Who else got that "please remember iPhone" email from Apple?

I got this email yesterday from Apple. The subject was: How will you love it? Let us count the ways.

The email then proceeded to go through a list of increasingly desperate reminders about why I was right to buy an iPhone 5.

Yah-huh?

I would have expected this in September 2012, when I actually bought the device. Perhaps maybe a month afterwards.

But toward the end of the first quarter of 2013? Straight after the week Samsung launched their most anticipated handset ever? The one that’s been killing (or depressing) iPhone sales the world over?

Curious.

I scrolled down the email and the immediate thought I had was, “desperate!”

Then I wondered how many other people got this email.

I’d love to know if this email was a planned broadcast by Apple or whether it was specifically scheduled to arrive on the first weekend day after Samsung’s launch?

If it’s the latter, geez.

I find it difficult to think that Apple would have allowed a scheduled broadcast such as this to be sent to clearly conflict with the Samsung launch. Indeed to avoid anyone picking up on it, why not stick the send date back a few weeks?

I can’t help but assume that this was a planned, panicked enterprise by Apple.

Did a senior Apple executive, holding on to the desk for dear life as the world spins around him, suddenly convene a meeting of the company’s best and brightest marketeers? Did they then hatch a plan that included (or majored?) on trying to remind the legions of iPhone 5 customers not to look elsewhere?

Run with me. Assume that I’m right for a moment and let’s take a journey into total speculation. If this is one of Apple’s principle public responses to the likes of Samsung (along with HTC/LG/Sony), then dear me, things are worse than I would have ever thought for Apple.

If your best response — if your only discernible response (beyond senior executive Phil bleating about Samsung last week) — is to whack out an email like this, I think we should all set our expectations for the next iPhone.

Should we be preparing ourselves for the iPhone 5.01? 😉