Edible Apple

The China Times reports that Apple plans to launch the iPhone 5 sometime between September 6 and 15th and that initial supplies will total 400 million units. Meanwhile, the report relays that component suppliers are already prepping to ship approximately 400,000 trial production units.

A mid-September launch date echoes a number of other rumors we’ve seen over the past few weeks. Earlier this week, BGR noted that AT&T already began disseminating its iPhone 5 launch plan to employees with a “proven source” indicating that Apple’s next generation iPhone will launch sometime in September.

A few weeks back, we reported that Apple Stores in the UK were increasing their retail hires in key outlets specifically for the dates of August 16th through October 29th. This has led some to believe that Apple will announce the iPhone 5 in mid-August to be followed by a launch in early September.

A fall launch would obviously be a departure for Apple who, since the iPhone’s inception, has launched a new model without fail during the Summer months. While the reasons behind the iPhone 5 delay, assuming it wasn’t strategic, remain unknown, some reports claim that Apple had to push back its release date on account of the device overheating thanks to Apple’s speedy A5 chip. Apple consequently had to go back to the drawing board and implement some changes to make sure that the device met Apple’s stringently high standards.

Also worth mentioning are a smattering of reports claiming that Apple will release the iPhone on both Sprint and T-Mobile this Fall. Assuming these reports are accurate, it remains to be seen if Sprint and T-Mobile will feature Apple’s latest iPhone or if they will be getting the iPhone 4 model.

Apple thus far has done a good job of keeping iPhone 5 secrets under the radar, and while we can’t bet on what kind of hardware Apple’s upcoming iPhone will sport, we can reasonably assume that it won’t support LTE 4G networks. Rumor has it that Apple was hoping to have LTE equipped iPhones ready for the iPhone 5 but that the selection of LTE chipsets wasn’t compatible with the form factor Apple was working with.