Mac Otakara reports that the long-running Japanese magazine MacFan has claimed that Apple will be holding a special media event on June 20 to introduce the iPhone 5S. According to the report, the iPhone 5S will actually launch in July with the rumored lower-cost iPhone following in August.
Various analysts and other sources have been indicating that the iPhone 5S could launch as soon as June or July, but MacFan's specific claim of a June 20 media event seems to defy common sense on several levels.
First, while Apple has not yet announced dates for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, a tentative long-range schedule that leaked several years ago and continued gap in the Moscone Center's public schedule have suggested that the company is likely to hold the conference the week of June 10-14.
Apple could certainly choose to introduce the iPhone 5S at WWDC as it did for several years before it shifted iPhone launches to later in the year for 2011 and 2012, although the company has shown that it is willing to hold WWDC without a major hardware launch and instead focus on iOS and OS X for its developer community.
Still, even if Apple chooses not to introduce the iPhone 5S at WWDC, it seems extremely unlikely that the company would expect the media to return for a separate media event just a week later to show off the iPhone 5S. Even when it is running a tight schedule to launch significant numbers of new products, Apple schedules significant gaps between its announcements in order to allow each one to have its full share of publicity.
Second, Apple almost universally holds its media events on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, with the theory being that Mondays are poor days for members of the media who may need to travel to the event location the day before and that Thursdays and Fridays don't leave enough time for the full publicity impact before the news cycle is interrupted by the weekend. The one recent exception to Apple's scheduling trend was its education-focused media event on Thursday, January 19, 2012, but that event was unusual in several respects, including its location in New York City and a strict focus on content such as iBooks Textbooks and iTunes U rather than any new hardware.
As a result, we believe that June 20 is a very unlikely date for an iPhone media event, with Apple being much more likely to either introduce the iPhone 5S at WWDC itself during a Monday keynote (regardless of what week the conference is held) or at a Tuesday or Wednesday media event at least several weeks removed from WWDC.
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History of iOS releases:
Version / Announcement / Release / Days Between
2.0 / 3-6-08 / 7-11-08 / 127
3.0 / 3-17-09 / 7-17-09 / 122
4.0 / 4-8-10 / 6-21-10 / 74
5.0 / 6-6-11 / 10-12-11 / 128
6.0 / 6-11-12 / 9/19/12 / 100
The average between releases is 110 days.
If iOS 7 is demoed on 6-10-13, then expect iPhone 5S to be released around either September 24 or 25th, or October 1st or 2nd. If I were a betting man, I'd say iOS 7 is going to have some fairly significant changes—so expect a release in October.
If Apple is going to announce the iPhone 5S at WWDC on June 10th, then expect an iOS 7 event around February 19. Whoops! Well lets use the shortest ever date on the table: 74 days. That means the event should have been held by...yesterday. Crap. I suppose it would be awesome if Apple poured some of their billions into iOS 7 to rewrite it from the ground up with super stability and tons of testing, but what are the odds of that happening? Although considering how iOS 6 wasn't a huge upgrade, there could be teams who have been working on it for a couple years now making sure it's rock solid. Hmmm. The only other way this could work for a June release is for the WWDC event to be held later in June and the event invitations to go out next week or something.
I should be an analyst. Look guys! I used numbers and wild speculation!!
That's completely wrong. Please don't post if you're going to spread misinformation as you'll confuse the more impressionable forum members around here.
The iPhone OS was always shown a few months before WWDC (with beta), and then the new iPhone was shown at WWDC along with the final build of the OS which would often reiterate the key points of the new OS along with some potential new software features only available on the new iPhone hardware. Then in 2011 they started showing the new OS at WWDC (with beta), followed up a few months later by an iPhone event and the final build of the OS, reiterate key features, and show any features only applicable to the latest iPhone (like Siri).
I know this gets said a lot on forums, but did you honestly even read my post? I put in a chart of dates that you should go fact check before saying I've got it all wrong. The latest iOS is always shown a few months before they release it to the public with a new iPhone. They haven't shown the new iOS yet, so it would seem unlikely that they would launch it in early June. Is this really that difficult to follow? iOS Beta, few months of betas, iOS release alongside new iPhone hardware. It's been that way every year after initial release in 2007. The only thing that changes are absolute dates.