Apple may be planning to release iPhone for the first time in years

The most important day for Apple will come earlier than usual in 2022. The company plans to announce the iPhone 14 at an event as early as September 7. This will be the first iPhone launch since 2016 and the new device will go on sale on September 16th. That would be a week before last year.

The event is believed to take place on the Wednesday after Labor Day, which will be an unusual day for Apple product launches. This may indicate that the company wanted to take off on Tuesday to allow media and guests to travel after the holiday. This approach strongly suggests that the company will hold an iPhone event at the Apple Park campus, similar to the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

The presentation itself should continue online – as Apple has already done during the pandemic. The company can also display the corresponding video directly on its campus.

A bit of a return to normal

Such an “in-person” event would be part of a broader push by Apple to restore a measure of normalcy. Around the same time, the company will also start allowing its employees to work at least three days a week in its Silicon Valley offices. Thanks to the combination of a live media event and on-site office work, this fall may be Apple’s most natural since the iPhone 11 launched in 2019.

The only anomaly is the launch date earlier than usual, since since Apple started offering iPhones in the fall of 2011, there was only one presentation with the iPhone 7 in 2016 that came much earlier. All other events occurred later, as the following list shows:

• iPhone 4S: Announced October 4, 2011, released October 14
• iPhone 5: announced September 12, 2012, released September 21
• iPhone 5S: Announced September 10, 2013; Posted on September 20
• iPhone 6: Announced September 9, 2014; Posted on September 19
• iPhone 6S: Announced September 9, 2015; Posted on September 25
• iPhone 7: Announced September 7, 2016; Posted on September 16
• iPhone 8: Announced September 12, 2017; Posted on September 22
• iPhone X: Announced September 12, 2017; Posted on November 3
• iPhone XS: Announced September 12, 2018; Posted on September 21
• iPhone 11: Announced September 10, 2019; Released on September 20
• iPhone 12: Announced October 13, 2020; Posted on October 23
• iPhone 13: Announced September 14, 2021; Posted on September 24

Supply chains are still working

Apple’s early start date would give an extra week of iPhone 14 sales in its fourth fiscal quarter, which runs through the end of September. This table could also indicate that Apple’s supply chain, at least with the iPhone, is still doing well. This is despite the constant shortage of chips and rising costs.

It’s also possible that Apple will already make room for a second event in October. In the years before the pandemic, Apple regularly released the new iPhone and Apple Watch together in September, followed by new iPads and Macs in October.

It is believed that an Apple event will be announced between August 29 and 31.

(Bloomberg/Cash)