of Mr Cook’s product unveilings at an event in Cupertino, California. “To have them synchronised, nobody else could have come close to this.”

The highly anticipated smartwatch combines health and fitness monitoring with mobile computer capabilities such as maps. Apple Watch, which was met with a standing ovation at the event, has a rectangular watch face and a dial on the side that can be turned to zoom in or out, or scroll up and down. The touchscreen device comes in two sizes, as well as in classic, sports and gold edition models. Six strap designs are available, including leather and steel.

Mr Cook said health features in the watch were a priority for him personally. The device can be used to detect a pulse rate, and has other fitness-tracking capabilities, such as letting a user monitor calories burnt during a workout. The watch also includes applications that have long been associated with smartphones, including maps, photos, music and messaging capabilities. It works with the voice-command software Siri, so if a user wants to see what movies are playing nearby they can speak into the watch to get the latest show times.

The device will be available next year — later than Mr Cook had originally telegraphed on timing, when he said new products would be introduced “throughout 2014”. The watch will be sold only in the United States and it will have to be paired with an iPhone to work.

Apple is a late arrival to the still-nascent market for wearable technology. Several other companies already sell smartwatches that have been greeted with widespread indifference.

But Apple has a reputation for igniting dormant markets. Other music players, smartphones and tablets were first to market, but the devices did not enthral consumers until Apple imbued them with its magic touch.

The smartwatch might be a game changer not only for Apple, but also for the entire industry, said FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives. “A lot of major technology players around the globe are taking notes on what Apple is trying to do here.”

Apple also revealed two new iPhones, called iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which have rounded edges and a thinner frame than earlier models, as well as higher-resolution displays. They will come with 4.7-inch (12cm) and 5.5-inch screens; the most recent iPhones measure 4 inches.

The new phones are not as big as Samsung’s latest flagship phones — 5.1 inches for the Galaxy S5 and 5.7 inches for the Note 4 — but they will be large enough to neutralise a key advantage Samsung and other Android manufacturers have had. The devices will come in silver, gold and space grey.

The processor inside the new iPhones is about 25 per cent faster than the previous version, said Mr Phil Schiller, an Apple head of marketing. The iPhones have slightly better battery life than the previous iPhone, and they include new wireless capabilities to get faster Internet speeds from cellular networks.

With the new iPhones and watch, Apple is moving deeper into the world of mobile payments. The firm demonstrated Apple Pay, a feature that allows users to pay for things in retail stores with the devices. Tens of thousands of retailers in the US will accept it, the firm said. Apple Pay will also work with services including mobile car-booking app Uber, restaurant reservation system OpenTable and daily deals company Groupon, it added.

The service would provide a new revenue stream for Apple. The company will collect a fee from banks on each purchase, people familiar with the service said.

But the move has implications far beyond Apple and those devices. If Apple Pay can make more people use their smartphones to pay for things, it could push companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft to reach similar deals with retailers and credit card companies, making mobile payments more widespread. AGENCIES

 

New iPhones’ release date in Singapore

- M1, SingTel and StarHub announced yesterday that they will offer iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus from Sept 19.

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