More information has been coming out this past week which is pointing to a release date of the iPhone during the week of October 10th and it may will be that the iPhone sales begin on October 10th. There have been a number of rumors which are from very reliable sources regarding the coming activities. The first and most important is the press event that Apple is going to be holding to make the announcement for the iPhones. The question of how many iPhones are being released has been confirmed by an Apple Board Member as being two iPhones last week by none other than Al Gore. We do know that there will be the iPhone 5 and a lower costing iPhone which has been dubbed the 4S by rumors. Since Steve Jobs is no longer the CEO, this will be the first presentation that Tim Cook will be responsible for organizing and conducting.
The actual press event will be held on October 4th according to All Things D nine days from now. It will not be held at the normal venue of Moscone Center in San Francisco because Oracle OpenWorld 2011 is being held from October 2nd through the 6th. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is close by and would make it very congested with the Oracle event going on at the same time. So, today we see that the iPhone announcement will be held at Apple in Cupertino at the company offices.
This is a much smaller location to be unveiling the iPhones, iOS 5 and iCloud to the public. Given the nature of technology and the ability to stream things to mobile devices, it may no longer be a requirement to hold the big press events that they have in the past. If this information from All Things D is correct, we can make an assumption that Steve Jobs will not be in attendance at the presentation. That would not surprise anyone if he was not there.
The other big information that is coming out is regarding Apple blocking out dates where employees are not allowed to take any vacation time. This is a true indicator of a big product release. There are two different activities associated with the release and the dates are being blacked out according to Apple Insider and seem to show the planned release of things. They are denying vacation request for the second week of October which would be starting on Monday October 10th. With the October 4th announcement, things are sure to follow soon behind after that. The first thing that will be made available is the iOS 5 release and that would happen on October 10th. That fits with the information and employees would be on hand to handle problems or upgrades.
With that in place, it would only be a matter of days after that where the iPhone sales would begin. That could start by October 14th or 15th and generate large lines of people at the Apple stores in order to get their hands on one. Verizon and AT&T will be selling them as well on the launch date. It is not known whether Sprint will be selling the iPhone on the first day or not. We can assume that Apple will have some pre-order sales days, but how many days and how many iPhones that might be available is not know.
All of this is assuming that the the iOS 5 refresh this weekend went without any problems and the OS hass shipped to Asia for installation on the awaiting iPhones. If that is not the case, then all of these dates are going to be slipping. If things are on track, there will be a press invite for a small group of people in Cupertino being announced some time this week.
