[azernik]

It's actually a very Apple strategy - discount the old iPhone, the fans realize a new one is in the pipeline but nothing's announced, and then the new one is finally released.

[gruturo]

The iPhone is on an extremely predictable release cycle. Especially fans would absolutely know that one comes around the last week of September every year. This scheduling got changed only _once_ (moved from June to September), and this was not kept secret.

[abhorrence]

But the iPhone is predictably released each year, so I'm not sure this is really the same.

[azernik]

But differing times of year. So fans use the discounts as a leading indicator of releases on the month to 2 month scale.