Have the salad days of Microsoft passed? Insiders say CEO Steve Ballmer was greeted with yawns at a recent annual meeting replete with reportedly “painfully flat demos and lifeless speakers.” Ballmer, who once derided the Apple iPhone market share as a ’rounding error,’ is now on the defensive, adopting the mantra “Windows Cannot Lose.”
Australian carrier Vodafone has erected a teaser page on its website for the rumored iPhone 5. The webpage features says “End the rumors” and presents a form for customers to receive updates about “this year’s biggest smartphone release.”
A couple days ago, it leaked that reputable case manufacturer Otterbox had already made up to three million cases for the iPhone 4S. That number always seemed a little far fetched, but the pictures themselves didn’t like: Otterbox was banking on the next iPhone to be a relatively small update over the iPhone 4.
Today, Otterbox is in the news again, though, with a banner ad showing up on their official website implying we’ll see both the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S next month. But what might seem like a knowing insider’s wink is, in actuality, something very different: a tease.
One of the things Apple really gets right is the streamlined names. Other companies add a bunch of confusing prefixes and suffixes to each incremental product change, but with Apple a MacBook Pro is simply called a MacBook Pro, and not a MacBook Pro 15XRCT. It cuts down on the confusion for some of us simpletons.
So if that’s the case, you might be wondering: what the heck is all this talk of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5? Are they the same device? If not, how are they different from each other? What does it all mean?
Well, it’s not as confusing as you think. Here’s the scoop on what all this talk about the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S is really about.
Despite recent rumors that suggest there will not be an iPhone 5 this October — just the iPhone 4S instead — DigiTimes reports that there are issues currently affecting the supply of iPhone 5 touch panels, which will plague the initial shipments of the device.
For months, we’ve been talking about the possibility of two iPhones: a speed bump upgrade called the iPhone 4S that may end up also being Apple’s low-cost, prepaid option, and the iPhone 5, the radically redesigned next gen device.
Over the last month or so, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the iPhone 5 is going to show up next month. There’s no evidence for the device in the supply chain, while there’s tons of evidence that the iPhone 4S is coming.
The image above of a new Otterbox case for the iPhone 4S might be the nail in the iPhone 5’s coffin, though.
AT&T is downplaying the impact of both Verizon and Sprint getting the iPhone 5. CEO Randall Stephenson told analysts the effect on the original U.S. iPhone carrier is “always overblown.” Instead, Stephenson said he was “very confident that we’ll do well” against the two CDMA carriers.
Visualize Apple has one of those huge monster trucks crushing its competition and you get the picture one analyst is sharing with investors. Fueling the Cupertino, Calif. firm’s onslaught is an incessant introduction of products hungrily awaited by consumers. “With the introductions ahead of the holidays, we expect a monster [December quarter] from Apple,” the Wall Street expert writes Thursday. What’s even worse for rivals mangled by Apple, the products just keep coming.
With their typical casual carelessness, Sprint has yet again hinted they are getting the iPhone next quarter.
With All Things D and Jim Dalrymple both weighing in saying October 4th is the day that Apple will announce the next iPhone, the obvious question that follows is “how long after that until the iPhone 5 is released?”
There’s no way of telling, but here’s the good news: every generation, Apple trims down the number of days before an iOS Device’s announcement and the day it ships.