Why a semi-annual product launch for Apple makes perfect sense?

A little statistics before we discuss the the above idea:

1) The total number of smartphones shipped in 2011 was 491.4 million units, up 61.3% YoY.
2) The financial times reported JPMorgan predicting smartphones shipments to top 657 million units.
3) Samsung clinched the top spot for Top smartphone manufacturer with having shipped 94 million units.
4) In at second place was Apple with shipments of 93.2 million

5) Talking about operating systems on smartphones, total number of Android shipments was 237.7 million taking the 1st spot in the smartphone OS market share with a 48.8% in at number two was Apple with having shipped 93.1 million iOS devices and acquiring a smartphone marketshare of 19.1% (these figures are as suggested by Canalys)

Now as to why I think Apple might be moving to a semi-annual product launch:

This year we saw something unprecedented from Apple, they refreshed all of their major products this fall, with Apple being the discussed party its highly unlikely that all of this was a coincidence. I think Apple did two things by upgrading all of its products this fall, one is that it freed up some time on the calendar to able to keep a single blockbuster launch for its much rumored iTV/AppleTV/iPanel (which shall be discussed at length later) and two (this was rather subtle) it cleared some dates around spring time for them to be able to refresh their products twice a year. For example we can speculate that Apple will come out with the iPhone 5s somewhere around June 2013 and with the iPhone 6 in the fall of 2013. This was a very different move by Apple and it could work handsomely in its favor.

As for why it might work for Apple?

Lets face it Apple is facing a stiff opponent in Android, one of the major reasons Android is such a hit (No! The user does not have a better experience on Android than on the iOS) is that it is available on huge number of devices (comprising of many manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, LG, Asus etc) so as plain and simple math would suggest, Apple would have to put more iPhones out there in the world to beat Android. So a logical thing to do would be to launch 2 new iPhones per year instead of 1. So even if we hold the amount of iPhones Apple sells for every new iPhone to be true, even when they launch 2 iPhones per year (course it wont be, but assume the best case) they end up selling twice the number of iPhones per year than they have done previously, which will definitely help Apple a lot. Another reason why this seams like a good idea is, it can save soft sales numbers for the rest of the year (other than the quarter which gets the new iPhone) because if two iPhones per year becomes a regularity, then the consumers will not wait an entire year for a refresh (which was the main cause of slightly lower than expected sales of the iPhone before the launch of the iPhone 5) this will keep the iPhone sales healthy throughout the year. So if Apple manages to do this with iPad and iPad Mini, the growth trajectory of iOS should witness quite a bump and may continue to grow stronger.

But the real question is, will Apple be able to manage the supply chains well enough to deliver at this brisk pace?

The answer to that is Tim Cook. The man is known as the supply chain king and is known to have the ability to do wonders when it comes to supply issues. Tim Cook's motive of putting the iPhone 5 on a 100 countries was more than just an aggressive roll out, according to me it was a test of its own supply chain and whether it can handle a massive rollout in a small window of time, and I'd say its going good for Apple as of now if they manage to complete the 100 country roll out. I think this will prove that Apple's supply chain is capable of delivering 2 iPhones a year with out any issues.

Well all we can do right now is, speculate. But this move by Apple, if it is intended to reschedule to a semi-annual launch cycle, seems like a good step to me.