Apple watching is fun. It’s fun because, unlike most other computer manufacturers, Apple prizes the consumer over the enterprise. The way to please the enterprise is to give as much warning as possible of every little change, so the companies out there with 100,000 workstations world wide can work out months in advance how to fit the bits together; the way to please the consumer is with surprise launches with fancy new features and a minimum of forewarning. So, Apple don’t generally do things like public betas or product pre-announcements; this makes puzzling out their future direction from half-rumours and educated guesses a much more entertaining puzzle than for most computing companies.

(Aside: one exception to the “no long pre-announcement” rule was the iPhone itself, which was announced on 9th January 2007 — six months before it became available. This is because of the way the mobile phone market functions, with people committing to 18 or 24 months of contractual lock-in with a vendor in return for subsidy on the handset price. Apple gambled they could pre-announce the iPhone and that at least some people would choose to delay their upgrade until the phone was available. Anecdotal evidence suggests this tactic worked handsomely. In addition, Apple had no current phones to suffer from the Osborne Effect.)

I think there is a new iPhone coming. That, in itself, is not a massive insight but I think it’s coming soon: specifically, in June or July this year. Why do I think so? My reasons, let me show you them.

Firstly, historical precedent. Apple released the first iPhone on 29th June, 2007 and the 3G iPhone on 11th July, 2008. Much like the tradition of iPod refreshes in the autumn, I think they are consciously sticking to an annual upgrade cycle with the iPhone.

Secondly, commercial pressure. For the first time since the iPhone was announced, there are phones appearing that can potentially outshine it; amongst others, the Nokia N97, the Palm Pre, and the Android phones (T-Mobile G1 and HTC Magic) are all pretty explicitly designed as responses to the iPhone. Few buttons, large touch screens, finger-friendly interfaces that don’t require a stylus. This is not the time for Apple to slow down the pace of their development.

Thirdly, the latest firmware for the iPhone, as with all of Apple’s firmware upgrades, has an XML datafile which contains the product version numbers that it can run on. So far, for the iPhone, there have been two versions in this file; “v1,1″ (the original iPhone) and “v1,2″ (the iPhone 3G). When Apple use these numbers for laptop and desktop computers, incrementing the second digit implies a minor change to the product; incrementing the first digit is for major revisions, like when the “iLamp” style iMac was replaced by the all-in-the-panel model.

As was widely reported by various sources, a “v2,1″ string appeared in the latest iPhone firmware. Furthermore, stat tracking firm PinchMedia have been seeing this in their Analytics product since October 2008, with all their hits in the San Francisco Bay Area around Apple’s HQ. Is it surprising that Apple are working on a new iPhone? No, of course not, but the timing of these two facts — a prototype device that has been in active use by testers since October and a current, shipping firmware that can run on this device — supports the idea of launch soonish.

Fourthly, the ship date for the just-announced version 3.0 iPhone software is simply “summer 2009″. It seems very likely to me that, once developers have had a few months to build apps to take advantage of new features, it would ship as both an upgrade to old devices and on a new version of the hardware simultaneously. This is exactly what Apple did with the lauch of iPhone OS v2.0 and the iPhone 3G.

What might the new iPhone bring?

My crystal ball is broken. There are the obvious iPhone++ type things:

• more memory (as in the iPod bit, likely 16Gb/32Gb)
• more memory (as in RAM, where programs run, likely 192/256Mb)
• faster processor
• better camera (I’d like 3Mp with a better lens, a macro slide switch, and a flash of some sort, please)

…but these are not hugely exciting.

Two things I don’t think we’ll see is a dedicated gaming device or an iPhone Mini, despite continuing analyst speculation that this will happen.Why? Because the iPhone’s real killer app is the App Store itself, and Apple know this. A well polished source of high quality software, accessible on the device, with uncluttered micropayment support and (in less than a year) a huge range of applications to choose from and developer success stories left and right.

Want proof? Look at how much work Apple have done to make the iPod Touch more like the iPhone: this is so developers can more effectively write a single app that works on both devices, giving them a market of 30 million wealthy consumers to sell to. And look at how Apple put the App Store front and centre in a lot of advertising (the main iPhone slogan in the UK right now is “solving life’s little problems, one app at a time”).

So, Apple won’t do anything to split the platform. This means no iPhone Nano. If they ship some sort of iPod Nano, it’d have to have a smaller screen. If the screen gets smaller, your fingers will be the same size, so everything on it has to get bigger or it’ll be unusable. That means developers have to support a second screen resolution and it means every single one of those bazillion apps on the App Store won’t work on the new device. Which iPhone do you want, the one with the bazillion apps, or the slightly cheaper one with no apps but maybe some apps later but probably never the full bazillion? Exactly, that’s why we won’t get an iPhone Nano, and congrats, you’re smarter than several analysts and journalists now.

As for the idea of a dedicated gaming device with a d-pad and some extra buttons, I very much doubt it. Once again, if they release that, games developers have to choose: do you sell your game to the 30 million people with an iPod Touch or iPhone, or to the pool of zero people who own the new device? And if games devs don’t write games for it, who will buy it? What I think we might see is some sort of snap-on case with the extra buttons in it, sold by someone like Belkin, which might get some games support if it’s cheap enough. This is possible with the new “remote device” support in iPhone OS v3.0, but I am digressing from the point.

Lots of people think we’re going to get one of these:

image credit: fotoboer.nl

Basically, an iPhone but four times or so the size, designed to address the netbook market. I don’t deny that the idea is palatable, although whether there is a big enough pool of potential buyers to make the numbers add up, I wouldn’t like to say. In any event, I don’t think this would be part of an iPhone announcement — it would be a new product.

So, apart from the “one louder” upgrades, I have no real idea where Apple will take the iPhone next, I am afraid. It may well turn out Apple are smarter than me though so don’t abandon hope for some innovation. However I am pretty sure we’ll find out in June or July. If you are considering buying an iPhone in the next few months, read my arguments, read my citations, and decide if you’d be better off waiting to see what happens next. I think you probably should.

Since this article was written, more evidence has emerged of the possible new iPhone — see my followup article.

Tech, iPhone