Gene Munster's Annual WWDC Forecast Offers Some Surprises
Gene Munster is out with some surprising predictions for the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017. The veteran analyst from Loup Ventures offered his annual WWDC forecast to Apple 3.0’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt.
According to the former Piper Jaffray analyst, there’s just a 10 percent chance that Apple will reveal a 10.5-inch iPad Pro next week. He notes, “Unless the company does away with the iPad mini, as rumored, a third iPad Pro size is a bit of a head scratcher for us.”
Munster is somewhat bullish on the possibility of Apple launching a long-rumored Siri-powered speaker in San Jose, California. Setting the likelihood at 60 percent, he explains:
We see these devices driven by natural user interfaces like voice as the future of computing. And Apple has ground to make up in the market for digital assistants in the home.
On the Mac front, Munster believes there’s a 50/50 chance new MacBook Pros are introduced on June 5. If they are, the laptops will likely use Intel Kaby Lake processors. The MacBook Pro lineup was last updated in November 2016.
Finally, Munster is 100 percent certain Apple will announce iOS 11 next week. “The question is: how much will iOS 11 tell us about Apple’s ambitions in augmented reality?”
WWDC begins on Monday, June 5 with the annual keynote address at 10 a.m. PDT, which Apple’s planning to stream live.
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