The iPhone 5 News Blog

Here’s something to ponder over the long, holiday weekend. With the debut of Apple’s fifth generation iPhone anticipated to be just around the corner (at least so we hope!), Totem, self-described as “a simple, no-risk service that offers fair pricing and an easy process to cash in unwanted devices,” is encouraging iPhone 4 owners to sell their old handsets soon before an inevitable price drop when the new iPhone is announced. Totem says it has the resources to resell, refurbish and recycle large quantities of outdated or broken mobile devices.

The way it works is that customers tell Totem the make and condition of their phone device, and get an instant provisional quote. If the offer is acceptable, the customer selects a payment mode preference (Pay Pal or check) and Totem mails out a postage-paid mailer to ship the phone to them. As soon as the device arrives at Totem, it’s inspected, vetted to confirm that it’s consistent with the quote they provided online, and if everything checks out, the company says payment will be processed within 48 hours, and that customers choosing to partner with Totem will receive a cash deposit into their PayPal account or be sent a check in the mail within 72 hours of the transaction’s confirmation.

As regular readers of this blog are amply and perhaps painfully aware, the fifth generation iPhone, variously speculated to be branded iPhone 4GS or a 5, is late-coming and expected to debut this fall, with most industry insiders projecting release some time from late September to mid October. With that time frame in mind, Totem is encouraging anyone who plans to purchase the new iPhone 5 to start making plans to sell their old iPhone now before prices drop.

Of course, that could involve the sticky complication of possibly unacceptable phoneless inconvenience in the interim for many users while they wait for the new Apple handset to ship.

Totem observes that one detail not up for speculation is the improved operating system that will be included in the next iPhone. Revealed at Apple’s annual WWDC industry conference in June, iOS 5 is slated to launch this fall alongside Apple’s new iCloud online service that will, among other things allow all Apple products to be activated and updated wirelessly.

iOS 5 is also expected to introduce a user messaging service similar to BlackBerry’s BBM that supports picture, video, and contact sharing as well as group messages, increasing the iPhone’s potential to become a true business device. Users can also expect an updated notification center, new entertainment features like a newsstand and game center, built-in support for Twitter and Safari, as well as upgrades to photo editing software and email programs. It should be noted, however, that iOS 5 will support the iPhone 4 as well as the new model coming in a few weeks.

Totem notes that the iPhone 5 is rumored by some to be completely redesigned, perhaps sporting a curvier, slimmer figure, and suggests that with the quirks having been been worked out with the famous delay in getting a white iPhone 4 to market, both black and white iPhone 5s should be available at the outset. Enhanced voice features that control music, text messaging and FaceTime applications are also expected, as is support for full 1080p HD videos, a faster dual-core processor highly likely, with many hoping for a larger display, additional memory, and possible larger storage capacity as well.

Whatever Apple eventually rolls out, Totem anticipates that the iPhone 5 will be sufficiently compelling for many smartphone users to want to upgrade, maintaining that smart consumers will prepare now while they can still get top dollar on their earlier-generation iPhones, and pitching sale of your existing phone to an established phone buyback program like Totem as a quick and easy to earn quick cash toward funding an iPhone 5 purchase, as well as responsibly disposing of the old phone in environmentally friendly manner.

Being one who’s inclined to hang on to older hardware long past its best-before and fully-depreciated dates, I’ve had no first-hand dealings with Totem, but it sounds like a low-hassle option for upgrading.

For more information, visit:
http://www.hellototem.com/

The road to the iPhone 5 has been paved with loads of purported leaked photos. These two new ones — brought forth late into the next iPhone’s rumor cycle — suggest iPhone 4-inspired iPhone designs.

If you are in search of a piece of “smoking gun” evidence about how the next iPhone will look completely different from the iPhone 4, you’ve come to the wrong place. This article, after all, is a round-up of two rapid-fire purported leaked photos of the upcoming iPhone, both of which depict what looks remarkably like the iPhone 4.

The first photo, pictured above, came courtesy of the folks at MacRumors, who point out that what we’re looking at here in essentially the iPhone 4′s chassis, what with a few noticeable differences. If you just trace the contour lines of the chassis, then you can see how this form factor would look remarkably like the iPhone 4 in specs, as “the mute switch and volume switches are on the same side of this casing, just like the iPhone 4.”

But looking at the innards reveals some interesting changes: “The mid-frame images above show that this so-called iPhone 4S will have two antenna breaks at the bottom of the casing . . . The reason for the movement of the antenna breaks is to accommodate different frequencies of the different mobile technologies.”

MacRumors also speculates on the home button in another photo, noting “the lack of any defined ‘Home Button’ area. The corresponding iPhone 4 part shows a cut-out area for the Home Button. It’s hard to draw an conclusions from this, but there has been a lot of speculation that Apple could be changing the Home Button area on the iPhone 5.” This photo and perspective factors in to the recent photos purportedly taken from one of apple’s component suppliers that appears to depict an elongated, multi-touch home button, th0ugh the photos are not copesthetic: the “Foxconn” photos would suggest a new form factor with a larger screen, whereas Macrumors‘ photos do not.

The second photo, offered today by Gadgetsteria, looks to me like a white iPhone 4. The website is couching this photos in the premise that it might be the white version on an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5: “After photos alleging to depict the next-gen iPhone 4S’ redesigned antenna leaked late yesterday comes a new leak showing off a prototype iPhone’s white back cover. “N94″ is printed on the case — a number which just so happens to have been associated with the next-gen iPhone in past builds of iOS 4.x and 5.x.”

It’s easy to write off the Gadgetsteria photos as adding little to the story, but they conclude their article with an interesting comment: “There could be one device. There could be two. We just don’t know. The case above may not even be the final iPhone 4S/5 casing. Apple is likely using iPhone 4 hardware to house next-gen internals to keep prying eyes from leaking their secrets early.” It is quite possible that the reason that the most credible rumors about the next iPhone right now seem to suggest it will be a refreshed iPhone 4 is because Apple is leaking disinformation. However, one thing is clear: more and more sources are leaning towards a refreshed iPhone 4 form factor.

Gartner Group’s “Market Share: Mobile Communication Devices by Region and Country, 2Q11″ report says that in 2011′s second quarter, Apple’s iPhone sales continued to exceed expectations, notwithstanding widespread expectation that the iPhone 4 will soon be replaced by a new model. Gartner notes that part of iPhone’s sales growth came from the 42 new carriers and 15 new countries that began selling iPhones in 2Q’11, bringing its total coverage to 100 countries. This expansion caused iPhone inventory to grow a little by the end of the second quarter, when sales to end users stood at 19.6 million units. In mainland China’s massive market, Apple is now the seventh-largest mobile phone vendor and the third-largest smartphone vendor.

Market Share: Mobile Communication Devices by Region and Country, 2Q11 is available on Gartner’s website here.

Meanwhile, OrangePR’s Ashley Halberstadt tells me that while iPhone 5 speculation appears to be the world’s new favorite sport, if you’re looking to upgrade, that rumor mills’ output can have a negative impact on the value of your trade in. “The important thing to consider,” says Ashley, “is not when the iPhone 5 will be available, but at what point you should trade in your old model.”

To help consumers make an informed decision about the timing of their trade-in, consumer electronics upgrades and trade-ins specialist firm NextWorth has looked at and analyzed past announcements and corresponding trade-in values for trends.

The data show that trade-in values of previous phone models begin to drop even before the actual announcement of the new version. It stands to reason that this is a result of the influx of rumors surrounding the anticipated announcement. Older generations show a relatively smaller decline in value, but the overall result is that when trading in, sooner is better.

To help provide you a frame of reference as to what to expect with the iPhone 5 announcement, NextWorth has put together a chart showing the decline in trade-in value of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS surrounding the announcement and availability of the iPhone 4.

And speaking of trade-in value….

iPhone 4 Discounted To $170, Trade iPhone 3 For iPhone 4 For As Little As $19.99

Forbes and Laptop Mag are both reporting that RadioShack, which had already discounted the iPhone 4 last week, has slashed prices even deeper with a promotion that will run through August 20, to as low as $170 for the 16-gigabyte model, indicating that it’s clearing out inventory to prepare for the iPhone 5 (or whatever). Additionally, RadioShack customers who trade-in an existing iPhone 3G or 3GS can get an allowance under the Trade & Save Program of as much as $150 towards a new iPhone 4 purchase, Add in instant savings of $30 and you’ve effectively lowered the price of a new iPhone 4 to as low as $19.99.

However, note well LAPTOP Editor in Chief Mark Spoonauer’s caveat that there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the full $150 off on top of the instant savings. It depends on the condition of the your iPhone 3G or 3GS you’re trading.

Still, an iPhone 4 potentially for as little as $19.99 represents a pretty sweet value, whatever the imminent new iPhone is called, and it will run iOS 5 too.

A reliable source, who chooses to remain anonymous, has just informed the iPhone 5 News Blog that an industry-wide rumor is spreading throughout Asia that Apple will be releasing three new devices in September, and they will be called the iPhone 4Gs, iPod Touch White, and iPad Pro. The source, a highly reputable top executive for a consumer electronics accessories in Asia, heard about these names of the new devices from a top distributor in China. The source said in an e-mail to the Blog that he “Heard from one of distributors today, they are quite confirmed that Apple will announce iPhone 4Gs, iPod Touch white, and iPad Pro next month. Take it as a reference. I think they should be reliable.”

When pressed about the voracity of these new rumors, the source said “It’s still a rumor, I got the info from our distributor. Which we feel good about it since we can continue to sell our iPod and iPhone cases.” This comment suggests that the iPhone 4Gs will indeed keep the same form factor as the current iPhone 4, since their current iPhone case molds will not have to be altered. However, even if this purported “4Gs” were to keep the same dimensions, it would not necessarily mean that the camera sensor and screen size could not be improved — just so long as the components would fit into the current iPhone 4′s chassis.

Fnally, I asked about whether the “4Gs” indicates that it will in fact be a 4G iPhone 4, or if it is just the moniker to attribute a refresh to the iPhone 4, but was unable to get a confirmation either way from our source. Just as the “S” in “3Gs” stood for “speed,” so too could Apple be using the “S” in “4Gs” to exploit the inclusion of the A5 chip, which is not present in the current iPhone 4.

If this reputable rumor proves true, it will discredit virtually all of the “spy” photos, leaked case designs, and other related reports over the past month or so that purport to show a radically revamped iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 News Blog completely trusts the credibility of our source, having known him and the company he works for for some time now. And since top iPhone case design companies like the one that our source works for rely on actionable intelligence like this to plan accordingly for the future, there is some validity to the nature of the rumor.

[UPDATED] — I recently received a photo of a purported iPhone case from the same source who provided the rumor above. The case photo purports to be an iPhone 5 case, and even though I have not seen any other iPhone 5 case photo on the net that looks exactly like this one, it does have a similar form factor to the ones we’ve seen in other reports. The plot thickens.

Purported PC Case for the iPhone 5

By Michael Nace

This week a gaggle of mainstream tech and finance journals and blogs have been riffing on a note to clients by Jefferies & Co. banking sector market analyst and tech-sector watcher Peter Misek Analyst entitled “One to Rule Them All: iOS and OS X Roadmaps to Merge.”

The main thrust of Misek’s screed is what he contends is an Apple strategy To Merge the iOS with OS X into a single platform for supporting apps and cloud services in 2012 concurrent with the projected release of quad-core, 64-Bit ARM A6 processor silicon that will be used not only in iPads and iPhones, but also Apple’s Macs — with the MacBook Air first up.

Misek’s timeline for the A6 rollout would see the new in-house designed CPU debuting in the iPad 3 during Q1 2012, and the A6 powered iPhone 5 next summer (or at WWDC?), and the the Macbook Air switching to A6 processors in the second half of 2012, or in early 2013, and with the iOS and Mac OS X merger into one operating system finally consummated by 2016. He thinks that 64-bit ARM architecture will be key for Apple to complete an operating system merger, which is plausible given that OS X 10.7 Lion is already 64-bit only. On the other hand, currently iPhones and iPads run on 32-bit ARM chips while Apple’s Mac PCs run on Intel x86 processors.

However, the report says “Apple is ready to start sampling the A6 quad-core app processor and will be the first such multi-device platform capable of PC-like strength,” so the wheels of this transition appear to be in motion.

In the meantime, Misek belongs to the school of thought that the new iPhone product that’s being ramped up for release in the late summer or the fall will be an A5 powered iPhone 4S.

Now, this constellation of predictions would be easy to dismiss if they were coming from some fly-by-night smalltime blog, but coming from a respected analyst at a well established and reputable firm like Jefferies & Co., one is obliged to take notice and give it careful consideration.

Personally, I find the prediction that Apple is fixing to merge the IOS with OS X completely plausible, and in fact I began predicting that Apple would eventually do so early last year, after the astonishing success of the iPad and iPad 2. However, the idea that Apple would actually wait until next summer to release an iPhone 5 is pretty hard to swallow, and based on fan sentiment vigorously expressed on this blog and elsewhere, the company would be risking a lot of backlash if all it’s released over the next couple of months turns out to be a tarted up iPhone 4 with a P5 processor, a somewhat larger display, an 8 megapixel camera and a few other tweaks.

Likely to be better-received is a report from Digitimes’ Monica Chen and Adam Hwang that Taiwan’s Pegatron Technology has landed orders for 10 million units of iPhone 5 to become Apple second iPhone subcontractor, with shipments to begin in September, according to unnamed industry sources.

In other news, 9To5Mac reports that A tipster at an Orange UK store in London has let them know that the carrier has told employees the iPhone 3GS is no longer available, that according to several sources in different countries, iPhone 3GS stock has been quickly tightening with few or no shipments coming through the pipeline to some regions, and according to a source at one popular international carrier, the iPhone 3GS has disappeared from the stock database altogether, while an accurate source at a major U.S. based iPhone reseller reports that iPhone 3GS stock is significantly lower than usual. The disappearance of the iPhone 3GS would seem logical if Apple opts to keep the current specification iPhone 4 in production as its entry-level handset after the new mainstream iPhone offering is revealed, whatever it turns out to be called.

For more on Peter Misek’s Jefferies & Co. report predictions, check out the reports at the following URLs below: Read More

I usually pay more mind to purported case photos for unreleased Apple products than alleged spy shots claimed to be of the item itself or at least a prototype.The latter are more often than not somebody’s Photoshop doodles, but product cases are serious business, and sometimes more reliable indicators of what to expect.

Chris Chang of M.I.C. Gadget, one of my favorite Chinese Apple-watcher sites, says iPhone 5 Cases are now “everywhere in China,” and has posted some photos of what look like very nice smartphone cases.

Inexpensive too! Chang cites 2 yuan or roughly $ .30 apiece — provided you buy a minimum of 500 units.

Click here to see photos of the new iPhone 5 cases on our iPhone 5 News Ticker.

Moving along, a press release from HelloTotem.com, a San Diego-based online provider in the mobile phone buyback industry, says that as Apple gears up to release the iPhone 5, iPhone 4 owners still have an opportunity to exchange their used device for top dollar. Once the iPhone 5 is available, Totem forecasts iPhone 4 values will drop significantly, and that while speculation abounds as to when the device might launch and what it might look like, savvy owners of the previous generation of iPhones are planning their iPhone 4 exit strategies strategies in preparation for an iPhone 5 upgrade.

Totem cite a recent Wall Street Journal report that Apple is rumored to be placing orders for 25 million iPhone 5 units, significantly more than any other previous generation. The iPhone 4, released in June 2010, received a record-shattering 600,000 pre-orders in the first 24 hours of its announcement and sold more than 1.7 million units in the first three days of availability.

Consequently, based on the success of Spring 2011 releases of the long-delayed white iPhone 4 and the newly available Verizon network iPhone, they suggest that the iPhone 5 will need very little help from the inevitable media frenzy, noting that in the last few months, Apple has shipped more than 20.3 iPhone 4 million units, mostly to emerging and developing countries like Mexico, Brazil and China.

The release goes on to recap the thoroughly-discussed iPhone 5 form factor, feature set and release date rumors, which I need not elaborate here, but you might be interested in considering that HelloTotem.com, is currently offering customers up to $400 for top-condition iPhone 4s with 32GB of memory. However, once the new iPhone is released, the value will almost certainly go down, noting that in May 2010, just a few weeks before the iPhone 4 was scheduled for release, eBayers flooded the online bidding site with 1,700 iPhone 3GS models that were equipped with16GB of memory, causing the value of the formerly high-end smartphone to be significantly reduced.

The takeaway is that the clock is ticking if you want to sell your iPhone 4 for top dollar, and “Though the iPhone 4 may not be worth $400 after the launch of the iPhone 5, a functional 16GB or 32GB iPhone 4 will always be worth more than the $199 upgrade price, allowing for a free upgrade,” says Totem CEO Nicholas Fiorentino.

Something to consider.

For more information, visit:
http://www.hellototem.com/how-it-works

and
http://www.hellototem.com/?utm_source=pr07252011
By Charles Moore

It’s conventional wisdom in some circles that Android will eventually surpass Apple’s iOS handily in market share. Perhaps that will come to pass in the fullness of time, but there’s little scientific indication of it so far.

Good Technology, a secure and managed enterprise mobility provider for iPhone, iPad, Android and other leading smartphone platforms, has just released its quarterly data report detailing the changing landscape of IT and mobile enterprise technology, noting that the trend of personal smartphones and tablets infiltrating the workplace is being led by both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android smartphone platforms, but in Q2 of 2011, iOS extended its rally from Q1, increasing in that time from just under seventy percent to just under eighty percent of total device activations, and of course that’s all without any iPhone 5 revision.

The report notes that in Q2 of 2011 iPhone represented a solid 2/3 of all smartphone activations while Android smartphones represented 1/3 of all activations. When tablets and smartphones are both included in this breakdown, iOS drove 75 percent of all activations, with Android at 25 percent for the quarter. Together iPad 2 and iPad activations outnumbered all Android device activations as Good customers heavily deployed the iPad 2 tablet to their workforces in Q2 after its initial release in March.

With new iPhones from Apple expected in Q3 2011, Good Technology says they expect iOS to finish the year as strong as it started, and while they previously predicted that Android activations would overtake iPhone activations in the smartphone category in 2011, they no longer predict that will happen this year, given Apple’s recent and planned product releases, and observing that Android smartphones represented nearly 33 percent of all smartphone (non tablet) activations compared to iPhone’s 66 percent, despite Android’s overall market share growth.

Meanwhile Apple’s iOS platform drove the majority of activations for the period from April 1 through June 30, 2011. The iPhone 4 was the most popular device, with a steadily growing activation rate averaging 22 percent for the quarter.

To download the full Good Technology report, which includes the methodology for the findings, visit:
http://www.good.com/resources/Good_Data_Q2_2011.pdf

Apple Dominates Mobile App Space with Content while Android Aims for Numbers

A new Strategy Analytics report, “Apps, Apps Everywhere: The Billion Dollar Industry,” says the app economy is strong and getting stronger, with paid downloads expected to drive nearly $2 billion per quarter by the end of 2012, and predicts that Apple will remain king of the app economy at least through 2012.

They do anticipate that the Android Market is poised to overtake the Apple App Store in quarterly volume by the end of 2012, but observe that the battle between Google and Apple is only one subtext in a market that will continue grow exponentially for the next six quarters.

For more information on the report, “Apps, Apps Everywhere: The Billion Dollar Industry”, click here:
http://bit.ly/nuSocz

By Charles Moore

As the iPhone 4 is due to be put into mothballs, many smartphone users see it as nothing more than a rusting legacy device compared to the throngs of newer, bolder Android gadgets. And yet, AT&T’s earnings show that the iPhone 4 has catapulted Apple into near smartphone dominance.

The iPhone 4 is well over a year old. In smartphone years, that’s like being a senior citizen, thanks to the break-neck speed that mobile technology advances. Since the release of the iPhone 4 in the summer of 2010, Android has released a horde of new smartphones that, when combined into one fighting force against the iPhone, wields many more newfangled features for the avid smartphone users. From 4G capabilities and 3D screens and cameras, to 8-megapixel cameras and dual touch screens, the Android-based smartphone designs that have followed the iPhone 4 would seem to have sucked up the imagination of mobile technology — so much so that it has led to a feeling that the iPhone 5 can not and will not offer users anything new that Android hasn’t already tried.

And yet, in spite of this perceived Android dominance, the old iPhone 4 has managed to singlehandedly outsell Android, according to a new earnings report from AT&T.

Like Uma Thurman in the Kill Bill series or Stallone in Rambo, one improbable iPhone has managed t0 mow down a multiplicity of competitors, almost in absurd fashion. According to The Street, for AT&T’s second quarter, “In wireless, where the iPhone represented nearly two-thirds of all smartphones sold in the quarter, AT&T added 331,000 postpaid subscribers. Analysts had been looking for about 200,000 new phone subscribers.” In that time, Android has thrown an array of impressive adversaries at Apple, including the Samsung Galaxy S II, which is touted as the natural rival to the iPhone 5.

The success of the iPhone 4 is not only evidenced in AT&T’s numbers; Apple’s profits are resoundingly high, thanks to both the iPhone 4 and iPad 2, as Bloomberg reports: “IPhone sales were buoyed by international demand, particularly in China, where total revenue jumped sixfold to $3.8 billion. After overcoming supply shortages for the iPad 2 following its March debut, Apple saw sales of the tablet soar. The device is now its second-biggest revenue source — behind the iPhone — less than two years after first being introduced.”

Folks, this is amazing: Apple sold over 20 million iPhones in their third quarter of 2011 alone.

So, how has Apple managed to make the iPhone 4 into such a formidable smartphone, even a year after its release? There isn’t just one answer to the question. A big slice of the revenue pie has come from an expansion into the Asia Pac rim, with China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan contributing a great deal to Apple’s bottom line. Apple COO Tim Cook says it best himself: “‘China was very key to our results,’ said Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, who is handling day-to-day leadership during Jobs’s medical leave. ‘This has been a substantial opportunity for Apple, and I firmly believe that we’re just scratching the surface right now.’”  In very practical terms, Apple has sensed the fact that the money has shifted away from the U.S. and its wavering economy, and into Asia, where — while poverty still dominates many countries — a burgeoning middle class and robust mobile subscribership is yearning for the iPhone. Understanding this shift, Cupertino has set its sights on squeezing more profits out of Asia.

But expansion into China still doesn’t explain AT&T’s success with the iPhone 4 in the U.S.

In spite of an increasing number of Americans losing their jobs and contending with food, gas, and goods prices rising 45% or more in the past year, AT&T — and Apple by extension — has managed to peddle plenty of iPhones in 2011. Apple has facilitied these sales by keeping the iPhone 4 front and center in the eyes of American consumers, first by expanding the iPhone’s reach by bringing Verizon on board, then releasing the white iPhone 4, and finally debuting iOS 5 and iCloud, both of which are fully compatible with the iPhone 4. A steady stream of effective marketing and advertising has also helped. As usual, Apple has managed to control the marketing message behind their iPhone 4 perfectly (a feat that cannot be said for the runaway train that is the iPhone 5 rumor mill).

That being said, when one ponders the impressive iPhone 4 sales over its long, meandering lifecycle in the marketplace, one has to wonder why we have even questioned why the iPhone 5 has been long delayed. Why, after all, would Apple rush to replace their best-selling product, especially when they are still selling 20+ million units of it nearly a year after its release. Hence the adage: if it’s ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

By Michael Nace

BGR’s Jonathan S. Geller, who has a pretty strong track record in making Apple product predictions, says he’s just received new information from what he calls an “incredibly solid source,” who maintains that Apple will be not only be launching an upgraded standard iPhone (which he says could be called either 5 or 4S) by the end of the summer, but also a prepaid/lower cost iPhone model that will sell retail for no more than $350 without a service contract.

Geller says it’s entirely possible that the low-cost iPhone will in fact be the iPhone 3GS but that he’s been able to independently confirm that an iPhone revision under development will feature “a radical new design,” although his source isn’t positive that it will be be the next mainline iPhone, but whether it’s the iPhone 4S or iPhone 5, a new iPhone model will be “at least announced by the end of Summer, late August-ish.” (As we’ve noted here before, strictly speaking, “late Summer could actually take us all the way to the third week of September but Geller’s source apparently goes with the popular view that Summer ends on August 31 or at most Labor Day). However, he makes the observation that if a new iPhone form=factor was coming that soon, his sources theorize that we should’ve seen new 3rd-party iPhone cases designed to accommodate it by now by now if the upcoming iPhone featured a different exterior, notwithstanding an Apple crackdown on case specification leaks.

In summary, speculates that it could mean that there will be an iPhone 4S in addition to a prepaid iPhone 3GS available within the next month to two, and that he’s being told the current iPhone 4 will continue to be sold well, giving Apple a full range of devices in the low, mid, and high-end price categories, which he suggests will equip the iPhone-maker to “again take charge and lead in the smartphone market.”

Interesting.

Read More

Michael put a positive spin yesterday on a rumor sourced from a Chinese-language tech website that the the iPhone 5′s long production delay can be attributed to the dual-core A5 processor chip’s overheating when confined in a thinner handset form factor. I’m not quite as sunny, but at least the overheating would be a plausible reason for the ongoing delay. It does put more wind beneath the wings of persistent iPhone 4S rumblings (I personally remain agnostic) from the school of thought contending that
September’s iPhone refresh won’t be a true iPhone 5, but rather either a souped-up iPhone 4 branded as iPhone 5, or even a revamp released as the iPhone 4S.

The now widely chewed-over Chinese-language Sohu.com site’s report contends that Apple hasn’t yet figured out how to get the iPad 2′s A5 processor into the iPhone case and keep it cool, with an unnamed insider source alleging that the A5 overheats even when installed in an iPhone 4 shell, forcing Apple to put any major form factor upgrade/downsize on temporary hold until it figures out how to solve the problem, and in the meantime the best we can expect is essentially iPhone 4 tweaks.

On the other hand, Smith observes that Apple uses the A5 in the iPad 2, inside which are not exactly wide-open-spaces, and it still manages to run without overheating. I can attest that my five week old iPad 2 has never even hinted at running noticeably hot.

Nevertheless, the A5 is inevitably in closer quarters inside an iPhone 4 case and significantly larger bigger, nearly twice the size of the single-core A4 chip used in the iPhone 4 (10.1 x 12.1 mm, vs. 7.3 x 7.3 mm for the A4), so it would be even more cramped in a thinner and lighter Phone 5 form factor, so Smith suggests that Apple may have to resort to plan B — a smaller dual-core chip, the A6, to be produced using a 28-nanometer manufacturing process, which will make it both smaller and more power efficient compared with the A5 chip which is fabricated using Samsung Electronics Co.’s 45-nanometer process.

Reuters news agency’s Clare Jim and Argin Chang reported on Friday that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), reportedly the world’s largest OEM chipmaker, has commenced trial manufacturing runs of A6 CPUs, indicating among other things that Apple is planning to shift its idevice processor sourcing at least partly away from traditional supplier and frenemy Samsung, with which relations are increasingly strained due to a bewildering concatenation of patent claims and lawsuits. Samsung is also one of Apple’s toughest rivals for in smartphone and tablet market share.

Incidentally, we first mentioned TSMC as a potential idevice CPU supplier here back in June, citing a report by Taiwan-based Digitimes’ Jessie Shen that Chinese-language Commercial Times quoted Dan Heyler, a semiconductor analyst with Merrill Lynch in Taipei suggesting that TSMC had a good shot at securing some orders from Apple for its next-generation A6 processors in 2012

However, it would be extravagantly optimistic to imagine that even with an accelerated development timeline, Apple and TSMC could get A6 powered iPhones to market before late winter or early spring 2012, not to mention that Apple will almost certainly want to release an A6 powered iPad 3 before the faster CPU makes it into an iPhone.

Consequently, the prospect of Apple releasing a range of the transition products, whether they’re a “simple refresh” of the iPhone 4 dubbed iPhone 5, or a straightforward iPhone 4 upgrade, is conceptually believable. Sohu.com cites as potential iPhone 4 tweak possibilities an 800-megapixel camera and a gorilla glass screen, or even a dual-core variant of the A4 chip and 4G network support, a bright side in their view being that worldwide iPhone 4 sales remain quite hot, which takes some of the pressure off Apple, although that’s cold comfort to iPhone fans impatiently anticipating a major iPhone redesign in September.

By Charles Moore