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Could Apple Be Planning an iPhone 5 AND an iPhone 4S?

Could Apple Be Planning an iPhone 5 AND an iPhone 4S?

Apple will begin production of a fifth-generation iPhone in August and launch the phone by the end of September, according to an unusually confident Wall Street analyst.

On top of that, another industry observer believes Apple could debut two new iPhones this year, an iPhone 5 and an iPhone “4S.”After a week of meetings with unnamed sources in Taiwan, Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley wrote to her clients on Sunday night (via AppleInsider): “Apple’s next iPhone will begin production in mid- to late August and ramp aggressively” into the fall.

Huberty’s sources said Apple would begin selling the “iPhone 5″ by the end of the third quarter, which ends in September. As a result Huberty revised her iPhone shipment estimates by shifting two million iPhones from Q3 to Q4.

The next morning, Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore speculated that Apple may come out with two phones this fall, according to a note obtained by Fortune.

“With Nokia and RIMM struggling the time is right for Apple to aggressively penetrate the mid range smart-phone market (i.e. $300-500 category) to dramatically expand its [total addressable market] and market share,” Whitmore wrote.

Whitmore also mentioned an unlocked, $350 iPhone 4S, which sounds expensive to those of us used to carrier-subsidized iPhones, but is a fraction of the $770 it costs for an iPhone 4 in China, for example.

Rumors of Apple’s smaller, cheaper iPhone catering to emerging markets have been rife since February, when Apple COO Tim Cook publicly hinted at such plans.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that the “iPhone 5″ will come with an A5 processor, an 8-megapixel camera, and iOS 5, and launch in September.

[Thanks: http://www.pcmag.com]

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