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The iPhone 5 could be on course for a June release, if comments let slip by a Foxconn recruiter are to be believed.
In an interview on Japanese TV, a recruiter with the factory that makes Apple gadgets said the company needs to hire 18,000 people to build the iPhone 5, “because it seems it will go on sale in June”, CNET reports, by way of Macotakara.
That’s according to a Japanese translation of the original Chinese. You can see the interview for yourself at TV Tokyo — the iPhone chit-chat kicks off at about the 7:10 mark.
The iPhone’s release date used to be predictable — for four years straight Apple has chosen June to reveal its new smart phone. But the Cupertino tech giant shook things up last year, choosing to reveal the iPhone 4S in October instead.
This latest hint would suggest that Apple is moving back to summer releases, but clashes with reports from February that suggest the next iteration of the company’s wildly popular blower will arrive in autumn, not summer.
Releasing the iPhone 5 in the summer would mean that the iPhone 4S would be on sale for less than a year, which would be cutting its lifespan a little short considering how well it’s selling — 4 million in the first three days on sale and 37 million in the last 14 weeks of 2011.
With sales figures like that, I suspect Apple’s in no rush to replace the 4S. But we’ll almost certainly see the iPhone 5 (which, following on from the new iPad, will probably just be called the new iPhone) this year.
What are you expecting from Apple’s next phone? An incremental update like the 4S? Or a radical overhaul? Could it look anything like these weird concepts? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.
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