WSJ: iPhone 5 coming to Sprint

Launch event may come in October; Sprint also set to carry the iPhone 4

by Nilay Patel

Aug 23, 2011, 7:43 PM UTC

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Nilay Patel is editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the Decoder podcast, and co-host of The Vergecast.

The iPhone 5 will reportedly launch on Sprint as well as AT&T and Verizon when it arrives in mid-October, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal today. Sprint will also sell a version of the iPhone 4 -- presumably the lower-cost 8GB version featured in a Reuters rumor earlier today. That's huge for Sprint -- the stock has jumped on the news -- but it could be even bigger for Apple, which appears to be prepping for an all-out assault on US marketshare when the next version of its handset arrives.

Interestingly, the WSJ reports contradicts the late-September launch time frame mentioned in this morning’s Reuters’ piece: it says the mid-October launch is “later than expected,” although that doesn’t rule out an introduction at Apple’s traditional fall event with a slightly later launch date. We’ll see what happens -- we assume the chatter will only get louder as we slide closer and closer to fall.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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