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Heading into Apple Inc.’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, expectations aren’t particularly high.
Last year, Apple fans pretty much knew ahead of WWDC that the company was going to announce a voice-controlled speaker and upgrade some of its computers, in addition to making the usual sorts of software improvements. This time around, there are no notable hardware rumors in the air, though analysts have been speculating over what the company could announce during a keynote address that takes place on June 4 at 1 p.m. Eastern time.
WWDC is one of Apple’s biggest events of the year, along with the company’s September iPhone release event, but recent conferences haven’t brought forth much in the way of groundbreaking technology.
“They’ve missed the mark in recent years,” KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Andy Hargreaves told MarketWatch. Apple has made augmented reality a major focus, but that “hasn’t caught on yet,” according to Hargreaves. And he said that while the company hasn’t released its own data on Apple Pay Cash, a peer-to-peer money-transfer offering announced last year, the service “doesn’t seem to have impacted Venmo in any way.”
When Apple announced Apple Pay Cash, it was perceived as a direct threat to the PayPal Holdings Inc. service Venmo . Instead, Apple Pay Cash has been an also-ran in the world of peer-to-peer payments, even as other challengers including Square Inc.’s Square Cash and the big banks’ Zelle service have succeeded in gaining ground on Venmo.
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Apple may surprise investors this year with a big hardware or software announcement, but experts are mainly expecting incremental enhancements on both the hardware and software sides.
In terms of hardware, Apple could introduce a cheaper Siri-integrated speaker, according to Gene Munster, a former Apple analyst at Piper Jaffray who now works at venture-capital firm Loup Ventures. “We believe Apple can advance its digital assistant ambitions with a $250 Beats-branded option that does not compromise HomePod’s $349 price point,” Munster wrote.
GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives, meanwhile, sees an “outside” chance that the company will show off an “iPhone SE 2” this year. The iPhone SE is a low-end model that’s meant to broaden the iPhone’s appeal in emerging markets.
And KeyBanc’s Hargreaves wrote Thursday that Apple could show off a host of Mac upgrades on Monday. “We expect hardware updates to the MacBook and MacBook Pro, and possibly to the entry-level MacBook Air,” he wrote. The MacBook Pro tends to see volume increases after Apple makes enhancements, according to Hargreaves.
The focus of WWDC mainly falls on software, though, and, in terms of that, Apple watchers look for small improvements as well as some new iOS features. Loup’s Munster, for example, said he thinks the company could make upgrades to Siri, augmented-reality tools and digital-privacy features.
Munster would like to see Siri get smarter and take on new tasks, like an ability to assist email. In terms of augmented reality, which is one of the key investment areas for his venture firm, Munster wrote that Apple’s AR developer platform ARKit needs to add “persistence” features and to support multiplayer sessions. Persistence refers to the ability for users to, say, hang up a virtual painting on a wall and see that painting in the same place next time they open the app, Munster explained. Multiplayer capabilities would let multiple users engage with a single virtual player in different ways.
As for digital privacy, Munster said he expects Apple to make it easier for users to find out when their personal data are being shared with developers and also introduce “device management” features that could help people limit their own screen time.
Apple could also announce a magazine-subscription service, following its recent acquisition of Texture, which bundled magazine subscriptions into a single service. Hargreaves eventually sees the company rolling out an all-encompassing subscription offering that would give users access to music, cloud storage, news, and other services for a flat fee, somewhat similar to Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Prime.
One thing we probably won’t see this year is an Apple video service to rival the streaming incumbents, Hargreaves said. The company has been investing in original content and media talent after original efforts to put shows on Apple Music proved disappointing, but investors and consumers might have to wait another year to see a new video service materialize.
“They’re in production for most of the significant shows they’ve bought, so there’s nothing to actually launch, because there are no shows,” he said.
As usual, Apple will show off a broad array of new software functions that will be available on its iOS 12 mobile operating system come fall, as well as enhancements to the Apple Watch’s operating system. Investors will be looking for signs that Apple is continuing to develop enticing software that will keep users loyal to their devices and interested in paying for Apple services, especially in light of recent underperformance of expectations by iPhone unit sales.