iPhone 4S/5 Release Date Confirmed for Fiscal Q4 2011, or Next September

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Earlier today Apple released its fiscal Q3 2011 earnings report and then it further elaborated on those numbers during its quarterly earnings report. And Apple, via Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer, confirmed that OS X Lion is going to be released tomorrow, but they also mentioned the fact that Apple will launch the iPhone 4S/5 in the next quarter, or fiscal Q4 2011.

Apple didn’t necessarily reveal the name of the product or actual launch dates but it did refer to a “future product transition in September” that will affect the quarter, financially speaking, when asked why the next quarter will not be able to top off the current performance.

We’ll remind you that Apple’s quarter ending in June was a new record for the company, with $28.57 billion in revenue, while the forward-looking estimate for September showed a more conservative fiscal Q4 with just $25 billion expected in revenue. Naturally analysts asked Apple, in the Q&A session, to explain the difference between the June and September quarters, and that’s when the “future product transition” was mentioned.

Apple didn’t elaborate on the fifth-generation iPhone during the call, but I think it’s pretty clear that we’re looking at a September launch date for the next-gen iPhone. Apple sold over 20 million iPhones in the past quarter, but the company may see a slight drop in iPhone sales next quarter as plenty of consumers will want to wait out for the iPhone 4S/5 to arrive instead of getting a new iPhone 4. And while Apple may not be able to sell enough iPhone 4S/5 units in Q4 2011, we certainly expect the company to reach a new quarter record in December (Q1 2012) as the next-gen iPhone will most likely sell like hot cakes in the holiday season.

What about you? What kind of a next-gen iPhone would your rather buy, an entry-level iPhone 4S or the flagship iPhone 5?