Users gearing up to buy the latest iPhones are going to have wait longer than they did last year.
In a call following the release of Apple’s Q3 earnings, the company’s CFO Luca Maestri shared that compared to the September 2019 release of iPhone 11 models, Apple is expecting this year’s supply of new iPhones “to be available a few weeks later.” It’s an exceedingly rare move for the company, which generally refuses to even acknowledge its timeline for releasing new products, even the iPhone which refreshes annually.
It is not unprecedented for the iPhone’s release to be delayed, in 2017 Apple’s iPhone X was not released until November. The company also often releases different iPhone models on a different release cadence in the weeks following the device announcements.
Apple is expected to release several new models this year integrating 5G network support.
On Thursday, Apple shared quarterly earnings results from the third-quarter which smashed Wall Street expectations delivering revenue of $59.69 billion, up 11 percent year-over-year. The coronavirus pandemic hasn’t knocked Apple’s share price or revenue growth, but the admission is one sign that it did halt momentum in its product pipelines in delivering another September release.