MacRumors

A user on Weibo has shared an image of what appears to be a manufacturing-related design drawing of Apple's rumored 5.8-inch iPhone with an OLED display, which is tentatively named the iPhone 8 or iPhone X.

The drawing, which surfaced on /LEAKS earlier today, appears to be on a computer belonging to an Apple manufacturing partner such as Foxconn. It's unclear when the photo was taken, or if it's authentic, so treat this rumor with some caution until actual parts start to leak from the supply chain.

The drawing appears to be from the EVT, or Engineering Verification Testing, stage. In other words, this could be one of over ten iPhone prototypes that Apple has supposedly been testing this year, and the iPhone that ultimately enters mass production later this year might have an entirely different design.

The drawing shows an iPhone with a larger display that takes up nearly the entire front of the smartphone, as widely rumored. However, while many sources suggest the display will resemble the Galaxy S8 with only top and bottom bezels, the drawing shows very slim bezels along the left and right edges as well.

On the rear of the iPhone, the drawing shows a vertically aligned dual camera system, which has been rumored only once before by Japanese website Mac Otakara in December. Touch ID has also been relocated to the rear shell, in line with multiple reports claiming the iPhone 8 won't have a Home button on the front.

It has been more frequently rumored that Apple will integrate Touch ID underneath the iPhone 8's display glass, but Cowen and Company analyst Timothy Arcuri recently said that Apple is facing yield issues with an under-display solution. If it cannot resolve those issues, he said Touch ID on the rear is one possibility.

The drawing depicts an iPhone 8 measuring 149.5mm tall and 72.5mm wide, compared to the iPhone 7's 138.3mm length and 67.1mm width, so the iPhone 8 would be slightly larger than a 4.7-inch iPhone as expected. It's depth is 8.6mm, compared to the iPhone 7 at 7.1mm, possibly due to a rumored glass and stainless steel frame.

If accurate, the iPhone 8 would be approaching the thickness of an iPhone 4, which also had a glass and stainless steel design.

Using the Pythagorean theorem, we calculated that the iPhone 8 would have an overall footprint of about 6.5 inches on the diagonal, compared to around 6 inches for iPhone 7 and around 6.9 inches for iPhone 7 Plus. In other words, the iPhone 8 would be smaller than an iPhone 7 Plus, yet with an even bigger display.

The sides of the iPhone include the usual volume toggles, mute switch, lock button, SIM card tray, Lightning connector, speaker grille, and what is likely a second faux speaker grille. In line with the iPhone 7, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack, suggesting that the legacy port won't be making a surprise comeback.

Chinese social network Weibo has been the source of numerous part leaks and Apple-related rumors in the past, but as is usually the case with leaks this far from launch, the iPhone depicted in today's image could end up being much different from the one that debuts later this year.

As a point of emphasis, the iPhone drawing pictured above is largely inconsistent with rumors and expectations from Apple analysts that we've heard. A vertical-aligned camera and Touch ID on the back of the iPhone in particular are largely one-off rumors that have not been substantiated by multiple sources.

However, this design cannot be entirely ruled out. As mentioned, Apple prototypes several different iPhones at once, and it will ultimately proceed with a model that is best suited for manufacturing at scale. Over the coming weeks and months, we should begin to see a clearer picture of which design Apple went with.

Around this time three years ago, a similar design drawing and a few real-life photos of a device that ended up being the iPhone 6 surfaced from within Foxconn, so these types of leaks are sometimes credible.

Mitchel Broussard contributed to this report.

Apple's iOS has dropped to its lowest share of the smartphone market in urban China since July 2014, according to new data collected and shared by Kantar Worldpanel. Today's report specifically details smartphone shares around the world for the three months ending in February 2017. In total, devices running iOS dropped 8.9 percentage points from the same year-ago quarter, receding from 22.1 percent of the China market to 13.2 percent.

Apple rival Android remains the dominant force in China at 86.4 percent of the smartphone market in the country, growing 9.3 percentage points year-over-year. Although the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus remained the top selling devices in China, Apple has trouble competing with local vendors -- like Oppo and Vivo -- who produce cheaper smartphones at a massive rate that are far easier to obtain by the Chinese consumer.

"In the three-month period ending February 2017, iOS accounted for 13.2% of smartphone sales in urban China, a decline of 8.9 percentage points from 22.1% a year earlier. This marks iOS’ lowest share since the three-month period ending July 2014," reported Tamsin Timpson, Strategic Insight Director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Asia. "That said, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus remained the top selling devices in the region, accounting for 8% of smartphone sales. By comparison, iPhone 6s and 6s Plus accounted for 14% of smartphone sales in the three months ending February 2016."

Not much has changed for either iOS or Android in the United States since Kantar's last report, although the latter OS has continued to see a decline in market share throughout December, January, and February. Android has dropped three percentage points when compared to the same year-ago quarter, now accounting for 55.9 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, while iOS has grown by 3.7 percentage points year-over-year to take 42 percent of the market in the U.S.

As in China, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus remained the top-selling smartphones in the U.S., which the devices have been since Kantar's report on the three months ending November 2016. Kantar's analysts cited hope that Google Pixel "might soften the drop in Android sales" that happen annually around every iPhone launch -- and which dropped even more dramatically last year because of the Note7 -- but the Pixel doesn't appear to have picked up the slack for the Android market in the U.S.

In terms of overall growth, iOS saw its biggest percentage point increase in the quarter happen in Great Britain, growing 4.5 percentage points year-over-year. In most of Europe's big five markets -- Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain -- Apple has done well to boost sales of iOS devices, with France housing the biggest growth for the Apple operating system over the holidays. Outliers still remain, like Spain's 1.7 percentage point dip in today's report.

Kantar's report also looked forward to the rest of 2017, admitting that the three months ending in February is a "challenging time" to report on due to its awkward middle ground proximity between the holiday season last year, and upcoming announcements at events like WWDC in the summer.

“The February period is always a challenging time to report on consumer behaviour and plans, since many people put purchases on hold following the holidays, waiting for the latest phone announcements from Mobile World Congress,” Guenveur said. “The much-anticipated March 29 announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S8, combined with the somewhat unexpected launch of the (PRODUCT) RED iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and the capacity upgrade to iPhone SE a week before that, may mean that the remainder of Q1 and Q2 could yield some interesting, even unpredictable, shifts in the market.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook has remained vocal in his optimism about the company's presence -- and future -- in China, mentioning in an earnings call last year that, "We may not have the wind at our backs that we once did, but it's more stable than the common view of it." More recently, Cook went into even more detail about Apple's China plans, stating that, "We're not just someone who's here to access the market," and that the company intends to bolster its presence in the country through providing jobs and improving people's standard of living.

At a nondescript office in Palo Alto, Apple is rumored to have a small team of biomedical engineers researching better methods for monitoring blood sugar, reports CNBC.

Apple's work on glucose monitoring is said to have started with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who wanted to develop a sensor that could continuously and non-invasively monitor blood sugar levels to improve quality of life. Apple is far enough along in its research that feasibility trials are being conducted at clinical sites in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it has hired consultants to sort out regulatory issues.

The glucose team is said to report to Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies. [...]

One of the people said that Apple is developing optical sensors, which involves shining a light through the skin to measure indications of glucose.

Rumors of Apple's work on advanced healthcare initiatives like diabetes management aren't new. Early Apple Watch information suggested the wearable device would be able to measure things like blood pressure and blood glucose levels.

Many health-related sensors that Apple wanted to include in the original Apple Watch were reportedly dropped because the technology was not consistently accurate, but rumors at the time said Apple would pursue its work on more advanced health sensors. Apple has also made several health-related acquisitions and around the time the Apple Watch was in development, hired dozens of biomedical experts.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has since said that Apple does not want to put the Apple Watch through the FDA approval process, something that would need to happen for more advanced healthcare features, so it is not clear if this is a feature Apple foresees being added to the wrist-worn device. From Tim Cook in 2015:

"We don't want to put the watch through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process. I wouldn't mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it, but not the watch, because it would hold us back from innovating too much, the cycles are too long. But you can begin to envision other things that might be adjacent to it -- maybe an app, maybe something else."

If Apple is planning on more advanced sensors for the Apple Watch, such features are not likely to be included in the third-generation device rumored to be coming in the fall of 2017. Information on that device thus far points towards a smaller update focusing on improving battery life and perhaps adding features like cellular connectivity.

While Apple works on its in-house own blood sugar monitoring solution, it has launched CareKit, a platform that allows app developers to create integrated software that allows patients and doctors to better manage medical conditions. Diabetes monitor One Drop was one of the first companies to support CareKit.

All three of Apple's rumored 2017 iPhone models will likely have 3GB of RAM, according to Cowen and Company analyst Timothy Arcuri.

An excerpt from Arcuri's late March research note, obtained by MacRumors:

In terms of memory/storage configuration, all three models will likely adopt 3GB RAM; the 4.7”/5.5” will likely have the same storage options as the current iPhone 7/7+ in 32/128/256GB while the 5.8” model looks to be only offered in two memory configurations: 64GB and 256GB. Finally, the 5.8” model will likely have extended battery life with two packs of batteries.

Arcuri's research contradicts Taiwanese research firm TrendForce, which recently said that only the next 5.5-inch iPhone and Apple's rumored 5.8-inch iPhone with an OLED display will have 3GB of RAM. TrendForce said the next 4.7-inch iPhone will continue to have 2GB of RAM like the iPhone 7.

Apple already includes 3GB of RAM in the iPhone 7 Plus, so the 4.7-inch iPhone would be the only model with increased RAM.

If the prediction is accurate, it's welcomed news for customers that plan on purchasing the next 4.7-inch iPhone, rather than spending upwards of $200 more on the so-called "iPhone 8" with an edge-to-edge OLED display.

Increased RAM means an iPhone can store more data in memory. If you have dozens of tabs open in Safari on an older iPhone, for example, you may notice that some of the tabs refresh when you revisit them. But with increased RAM, the likelihood of Safari reloading a website you previously loaded is lower.

Arcuri also corroborated KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in saying that all three 2017 iPhone models will continue to have Lightning connectors with USB Type-C Power Delivery for faster charging.

Cowen's research is based on his own checks of Apple's supply chain, so his prediction lends credence to the already-reliable Kuo.

The Wall Street Journal previously said the "iPhone 8" will have "a USB-C port for the power cord and other peripheral devices instead of the company’s original Lightning connector." But the report did not provide any additional details, and it appears the Lightning connector will live on.

Last week, Apple executives announced that the company is working on an updated Mac Pro that features a revamped modular design to accommodate regular component upgrades.

The launch of the new modular Mac Pro is at least a year away as development has just started, so we have no idea what the machine will look like when it's finished, but that hasn't stopped designers at CURVED/labs from dreaming up a conceptual design that includes a simple Mac mini-style box and a matching Apple-branded display.

Holes on the top are designed to allow hot air to escape, and there are added features like a Touch ID power button, a Touch Bar for accessing information on included components, and USB-C, USB-A, and HDMI ports, along with a microphone and a headphone jack.

Accompanying the imagined Mac Pro is a revamped 27-inch Apple "Cinema Display" with ultra thin bezels, an iMac-style stand, and and USB-C ports at the back.

Again, this is in no way representative of what the finished Mac Pro might look like, but it does imagine features that are in line with what Apple executives have said about the Mac Pro so far. It's going to be a high-end high-throughput machine that will facilitate regular upgrades to meet the needs of Apple's pro user base. And given its modular nature, it will ship with an Apple-branded "pro" display.

Apple is in the process of "completely rethinking" the Mac Pro and execs say it will take "longer than this year" to finish. What that means is not entirely clear, but one rumor has suggested it might not launch until 2019. Apple has a dedicated team working on the machine, which will serve the company's "most demanding pro customers."

Apple's supposed "biggest bottleneck" in preparing to mass produce the rumored 5.8-inch iPhone with an edge-to-edge OLED display remains integrating Touch ID underneath the display, according to a research note from Cowen and Company analyst Timothy Arcuri obtained by MacRumors.

Arcuri, citing his own "field work" within the supply chain, said the current yield of Apple's in-house AuthenTec-based fingerprint sensor solution is low, while noting that Apple seems unwilling to use an outside solution at this time. If Apple cannot resolve these yield issues, he sees three different scenarios:

• Apple removes Touch ID from the 5.8-inch iPhone entirely and relies solely on facial/iris recognition. Arcuri said this is unlikely, as it's not secure enough, risky, and would potentially create issues with Apple Pay.

• Apple puts Touch ID on the back of the 5.8-inch iPhone, but in a different place than the one on the Galaxy S8, which can be hard to reach. Arcuri said this would not be a user-friendly or optimal solution to say the least.

• Apple delays production of the 5.8-inch iPhone, but still announces the device in early September alongside updated 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models.

Arcuri said Apple is aiming to finalize its fingerprint sensor specification by May, but if its in-house AuthenTec-based solution is not feasible due to yield issues, mass production of the tentatively named "iPhone 8" could be delayed until September, compared to its usual late July to August timeframe.

Arcuri still expects Apple to announce the 5.8-inch iPhone alongside updated 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models in September, but supplies may be extremely limited or unavailable whatsoever until later in the year. That timeline echoes recent predictions from Apple analyst Brian White and investment bank Barclays.

It's also a scenario that has occurred with nearly every previous iPhone launch. Last year, the iPhone 7 Plus in Jet Black was a highly popular model among customers, and shipping estimates for online orders quickly slipped to several weeks out. It wasn't until around November that it became more widely available.

The device, which has also been called the iPhone X, iPhone Pro, or iPhone Edition, is expected to feature a new glass and stainless steel design, wireless charging, longer battery life, a new front-facing camera with 3D sensing capabilities, and improved water resistance. It also won't have a physical Home button.

Touch ID-related yield issues may be the reason why 5.8-inch iPhone components and schematics have yet to leak from the supply chain. iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus parts began to leak around March last year.

Cowen and Company maintains an "outperform" rating for AAPL with a $155 price target.