We’ve heard all kinds of rumours about how delayed or not-delayed the iPhone 12 might be, and finally we have an answer from Apple itself.
On its most recent earnings call, the company said the phone is coming soon as anticipated – but it’ll be a few weeks later than the usual September date.
That’s bad news for anyone who was hoping the mighty Apple wouldn’t be impacted by coronavirus, but good news for people who thought the rumoured November date might be true.
Apple very rarely delays anything, and as Techradar points out, the only times it’s happened so far have been due to supply chain issues (or so they said – we can’t imagine Apple owning up to anything ever).
This time, there’s the whole covid-19 problem, which has screwed over pretty much everyone – loads of Apple stores are still resolutely closed, including some that had previously reopened. With the random on-off local lockdowns the government keeps announcing, we can’t see that changing anytime soon.
Also, Apple might have screwed itself a bit: Tim Cook mentioned on the call that the company has sold a lot of iPhone SE 2020 handsets to people who had older iPhones and wanted to upgrade. Now that they have a newer albeit less high-end device in their hands, they might not be so keen to switch phones again when the 12 finally comes out.
The rest of the earnings call was pretty positive, thanks in part to said iPhone SE: sales of iPhones are up two per cent on last year, and iPad and Mac sales have rocketed despite the issues coronavirus causes.
However, those issues do mean Apple isn’t certain enough to set a target for its earnings in the fourth quarter of this year. In other words, it’s as confused as the rest of us about what the remainder of 2020 has in store. [TechRadar]