What COVID-19 Means for the New iPhone 12 Nicoló Follow Apr 4 · 3 min read

Image by Kaiyu Wu from Unsplash and remixed by Author

In a world where the novel coronavirus has infected over a million people all over the globe and is growing at an astronomical rate. It is often easy to forget the traditions which many people look forward to every single year ranging from the Eurovision song contest in Europe to the iPhone launch event in Cupertino. Many of these annual traditions have now been cancelled, including Apple’s own WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) which will be held online this year. While software development is a reasonably easy task to do remotely, producing physical hardware with complex global supply chains, such as the iPhone, is an entirely different ball-game. The question now left on many technology enthusiast’s minds is whether Apple will be able to update their flagship product line this year or whether they may have to wait until next year.

In late 2019 a technology analyst with a stellar track record for Apple product predictions had suggested that Apple would release “Four new OLED iPhones in 2020” and an “iPhone without a Lightning Port in 2021”.

It now seems that according to another analyst, Daniel Ives at Wedbush Securities, we may have to wait a couple of months longer for that product line refresh we all count down to every single year.

In typical Apple fashion, we have had no official communication on the status of the new iPhone lineup, so all that is left is the speculation. To their credit, there have recently been leaks of the upcoming AirTags and even a full product release for the new iPad Pro. Apple has also created a COVID-19 tracker app for its US market, so they have definitely been able to stay agile and function remotely through all the madness.

The real question is whether they are using Zoom or Facetime to do this ;)

Some hope may be afforded by the fact that many of Apple’s factories, including Foxconn, have recently started slowly reopening their doors as China begins to come out on the other side of the pandemic. However, it is essential to note that the scale of the crisis has still introduced significant delays, and Apple has also banned their employees from travelling to China.

While you may say that this may not be the right time to be worrying about the next iPhone, I would agree with you. It is irrelevant compared to the scale of this crisis and the massive impact it is having on the entire world both medically and economically. The thought remains.

If Apple really does postpone the launch of their new iPhone 12 until 2021, it would mark the first time in over a decade that Apple has gone an entire year without releasing a new iPhone and for something entirely out of their control. It is also still possible that Apple will release the budget iPhone9/SE this year, however this will likely add very few new features. We can only guess what implications COVID-19 will have on how Apple will go about this year’s product launches. Still, there is one thing we know for sure, when it does finally come out, we will be so tired of being stuck at home with our iPhones, that the lines at Apple stores around the world may be just that little bit shorter.

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