As somebody who works selling phones, an Apple release is never a "non-event." As has been pointed out frequently on this thread, the majority of people who purchase iPhone's are not on MacRumors and are not clued into the clever marketing and underachieving phones they are buying. Apple could quite easily go and make the most powerful phone on the market each year, but they don't, because they don't need too. They can quite easily keep going with these incremental updates for years, because the majority of their users are so built into their ecosystem. This is why Samsung, Google, Microsoft etc have to spend so much money on advertising and coming up with clever ways to easily port people from Apple to Android.
Whatever happens at the start of September, I guarantee several things:
1. Retail will not have enough iPhone 7 / Plus for demand.
2. iPhone 6s pricing will stay relatively the same, contract wise for another month or so.
3. Increased demand for the iPhone 6s
I agree to a certain extent with what the OP has said, that Apple may jump to an iPhone 8 launch next year and hopefully update their design philosophy at the same time. Stating, that they've gone back to the drawing board, they've completely redesigned this brand new iPhone from the ground up. Meaning that the moniker "iPhone 7s" just didn't show how much has changed with this brand new iPhone. It'd also like OP says, but them in line with the Samsung S & Note series in terms of the "number" (until the year after) and the media outlets would eat all this up and so would the majority of consumers.
Apple need to do something, because their competitors ie. Samsung are going all out.
Whatever happens at the start of September, I guarantee several things:
1. Retail will not have enough iPhone 7 / Plus for demand.
2. iPhone 6s pricing will stay relatively the same, contract wise for another month or so.
3. Increased demand for the iPhone 6s
I agree to a certain extent with what the OP has said, that Apple may jump to an iPhone 8 launch next year and hopefully update their design philosophy at the same time. Stating, that they've gone back to the drawing board, they've completely redesigned this brand new iPhone from the ground up. Meaning that the moniker "iPhone 7s" just didn't show how much has changed with this brand new iPhone. It'd also like OP says, but them in line with the Samsung S & Note series in terms of the "number" (until the year after) and the media outlets would eat all this up and so would the majority of consumers.
Apple need to do something, because their competitors ie. Samsung are going all out.