New Comer : iPhone 5 Red
Right, we just said we don’t believe the guy has what he claims to have. But he’s got something in those pictures, which even if fully fake did take a fair amount of time to come up with. And these things are often based on some sliver of lost-in-translation truth which came from someone who works on an assembly line somewhere who saw something who told someone who bragged to someone else who got the idea to use it for self-publicity purposes.
Along the way, some of the original truth about the product remains intact. Ever wonder why even when supposed product images manage to get almost everything wrong, there’s always that one odd aspect that they got right, and there’s seemingly no way they could have known about it? That’s what the red iPhone 5 image feels like here, and it’s why there’s a puncher’s chance there’s a real one coming…
Right, we just said we don’t believe the guy has what he claims to have. But he’s got something in those pictures, which even if fully fake did take a fair amount of time to come up with. And these things are often based on some sliver of lost-in-translation truth which came from someone who works on an assembly line somewhere who saw something who told someone who bragged to someone else who got the idea to use it for self-publicity purposes.
Along the way, some of the original truth about the product remains intact. Ever wonder why even when supposed product images manage to get almost everything wrong, there’s always that one odd aspect that they got right, and there’s seemingly no way they could have known about it? That’s what the red iPhone 5 image feels like here, and it’s why there’s a puncher’s chance there’s a real one coming…
Things are no longer merely black and white as the iPhone 5 will come in red. In fact you can get a red iPhone 5 right now if you pony up for it, as according to one guy on craigslist, he’s got (stolen) iPhone 5 clone units for sale right now and you can have one for a mere $250. Yeah, we don’t believe him either. Then again, we were highly skeptical when some guy claimed to have found an iPhone 4 prototype in a bar last year, and we all know how that one turned out. Let’s just say that the prospect of a red iPhone 5 is perhaps more interesting than the fact that someone is claiming to be selling iPhone 5 “clone” units which he himself is admitting aren’t even real. Even as Apple has pushed the color boundaries for years with its products like the iPod nano and even the early iMacs, for some reason the company has been content to sit back and play the follower game when it comes to iPhone colors. And this is the first, if oddball, indication that that could be about to change.
The particularly eye opening part is that the craigslist guy doesn’t even appear to know that the red iPhone 5 depicted on his supposed packaging is the biggest part of the story. If he’d made a point of creating the red iPhone 5 idea himself, it would have been so he could use it to draw attention to his claims. But instead there’s no real mention of it. That feels more like someone said to someone “oh by the way, there’s a red one too” and the person on the receiving end of that information opted to include it in the fake mockups but didn’t fully grasp the importance of that information. That’s sketchy as can be, but add it to Apple’s documented affinity for the color red and how it ties into the larger picture, and the odds go up dramatically…
A few years back, U2 lead singer Bono helped create PRODUCT RED which encouraged major corporations to make an all-red version of their existing products, charge the same price tag, and yet give a portion of the proceeds to help Africa. Apple jumped in with a red iPod nano, which it still offers to this day. But the company has never gone that route with the iPhone. The lack of iPad and iPad 2 colors is more understandable, as the eighteen different inventory models generated merely by having white and black options (multiply that by Verizon, AT&T, and wifi-only models, each at three different capacities).
No wonder Apple went with Smart Covers in various colors, then, as the alternative would have been to have hundreds of different iPad variations floating around, making for a retail and inventory nightmare. But the iPhone is a different story. There are only two iPhone 4 capacities, multiplied by black and white colors, for a total of four iPhone 4 units. Double that, of course, thanks to the Verizon and AT&T split models. But if the iPhone 5 is indeed a hybrid model which works with both carriers, then we’re back to four iPhone 5 units total. Add a red model and there are only six units; a mere five if red is reserved for just the high-end iPhone 5 model. That’s an inventory piece of cake compared to where the iPad 2 is right now…
So why wouldn’t Apple do this? Pure inertia, I guess. It’s one of those things that makes too much sense not to do, particularly if the iPhone 4 sticks around in the bargain basement in both black and white. That’ll mean that there’s no color-based incentive to upsell yourself to an iPhone 5 unless it also comes in a third color option on top of black and white. And red suits the bill for a number of reasons. It also gives the iPhone 5 a leg up over competing phones which only come in black and white, the two standard-bearer colors for most smartphones over the past several years.
So even as ludicrous as today’s craigslist “iPhone 5 clone” posting seems (please don’t buy one of those things unless you like the idea of setting $250 on fire), it’s believable that the red iPhone 5 concept depicted within that phony listing could indeed be based on nugget of well thought out truth
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