T-Mobile’s announcement that they will offer the iPhone 5 starting in mid-April harkens back to Verizon’s 2011 announcement — which could push back the iPhone 5S release date.
Well, T-Mobile customers’ long wait for the iPhone has finally ended. Beginning on April 12th, the company will offer the iPhone 5, which will also benefit from T-Mobile’s newly, hyped LTE network. T-Mobile will also be carrying the iPhone 4S and 4 is select markets as well, giving the carrier the opportunity to compete with the likes of the big three in the U.S..
The T-Mobile announcement to carry the iPhone gives Apple the opportunity to widen its distribution and sales network in the U.S. — a kind of strategic pivot against Samsung, who appears to be slowly encroaching on the iPhone with its Galaxy S as a contender that can take on Apple mano e mano. For their part, T-Mobile’s new marketing pitch to be the “Uncarrier,” with incentives like only having to put up $99 bucks for the iPhone 5, is a way to take on the likes of Sprint as a price leader in the mobile network market. So, everyone is making their play.
This move by Apple to allow T-Mobile to sell the iPhone 5 come April has. other implications, however. Namely, how will it affect the iPhone 5S release date?
Ironically, Gene Munster weighed in on the iPhone 5S release date just in time for this announcement, and his analysis could not be more polar-opposite of what the T-Mobile iPhone 5 announcement suggests about when we see the iPhone 5S. CBS reports:Apple will likely bring out its next iPhone in late June, projects Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.You’ll recall that I have been lobbying for a June release of the iPhone 5S, looking for signs from Apple, alla the iOS 7 beta release, to suggest that they might re-engage the WWDC as a launch pad for the new iPhone. On any other day, Munster’s analysis would have been an affirmation of my own feeling that Apple could indeed release the iPhone 5S in June.
Assuming that forecast comes true, Munster believes Apple will sell 4 million units of the new phone before the month and the quarter are over. That estimate compares with the 5 million iPhone 5 handsets sold during that model’s opening weekend.
However, the T-Mobile announcement today now gives me some major pause on June for the iPhone 5S release date.It was back in early 2011 when Verizon announced that they would begin carrying the iPhone 4 — nearly six months after its initial release on AT&T’s network in the U.S.. This was a huge story for Apple (and Verizon), and at the time, the tech media assumed that it would be business as usual for a June iPhone release. However, the late-released Verizon iPhone, followed by the white iPhone release later in the spring, proved to be mitigating circumstances for why the iPhone 4S came to be released later in the fall of that year.
We don’t know for sure why Apple moved the iPhone release in 2011 from early summer to fall — it could have been because of Steve Jobs’ health, problems manufacturing the processors, or a voluntary choice that had nothing to do with the rumored iPhone 4S snafus. But I tend to think that Verizon’s late release of the iPhone 4 had a lot to do with the decision.
Read more at http://iphone5newsblog.com/2013/03/26/t-mobile-iphone-5-announcement-changes-iphone-5s-release-date-calculus/#XbM3MZu8CfML3ICE.99
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