While everyone's been waiting with bated breath to know Apple's view on large screen phones, the Cupertino headquartered company doesn't look too keen on the idea, at least in the short term.
During Apple's second-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Tim Cook, while
answering a question on the company's view on a 5-inch phone, mentioned that the company doesn't want to cut corners in areas related to the quality, power consumption, portability, and compatibility with apps.
Responding to a question by Ben A. Reitzes of Barclays Capital, Cook said, "My view continues to be that iPhone 5 has the absolute best display in the industry. And we always strive to create the very best display for our customers. And some customers value large screen size, others value also other factors such as resolution, colour quality, white balance, brightness, reflectivity, screen longevity, power consumption, portability, compatibility with apps and many things."
"Our competitors had made some significant trade-offs in many of these areas in order to ship a larger display, we would not ship a larger display iPhone while these trade-offs exist," he added.
Cook's answer talks about a lot of different user experience elements. While phone makers like Samsung have reduced the screen resolution of their large phones with their screen size, in the past, they also had to include batteries with larger capacities. Of course, app compatibility would also be an issue as developers would have to optimise their apps for different screen resolutions and sizes.
It's worth pointing out that Cook did not dismiss the idea of a 5-inch phone altogether but hinted that Apple would only bring a large screen phone to the market if it's able to take care of the elements that go into creating a good user experience.
Cook also announced that Apple has a lot in store in terms of new products in fall and across 2014. So the earlier
rumours pointing to a delayed iPhone 5S and iPad mini next generation launching in fall, may have, in a way, been corroborated.
"I'm just saying we've got some really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014," Cook added.