Apple unveils its iPhone 5

Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller unveiled the new iPhone 5 in San Francisco last night. He claims it is the thinnest, lightest and fastest handset yet.

The new smartphone has a taller 4-inch screen, 4G capability and is priced at £529. It will be available in UK shops on 21 September.

Apple also announced a new version of its iTunes store. The updated software uses cloud computing, which means that viewing paused on one device can be resumed at the same point on another.

IDC predicts that the company will sell 51 million iPhone 5 units in the run-up to Christmas, more than the 37 million it sold last year.

Apple is the world’s most valuable company, with a $620 billion market capitalisation and around $100 billion cash.

Commenting on the launch, Paul Armstrong, head of social at Mindshare UK, said: “Apple again demonstrated its commitment to technical and design excellence with last night’s iPhone and iPod announcements.

“Boasting impressive numbers for the iOS platform and its range in general it is clear that connectivity and social activity remains very much at the heart of Apple products from their phones, to their MP3 players.

“The updated iOS coming shortly has increased the ease at which people can post to major social networks and messaging which means even more updates to wade through for consumers.

“This is good for users in some ways, but will also increase the amount of information out there to sift through. Cutting through this potential noise means paid media on these platforms will only increase in importance.

“There were a couple of really ingesting nuggets that should be carefully noted:

• The iPod has evolved and now has the ability to further disrupt the digital camera market – with improvements to the camera, the new strap and its general ability to take better photos even more easily, Apple has made a clear mark – people are taking a lot of photos and sharing them with friends and family and this is clearly a key battle ground for the future and another nod to how social is at the heart of this launch.

• AirPlay mirroring is not a new feature but having it on the iPod means it has the potential to disrupt and / or augment industries such as gaming and TV viewing since there are going to be a lot of devices out there that have this functionality to interact directly with TVs.

• Passbook has amazing potential to disrupt many industries based on the number of devices that will have this capability baked in or enabled when software is updated and has yet to really be explored by anyone.

• Data, data, data – nothing announced today helped people send or receive less data. This is all well and good but it could mean overages when you exceed your data limits and for the tech savvy consumer ‘all-you-can-eat’ plans, or even back up SIMs look increasingly like being the only option.”