Apple Inc introduced its largest-ever iPhone and a watch that detects heart problems on Wednesday in an attempt to get customers to upgrade to more expensive devices in the face of stagnant global demand for smartphones.
The relatively small changes to its lineup, following last year’s overhauled iPhone X, were widely expected by investors, who sent the company’s shares down 1.2 per cent to $221.07.
The strategy has been successful, helping Apple’s stock up more than 30 per cent this year and making it the first publicly traded U.S. company to hit a market value of more than $1 trillion.
Apple’s new iPhone XS, pronounced “ten S,” has a 5.8-inch (14.7-cm) screen, and starts at $999.
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The XS Max, the largest iPhone to date and one of the biggest on the market, has a 6.5-inch (16.5-cm) screen, and starts at $1,099.
“They have finally added a larger-screen phone so that they can directly compete with the Galaxy Note9 products,” Gartner analyst Annette Zimmermann said at the event at Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters, referring to rival Samsung Electronics, which has led the trend toward big-screen phones.
“The larger screen will be very important in China to turn around the trend there, because they have lost some share in the last few years, partly because of screen size,” she added.
Apple also introduced a lower-cost 6.1-inch (15.5 cm) iPhone XR made of aluminum, starting at $749.
