14 DAY TRIAL // German carrier Deutsche Telekom is usually among the first to receive Apple’s latest and greatest iPhone, and this year the wireless operator isn’t expecting any different. In fact, it is going to such great lengths to keep customers using its network that it has actually instructed its support staff to entice callers with the promise that they’ll have the iPhone 6 on offer on September 19.
A very rough machine translation of the claim (via apfelpage.de) can be found below.
“It has, therefore, the call center tasked with customers, whose contract expires in about the launch of the model, to convince them to extend their tariff - but then with an iPhone 6 in the luggage. We are talking about a launch date of the device at September 19, 2014 at Telekom and probably the same in the Apple Stores.”
Apple isn’t known to hand out release dates this early, but there is a chance the company has instructed a select few partners to expect shipments and make inventory adjustments, update and / or create new wireless plans to create attractive purchase offers, etc.
In all fairness, Telekom could be telling the truth – in that iPhone 6 will be available (at least in Germany) on September 19. Previous iPhone launches occurred around the same time: iPhone 5, for example, was launched on September 21. Of course, Deutsche Telekom could be guessing its way into locking customers in.
Recently, a rumor broke out that Apple will be launching the iPhone 6 not at WWDC (June 2-6), not at one of its usual September events, but at a special event scheduled for August. This is an atypical time for the Cupertino company to make announcements of any kind, but it wouldn’t be unheard of either.
The Mac maker is said to have planned two different iPhone 6 models for this year, one sporting a 4.7-inch display, the other packing a screen that measures a whopping 5.5 inches on the diagonal. The two might not share the same launch event.
One hypothesis would be Apple launching the smaller model at the Worldwide Developers Conference, leaving the August event for the bigger model. In fact, more than one prominent Apple watcher has predicted that the company will launch the two handsets months apart, so this would kind of make sense.
Yet another theory would be for the 4.7-inch model to launch in August, and the larger version in September. Any scenario makes just as much, or just as little sense right now.