With Jobs gone, the Apple executives left the showmanship to the rock band Foo Fighters, who closed out the two-hour presentation with three songs, including one called "My Hero" dedicated to the company's employees for developing products like the iPhone 5.
It's the year's most anticipated phone. The number Apple can sell, analysts believe, is limited mostly by the production capacity of its suppliers. There had been concerns that supplies could be tight. Even so, analysts were expecting Apple to sell tens of millions of phones before the year is out, including perhaps as many as 10 million of the devices before this month is ever.
If the iPhone 5 lives up to the lofty expectations, it will be the company's hottest selling — and most lucrative device yet. But it will face stiff competition from an array of smartphones running on software made by rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., as well as tablet computers that also cater to consumers' desire for a more convenient way to stay connected to the Web.
Apple has dominated the tablet market by selling more than 84 million iPads since they came out in April 2010, but it's facing a challenge from Amazon.com Inc. and Google. Both those companies are peddling less expensive tablets with slightly smaller screens than the iPad, a threat that many analysts expect Apple to answer next month by rolling out a mini-iPad.
The bigger screen in the iPhone 5 moves Apple somewhat closer to competing smartphones, but the iPhone is still small compared with its main rivals. Samsung Electronics Co., Apple's biggest competitor, has increased the screen size of its flagship phone line every year, and it's now 4.8 inches (12.19 centimeters) on the diagonal, about 45 per cent larger than the one on the new iPhone. The new iPhone is lighter than Samsung's new Galaxy S III.
