Apple is expected to launch its much-anticipated TV streaming and Apple News subscription services on March 25. The company has already sent out media invites for an event scheduled in Steve Jobs theatre on March 25.
Announcing its financial results for its fiscal 2019 first quarter that ended on December 29, 2018, the revenue from iPhone declined 15 per cent in comparison to the previous year, while the total revenue from all other products and services grew 19 per cent.
Services revenue reached an all-time high of $10.9 billion, up 19 per cent more than the previous year. Revenue from Mac and Wearables, Home and Accessories also reached all-time highs, growing nine per cent and 33 per cent, respectively. And revenue from iPad grew 17 per cent.
Thus, it is no surprise that Apple wants to bet big on the services market. The Apple News service is expected to look a lot like Netflix, but, instead of movies and shows, the Apple service will have magazines and subscription newspapers.
Apple has already been raving about a lot of TV shows and original content that the company has in pipeline, but no such platform has yet been announced to watch those shows. The March 25 event could be the where the company can actually announce the platform.
The Cupertino-based iPhone maker is also looking to upgrade the Face ID in its upcoming iPhone models and the company has acquired patents of a security camera maker company – Lighthouse.
The acquired patents largely deal with computer vision to scan and recognise faces. Apple could use this research in its next iPhones to add more than one faces to unlock a device using Face ID.
Apple first introduced Face ID in the iPhone X that users a TrueDepth camera system made up of a dot projector, infrared camera and flood illuminator. Face ID projects more than 30,000 invisible IR dots which are then passed through neural networks to create a mathematical model of your face. Only one Face ID works with an iPhone. With the acquisition of Lighthouse’s patents, Apple could allow more than one approved user for Face ID.
