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Splainin iPhone 5: does Apple owe Verizon customers a public roadmap?

Splainin iPhone 5: does Apple owe Verizon customers a public roadmap?

“Lucy, you’ve got some splainin to do,” goes the old time gag. The more apt variation for 2011 is whether Apple has an obligation to its newfound Verizon customers to give them a public roadmap which connects the dots from the Verizon iPhone to the iPhone 5, and if Apple’s failure to provide one will mean that Apple will have some splainin to do of its own.

Here’s the short of it for Verizon customers now staring the Verizon iPhone in the face: Apple has always launched a new iPhone generation in the summer of each year since the iPhone first went on sale back in summer 2007. Anyone who pays so little attention (or cares so little) about this uber-obvious upgrade cycle when buying their first iPhone is probably going to ultimately realize it’s their own fault if they buy an iPhone in June and then Apple discontinues it in July, even if there is some Apple-cursing involved in the interim.

But the Verizon iPhone 4 arriving seven months into the iPhone 4 era is unique to the iPhone’s history, as there has never previously been an interim iPhone revision in between annual generations. From a Verizon customer’s point of view, if they’re buying the Verizon iPhone 4 on the first day it’s available, it feels only logical that it would be more than a mere five months or so before it’s discontinued and replaced by the next-generation iPhone 5 on both carriers.

And yet, unless Apple deviates from its own historical iPhone pattern (which is entirely possible), that’s exactly what Verizon iPhone 4 buyers will be facing. So does Apple owe them an explanation beforehand?

Yes and no. Uncovering the fact that the Verizon iPhone 5 is (probably) coming in summer 2011 is very easy; simply searching for “iPhone 5″ will clue you in. Then again, can the typical (not a geek, not a reader of technology news, not a close follower of every last iPhone detail) Verizon iPhone 4 buyer be expected to know that Apple launches a new iPhone every summer? By all rights, the Verizon iPhone 4 should have launched the same day as the original iPhone 4, and we’re left only to speculate as to why it didn’t happen. Perhaps the the companies couldn’t get their act together any sooner; perhaps Apple’s pre-existing deal with AT&T wouldn’t allow it. But even as huge of a story as the Verizon iPhone 4 is in the eyes of the Verizon user base, Apple sure is treating it like an also-ran story, even going so far as to allow Verizon to have been the one to announce it. The iPhone 5, which will presumably launch on both carriers at the same time and may even be a hybrid-compatible model, is looking more like the moment at which Apple wants to begin screaming from the mountaintops about the Verizon iPhone. Until then it’s being treated as a sidestage rollout.

[Thanks: http://www.beatweek.com]

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