Keeping up with Apple products rumors is a full-time job, but we do our best around here to keep loyal iOS fanatics apprised of the latest. The newest information from “people familiar with the situation” provides a little more detail to release date rumors discussed a couple of weeks ago.
The Wall Street Journal has spoken to some anonymous suppliers of components for the new Apple product and report that the new version of the iPhone will be “thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4.” Of course, we speculate that this will be the iPhone 5, but it’s entirely possible that the new phone could be called something different (4S, perhaps?).
The new iPhone will apparently run on a wireless baseband chip from Qualcomm and will sport an 8-megapixel camera.
Apple is expecting the buzz for their new phone to be significant, according to suppliers. One told the WSJ that Apple has told them to prepare for a lofty goal –
“Apple’s sales estimates of the new iPhone is quite aggressive. It told us to prepare to help the company meet its goal of 25 million units by the end of the year,” said another person at one of Apple’s suppliers. “The initial production volume will be a few million units… we were told to ship the components to assembler Hon Hai in August.”
By comparison, Apple reported that it sold 18.6 million iPhones in the fiscal second quarter.
When, when, when? This is obviously the most important question, and the new rumors back up a couple of previous reports that we told you about. According to the suppliers, the new iPhone (5?) will launch sometime in Q3, which of course would be in time for the holidays.
This timeframe mirrors reports by Bloomberg and AppleInsider that both project August production of the new iPhone and a September release.
So thinner and lighter? Sounds good. As far as the actual design of the new phone, rumors exist all across the spectrum. While some have predicted little to no change in the design, BGR quoted a reliable source in saying that we should “expect a radical new case design.”