Ready for a June launch of a 3G iPhone on AT&T? Don’t get too excited, because you’re going to have to wait another month or two. It might be August before we see a 3G iPhone launch on a GSM carrier in the U.S. AT&T is citing call quality issues, but others are quick to point another reason for the delay. Speculation is that Apple will release its 3G iPhone in June as well, and RIM wants to avoid competing with the hip new device. And so the 8900, a.k.a. Meteor, will stay out of consumer hands for at least three more months.
Do you buy the iPhone excuse? I’m not sure I do. Wouldn’t you rather come out around the same time as a competitor than a month or more afterwards? It seems to me that if the delay is iPhone-related, RIM is just giving its customers another reason to switch to the Apple phone. No one wants to wait.
Then again, I’m not on the inside, so I can’t tell you what they’re thinking. Maybe it really is a call quality issue. Maybe it’s a battery life issue, and AT&T and RIM just don’t want to talk about it. Really, it could be anything, since neither company would comment on the situation.
The final line from the Fortune piece: “RIM is also expected to introduce a touch-screen 3G BlackBerry 9000 later in the year that is aimed directly at the iPhone.” So we’re already presuming that the first of the 9000 series will be touch screen?
