iPhone 5 Announcement Coming at Apple September Media Event; iPhone 5 Release Date Still Unknown

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Just yesterday we heard that Apple’s iPhone 5 will enter mass production at some point in September and today’s iPhone 5 rumors say that Apple is going to introduce the next-gen smartphone at some point in fall.

We know from Apple that the WWDC 2011 event will only bring us iOS 5 and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion news as no hardware is supposed to be announced at that time. Traditionally WWDC is the place where Steve Jobs and Co. announce the new iPhone, which gets released a few weeks later.

The iPhone 5, for various reasons, will not have an early summer release date and we could see it in stores only in fall 2011 in the USA, and maybe even later in other markets. That’s of course if All Things Digital’s John Paczkowski is to be believed:

As I’ve reported here before, Apple doesn’t plan to unveil a new iPhone at its Worldwide Developers Conference, which this year will be largely software-focused. And increasingly, I’m hearing speculation about the company possibly commandeering its annual September media event to launch the device instead. Which seems plausible.

Should this rumor turn out to be true then we can’t but wonder how Apple is going to manage its regular fall iPod announcement. We’ve gotten used to seeing new iPads in fall, but that might change starting this year. The iPod, no matter what model we’re talking about, can’t compete with the iPhone, the iPad or the Mac. Sure the iPod is what started everything, and without Apple’s push in the music business we wouldn’t have seen the iTunes and iOS extravaganza we witness today, but the iPod is not the same hot product it used to be.

Therefore having a fall event centered around the next-gen iPhone instead of the next line of iPods would make a lot more sense for various reasons, which, in short, translates into more attention and cash for Apple. Of course we could witness a longer Apple event that would start with the next-gen iPods and end up with the iPhone 5 introduction.

When would you like to see the new iPhone 5 come out?