Things don't look good for Apple and the iPhone 7

This year isn't going to bring a bumper harvest for Apple - and it's all because of what's set to be an underwhelming iPhone 7 offering.

These are the predictions of ever-reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of finance group KGI Securities, outlining Apple's falling favour in a new research note.

A gadget forecaster who's previously forecast Apple releases including the iPhone SE, iPad Pro and iPhone 6, Kuo believes that in a "worst case scenario", Apple will ship 190 million iPhones - it's lowest number since 2014. While that's still a lot of iPhones, it represents a fall of 18 per cent. Even in a best case scenario of shipping 205 million devices, Apple would still see iPhone sales reduced by 11.6 per cent. 

Should this be the case, it would leave Apple as the only top-five smartphone brand in 2016 to see a decline in shipments year-over-year, the first occasion in which Apple would underperform in the smartphone sector it practically invented. 

The cause of this dip? Kuo points to one factor being a lack of interest in the iPhone SE - a handset that falls out of line with Apple's usual habit of incrementally improving the newest iPhone model. In addition, he's not predicting grand things for the iPhone 7 - a handset that could cap-off Apple's current all-metal phone design. 

He's described the iPhone 7 model currently in the works as lacking "many attractive selling points", pointing to a new handset set to be released in 2017 as having some far more appealing design features, including a radically improved camera and all-glass case.

With the iPhone 7 expected to look awfully similar to the iPhone 6S, with marginal improvements for the camera, processor and battery, it could see the company fall further behind Samsung. 

Sure, it's just one analyst looking into their techy crystal ball - but with Apple sales growth falling in recent months, the pressure is certainly on to deliver something special. 

[Via: 9to5mac]