You may want to clear your schedule for February 3. That could be the day Verizon begins selling the iPhone — at least figures one blogger. Why pick that day? Turns out it wasn’t selected out of a hat, but based on several factors.
The Cupertino, Calif. tech giant has “blacked-out” Thursday, Feb. 3rd through Sunday, February 6th, denying any retail employee vacation requests, according to the blog, citing “a source close to Apple.” Earlier this week, a report surfaced that the iPhone maker was canceling vacations for retail workers sometime between late January and stretching into February. The move was seen as indicating a major product announcement was planned.
The February 3 date is also being suggested as D-Day for Apple and the carrier because of traditional launch days for both companies. When Apple introduced the iPhone 4 in 2010, it picked the same timeframe — a Thursday through Sunday. Additionally, Verizon has always launched products on Thursdays.
Is this just a coincidence? Maybe. But with both Apple and Verizon tight-lipped, such Silicon Valley tea-leaf reading might be our best tool in determining when the long-rumored CDMA iPhone appears.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
