Speak not of the iPhone 5, as Apple has not only killed any chance of a prompt summer release, it’s attempting to all but bury the product for now by instead distracting the public with a shiny new white iPhone 4. It doesn’t do anything that the existing iPhone 4 didn’t already do, but that doesn’t matter. By mischievous design all long or by accident as claimed, the uber-late arrival of the white iPhone 4 has breathed new life into the iPhone 4 lineup in the most shallow of ways – but also in a surprisingly effective manner. Our anecdotal research has revealed that iPhone 4 sales have indeed seen a significant spike since the release of the white iPhone 4. And unlike some recent Apple product launches (iPad 2, original iPhone 4) which saw Apple oddly unable to produce a respectable amount of initial inventory to meet said demand, Apple.com has now confirmed that new white iPhone 4 orders will be fulfilled in 24 to 48 hours, meaning that Apple did remember to make a few this time around. So what does that mean for the iPhone 5?
Here’s the hard for Apple: nearly every white iPhone 4 sale now will translate to one less iPhone 5 sale when the next generation first arrives. Few will eat the cost of not only buying two new iPhones within the span of less than half a year, but also plunking down $250 above sticker price to get the latter of the two, as buying a white iPhone 4 from either Verizon or AT&T will plunge you into unsubsidized territory when the iPhone 5 arrives. But for its part, Apple apparently doesn’t care. Either device will pull the user more tightly into the iOS experience, buying more apps, music, and video from the App Store. And if the white iPhone 4 is the user’s first iPhone, the odds are that said user will stick around in the long term – even if it was something as shallow as the sudden availability of a white model which lured them in.
Waiting for the iPhone 5 is still an easily defensible position: it’ll undoubtedly be a better all around product than the iPhone 4, at the same or better price, and it’ll almost certainly be here by the fall. But whereas waiting for a June iPhone 5 would have automatically qualified as the “smart move” to make, the fact that the white iPhone 4 signals a later iPhone 5 arrival means that there’s no real reason to argue against getting a white iPhone 4 now. And as such, Apple’s attempt at burying the iPhone 5 is at least a partial success. The arrival of the white iPhone 4 hasn’t gotten people to stop talking about the iPhone 5, it hasn’t gotten them to stop asking when the iPhone 5 release date will be, and it hasn’t gotten them to stop asking whether they should wait for it. But just the fact that the white iPhone 4 has suddenly pushed the iPhone 4 back into the conversation this late in its life cycle means that for whatever reason Apple has delayed the iPhone 5, the interstitial white iPhone 4 means the company is making the best of the situation. Here’s more on the white iPhone 4 and iPhone 5.
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