MacRumors

Following early third-party iPhone 7 cases that surfaced earlier this year, several accessory manufacturers have now begun releasing cases for the larger iPhone 7 Plus, but the cases continue to fuel conflicting rumors over whether the larger model will include a Smart Connector on the rear.

The first case manufacturer, Sunnyc, has a listing for a $9.99 case that includes mockup of the iPhone 7 Plus that shows off the rumored dual-lens camera system with a horizontally-aligned flash (via 9to5Mac). At the bottom of the case's back side, there's a cutout for a Smart Connector, a feature that has been the subject of a number of rumors including both as a potential inclusion on the device and an idea scrapped by Apple.

Rumors earlier in the year began indicating that the iPhone 7 Plus would feature an iPad Pro-like Smart Connector, which is used to provide simultaneous power and data connections to accessories like the Smart Keyboard. As the expected fall launch of the new iPhone devices grows near, however, Japanese site Mac Otakara suggested Apple has nixed the Smart Connector from its plans -- a rumor SunnyC's case now opposes.

Supporting claims of no Smart Connector for the iPhone 7 Plus is another set of cases that recently surfaced on Alibaba. The simple cases include the same horizontally extended camera opening to accommodate dual lenses, but lack an opening lower on the case for a Smart Connector.

Either way, it remains unclear what advantages including a Smart Connector on the iPhone would bring, considering the iPad Pro's primary Smart Connector-enabled accessory is its $149.00 sold-separately Smart Keyboard ($169.00 for the 12.9-inch model). Possibilities include an interface for battery cases that would not require a "chin" or block the iPhone's Lightning port, a docking station, or a potential wireless charging solution that's paired with a charging pad.

Sunnyc has also posted two case designs for the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 -- both described as a "Protective Silicon Case" -- that offer basic protection and raised edges to protect the front of the device. While one sells for $8.99 and has a cutout for the Apple logo on the back, and the other is going for $11.99 and includes a more uniform, uninterrupted back plate, both are largely unnoticeable as next-generation iPhone cases and do not include cutouts for a Smart Connector.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker recently shared her annual Internet Trends report for 2016, showcasing a presentation of 213 slides covering a range of topics from global life expectancy to the ongoing market battle between iOS and Android.

Concerning the specific battle between iOS and Android, Meeker notes that over the past six years iOS has seen just a two percentage point increase in market share, while Android has exploded from a 4 percent presence in the industry in 2009 to a massive 81 percent in 2015. The pattern is expected to continue, with Meeker projecting iOS will see a year-over-year loss of 11 percent in unit shipments as Android climbs another 7 percent in 2016.

Due to Apple's introduction of the lower-cost iPhone SE -- and the cheaper price tag of smartphones in the company's expanding global markets -- Meeker also expects Apple's average selling price per unit to dip this year for the first time since 2012. In that year, ASP dropped only 4 percent (from $712 in 2011 to $686 in 2012), but now the company is predicted to see a 9 percent decline in ASP (dropping off from $717 in 2015 to $651 in 2016).

Unlike in years past, global smartphone unit shipments are slowing "dramatically," for both Apple and Android-supported devices. Expansion for the smartphone market as a whole has stagnated, going from a peak in 2010 at nearly 80 percent year-over-year growth, to just about 15 percent in 2015.

Global smartphone user growth is seeing a similar slow-down; understandably, the largest markets with the least amount of smartphone proliferation have the biggest upticks in year-over-year increments. These include Asia-Pacific, which has seen a nearly 20-percentage-point increase in smartphone user share over the last seven years and now accounts for over half of the total market.

Apple has been attempting to gain a larger foothold in these countries, notably seeing strong performance in China in recent years and looking toward India as its next area of focus. Low-cost devices -- and a larger number of potential customers without a smartphone -- in areas like the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America also presumably helped those territories come out on top in the total rankings for global smartphone user growth.

Earlier in April, Apple reported its first year-over-year decline in revenue since 2003. The news led to a string of reports addressing the company's declining stock value and various "peak iPhone" comments concerning its potential inability to continue to grow in certain markets, especially where its flagship smartphones see annual releases without much dramatic distinction between models.

Meeker's tamped-down expectations for 2016 mirror these concerns, particularly regarding the increasing belief that the 2016 iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be iterative updates on the current iPhone 6s line, using a largely similar design but with new features like a dual-lens camera and Lightning-enabled headphone connector. An uptick is now projected for 2017's "iPhone 8," which is seeing rumors surrounding everything from a massively redesigned bezel-free display that features a dual-curve OLED screen to truly wireless charging.

Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends presentation, and a download of the full PDF, is available on KPCB's website.

Apple today launched its annual Back to School promotion in the U.S. and Canada, offering a free pair of Beats Solo2 Wireless Headphones to qualifying students, parents of students, educators, and select others that purchase an eligible Mac with education pricing, including the iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac Pro. As usual, the Mac mini and refurbished Macs are excluded from the deal.

Apple is also offering a free pair of Powerbeats2 Wireless Headphones with the purchase of an eligible iPhone or iPad Pro with education pricing, including the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and both the 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Those who purchase a qualifying iPhone or iPad Pro can also upgrade to the Beats Solo2 Wireless Headphones for $100, or $110 in Canadian dollars.

Apple will apply an instant credit in the amount of $299.95 in the U.S., or $329.95 in Canadian dollars, to cover the full cost of the Beats Solo2 Wireless Headphones in Black, Blue, Red, White, Gold, Rose Gold, Silver, Space Gray, Blue Active, Red Active, or Yellow Active. Apple will similarly apply an instant credit of $199.95, or $219.95 in Canadian dollars, for the Powerbeats2 Wireless Headphones in Red, Black, Black Sport, White Sport, Red Active, Yellow Active, or Blue Active.

Apple has outlined the full eligibility requirements for the program in its terms and conditions for the U.S. [PDF] and Canada [PDF] on its website.

Apple's Back to School promotion runs from today through September 5, 2016 at Apple retail and campus stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada. The deal is also available on Apple's online store or by calling 1-800-MY-APPLE. Apple has not yet officially announced the promotion in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, or other European countries where it is typically offered.

Apple's rumored electric car is unlikely to hit full-scale production or be ready for shipping before 2020, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Musk offered his prediction to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the Code Conference, where he claimed that Apple's ambitions, while admirable, were falling behind in a fast-paced industry.

"I think it's great they're doing this, and I hope it works out," said Musk. "It's just a missed opportunity. It's a couple years... they'll make a good car and be successful."

In September 2015, it was reported that Apple had spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car and given permission to leaders of the project, code-named Titan, to triple its 600-person team to facilitate development in anticipation of a possible shipping date in 2019.

Musk's comments suggest that the 2019 date might realistically indicate the point at which engineers confirm the main features of the product, and would seem to corroborate earlier rumors that fixed on a 2020 timeframe for the car's launch.

During the wide-ranging Code Conference interview, Musk also claimed Tesla's Model 3 would hit its prospective 2017 launch year, by which time his company aims to fulfill more than 325,000 pre-orders for its lower-priced model.

Musk said the car's design would be finished in about six weeks' time. "Almost all of the Model 3 design is done, and we're aiming for pencils down basically in six weeks, complete pencils down. And we're tabling — you know, if there are ideas for future cool things, we'll have it in version 2, version 3," he said.

Musk also expressed his doubts that Google will release a car, despite its years of testing self-driving electric vehicles, and instead he expects the company to license its technology out to existing automotive manufacturers.

The bulk of Apple's car research and development is thought to be taking place in secretive buildings in Sunnyvale, California, where late night "motor noises" have been heard.

You can watch the full interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Apple Pay is seeing a lukewarm reception in many countries outside of the United States and is making just a "small dent" in the global payments market, according to a new report from Reuters.

In 2015, Apple Pay usage totaled $10.9 billion, most of which came from the United States. That figure is perhaps unsurprising as Apple Pay has been available in the United States since 2014 and only began rolling out to additional countries in 2015. Apple Pay is now available in the United States, the UK, China, Canada, Australia, and Singapore.

Though Apple Pay is in the early stages of adoption outside of the United States, it seems to be struggling to gain a foothold in the countries where it's now available. In China, Apple Pay has to compete with established payment services Alibaba and Tencent, and according to research conducted by Reuters, Chinese users have complained that using Apple Pay is not as seamless as WeChat, Tencent's payment service.

In Britain and Australia, contactless payment cards are in wide use, so iPhone users need to go to the trouble of adding their cards to Apple Pay. Juniper Research analyst Windsor Holden told Reuters that the prevalence of contactless cards makes it more difficult to persuade people to adopt Apple Pay.

"You have over 86 million contactless cards in circulation, you have to persuade Britons to register their cards to the (Apple Pay) service when they can already use them to make a contactless payment," Holden said

Bendigo Bank in Australia says it is experiencing "some unforeseen technical issues" accepting Apple Pay payments at select merchant terminals, something Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey told Reuters was "not representative" of the Apple Pay experience.

Apple Vice President Jennifer Bailey said such experiences were premature and not representative. "Like any set of major technology changes, it takes time," she said. "We want to move as quickly as possible, we push it as quickly as possible."

In addition to a lukewarm reception in the countries where it is available, Apple Pay is seeing a slow global rollout due to the need to negotiate transaction fees with multiple partners. Apple makes approximately 15 cents for every $100 spent in the United States, but has had to negotiate lower fees in some countries. Apple has also faced resistance in locations like Australia, Canada, and the UK because banks in these countries are building their own competing payment products.

Apple Pay hasn't yet caught on globally, but Apple is "working rapidly" to expand Apple Pay to additional locations in Asia and Europe. Apple Pay is expected to debut in Hong Kong in the near future through a partnership with American Express, which will also bring the payments service to Spain later this year. Rumors and leaked documents also point towards negotiations to bring Apple Pay to France, Brazil, and Japan in the not-too-distant future.

In a recent interview with TechCrunch, Bailey said Apple considers a number of factors when deciding where to deploy Apple Pay, including the size of the Apple product market, credit and debit card penetration, and existing contactless payment coverage.

Thunderbolt Display stock shortages at some Apple retail stores have begun sparking speculation that a refresh is coming in the near future, and with current machines unable to run a 5K display over a single-stream cable, discussion has turned towards other methods Apple could use to introduce a functional 5K display.

Stephen Foskett and Daring Fireball's John Gruber speculate that Apple could potentially introduce a refreshed Thunderbolt Display with a built-in graphics card, which would result in a display able to work with almost any Mac because it would be driven by an internal graphics card rather than the machine it's connected to.

9to5Mac is floating a similar theory, claiming it's heard rumors Apple is indeed working on a 5120 x 2880 display that has an integrated GPU. Such a display would likely require the purchase of a newer machine with USB-C or Thunderbolt 3, but it would work with Apple's notebook lineup going forward.

A noted analyst doesn't believe Apple will go to the trouble of introducing a display with a built-in GPU, instead releasing a 5K display that will connect with newer Macs over Thunderbolt 3 by taking advantage of both DisplayPort 1.2 streams.

It's been believed Apple would wait to introduce a 5K display until DisplayPort 1.3 support is built into Intel processors as the standard will allow for plug-and-play support for 5K external displays, but by using both of the DisplayPort 1.2 streams, forthcoming machines that include Thunderbolt 3 ports will be able to drive a 5K display using Multi-Stream Transport without the need for an external GPU.

Multi-Stream Transport (MST) would stitch two halves of a display together to make a single seamless display, with each DisplayPort 1.2 connection driving half of the display, a technique Apple previously used in the first 5K iMac. The 5K iMac used the internal equivalent of a dual cable DisplayPort 1.2 MST setup.

Multi-Stream Transport is inferior to the Single-Stream Transport that would be possible with DisplayPort 1.3, but DisplayPort 1.3 support is not built into Skylake or its successor Kaby Lake, meaning it will be at least 18-24 months (the time until Intel's Cannonlake processors launch) before Apple can introduce machines powerful enough to drive a 5K display over a single-stream cable.

With the Thunderbolt Display having gone without an update since July of 2011, another two years is a long time to wait for a refreshed display.

There is no concrete word on when Apple will introduce a new Thunderbolt Display, but given the stock shortages and the rumblings that a successor is in the works, there is a possibility an announcement could be made at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Though the 2017 iPhone is more than a year away from launching, we're already hearing non-stop rumors about the device due to the major design changes Apple is expected to introduce. The latest rumor, coming from IHS analyst Kevin Wang, suggests the 2017 iPhone will include a dual-curve OLED display that covers the left and right edges of the device.

On Chinese social networking site Weibo (via PhoneArena), Wang said Apple will release a device with sloping edges similar to the Vivo XPlay 5 or the Galaxy S7 Edge.

Kevin Wong's exact words are that after Vivo outed the Xplay 5 with its 5.4" OLED screen that slopes to the sides like on the S7 edge, there will be more manufacturers using this technique, including Apple with next year's iPhone.

Apple is already rumored to be using flexible OLED displays for the 2017 iPhone, which will be necessary for any kind of dramatically curved display. It is not clear from Wang's statement how far the display will extend to the edges of the device and whether it will be a subtle curve for design purposes or a functional wraparound display as Samsung uses in its Galaxy Edge devices. The Galaxy Edge's wraparound display features side buttons and alerts accessible when the phone is face down.

Wang does not offer details on where he is sourcing his information from, but it is presumably coming from the Asian supply chain and Apple's myriad manufacturing partners. Supply chain information can be difficult to interpret at times and Wang does not have a well-known track record, but he has shared some semi-accurate information on the release of the iPhone SE. Earlier this week, Wang said the iPhone 7 will have 32GB as minimum storage tier.

Apple has reportedly secured 5.8-inch OLED displays from Samsung, and a previous analyst prediction has suggested that a display of that size could perhaps be used to wrap around the edges of a 5.5-inch iPhone, speculation that agrees with Wang's prediction.

Other rumors about the 2017 iPhone, which may be called the "iPhone 8" instead of the traditional "iPhone 7s" because of the changes expected, include an edge-to-edge bezel-free display with built-in Touch ID functionality, no home button, and a glass body.

An edge-to-edge display that extends upwards towards the top and bottom of the device, as has been rumored, does not seem to mesh with rumors of a wraparound display, leaving a lot of questions about the actual display we'll see in the 2017 iPhone. As the 2017 launch date creeps closer, we'll undoubtedly learn more about the device, giving us a clearer picture of the changes Apple is implementing.

Apple is expected to wrap up construction on its second campus at the end of 2016, so there are six months of work to go. As the deadline approaches, work is continuing on, as seen in a new campus construction update shared by drone pilot Duncan Sinfield.

Over the course of the last month, Apple has continued adding more massive curved glass windows to the main ring-shaped building. Because the windows are so large, it's taking Apple several months to get them all in place. Additional window shades and solar panels are also going up, and it looks like it'll be a few months more before work on the main building wraps up.

Both the auditorium and the two massive parking garages are nearing completion, and solar panel installation is largely finished on the roof of the parking structures. The fitness center is still being worked on, and the Tantau research buildings are looking more polished.

Parking tunnels also look to be nearly done, and the two major dirt piles on site, which will be used for landscaping, are currently untouched.

Drone pilot Matthew Roberts has also shared a June campus update video, offering a closer look at the progress made on the roof of the main ring-shaped building and a wider view of the parking structures and auditorium. There's also a close look at some new buildings being constructed on Tantau Avenue, which will be used for research and development purposes.

Last month, Apple began taking down the green privacy fence surrounding the entire campus, replacing it with a shorter chain-link fence. The gates are often left open as well, allowing passersby to get a close-up look at the campus and the ongoing construction.

Apple plans to complete work on Apple Campus 2 at the end of 2016, with employees set to start occupying the facility at the beginning of 2017.

Apple today invited members of the press to attend the keynote event for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, set to take place from June 13 to June 17. The keynote will be held on June 13 at 10:00 a.m., the standard start time for Apple's media events.

It will take place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, a venue able to hold more attendees than Moscone West, where the event has taken place in past years.

Apple is expected to launch new versions of iOS and OS X, along with new versions of tvOS and watchOS, its two newest operating systems. There's also a possibility we could see the debut of new hardware products, and much of the Mac line is in need of an update.

iOS 10 and OS X 10.12 will be the two major announcements at the event. iOS 10 is believed to include a redesigned Apple Music app, a Siri SDK for developers, and Apple Pay support for web browsers, allowing Apple Pay to be used to make purchases via Safari much like PayPal. OS X 10.12 is expected to bring Siri integration to the Mac for the first time, with a dedicated Siri button available through the menu bar and dock.

In past years, Apple has made a live stream of its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote available on the web and through the Apple TV, and it is likely to do so again this year. MacRumors will also provide live coverage of the event both through MacRumors.com and through our MacRumorsLive Twitter account.

Following a recent report claiming the iPhone 7 will ship with at least 32GB base storage, with Apple dropping the infamous 16GB model, research firm TrendForce adds that the mid-tier 64GB storage option may be replaced with 128GB alongside a new 256GB version at the high end of the lineup.

Apple is likely to make changes to the storage options for iPhone 7. The 64GB version, which has been the most popular option in previous generations, may be discontinued and replaced by the 128GB version, though this decision has yet to be finalized. On the other hand, Apple is certain to raise the maximum storage option to 256GB so that iPhone 7 will have the highest NAND Flash density of the entire series.

The new storage options would henceforth be 32GB, 128GB, and 256GB, although the report does not make it entirely clear if the 256GB version will be exclusive to the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus or also available for the 4.7-inch model. The current storage options for both the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus include 16GB, 64GB, and 128GB.

Earlier this year, Chinese website MyDrivers said the iPhone 7 Plus may exclusively feature 256GB storage and a 12.7 percent larger 3,100 mAh battery. In terms of credibility, the website did accurately report on the iPhone SE's 1,624 mAh battery and 2GB of RAM before Apple launched the 4-inch smartphone.

The remainder of the report corroborates other well-known rumors, including a dual-lens camera and 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM being exclusive to the 5.5-inch model. The 4.7-inch model is expected to retain a single-lens camera and 2GB of RAM. No major display upgrades are expected until Apple switches to OLED in 2017.

Recent rumors suggest the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will share a design similar to the iPhone 6s series, sans a 3.5mm headphone jack, with more significant changes coming to the 2017 iPhone. This year's new features could include a faster A10 chip, waterproofing, repositioned antenna bands, faster LTE and Wi-Fi chips, and more.

Update: TrendForce has clarified for MacRumors that the 256 GB high-end capacity is only confirmed for the iPhone 7 Plus model. The storage capacity for the smaller iPhone 7 is yet to be determined.