While the iPhone 11 series has been an unmitigated success for Apple, not everyone is in the market for a pricey flagship phone. It’s one of the reasons that Huawei is now the world’s second-biggest smartphone maker just behind Samsung, but Apple has a plan to cast its net even wider in 2020 to attract consumers that might not otherwise have considered an iPhone. The key to this plan will be the iPhone 9, and thanks to a new leak from prolific spoiler of all things mobile, Evan Blass, we might know exactly when Apple’s budget iPhone is launching.
On Thursday night, Blass shared a screenshot of a calendar that appears to unveil the release timeline for upcoming smartphone launches. Not only does it reveal that Apple will announce the iPhone 9 (also frequently referred to as the iPhone SE 2) in mid-March, but it also says that Samsung’s Galaxy S20 will begin arriving in stores and on doorsteps around the world on March 6th. The March 6th date lines up with a recent leak from Samsung’s website.
We have no idea where this leak originated from, nor can we confirm or deny its legitimacy, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a similar calendar spoil a smartphone’s release date. It also wouldn’t be anywhere close to the first time Blass has leaked something that turned out to be true, so we’re inclined to believe it.
Furthermore, while Apple has yet to even hint that a spring hardware event might be forthcoming, just this week we saw photos from the retail store of a major mobile carrier in South Korea (KT) that is already taking preorders for the iPhone 9. If consumers really are already putting money down for a brand new iPhone, it seems likely that an official announcement isn’t far off. That’s another point in favor of this mysterious leak.
If Apple is indeed holding a spring event, we likely won’t know until a week or two out, which means we will likely have to wait until the end of the month to determine the accuracy of this leak. That said, if history is any guide, we’ll almost certainly see a few dozen or so additional leaks between now and then.
