Monday, June 20, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The Problem With A September 7 iPhone 5 Release Date

Posted: 19 Jun 2011 09:18 PM PDT


As Michael reported here yesterday, CNET UK’s editors have carefully scrutinized their tea leaves and gazed into their crystal ball, reaching the conclusion that Apple will release the iPhone 5 on September 7, along with iOS 5, at an event displacing the usual September iPod refreshment and new product announcement.

They may turn out to be right, but I perceive a serious problem with their deduction. Apple clearly announced at WWDC that iOS 5 would be available at some unspecified date “this fall,” and on September 7 there will still be two weeks of summer left before fall officially starts. Now that might just be vernacular sloppiness, or conflating "fall" in this context with the traditional commencement of the school year, but that sort of imprecision is out of character for both Jobs and Apple.

Of course, Apple could, if it wanted to, release the iPhone 5 in advance of iOS 5, but I think the likelihood that they would is exceedingly remote. Here’s why. If the iPhone 5 was rolled out running iOS 4.3.x, savvy users who aren’t absolutely desperate to get their hands on the new model handset would most likely continue holding off and delaying their purchase anyway waiting for iOS 5 to be released and installed on new iPhones. It would also risk Apple and its downstream resellers getting stuck with a lot of unsold iPhone stock with a soon to be yesterday’s news version of the operating system installed. Then once iPhone 5s began shipping with iOS 5 loaded up, less savvy users who’d gone with the iOS 4 version would be angry at Apple for making their new phone outdated so soon after they purchased it. The whole scenario just doesn’t make sense. At this point we’re not going to see the iPhone 5 in consumer hands before iOS 5 goes live to consumers, and I’ll be really surprised if that happens on September 7.

Indeed, CNET UK have given themselves some wiggle room by stating that they think September 5 is the “most likely”release date for the iPhone 5.

My guess is that when Steve Jobs said" this fall" in the WWDC keynote it was because he meant it would really be this fall, which strictly speaking could mean any time from the third week of September to four days before Christmas, but most likely sometime in October or November.