Watch Live: Apple Unveils Latest iPhone From Spaceship Campus

Update: This seemed to sum things up in Cupertino perfectly - Steve Wozniak is wandering around. He said he is excited to see the new iPhone features, especially the facial recognition. He likes the feature a lot on his Samsung phone.

1001ET BLACKBERRY ENTERPRISE UPDATED TO AAPL IOS 11 MOBILE OPER SYSTEM

The stock ran up excitedly into the event...

1007ET APPLE TURNS POSITIVE AS PRODUCT EVENT BEGINS

1019ET Apple Watch - *FOSSIL SHARES DIP AS APPLE CLAIMS TOP POSITION IN WATCHES

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As we detailed earlier, anticipation is sky high as CEO Tim Cook prepares to unveil Apple"s latest iPhones (and "one more things") from The Steve Jobs Theater at the new Apple "spaceship" Campus.

As CNET reports, for the past eight months, we"ve watched a parade of flagship phone launches, from power players like Samsung with the Galaxy S8 to scrappy players like Motorola with its family of Moto phones. Premium phones with not-so-premium prices like the OnePlus 5 have also competed for our attention.

Meanwhile, rumors about the next iPhone kept trickling out thanks to leakers and established publications alike.

Apple is set to cut through all the noise with the official unveiling of at least one new iPhone (and maybe more), as well as the rumored release of updates to the Apple Watch and Apple TV. There"s also a chance we get more details on the forthcoming HomePod smart speaker.

Watch live here (if you"re on a Mac with Safari).

Live Feed (via CNET):

What are we expecting...

 A weekend leak of some unreleased iOS 11 code may have spoiled all the surprises Apple had in store for tech fiends at tomorrow’s big iPhone event, with John Gruber of Daring Fireball calling the leaker “the least-popular person in Cupertino.”

There is expected to be three new phones. Two will at least be modest upgrades to the iPhone 7, getting beefier chips and the like.

The phone people really care about -- in imagination, if not necessarily spending plans (yet) -- is the 10th anniversary version of the phone.

While Apple was typically quiet about its plans, by now the world has a pretty good sense of the feature set.

The phone is expected to be Apple’s first with an organic light-emitting diode, OLED, display, which will be larger at 5.8 inches, and sharper, than the previous LCD displays.

Hold on to your hats: Apple ditched the home button in the phone, which is expected to now be unlocked through facial-recognition technology.

The phone is also expected to offer wireless charging and 3D sensors that enhance the performance of coming augmented-reality apps.

What will the stock do?

UBS technology analyst Steven Milunovich says there’s a distinct pattern in how Apple’s stock price reacts to these product launches.

“Based on the last five iPhone announcements, the stock has a reasonably consistent pattern: down in the two weeks preceding the event; up/down 1-2% the day of the event; up between the event and launch (phone availability about two weeks later); weak in the two weeks post launch; and then up going into earnings,” he wrote in a note out Tuesday morning.

“We think there is somewhat greater near-term downside risk this time though we expect the stock to outperform over the next 6-12 months.”

Here"s how the stock has moved before, during, and after previous iPhone announcements, relative to the S&P 500:

Apple Spikes On Report It May Announce New Products As Soon As Next Week

AAPL stock briefly spiked in what may have been yet another stop hunt moments ago, following a MacRumors report that Apple is expected to announce new products later this month, most likely between Monday, March 20 and Friday, March 24, citing "reputable" supply chain analysts.

The analysts did not disclose which products it expects Apple to announce, but rumors have suggested at least a trio of new iPad Pro models will be unveiled as early as this month, including a new 10.5-inch model with slimmer bezels and updated 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch versions.

The sources expecting an iPad refresh include, among others, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Barclays analyst Blayne Curtis, and Japanese blog Mac Otakara. The latter of the three also expects a new 7.9-inch model that would supplant the iPad mini 4, but others have denied or yet to mention that particular claim. 

Last month, Japanese blog Mac Otakara said Apple will host a March event where it will debut its new iPad Pro lineup, a larger iPhone SE model with 128GB storage, and new Apple Watch bands. The report also claimed Apple will add a red color option for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, which could be part of (PRODUCT)RED.

The all-new 10.5-inch iPad Pro is expected to have slimmer bezels, and possibly no Home button, allowing it to have the same overall footprint as the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. This design could foreshadow the rumored 5.8-inch iPhone. The tablet is also rumored to have a higher-resolution display and quad microphones.

The updated 12.9-inch iPad Pro is said to feature a 12-megapixel rear camera and True Tone display like the current 9.7-inch model, using advanced four-channel ambient light sensors to automatically adapt the color and intensity of the display to match the light in the surrounding environment.

On the other hand, Apple has yet to invite the media to an event this month, and those invites would be a far shoter notice than usual if Tim Cook is indeed planning to announce new products this way as early as next week.  In each of the past two years, Apple invited the media to its March event roughly 11-12 days beforehand, including February 26 invites for a March 9 event in 2015 and March 10 invites for a March 21 event last year, MacRumor notes.

Which, according to the website, means that there are three plausible scenarios if new products are in the cards:

• Apple is planning a March event, and invites will go out soon;


• Apple is planning a Spring event, but not this month; or


• Apple will share its announcements through a press release as it did when it dropped the price of the fourth-generation iPad to $399 in March 2014.

Another rumor suggested Apple could be planning an event on April 4, but this date was based on Personal Pickup for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which is generally not a reliable indicator of an event. The in-store pickup date for 12.9-inch iPad Pro models is a rolling target, as evidenced by the April 10 date now shown.

For now, there is no indication that a new iPhone is coming any time soon, which may be the reason why after the initial spike higher, AAPL stock has since given up the kneejerk gains.

Apple Sues Qualcomm For $1 Billion

It has gone from bad to worse for mobile chipmaker Qualcom, which just days after getting sued by the US government, which accused the chipmaker of engaging in monopoly tactics over mobile phone components, was also sued this afternoon by the world"s biggest company. Apple filed a $1 billion lawsuit against its supplier, accusing Qualcomm of overcharging for its chips and refusing to pay some $1 billion in promised rebates for chip purchases. Apple said in its complaint that Qualcomm demanded onerous terms for its technology and that it withheld rebates because Apple cooperated with South Korea"s antitrust regulator, the Korea Fair Trade Commission, in its probe into Qualcomm licensing practice.

The KFTC fined Qualcomm Inc 1.03 trillion won ($854 million) in December for what it called unfair practices in patent licensing, a decision the U.S. chipmaker said it will challenge in court.

In its statement, Apple said that Qualcomm has taken "radical steps," including "withholding nearly $1 billion in payments from Apple as retaliation for responding truthfully to law enforcement agencies investigating them."

Apple added, "Despite being just one of over a dozen companies who contributed to basic cellular standards, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple at least five times more in payments than all the other cellular patent licensors we have agreements with combined."

"If that were not enough, Qualcomm then attempted to extort Apple into changing its responses and providing false information to the KFTC in exchange for Qualcomm"s release of those payments to Apple. Apple refused," Apple also said.

According to the Apple complaint, Qualcomm’s terms required Apple to pay a percentage of the average selling price of an iPhone to use Qualcomm patents and to exclusively use Qualcomm chips in iPhones from at least 2011 to 2016. Apple received what it called quarterly rebates from Qualcomm under terms of the agreement, but Qualcomm began withholding those last year after Apple met with Korean regulators, the suit says.

The lawsuit is surprising in that Qualcomm is a major supplier to both Apple and its arch nemesis, Samsung Electronics for "modem" chips that help phones connect to wireless networks. The two companies together accounted for 40% of Qualcomm"s $23.5 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year. Furthermore, Qualcomm was the sole supplier of modem chips for Apple’s phones until the release of the iPhone 7 in September. Intel Corp supplied about half of the modem chips for the newest models, said Stacy Rasgon, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research.

Apple made the move around the same time that Samsung, which had switched to using its own internal chips for its Galaxy S6 phones, returned to Qualcomm for the Galaxy S7.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm"s legal problems continue to pile up. In February 2015, the company paid a $975 million fine in China following a 14-month probe, while the European Union in December 2015 accused it of abusing its market power to thwart rivals. In Washington on Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm, saying the San Diego-based company used its dominant position as a supplier of certain phone chips to impose "onerous" supply and licensing terms on cellphone manufacturers like Apple and to weaken competitors.

For now, Qualcomm "has been able to manage through (the Apple contract loss) pretty well because they got back Samsung at the same time," Rasgon said, however sensing weakness how long until Samsung likewise attacks its key vendor demanding easier terms too? Judging by the modest reaction in QCOM"s stock, the market does not see that as a likely possibility.