The top 3 takeaways from Apple’s 2014 Keynote event

1. New screen sizes on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus 

Videos of the new iPhone 6 had been leaked days in advance so the general design was not a surprise to many people. The new phones are bigger, faster and look incredibly slick as was to be expected. What is interesting to retailers is that Apple is introducing two new screen sizes. Given that the iPhone 6 Plus can use apps in landscape mode, the two new phones are taking the number of screen sizes a retail app has to cater for from 2 (iPhone 4 & 5) to 5 different screen sizes.

When Apple introduced the larger iPhone 5 screens, it took many retailers months to update their apps to the new design for the bigger screen size. Actually, still now there are some retail’s apps in an old iPhone 4 design only.

On the plus side, the ability to use apps in landscape mode on the iPhone 6 Plus is a huge opportunity for retailers as it merges the great shop-ability of the iPad with the constant availability of the iPhone, always being with the consumer, always turned on.

We at Poq, are eagerly awaiting the two new phones as it will underline the value of our platform approach to powering retail apps further. As for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5, we will be offering the upgrades the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus designs automatically for all retailers on the Poq App Commerce Platform.

2. Apple’s move into wearables: Apple Watch 

Apple is finally moving into wearables with the Apple Watch. Wearables have been a hot topic in retail, especially around fashion designers. Apple has shown their ability for amazing design with many products before, but the new Apple Watch is a great example of a piece of technology combining the highest design standards from a fashion point of view, with the latest technology available.

Most interesting for use in retail is swipe to pay with Apple Watch. In combination with an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, consumers will be able to pay for goods by swiping the watch to any NFC reader. We expect this to be similar to using NFC payment with a bank card in the UK and be mostly available for purchases under £20.

3. “One more thing” – probably the most revolutionary for retail: Apple Pay

The biggest point of yesterday’s Apple Keynote weren’t the new phones or the watch. It is that Apple is moving into mobile payments. With the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus Apple is adding a digital wallet, which already at launch will allow consumers to pay at 220,000 merchants across the US. While using NFC with a digital wallet isn’t new for Android users, it sounds like combined with Touch ID (using your fingerprint to verify the payment), Apple Pay is more secure and convenient than previous attempts.

Apple already has 800 million+ credit cards on file through iTunes, but you can easily add a new one by just scanning a credit card and pay with that. This is a huge number of cards, if compared to the biggest e-commerce company in the world – Amazon – with about 250 million and Paypal with less than 200 million credit cards on file. (See chart below).

Apple Pay is not just making in-store payments easier, but it is completely revolutionising online payments. Being able to pay and checkout out in a retailer’s app with a single tap of your finger will completely change the payment dynamics in ecommerce. Apple Pay makes an app effectively the fastest, safest and most convenient to pay online.

It’s a true one-touch checkout, no need to enter a card number, type an address, not even card information is shared with the merchant. Apple announced a few first prototype clients in the US – you can see screen shots below. We at Poq will make sure to make this available to retailers on our platform as soon as Apple launches Apple Pay in the UK.

Together with the latest report on mobile traffic to retail sites being now 50%+, Apple Pay will make native app commerce the new e-commerce in 2015.