News via Forbes
If You’re an iPhone user and you haven’t upgraded to a 5 yet, odds are, you’re sticking it out and waiting for the 5S. I’m in the same boat, realizing that iOS 7 will technically run on my iPhone 4, but barely. The good news is that we could be about 12 weeks away from the next iPhone.
he prediction of a September 20 release date (and a product announcement ten days earlier that will also include the September 18 release date of iOS 7) is being ventured by Dave Smith, technology editor for International Business Times. Here’s what it’s based on:
First, he assumes that iOS 7 will follow the pattern of iOS 6 and be released exactly 100 days after its announcement (that would be the September 18 date). Then he figures the new iPhone will follow by just two days, just as the iPhone 5 followed two days after iOS 6. Apple AAPL +3.22% does tend to follow these kinds of almost superstitious and numerological habits, so his math makes sense.
A bigger leap based on leaks and rumors concerns the low-cost iPhone 6 (or iPhone Light or whatever) that Smith goes on to predict will be released a week or two later (to avoid excess lines at the Apple stores.) Assuming the rumors are true and thatleaked photos of brightly colored plastic iPhone casings are legit and not just unauthorized Chinese knockoffs, release dates of September 27 or October 4 sound plausible.
These supposedly colorful and inexpensive iPhone will be aimed primarily at the developing markets of China and India, but I think they will prove popular here as well. The preciousness of the standard iPhone casing is not actually a selling point for some users, particularly the young and butter-fingered! Now if they could work some smash-proof glass in there too that would be a real winner.
The other reason for the close coupling of these release dates, again according to Smith, is to make room later in October for another announcement, this time for a new full-size iPad and a retina iPad Mini—and maybe a new Apple TV and/or an iWatch—just in time for Christmas shopping.
The low-cost iPhone could do for Apple’s phone line what the iPad Mini has done for its tablet line. The lower price point, rather than the smaller size, is the thing that will convince incremental customers to join the Apple platform. The Apple TV, the iWatch and iOS in the car are the things that will extend that experience and give users ever more things to hook their iPhones up to.
If Apple can do all of this (or even most of it) and tune up the rough edges on iOS 7, the end of 2013 could prove to be a turn-around for Cupertino’s fortunes. But my needs are simple. I just want my iPhone 5S!
