Apple roadmap for 2014: new iPhones, iWatch, new MacBooks, no iTV

A South Korean analyst with a good track record in predicting the future of Apple’s products as well as schedules of their introductions has published a new version of the company’s roadmap for the this year. The plan includes plenty of new products, several upgrades, but excludes the highly-anticipated TV-sets as well as professional iPad Pro tablets.

KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi Kuo predicts that Apple will introduce two models of iWatch smart watches with 1.3” and 1.5” screens, two all-new iPhone designs with 4.7” (1334*750 resolution) and 5.5” (1920*1080 resolution) displays, a low-cost iMac (what will happen to Mac Mini in this case?) as well as all-new 12” MacBook in ultra-slim body this year, reports Mac Rumours. The company is also projected to upgrade iMac, MacBook Pro and Apple TV.

Virtually all new introductions/releases are projected to happen in late Q3 – early Q4 timeframe (September and October), which is a little bit surprising as Apple will not have new notebooks for the back-to-school season. The analyst believes that the company will announce the low-cost iMac and upgraded iMacs sometimes in late Q2, which is probably June, so expect the new all-in-one Macintosh systems to feature Intel Core i-series “Haswell Refresh” microprocessors. The enlarged iPhone with 5.5” display is expected to show up in the very late Q4, so do not expect a lot of such devices to ship this year.

It is noteworthy that Ming Chi Kuo no longer expects Apple to release its own TV-sets this year. Since predictions of the KGI analyst are heavily based on market rumours and supply-chain checks, it is possible that the current expectations are based on the recent information that Apple plans to delay introduction of the iTV to 2015.

Another interesting thing is that for some reason the analyst also no longer projects Apple to release the iPad for business users with 12.9” display. Instead, he claims that the new iPads (second-gen iPad Air and third-gen iPad Mini) will feature A8 system-on-chips as well as touch ID fingerprint readers, which will make them generally more attractive to enterprise customers. Still, keeping in mind that for business users Apple would need to reinvent the text input method on tablets as on-screen keyboards are rather inconvenient, it seems that the company might have run into some technological problems with the iPad Pro.

Apple did not comment on the news-story.

KitGuru Says: While all predictions regarding Apple’s plans should be taken with a grain of salt since the company is still capable of keeping its secrets very well, a number of KGI Securities’ predictions appeared to be accurate in the past.

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