iPhone 18 Pro: Apple Shifts Key Release Schedule Date As Event Nears
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro is expected to be announced on Wednesday, September 9th, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. This date is chosen because Labor Day falls on September 7th, and Apple typically avoids holding events directly after a holiday weekend. While pre-orders usually begin the Friday following the keynote, this year presents a unique challenge. The Friday after the event is September 11th, marking the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. To avoid this sensitive date, pre-orders are now predicted to start on Saturday, September 12th. The new iPhones are then anticipated to go on sale to the public on Friday, September 18th. This adjusted timeline reflects Apple's careful planning around significant dates.
The Apple iPhone 18 Pro will be announced on Wednesday, Sept. 9, according to a new report. Regular readers will know I’ve been saying that for weeks, and even researched every single iPhone keynote date to back up my claims, but there’s now confirmation from an industry heavyweight that this is the plan. Oh, and you can read about when the keynote will be announced here.
This is the big date in the calendar and sets the schedule for everything that follows.
“Historically, Apple has held its new iPhone launch on either the second Tuesday or Wednesday of September. That has been the case every year since 2012 (except for 2020, when Apple introduced its new phones in October due to the Covid-related production delays),” he said.
But the key update, a change from what Gurman has been saying until very recently, came next.
“But there’s a twist this year: Labor Day falls on Monday, Sept. 7. Apple doesn’t typically hold events directly after a weekend because it wants to give attendees a travel day. That makes Wednesday, Sept. 9, the most likely event date this year,” he added.
I think this is spot-on. It’s not just the attendees who don’t want to travel on a public holiday. Apple is reluctant to have its staff work on the holiday as well (although, again, I’m sure there will be plenty of meetings being held on Tuesday, Sept. 8).
While Apple is sometimes predictable, that doesn’t mean that every item on the agenda will fall into the same schedule as last year.
He also added an extra detail that was news to me. I’d been predicting that pre-orders would open on the Friday after the keynote — that’s what almost always happens. But this year, that would be Sept. 11, a date that Apple has always avoided for keynotes.
This year, as it’s the 25th anniversary of 9/11, pre-orders might start later.
“Another wrinkle this time is the preorder start date. More times than not, Apple opens up iPhone preorders on the Friday following its event. Given that that Friday falls on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I find it unlikely that Apple would pick that date. The last time such a Friday fell on Sept. 11, Apple moved preorders to the next day, Saturday, Sept. 12. I have to assume they’ll take a similar approach this year,” Gurman said.
This makes sense to me. I believe the timing will be the same, that is, pre-orders will open at 5 a.m. Pacific, 8 a.m. Eastern, 1 p.m. U.K. time.
Whatever the exact date of the keynote, the last part of the schedule — when the phones hit stores — is near-certain to be on the same day of the week, Friday.
In any event, the new phones will go on sale on the following Friday, Sept. 18, I believe.