Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst for KGI Securities, yesterday told investors that it will take Apple’s competition in the Android market as long as two and a half years to duplicate the features and user experience offered by the iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera.
In an earlier report issued by Kuo, he said it would take between one and two years for Apple’s competitors to match their latest achievement. After an in-depth study of the company’s official technical demos, he is now convinced that it could take even longer.
The TrueDepth camera will provide Apple with a robust technological edge until at least 2019 — and possibly even the first few months of 2020. This urged Kuo to state that KGI is 100% confident in the new Apple product’s chances of being successful in the top-end smartphone market over the next few years, in spite of the iPhone X’s lacklustre sales since its release.
KGI Securities had to downgrade shipping estimates for the iPhone X for 2017 from 40 million to between 30 and 35 million units. Kuo, however, stated that his company stood by its “positive outlook” on future sales of iPhones fitted with the TrueDepth camera.
The camera system is the core technology behind Apple’s new facial ID recognition technology and related features, such as facial analysis and tracking for Animoji. Rumour has it that the complexity of producing the TrueDepth camera was the source of serious production problems experienced with the iPhone X, which seriously limited initial availability.
Companies such as Google and Samsung will have to overcome the same production and development issues if they want to make anything similar to Apple’s TrueDepth camera. Although Samsung already has a device which boasts facial recognition, it doesn’t match Apple’s latest product since it only offers two-dimensional tracking, which makes the technology easier to fool and thus less secure.