14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwan's Commercial Times claims to have heard from industry sources that Apple has had a change of heart with the iPhone 5S and has recently decided to use a bigger screen.
In what can be regarded as the least plausible iPhone rumor in recent months, the Taiwanese newspaper got its story cited by Bloomberg, which gave it more visibility and, hence, got people talking.
The gist of it is that Apple has allegedly chosen to delay the introduction of the iPhone 5S until the end of the year “after the design was changed to feature a bigger 4.3-inch retina display screen,” reports Bloomberg, citing the Commercial Times report.
The release was previously scheduled for late September – early October, according to the Taiwanese newspaper which cited sources in the semiconductor industry.
Editor’s note While there is an offset chance Apple will introduce a 4.3-inch iPhone 5S this year, I’m pretty sure this change of heart didn’t occur just now. If Apple wants to launch this phone in 2013, the design has long been agreed upon.
You don’t just make a phone bigger because you suddenly want a bigger screen. Everything else (inside the phone) changes as a result of such a move, and it’s not Apple’s style to be so undecided mere months ahead of a product’s release.
But as I noted in the above paragraph, that’s not to say Apple hasn’t already prepared a bigger phone for 2013.
The news from Taiwan's Commercial Times could simply be a misinterpreted rumor about production issues (i.e. display reliability, yield rates, or the entire process of assembling the phone itself) which wouldn't be surprising, considering Apple's stringent manufacturing guidelines.
We’re even more enticed to assume that the 4.3-inch specification is accurate, since Apple likely can’t afford throwing in another 4-inch phone with an identical form factor and design.
The competition is getting fierce in the mobile space, while Tim Cook needs to prove himself fast.