Apple is assembling the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5S for concurrent release this fall, according to a supplier in Taiwan currently working on the IC audio chips for both. “They’ve already finished with the iPhone 5S IC chip,” a source tells Stabley Times, “and now the company is on the middle of production on iPhone 6 IC Chip.” This information falls in line with reports this week that the next iPhone launch will be slightly delayed while Apple awaits the completion of a larger form factor model, and paints the fall 2013 Apple lineup as including an iPhone 5S which is similar in look and feel to the existing iPhone alongside a newly redesigned iPhone 6 with a visibly different look and a 4.3 inch screen.
While several leaks have come out of Asia in the past month regarding when the new iPhone will go into production and which components it will use, little up to this point has indicated whether the new iPhone will be an iPhone 5S sequel or an iPhone 6 reboot. Apple has laid precedent for going in either direction with its past moves. While the iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 were each followed by an identical looking model, the latter was a fallback when components for the iPhone 5 failed to materialize in time and Apple had to buy itself another year. That lays the groundwork for Apple jumping directly to the iPhone 6 this year, but the Taiwanese supplier says Apple will in fact offer both.
Apple’s motivation for offering an iPhone 6 and an iPhone 5S concurrently comes from a few places. Doing so allows the entire iPhone 4.x era to be retired at once, putting an end to Apple’s long-tail reliance on its own discontinued 30-pin connector port and instead ushering in an all-Lightning port era for the iPhone, as only the iPhone 5 from the current lineup would remain. It would also allow Apple to move past criticism for offering only a two-plus year old iPhone model for free with contract, instead offering the one year old iPhone 5 as its free contract model while offering two new iPhones – the 6 and the 5S – at $199 and $99 respectively. This would allow for a more timely and potent iPhone lineup to go head to head with Apple’s Android based competitors, some of which offer half a dozen new phone models per year.
Apple has also shown a desire for wholesale change with its new iOS 7 interface which will debut alongside the new iPhone hardware this fall. The introduction of an iPhone 6 with wholesale hardware design changes alongside the familiar iPhone 5S allows Apple to split the difference, debuting the new interface on brand new hardware at higher profit margins while also offering it on familiar hardware at a budget oriented price.