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Apple is expected to introduce the iPhone 5 Sept. 12-after which it’s going to be no easy feat for its competitors to grab a headline or pull attention away from the smartphone that Apple fans have been waiting for since essentially last October.
Because of this, you can expect a whole lot of news to be crammed into the week before.
Nokia has an event planned for Sept. 5, during which it’s expected to introduce its first phone, or phones, running Windows Phone 8.
Nokia could use a bit of spotlight, certainly-while to its credit it did increase smartphone sales between the first and second quarters, Gartner recently described Nokia’s Lumia devices as continuing to “struggle to find a place in consumers’ minds as a replacement for Android.” However, it’s not likely to have that spotlight to itself for very long.
Later that same day, Motorola has an event planned, also in New York City.
The next day, Sept. 6, Amazon has invited some members of the press to an event in the Los Angeles area. The easy guess is a new Kindle Fire-the tablet that, ahem, blazed onto the scene last December and line-hopped everyone to grab the No. 2 market share ranking behind Apple.
The next quarter was a much different story.
In response to its dramatic market-share fall, Amazon has a new Fire in the works, IDC Research Director Tom Mainelli said in a May report, adding, “We expect a new, larger-screened device from Amazon at a typically aggressive price point, and Google will enter the market with an inexpensive, co-branded ASUS tablet designed to compete directly on price with Amazon’s Kindle Fire.” Since he got the second part of that right, there’s no reason to think the first prediction won’t also hit.
Another guess is that Amazon will show off a smartphone. The Wall Street Journal reported July 11 that Amazon’s parts suppliers in Asia said the company is “testing a smartphone and mass production of the new device may start late this year or in early next year.”
If sales of the Samsung Galaxy S III, which features a 4.8-inch display, are any measure of consumer tastes-and they should be; Samsung sold more than 10 million of them in a matter of months-people like a big display. Amazon is hip to this, surely, and the phone being tested, said the Journal, features a display that measures “between four and five inches.”
At least one other manufacturer also has an event planned for that day, though it’s asked those invited to remain mum about the details. Or rather, about the invitation-the details are anyone’s guess.
Apple, which has contributed to the busy week that will follow the Labor Day weekend, may have the last laugh. Sept. 12 is a reported date, speculated by analysts and the media. Apple has yet to send out invitations to its event. Most likely, it will wait to do this until Sept. 5 or 6, and manage to make competitors fight for headlines after all.
Follow Michelle Maisto on Twitter.