Everyone wants to know what Apple is doing next, and the voracious online appetite for news around the iPhone has created an issue for Apple. The geekerati have been talking about vivid OLED screens, curved screens, a new design and style, and are eager to see what Apple has to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its first smartphone. Unfortunately the iPhone's first decade isn't up until 2017.
The presumptively named iPhone 8 is expected to deliver all of the above changes next year, is filling up the digital column inches with promise and polish, and anyone paying close enough attention to the news about Cupertino (which, frankly, is pretty much everyone) will be aware that 'the big one' is a little over fourteen months away.
In the meantime, Tim Cook is going to try to sell you the iPhone 7.
You can't label this a classic Osborne Effect. Unlike founder Adam Osborne dooming his computing company in 1983 by letting everyone know that 'next year's model will be even better', Apple has not confirmed any details about the iPhone 8.
Although Apple has not confirmed details around the iPhone, a cursory search shows the potential of the iPhone 8 is already established in the minds of many consumers. Even if the details are incorrect, Apple has lost control of this part of its marketing story. The accepted wisdom is 'next year's iPhone will be even better', and while that thought is usually lurking in the coverage of every iPhone release, there are actual details and desires attached to the 2017 model that the 2016 model will have to fight.
iPhone sales have already lost some of their shine after the calendar Q1 warning of the lack of growth in Apple's smartphone sales during the first three months of the year. The iPhone SE, although pitched as a new model, was a reheated iPhone 5S that lowered the average selling price across the iPhone range. And the feeling of malaise in the design department from Cupertino that was present in the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus is growing.
Apple's gamble is that the faithful will continue to buy the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus in sufficient numbers to keep the financial side of the company happy, while the significant technological leaps it wants to add to its smartphone can wait for next years handset without damaging sales of the 2016 handsets.
The counter-arguments are already in place: everyone knows next year's iPhone will be better, people are upgrading from a two-year old handset and will be happy to buy the current iPhone, consumers on Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program can upgrade safe in the knowledge they can pick up another model next year by extending the payment plan, and every writer predicts the iPhone is doomed at some point. So what's changed?
Put simply, the news that Apple's supply chain partners are reporting more conservative orders of components for the new handset, a conservative approach not matched by its rival manufacturers. The arguments wondering 'if this is the year that Tim Cook loses it' may be ever-present, but if these reports are correct, this year Apple has already decided to take action to mitigate the risk of its self-inflicted Osborne Effect.
Now watch what we already know about the iPhone 8:
