The white iPhone 4 is due out soon. How about the iPhone 5?The Italian news site PhoneItalia says that according to information received “from a reliable source,” they can reveal (“perhaps”), that the white iPhone 4 will go on sale in Italy on April 26.
With the qualifier that this information is based on hearsay from from the unnamed source and therefore, can’t be verified or refuted directly by the editors of iPhoneItalia, they note that the white iPhone product code is already open at H3G stores in Italy, so declare the news to be “almost certain though not announced,” especially in light of many other rumors indicating a possible release of the white iPhone in late April.
The French Apple-watcher site HardMac suggests that the white iPhone release could well be a strategy of Apple’s to ease pent-up demand fro something new in the iPhone category, given a fairly strong consensus that the iPhone 5 will not be coming until the fall, with the best explanation of that delay coming from experts studying the supply chain in China who say that Apple has not yet ordered any new components for iPhone 5 production and that no new manufacturing chain is being built so far, and deduce that the probable reason for that would be that the A5 dual-core processor, expected to be a key upgraded feature in the iPhone 5, is in short supply because of heavier than anticipated demand for the iPad 2, leading to a constant shortage of iPad 2.
Since it’s unlikely that Apple would release the white iPhone in Europe or elsewhere before it hits the U.S. market, if this scuttlebutt is correct, it’s looking good for a white iPhone debut soon after Easter.
As for the iPhone 5 itself, when it does arrive, HardMac notes divers predictions that it will have a metal housing made of aluminum of Liquid Metal and a higher-resolution screen than the iPhone 4 in the neighborhood of 8 to 12 million pixels.
HardMac also notes that rumors are also ramping up that the iPhone 6 is being readied for a projected launch in the “first semester” of 2012 featuring a completely different design from previous models, which would suggest that the iPhone 5 will be an evolutionary development from the iPhone 4, and not a clean slate redesign.
Back in the U.S.A. and points east, AppleInsider’s Neil Hughes cites a note issued by Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on Monday contending that the iPhone 5 will only have “slight modifications” from the iPhone 4′s spec., including the faster A5 processor, an 8 megapixel rear camera and a Qualcomm baseband that would enable the same phone to support both GSM and CDMA wireless services (but no 4G?), and that it will not enter trial production until August and full production in September due to component shortages caused by the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disasters, and to finally be released for sale for sale likely after Apple begins its next fiscal year beginning in October, with anticipated overall iPhone (4 and 5) shipping volumes of 28 million and 32 million units for 2011.
However, Hughes says Kuo thinks Apple will at least give us a peek at the iPhone 5 at the World Wide Developers Conference to be held June 6-10 at San Francisco, and that due to its similarity to the iPhone 4, one of its primary selling points will be the new iOS 5 operating system, which of course will support the iPhone 4 as well. The Register’s Rik Myslewski, on the other hand, says he thinks a preview of the iPhone 5 at the WWDC is highly unlikely, given that with the he iPhone 4 is still selling quite well, undercutting it by announcing that an improved model that won’t appear until months later would be poor strategy.
Hughes observes that Kuo’s track record for predictive accuracy is pretty strong, his having called the iPad 2′s retention of a 1024 x 768 resolution display and use of lower-quality iPod touch cameras instead of iPhone 4 units.
Kuo predicted last month that Apple would begin white iPhone 4 production in April to ship late in the month, and concurs with the European rumoristas that the iPhone 6 will likely be rolled out during in the first half of 2012 in order to counter “fierce competition” from Android-based products.
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