Apple May Launch It First Major Product In Months

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 21, 6:24AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Apple May Launch It First Major Product In Months — © Eric Thayer / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) moved aggressively into the accessory business several years ago. Why give away components key to product use when it could charge for them and make tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars?

Airpods are the current best example of Apple’s move to sell products that allow people to make the best use of its flagships. Each set works with Apple’s major hardware products. The least expensive version is AirPods with a charging case, priced at $159. AirPods Pro, with additional features like “active noise cancellation” cost $249. AirPods Max, a full set of headphones, cost $549.

Bloomberg reports that Apple’s next big accessory product may be a “battery-boosting” accessory that attaches to an iPhone magnetically. It would use MagSafe, which is already available for wireless charging. CNN Business speculates that the product will be particularly useful because 5G superfast service, which the iPhone 12 runs on, drains batteries faster than the current 4G standard.

How much is a wireless magnet attached charger worth to Apple? Its accessories and home products business $15 billion this year.

Apple’s new battery pack will compete with products already available for sales. Among them, Xvida costs $49. The company claims the battery can charge an iPhone battery that is empty to 80% power within 35 minutes.

How long an iPhone battery holds a charge varies substantially. Unused, the battery may stay charged more than a day. Playing video can cut that time in half. Presumably, the success of a magnetic battery pack is based on the fact that not everyone has a place to easily charge their iPhones while they are away from a traditional or standard wireless charger.

[nativounit]

Apple’s incentives for the creation and sales of accessories are substantial. Although the current iPhone 12 is considered in a super-cycle of unusually high sales that could last a year and a half or more, eventually sales will begin to flatten or dip, unless the iPhone 13 has unexpected features that make a leap with features that are unexpected.

A magnetic charger could be the first in a line of accessories meant to keep Apple’s revenue rising well into 2022.

Click here to read Apple’s Car First Major Step Falls Into Place

[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.