Apple likely to hold two separate events: one for iPhone, then another for iPad mini and iPod touch

“I’m thinking it makes more sense for Apple to hold two events,” John Gruber writes for Daring Fireball.

“First, an iPhone event, focused solely on the new iPhone and iOS 6,” Gruber writes. “Then, the iPhone ships nine days later, and there’s another wave of iPhone-focused attention as the reviews come out. Then, in the first or second week of October, Apple holds its traditional ‘music event,’ exactly along the lines of the events at which they’ve been debuting new iPods for the last decade… An event where the iPad Air (cool, but just a smaller thinner cheaper iPad), new iPod Touch (cool, but just an iPhone without the phone), and maybe even new or at least updated iPod music players (eh) share the stage, tied together with the theme of consuming iTunes media content.”

To which The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple responds, “Oh that Gruber is a smart fellow.” Which is pretty much Jim’s long-winded version of “yep.”

Much more from Gruber in his full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]

30 Comments

  1. This makes a lot of sense. And it’s more than the iPhone not wanting to share the spotlight. Based on the rumors and hardware leaks, the new iPhone production is ahead of the smaller iPad production. The smaller iPad won’t be ready for a September release. Apple doesn’t announce new versions of existing products unless they are ready to start selling them in the very near future (1 or 2 weeks).

    Nerds like us already know there is almost definitely a smaller iPad coming out soon. “Normal people”, not so much. If Apple announced a smaller iPad on Sept 12 *every* television and radio show would be talking about it. I can guarantee Apple won’t be selling many current iPads between the announcement and the release. People will want to compare the two devices (or at least read someone’s hands on review) before deciding to get the 10″ iPad or the smaller & cheaper iPad.

    I believe sales will pick back up for the 10″ iPad in November or so. The smaller iPad isn’t going to totally replace the 10″ one, but I do expect Apple to sell a *ton* of smaller iPads.

    On top of minimizing the time between announcement and release, do you guys remember how large the lines are on iPhone release days? Just as a pure logistics standpoint it would be a complete fuster cluck to have a new iPhone and iPad on the same weekend, or even the same week.

    So, if this theory is true, everything works out better sales wise, logistics wise, and Apple gets the added benefit of being in the press 24/7 for most of September AND October. Sounds like a brilliant strategy.

  2. Seems like that’s exactly what Apple’s competitors crystal ball is telling them and why they’ve moved their launch events before Apple’s expected date. The rest of the month should be pretty much taken by Apple.

    Well all except HTC, but their crystal ball has been fogged up for a while.

    That said it would be funny is Apple moved their launch announced to earlier in September now 😉 But not likely.

  3. The biggest most important question here is if Apple changes the iPhone to a 4″ screen with a new ratio, how exactly would those apps scale on the regular iPad or this so called 7.85″ iPad. There seems to be too much fragmenting going on here for developers and Apple’s iOS. The new iPad would need to follow suite to fit the iPhone changes at least ratio wise. Unless Apple plans to remove the 2X feature for iPhone apps, which I doubt.

    1. First, I don’t believe running iPhone apps on the iPad is important. Especially in 2X. The apps look awful. It was a brilliant move when the iPad first came out, but now the iPad has an app library of its own.

      Having said that, there are no technical problems where a taller iPhone would hinder running the apps on the iPad, even in 2X. The reason for this is all of these iPhone apps will need to support the iPhone 4 resolution, plus the taller resolution on the latest iPhone. The iPad can simply pixel double the iPhone 4 resolution version. Easy peasy.

      Yes, a little fragmentation is sneaking in. I think the benefits will be worth it though.

      1. you bring up a good argument, and I must stress that I myself and very eager to get my hands on this mysterious shrunken head iPad. I have not bought an iPad because I find it still too clunky regardless of how beautiful and fun it may be. The 7″ iPad I am hoping will change my feelings about this.

  4. Apple spreads out announcements because of the free publicity. They estimate they get $100M worth of free publicity with each focused intro. They don’t intro multiple new products at a time because of this. Refreshing old lines doesn’t count..

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