Apple may be planning a major shakeup of its normal iPhone release schedule, according to a JP Morgan analyst who predicts the company will soon start introducing new models twice a year instead of once, in the fall.That analyst, Samik Chatterjee, is out with a new report which forecasts that after Apple launches four new iPhone models next year — including a 5.4-inch model, two 6.1-inch models, and a 6.7-inch iPhone — Apple will switch to a spring and fall release schedule starting in 2021. Per a Marketwatch report about Chatterjee’s forecast, the analyst thinks this shift in the release timing could help Apple “smooth seasonality” around new iPhone launches and to be in a better position to compete with offerings from rivals throughout the year.
Also, Chatterjee continues, this new timing could help Apple limit its vulnerability to “product cycle missteps” — meaning, if Apple gets something majorly wrong, it’s got an opportunity to change up its new phone design or make other tweaks sooner instead of having to wait a whole other year for the next model release.
“Early visibility into 2020/2021 iPhone product cycles are offering incremental reasons to be positive relative to volume implications,” Chatterjee writes in his new report. Speaking of that product cycle, all of the new iPhone models mentioned above that are reportedly coming in 2020 would support 5G, while the two higher-end models will support “world-facing” 3D sensing, according to Chatterjee.
The biggest news in his report, though, definitely concerns the change to the way Apple has released its flagship iPhones going all the way back to the iPhone 4S eight years ago now. Chatterjee’s sources are pointing to two new iPhone models sometime in the first half of 2021, and then two more new releases in the second half of 2021. Not only would that potentially be a better way to handle the growing volume of iPhone variants, but this would bring Apple more on par with the way Samsung releases its flagships each year. Tech blogging, it would seem, is going to get even more busy very soon.
