iPhone 7 release date 2015 shift after Galaxy S6 copycat move

By Phil Moore | March 4, 2015

The iPhone 7 release date may have just been moved up a year, thanks to Apple’s biggest rival. Samsung has unveiled its Galaxy S6, a metal-and-glass smartphone which has abandoned any pretense of even pretending not to be an iPhone derivative, and is instead a straight-up iPhone 6 clone. Over the past several months Apple has been taking large chunks of marketshare and sales away from Samsung thanks to the arrival of larger iPhones, and now the latter has retorted by launching its boldest copycat yet. That places Apple in a position where it almost has no choice but to fight back aggressively – and the only play is to jump straight into the iPhone 7 era.

Apple’s traditional schedule would call for an iPhone 6S this fall and then the newly redesigned iPhone 7 arriving in late 2016. But with Samsung now pushing the Galaxy S6 as an iPhone 6 copycat, Apple will look to move on from the form factor swiftly. The last thing it wants to do is sit on the iPhone 6 form factor for another year and a half, 6S era included, by which time the buying public will have forgotten who copied whom and will have come to view the two products as equivalents.

That means Apple’s best play is to go ahead and hold the iPhone 7 release date this fall. The lineup would include the iPhone 6S introduced as the mid range model, and the iPhone 6 sticking around as the free-with-contract option, meaning the end of the 5x era of four inch screens. Even with iPhone 6 sales currently flying through the roof, Apple has learned not to sit back in wait after Samsung’s counter moves. And this latest Galaxy S6 copycat fiasco may just be enough to motivate Apple to tear up its entire roadmap in the name of fighting back. That begins with an iPhone 7 this year.