iPhone News Updated

How Steve Jobs’ Apple Married Mass Marketing With Unabashed Creativity

Will Tim Cook Subscribe to Same Principles That Drove Record Revenue, Profit?

Apple is a company inextricably tied to the word “new” — new categories of consumer technology, new distribution models and, of course, when is the new iPhone coming out?

But when it comes to marketing, Steve Jobs has proven to be 100% old-school: back up great products up with creative advertising, big media spending and, don’t forget, smart retail.

As Mr. Jobs, arguably the brand’s beating heart, steps away from his role as CEO to become chairman, one can only hope his successor, Tim Cook, adheres to the marketing formula that, while far more rotary than iPhone, has helped propel the company to record revenue and profit.

“There’s exceptional sentiment that [Apple is] all about product design and proves that user experience is all that matters,” said Noah Brier, cofounder of content discovery startup Percolate and former exec-director strategy at the Barbarian Group. “Then why does Apple spend $400 million on the most traditional kind of advertising?”

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iPhone 5 has metal back, A6 chip ‘late 2012′

The future of Apple is mobile and that’s what’s driving such speculation as the world and its brother considers the future of the company now CEO Steve Jobs has moved, Gandalf-like, into the shadows. And it looks like the next-gen iPhone 5 will be faster, smaller and bigger, according to this morning’s report from Digitimes.

We all want to know

Though highly speculative, there’s little new in this morning’s claims, in brief: Digitimes now says the iPhone 5 won’t possess a 4.2-inch screen. (iPhones have never had such a screen). The iPhone 5 will boast a metal back with a 3.5-3.7 inch screen with a thinner bezel for a larger-looking screen.

The new claims do render some interesting gleanings: “The rumored specifications of iPhone 5 include a 4- to 4.2-inch HD touch panel, 8-megapixel camera, Full HD video recording, A5 dual-core processor and new ultra-thin industrial design; however, the sources believe that the leaked specifications are rather the market’s expectations for iPhone 5.”

This is interesting because a second rumor this morning claims that the introduction of Apple’s A6 processor may not take place until the second-half of next year, which suggests a late 2012 launch for post iPhone 5 models and any significant A6-powered iPad upgrade.

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