Iphone 5 coming in October – heavy promotion starting during BUILD?

Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Iphone 5 will be available this October. Also being reported is the fact that Sprint will also be one of the vendors selling the phone.

Sprint Nextel Corp. will begin selling the new version of the Apple iPhone in mid-October, people familiar with the matter said, filling a huge hole in the No. 3 U.S. carrier’s lineup and giving Apple Inc. another sales channel for its popular gadget. The timing, however, indicates Apple’s new iPhone, which is expected to be called iPhone 5, will hit the market later than expected and too late to contribute to sales in Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in September. Most observers had expected the device to arrive next month.

What is interesting to me is the timeline. If true, this would mean that heavy promotion for the Iphone 5 might start in September. Also, we are expecting the release of IOS 5 around this time. Now, as a marketing person, if I was Apple, I would probably kill 2 birds with one stone and schedule my promotional event during a week when one of my competitors was doing something exciting. A week like, oh i don’t know, September 13th through the 16th? Who knows? That’s just what i would do. One thing we do know for sure is that the promotion and rollout of the Iphone 5 will be a MAJOR event. The phone community is waiting with baited breath to see how Apple will improve their best selling mobile device. Here are some concept photos I found on the web that show what a potential device could look like. If the real thing turns out to be similar to this, Apple will have another best selling device on their hands and Windows Phone Mango and Windows Phone 8 will have another benchmark to catch up to. [caption id="attachment_5867" align="aligncenter" width="400"] iphone5 Concept 1[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_5868" align="aligncenter" width="590"] iphone5 Concept 2[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_5869" align="aligncenter" width="500"] iphone5 Concept 3[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_5870" align="aligncenter" width="500"] iphone5 Concept 4[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_5871" align="aligncenter" width="500"] iphone5 Concept 5[/caption]]]>