Here's what you need to know about Apple's iPhone event

On Tuesday, Apple is set to reveal the new iPhone 13 at a digital product launch event. Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley shares the details.

Video Transcript

- Let's stay on Apple's big day, though. Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley is here with us now. Dan, look, looking at a lot of research notes into this event, they expect these devices to be not just a little higher in price, but pretty large increases compared to what they released last year.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah. That's kind of the ongoing consideration, you know, discussions on whether or not inflation will hurt this as far as consumers go in terms of pricing, whether or not consumers will then go for the higher priced iPhone Pro or Pro Max. That really helps boost up average selling price for these devices. And that's important for Apple, obviously. But they have been selling the iPhone 12.

I mean, they've been selling like crazy, right. So the 5G kind of spurred that. We're looking for a continuation of that somewhat in the iPhone 13. At least that's what some analysts think. I think one of the things that's going to be important is that, you know, we saw such a huge change with the iPhone 12. We're not going to see that much of a major change in the iPhone 13. We may see some improvements to the display, some camera improvements, maybe satellite communication. That would be something really cool. And I think people would be very interested in that. Faster processor, as always. But I don't think people are going to look at this and say, oh, this is a must get from my iPhone 12.

I think if you have an older phone, that's completely different. But the iPhone 12 to 13 crowd, that's probably going to be a little bit smaller this time around. I think the other thing to look at, though, is what Apple is doing outside of the iPhone. We're talking about two of its main wearables that are going to be updated. That's the AirPods and the Apple Watch. And the Apple Watch is going to get a redesign. It's going to be the Apple Watch Series 7. We don't know what that means, though, for the Apple Watch Series 3, which is older and has been a good seller for them because of its low price. So that may kind of go the way of the dinosaur.

The Apple Watch SE is still out there, though. And that's a lower price. And then the AirPods. The AirPods are going to get a middle tier. You have the entry level AirPods that everybody knows what the long stems. These are supposed to be an upgrade over those. And they could have smaller stems. And some of the abilities of the AirPods Pro. But then we'll have the AirPods Pro proper at the top of that food chain. So really, you know, they're going to be expanding out the services-- sorry, the wearables. Maybe an iPad Mini in there. We'll have to see. The iPad obviously selling incredibly well for Apple throughout the pandemic as people were kind of forced to work from home or chose to work from home and did schooling from home. So I think really the big thing here is outside of the iPhone obviously being the biggest draw is the wearables. And that's something that's incredibly important to Apple now.

- You say smaller AirPods, I think easier to lose, unfortunately. And they already are pretty darn easy to lose. Dan, you know, this event coming at an unusual time for Apple compared with the other events in the past, the product launches. In that, we just have the Apple Epic outcome. While it seemed to be positive for Apple, it was certainly not entirely so. And it's something that's going to continue. You also just had an embarrassment for Apple yesterday with an Israeli security firm finding a vulnerability through iMessage that caused them to have to put out an emergency security update. But it seems like people are not paying that much attention to those items as they focus on product. But talk to me about where Apple is right now as it comes out with these new products.

DAN HOWLEY: You know, it's interesting. I did a piece on this a little while ago about how investors just don't really care about these kind of controversies that happen, whether it's the Apple or Epic. I wrote this prior to Apple and Epic's decision. But you the day of that decision, I think the stock was down a little more than 2% at most, right. People kind of looking at that and shrugging, well, maybe some developers will switch over and allow for people to get third party payment options for their apps. Apple still has the kind of go to easy function for purchasing apps.

So a lot of consumers may just still opt for that. Services big for Apple. But they make a lot of money off that Google deal that they have, as far as using Google as the primary search option for the iPhone and for Safari. So they do a decent amount of their services business right there. I think the idea that the NSO, I believe it was, vulnerability Pegasus-- that's something that's been out there for a bit. The patch for it incredibly important though. But I just don't see that really impacting people's decisions to buy an iPhone. You are in the Apple ecosystem.

Unless you want to go through the rigmarole of switching over, you're going to go to the Google ecosystem. And then it's basically the same can of worms. You're going to have to deal with whatever is going on as far as the Play Store and Epic. Google obviously has its own issues going on. So I think really it just comes down to which device you're most comfortable using and which you feel is easier to stick with. And I think for a lot of people on the iPhone, it's the iPhone.

- Dan, are you live blogging this Apple event for us? Where can I follow you?

DAN HOWLEY: No. I'm watching. I'm watching. I'm going to be posting it as it comes out, though. So I'm going to have my fingers fried by the end of the day. But we'll have plenty of posts coming.

- All right. Hang tough, brother. Dan Howley. Thanks so much.