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| September vs. October iPhone 5 Launch Debate And The Loyalty Of iPhone Fans Posted: 03 Aug 2011 07:36 AM PDT
Read Charles Moore’s round-up of the latest rumors surrounding the release month of the iPhone 5, as well as some insight into the loyalty of iPhone users. This week, the iPhone 5 scuttlebutt seems to be moving closer to a general consensus, although there’s still plenty of dissonance, particularly regarding the speculative release date. The good news is that most speculators now seem to be pretty much in agreement agree that there will be an iPhone 5 coming in the next few weeks, with the largest school of thought deducing September (which is now next month), but some votes for October as well. Appleinsider’s Neil Hughes reports that Sterne Agee analyst and Apple-watcher Shaw Wu is hearing from his supply-chain sources that the fifth-generation iPhone, while it’s still unlikely to include 4G-LTE high-speed wireless data connectivity, “could be a bigger upgrade than we expected,” and that for example will have a “slightly larger” display than the iPhone 4′s 3.5-incher along with the A5 processor used in the iPad 2, packed into a similar form factor enclosure similar in size to the iPhone 4 but perhaps slightly thinner. Wall Street Journal AllThingsD columnist John Paczkowski stirred the pot this week declaring that rumors claiming the iPhone 5 will debut in late September are mistaken, and that it will be October instead, citing unnamed sources “with knowledge of the situation.” Not so says Charles Arthur of The Guardian’s Technology Blog, who advises readers to believe nothing they read about the iPhone 5′s launch unless they really, really trust the source “And even then, look askance at it.” Arthur thinks there may be more than one new/refreshed iPhone model rolled out, and it/they may not be called the iPhone 5. While Arthur allows that its possible John Paczkowski’s sources may be bang-on with their October launch prediction (noting that the WSJ is a stickler about not getting things wrong; displaying motto inside its editorial building that it’s better to be late and correct than early and wrong), he notes that the iOS 5 is still scheduled for a September release, the Web beta for iCloud has been released to developers, and he’s hearing from sources in the service provider sector that boxed product believed to contain the refreshed iPhone has arrived for testing network compatibility in carriers labs, so in Arthur’s estimation “the new iPhones are in the system, which means they now just have to get approval – which will probably only take a few weeks at most.” Arthur reasons that if the refreshed iPhone is good to go, there seems to be no logical reason why Apple would wait to launch it deeper into the fall and missing weeks of sales in the lucrative run-up before Christmas, and speculates that “someone” might actually be feeding disinformation to AllThingsD in order to diminish iPhone 4 sales fall-off in anticipation of a September launch. But who would do that? Indeed, Forbes’ Brian Caulfield cites Apple watcher and Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimating that delaying the iPhone 5 release until October could cut the number of iPhones sold during the quarter ending in September by 2 million units. Arthur does riff a bit on a report by BGR’s Jonathan S. Geller, who says he has confirmed information an internal document received from a reliable source at Canadian wireless carrier Telus, that the iPhone 5 will be released in the Great White North on October 1. Of course, assuming that the Telus mole knows what he/she is talking about, that wouldn’t preclude a September stateside launch. History isn’t much help here, as Apple has been all over the lot as regards synchronizing product releases in Canada and the U.S. There was a three week lag last March for the iPad 2 release north of 49, but the iPhone 3GS was launched on both sides of the border simultaneously. However…… Geller also observes that October 1 is a Saturday, which would seem an unlikely although not impossible choice for a new product rollout, but says his insider source notes that that Saturdays are the busiest day of the week for wireless retail stores, and doesn’t believe a Saturday launch is unrealistic. Whenever, Apple is poised to sell a humongous volume of new model iPhones. Despite grumpiness about the seemingly endless gestation and delayed release of the iPhone 5, Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt notes that Gene Munster in a note to Piper Jaffray clients Monday suggests that pent-up demand for Apple’s new phone could be even greater than expected, citing 64% of respondents in a (concededly small) recent survey indicating that they expect their next phone to be an iPhone, with 29% already owning iPhones and 17% have an Android device, and also 17% indicating they expect their next phone to be an Android. Regarding product preference and loyalty, 94% of existing iPhone users said they expect to buy another iPhone (only 6% expect to switch to Android), while among existing Android users, only 47% expect to buy another Android smartphone, while a whopping 42% expect to switch to iPhone, leading Munster to conclude that Apple will be cutting into Android’s market share as well as BlackBerry’s. |
| Posted: 03 Aug 2011 06:41 AM PDT
A wash of iPhone 5 “spy” photos and case sighting over the past couple of weeks are giving way to more actionable intelligence: that a wide range of mobile carriers are testing the iPhone 5, and Apple has ordered an initial bust of 10 million iPhone 5 production units from Pegatron. This new news comes as a relief to the tech community who, up until this point, have been straining in vain to confirm the form factor and features of the next iPhone based on shoddy spy photos, purported clones of the true iPhone 5, and cheap, preemptively manufactured iPhone 5 cases, all of which have done little to reassure prospective iPhone 5 customers. While production orders and mobile carrier testing do little to quell the interest and intrigue of what the next iPhone will look like, the news does put an imminent iPhone 5 announcement and launch into better focus. On the supply side of the iPhone 5 launch, a new report from DigiTimes states that “Pegatron Technology has landed orders for 10 million units of iPhone 5 to become the second ODM of the smartphone. Shipments will start in September, according to industry sources.” The “10 million” number in this report contradicts earlier reports that Apple was initially ordering 15 million units of the iPhone 5 to be produced, and one wonders if the reduction in production quantities is simply a byproduct of the rumor mill (which never seems to get facts entirely correct) or rather a downgrade in production by Apple as a result of continued concerns about the U.S. economy and consumer spending. In either case, news of iPhone 5 production orders from Pegatron indicate that production is indeed in full force. As far as testing goes, The Guardian is reporting today that the iPhone 5 is indeed out for testing with a wide range of mobile carriers. According to Charles Arthur, "My carrier sources tell me that the boxes in which the new iPhone hardware is encased have been transported to carrier for testing. similar to the production side of the most recent iPhone 5 rumors, this news corroborates earlier reports of the iPhone 5 being tested by AT&T, Verizon, and even Sprint. The interesting thing about Arthur’s new article, however, is not that he is confirming that the iPhone 5 is currently being tested by mobile carriers, but rather that he raises the two most contentious and confounding issues of the iPhone 5: when it’s going to be released, and what it will look like. iPhone 5: September Or October? The tech community had all but settled on the notion that the iPhone 5 would indeed be released sometime in September. But that notion has begun to skew over the past weeks, with some reports suggesting that the September release of the iPhone could be limited to the U.S. only, with the rest of the world having to wait until October. Today, a new rash of reports are now claiming an early October launch of the next iPhone. AllThingsD‘s article seems to be leading the charge. John Paczkowski says that “Sources with knowledge of the situation say reports claiming AT&T has blacked out employee vacations during the last two weeks of September in preparation for the retail debut of the next iPhone are misinformed” and that “Instead, it's going to be an October surprise — the month in which Apple plans to launch its next-gen iPhone.” But there is some dueling going on here in the iPhone 5 rumor mill, with The Guardian‘s Charles Arthur taking a bit of a shot at AllThingsD: “It’s absolutely possible that Paczkowski has nailed this, and that the iPhone(s) will not land until October. However, I’d point out that by my understanding, ATD doesn’t have to pass the same tough tests that articles in the WSJ do, where even “anonymous” sources have to be named to senior editors and in effect vetted for independence. (The WSJ is very, very hot on not getting things wrong; the motto inside the building is that it’s better to be late and correct than early and wrong.)” In short, Arthur is telling us that, even though AllThingsD is a spin-off of the Wall St. Journal, we shouldn’t assume that their sources or vetting is rock solid like WSJ.com. Geek fight! Here’s my take on the September/October iPhone 5 release issue: I think that, from a marketing and sales perspective, it would make more sense for Apple to announce the iPhone 5 sometime in September, and release it in early October. That may not be what we, the iPhone 5′ers, would like to hear, but releasing the iPhone 5 in October puts its release closer to the start of the Christmas shopping season. Also — in case you didn’t know this — the U.S. is headed for another politico-economic showdown in the government in September over the budget. If that fight spurs another financial panic, Apple may want to keep the iPhone 5′s release at arm’s length from it. iPhone 5 Form Factor: What We See Is (Hopefully Not) What We’ll Get Going back to the original piece from The Guardian, Charles Arthur also talks about how the iPhone 5s that mobile carriers are testing are concealed in lock boxes, which also most likely house an iPhone 5 in an iPhone 4 or 3Gs body: “my understanding is that barely anyone inside the carriers gets to open those boxes, and even when they do the hardware is encased in a dummy body which means there’s no clue to what the actual phone will do.” This detail coincides with a wonderful piece on Digital Trends by Andrew Couts, entitled “This had better not be Apple's iPhone 5,” wherein he openly complains about the purported “clone” iPhone 5 that Gizmodo revealed to the public last week, stating: “there is absolutely nothing spectacular about this phone, not a single design feature that distinguishes it from the bulging, monotonous hoard of Android devices now available, save the Apple logo on the back. It is not the future of smartphone design, as all Apple's previous iPhone iterations have been. It is not even the present . . .” and that “I can, however, guarantee one thing: If this is what the next iPhone looks like, I'm not buying one.” I totally agree. Folks, virtually every purported photo we’ve seen of the iPhone 5 has looked like the 3Gs — there is nothing new or novel about it. Given the fact that the Apple is known to conceal its new iPhone form factor in an older chassis (after all, for testing, the form factor means very little), why are any of us buying these photos? It very well may be that the Gizmodo iPhone 5 clone is indeed based on a prototype that someone saw — but was that iPhone 5 prototype housed in an old iPhone 3Gs chassis? At this point in the iPhone 5 hype cycle, it is best to assume that what we’ve seen from the iPhone 5 photos is not necessarily what we’re going to get, and that the month of September may turn out to be the announcement month for the iPhone 5 and not the release month. My feeling, however, is that, once we get to the announcement, there will be a great deal of relief, and waiting a couple more weeks for the official launch won’t be too agonizing. It is not knowing that hurts so much. |
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