Apple will host a product event in China on Sept. 11, the day after a similarly themed gathering at the company's Cupertino, Calif. campus, where the next iPhone is expected to be unveiled.
Invitations to the event being held at Beijing's World Trade Center were nearly identical to the ones sent out this week to media for Apple's Sept. 10 event in Cupertino, with the only difference being that the English tagline "This should brighten everyone's day" and event details were written in Chinese for the Sept. 11 invites sent to Chinese media outlets like Sina Tech.
Both invitations feature a white Apple logo against a background of colorful circles, lending credibility to the rumors that the next iPhone will come in several new colors.
It's also worth noting that given the time difference, the Beijing event, scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. local time, will kick off just eight hours after the Cupertino event's main portion commences at 10 a.m. Pacific.
The fact that Apple is holding what's likely to be an iPhone unveiling in China so close on the heels of its U.S. event lends some credibility to a couple of major rumors that have been swirling in recent months.
Those rumors are actually somewhat tied together. The first is that Apple plans to strike a deal with China Mobile, the world's largest cellphone carrier with an estimated 740 million subscribers. The iPhone maker already sells its smartphones through China's two other state-run telecoms, China Telecom and China Unicom, but China Mobile operates a TD-SCDMA 3G network which isn't compatible with older iPhone models.
Courting the world's biggest carrier could be more important for Apple than ever before. The iPhone is now lagging behind Apple rival Samsung's smartphones in China in market share, according to reports.
Here's where the second, intertwined rumor about Apple's next iPhone offering comes in. In addition to a full-priced iPhone 5 follow-up rumored to be called the iPhone 5S, Apple for the first time is reportedly going to introduce a lower-priced, plastic-backed model for sale in certain markets, including China.
That phone, supposedly being called the iPhone 5C, will reportedly pack Qualcomm's RF360 multimode, multiband 4G LTE chipset, which supports both TD-SCDMA and a TD-LTE-based network for 4G service which China Mobile is currently rolling out.
That would conceivably position the so-called iPhone 5C, which will reportedly lack the Siri voice assistant and come in different array of colors than the more expensive 5S, for a spot in China Mobile's roster of smartphones and bring to fruition a partnership Apple CEO Tim Cook has been trying to strike up for the better part of a year.
For more, check out our iPhone Rumor Roundup slideshow above and for our first take on the Apple event, plus the other top tech news of the day, watch PCMag Live featuring Dan Costa and Sascha Segan:
About Damon Poeter
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