Verizon Expects the iPhone 5 to Launch This Fall

While discussing Verizon’s results from the past quarter, Verizon COO and soon-to-be CEO Lowell McAdam made a very candid quip about Apple’s next iPhone release saying that while his company had expected it this summer, the carrier now expects it to arrive sometime this fall. Of course, this isn’t new. There are rumors abound about a release sometime this fall and possibly as soon as the end of August but what does make this interesting is that it’s coming from the CEO of a major wireless provider and not from a source. He did however state that his company still has no idea when the phone is going to come out. (Right.)

Here’s the full quote, courtesy of 9to5Mac:

We are probably what I would view as maybe a quarter behind what we had talked about in January, primarily because we expected an iPhone 5 refresh sometime this summer. We don’t know when the next one is going to come out. You will have to ask Apple that, but we expect that probably sometime in the fall, and I think you will see a significant jump there when we get to that point.

So, if you’ve been worrying about whether or not the iPhone 4S/iPhone 5 would be coming out this year, you can probably rest pretty easy. It’s now just a matter of getting a specific date down.

Speaking of that, iPhone Italia, a source that will surely get a laugh out of our own Will Shanklin, is reporting that September 5th is the date that a “very reliable source” told them would be launch day for the next iPhone in the United States. That launch would then be followed by a October 5th launch everywhere else. Take those specific dates with a grain of salt but that early September release date has popped up so many times that it seems like the right horse to bet on.