Apple confirms delay to iPhone 12 release

CFO Luca Maestri makes rare admission during earnings report. Macworld Staff report

Over recent months, pundits and analysts have gone back and forth on the question of when this autumn’s new iPhone models will be launched. But now – extremely unusually – we have confirmation from Apple itself that the iPhone 12 will be delayed.

During the quarterly earnings report, Apple CFO Luca Maestri announced that the late‑2020 iPhone will be released a couple of weeks later than usual.

In other words, the new phones won’t be available in shops until October.

The announcement comes as no major surprise, especially as Qualcomm’s chief financial officer Akash Palkhiwala announced as recently as 29 July that the “delay of a flagship mobile” will have a negative effect on results for the current quarter. We even suspected that this quarter’s report could contain hints about the iPhone 12 launch schedule.

Broadcom’s CEO Hock Tan has also previously said that an “important product” from a “major North American mobile phone manufacturer” had been hit by delays. As we’ve mentioned before, this doesn’t necessarily mean the announcement will be delayed: there’s nothing to stop Apple from unveiling the iPhone 12 in September, but the hardware won’t actually go on sale until October.