The launch of a new iPhone is the most important date in the Apple calendar and the week before the event is usually filled with feverish speculation about what the new device might offer. However, the run-up to Wednesday’s iPhone launch has been overshadowed by a row about tax, after the European Commission struck down its deal with Ireland and hit it with a demand for €13bn in unpaid taxes.
Apple says it will appeal against the ruling but the timing is unfortunate. This was already shaping up to be an unusual launch, as it is the first time that a new iPhone will be unveiled against a backdrop of falling sales.
Apple normally overhauls the handset’s design every two years but supply chain leaks suggest that the new model will be a pretty similar shape and size to the iPhone 6 and 6S. Rumours of one of its flagship new features is already causing a backlash — Apple plans to do away with the regular headphone socket as part of a shift towards wireless audio. While Apple is expected to unveil new Bluetooth earbuds at the same time, the move could annoy people whose expensive wired headphones will now require a new adapter.
The other big upgrade to the iPhone 7 is likely to be in the camera. Apple’s event invitation shows soft-focus lights that hints at the iPhone’s new dual-lens camera, which is expected to challenge high end SLR cameras in sophistication and image quality.
However, many Wall Street analysts are doubtful that these changes will force as many people to upgrade as the iPhone 6, with its larger screen, did two years ago. So, many analysts predict iPhone sales will be broadly flat for the remainder of the year.
Public invited to Sports Direct AGM
Sports Direct will open its annual shareholders’ meeting to the public on Wednesday in an effort to defuse controversies surrounding employment conditions and corporate governance at the company, which is controlled by its billionaire founder Mike Ashley.
Britain’s biggest sportswear retailer has come under pressure after a powerful group of investors demanded that it dismiss the chairman, overhaul the board and launch an independent review into governance and working practices.
The demands came days after the Financial Times revealed that Sports Direct was paying a little-known company owned by Mr Ashley’s brother John to arrange international deliveries.
Barlin Delivery, which makes a profit of about £300,000 a year from the arrangement according to an estimate supplied by Sports Direct, owns no vans and employs no drivers, but instead uses couriers such as DHL.
Mr Ashley has previously courted controversy by appointing his daughter’s boyfriend to run Sports Direct’s property empire, via a consultancy contract that could be worth millions of pounds to the 26-year-old former nightclub promoter.
Investors will confront shareholders and members of the public on Wednesday in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, where there is a company open day two days after publication of a report into working practices which the company has commissioned from law firm RPC, its longstanding legal representative.
Sports Direct says the purpose of the open day, open to non-shareholders, is to “enable the board to engage with as many people as possible in an open discussion about the business”.
In June, MPs lambasted Mr Ashley over labour abuses at Sports Direct, saying they found it “incredible” that the self-made billionaire had no idea of “appalling” employment practices at his retail empire.
Committee chairman Iain Wright said that evidence pointed to a “business whose working practices are closer to that of a Victorian workhouse than that of a modern, reputable high street retailer”.
[Source:-FT]
