A new claim from an analyst with an extremely limited track record says that Apple will mark the 20th anniversary of the iPhone with an iPhone 20 that launches in the first half of 2027.
It's long been expected that Apple will mark 20 years since the iPhone's launch by making as radical a redesign as it did for the 10th anniversary. Now a new report says that this 2027 model will be launched earlier than expected.
According to ET News, Omdia chief researcher Heo Moo-yeol told a conference in Seoul that it would launch in the first half of 2027. If correct, that would bring it more inline with the 20th anniversary of when the original iPhone first shipped.
The researcher also says that Apple will skip the iPhone 19 name and instead go straight to iPhone 20. That follows how it went from iPhone 8 to iPhone X in 2017.
Beyond that, the researcher echoed previous claims that Apple will be splitting its iPhone launch in two. Specifically, he expects that both an iPhone 18e and an iPhone 20 will launch in the first half of 2027.
Then he believes a launch in the second half of the year will see an iPhone Air, iPhone 20 Pro, iPhone 20 Pro Max — and a second-generation iPhone Fold.
The machine-translated version of his remarks doesn't make it clear when he expects the iPhone 18 to be released. Previous reports, however, have said that starting in 2026, Apple will launch Pro models in September, and others in the Spring of the following year.
Those previous reports have also predicted that Apple's radical redesign for the iPhone 20 may see it have an all-glass chassis. It could be the first curved iPhone since 2020, based on multiple patents filed by Apple.
Note that Omdia has no track record in Apple leaks. In December 2024, it made a similarly comprehensive report about Apple's OLED plans, but its predictions were for 2026 and beyond.
As such, the timing of Apple's anniversary phone doesn't look right. We can't think of a compelling reason for the earlier than September launch of the iPhone 20, given that the iPhone 19 Pro and Fold would have launched about six months prior.
Ultimately, we'll all see with time.
