Apple unveils thinner and lighter iPhone Apple has launched a thinner and lighter iPhone with faster wireless technology and overall upgrades, which the company hopes will trigger a new wave of smartphone sales as demand for its predecessor flags. The iPhone's improvements largely accord with what industry experts had expected rather than a surprising leap forward. However, pent-up demand from Apple's legions of devoted fans, whose previous purchases tie them into its App Store software, and its fastest international deployment to date, mean the iPhone 5 provides enough to fend off competition from Samsung for now. "Apple has never been stronger," said Tim Cook, chief executive. Apple did not cut the price for its flagship device, with the iPhone 5 starting at $199 on a two-year contract. But the iPhone 4 will now be free with 8GB storage. The new device goes on sale in major markets on September 21. With availability in 100 countries by the end of the year, it will be a vital driver of new sales. "We've improved everything in the iPhone 5," Mr Schiller said. Everything has been enhanced, reengineered and redesigned. The device bears some physical resemblance to the iPhone 4S, with its flat glass, minimalist face and rounded corners, but also offers an improved processor and LTE wireless technology. "It's easy to make a phone that's bigger, everyone does that," he said, in a swipe at larger-screened rivals from Samsung and Google's Motorola. The challenge is to make it better and smaller. The thinner device is achieved by having a smaller adaptor, called "Lightning," the first major change to Apple's docking system since 2003. It also has stronger external protection to prevent cracking. It has similar battery performance and camera to the 4S, with a new panoramic-photo mode and improved low-light performance. The iPhone 5 also has three microphones to improve noise cancellation voice recognition in Siri, Apple's virtual assistant. "Wideband audio" provides better voice clarity. New mapping software offers step-by-step navigation - indicating to the user the next turn left or right - a key feature which the iPhone lacked over Google's rival Android software. Apple ditched Google Maps for its own tools in the latest generation of its operating system, which also offer 3D renderings of famous spots such as Big Ben. The new software, which is expected to be made available to iPhone 4S owners also, includes a "shared photostream" feature allowing users to send pictures from the device to their friends - similar to Instagram - in a gentle move into social networking, where Apple has struggled in the past. The initial reaction from some analysts was cool. "The surprise, was that there was no surprise," said Adam Leach, analyst at Ovum, of the new iPhone. It is an incremental product upgrade which is showing how mature the product is. The arrival of the new iPhone was preceded with the usual wave of hype. Some analysts suggested it could be the biggest consumer-product launch in history, judged by revenues. Economists at JP Morgan estimated it could provide a 0.5 percentage-point boost to US GDP in the fourth quarter, on an annualised basis. Apple's shares hit a new all-time high of $683.29 at the end of last week as anticipation built for the new device, having almost doubled over the last 12 months. In the minutes after the launch, Apple shares fluctuated as much as $7 dollars - rising to as much as $664 before falling back to $657.39 - and were trading flat at $660 by 1.45pm eastern time. The iPhone 4S, seen as an incremental upgrade from its predecessor, was launched last October and Apple went on to sell 37m iPhones in the run-up to Christmas 2011. Competition from smartphones based on Google's free Android operating system will only increase after the iPhone 5 launches, analysts predict. In a new forecast on Wednesday, IHS iSuppli projects worldwide annual unit shipments of 357m Android phones in 2012, rising to 451m in 2013, taking the platform's cumulative total since launch in 2008 to 1.1bn. By contrast, iPhone units will total 527m by 2013, the analysts say, reflecting the fact that only Apple makes the devices, competing with Samsung, HTC, Sony and many other manufacturers using Android. But even before it was unveiled, analysts expected the iPhone 5 to outsell the 4S, with some forecasting 10m sold by the end of September and up to 50m devices in the December quarter. Samsung's Galaxy SIII, the iPhone's closest rival, sold 20m devices in the first 100 days after it went on sale in the spring. Some warned that supply-chain problems could bring these iPhone forecasts back to earth. "The change in design could create a potential headwind if Apple is not able to manufacture enough devices to match demand," said analysts at Canaccord Genuity in a note to clients on Wednesday. LG and Japan Display could be bottlenecks in the supply chain if they are not able to manufacture enough screens.