Will the next-gen iPhone release be enough to ensure Apple’s smartphone market dominance?

With the popularity of Apple products through the roof ,and the imposing shadow of the next-gen iPhone on the horizon, we take a look at some of the “leaked” info and rumours that have been circulating ahead of its launch and ask whether Apple is doing enough to secure its dominance for the future.

We keep our ear pretty close to the ground here at BANGBANGTECH so we think we’ve got a fairly good idea what’s going to roll out of Apple’s Cupertino HQ come the 17th July, sadly though, we don’t think we’re going to be bowled away.

Although Apple has still given no official word of a new iPhone yet it’s generally considered that this situation will change come the 6th June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) when the next-gen iPhone 3 (or whatever it will be called) will be officially announced.

Up until now there have been lots of rumours about the form of the next release ranging from a space-saving smaller, lighter, Nano-style device to a pocket-filling full-QWERTY for easier emailing, browsing and messaging. We think that it will be neither of these, and instead Apple will leave the form virtually unchanged, it may slim it down a little – but nothing like the extent of a Nano version.

Feature-wise we’re naturally expecting a refresh of the iPhone to rectify its current glaring omissions (MMS and video recording spring to mind) and bring it a bit more up to date but beyond these changes, which are largely rectified by the introduction of the new OS 3.0 operating system, we’re beginning to lose faith that we will see anything truly ground-breaking or ingenious. Cut-and-paste is so last-year.

So that leaves the hardware,  except from what we’re hearing, even that may leave us feeling a little, to use internet parlance, “meh”. The camera is rumoured to be seeing an upgrade from 2 to 3.2-megapixels, but in today’s terms we don’t think that’s enough.

Every self-respecting smartphone is shipping with a minimum of 5-megapixel snappers (or should be) and it’s not really to do with needing the extra pixels, but with budget (sub-$200) handsets like the upcoming Nokia 5530 XpressMusic shipping with an equal 3.2-megapixels, consumers want to see that the premium product that they are purchasing is head-and-shoulders above of the competition. And in this instance the direct smartphone competition is busily working away on a swathe of 8 and 12-megapixel devices. Even the heavily anticipated Palm Pre that is launching soon will ship with a 5-megapixel snapper.

Other hardware upgrades that we’ve all but had confirmation of include larger hard drive (32GB) SKUs – a 32GB place holder was actually spotted online at T-Mobile Austria by some eager-eyed sleuths, but was quickly pulled from the site.

We’re also pretty darn sure that we’ll be seeing 3G data transfer speeds boosted to at least the 7.2Mbps range and the Wi-Fi module should be N-spec meaning zippier data transfer speeds when connected to a network.

And this is all very well, but it isn’t very exciting, it isn’t the reason that Apple has such a huge following of dedicated consumers in the first place; that requires innovation.

We want them to blow a gajillion dollars on R&D for some crazy new features that we don’t even know we want or need yet, we want them to implement crazy new gesture controls that involve spelling out the word ‘answer’ in air-writing just to answer a call (OK, maybe not that – but still). However, we fear that this time round Apple will play the cautious card; slim it down and beef it up, but basically leave it the same; and who can blame it, it’s been one heck of a winning formula so far.

But that was when the iTunes app store was the only shop on the block; the success of it, and the app store in particular, has prompted every one of Apple’s major competitors to launch their own version and admittedly whilst they are still gathering momentum they may not be too much of a threat to Apple’s grip, but soon enough they will grow to the point where virtually all major apps are available for all operating systems, which can only be detrimental for Apple’s business.

We hope we’re wrong, we really do, but we just can’t help but feel that Apple’s newest iteration of its dominating touchscreen handset might have a few, more worthy, competitors on its hands this time around – albeit without a glowing Apple logo on-board.

We can’t wait until WWDC to find out more and look forward to next-gen iPhone’s rumoured arrival on the 17th July but there are a number of worthy contenders waiting in the wings ready to step into the iPhone’s limelight should it falter.