Naming The New iPhone

As you’re all aware, yesterday Apple dropped its bomb on the press by announcing a special event on the 12th of September. For those of you who follow the news, this shouldn’t came as a surprise, considering that this date was rumored since mid July almost.

The big news (as always) is the picture embedded in the invitation.

“It’s almost here.” – A great tease to point at the introduction of a new product. Then there’s the number 12 that stands as the reference date for the event and finally there’s hell. In reality there’s a shadow representing a number 5, but this shadow opened a new circle in hell.

All the press went crazy and started to speculate on the hidden meaning of the shadow and probably someone said there is some sort of alien plot in place.

I think, as others already pointed out, that the reason for this 5 is that the new iPhone is going to be called the “iPhone 5”.

I now that apparently it doesn’t make any sense.¹

Nevertheless there’s a very simple explanation for the number 5: everybody is already calling it the iPhone 5. Since last year when we received the 4S, everybody was expecting the “iPhone 5”. So much that the identification 4S for many was the result of a rushed R&D and an underpowered device.

If you follow this logic it suddenly makes sense. Apple does not want to confuse customers, so following past trends (3G->3GS,4->4S) now it’s the perfect time to launch the iPhone 5.

I think we totally need to forget the other rumored possibility of “The New iPhone”. It’s not working fine with the iPad, where less tech-savvy customers always ask for the iPad “3” (even if it doesn’t exist in theory), it would be a PR disaster for a product as big as the iPhone. And even if Apple want to go down the “The New iPhone” route, I’m sure people will always refer to it as the “iPhone 5”.

Apple is always very focused on providing users with less but more accurate information, so in this light it makes perfectly sense to call it the “iPhone 5”. You can call it however you want, but don’t expect Apple to do the same this time.