iPhone 5 home for Christmas, maybe

source: reuters

Apple’s iPhone 5 isn’t expected to hit the market until Christmas or early next year, according to Business Insider’s Jay Yarow.

Avian Securities said in a note, based on conversations with a “key component supplier” to Apple, that the the iPhone 5 should go into production in September and that Apple could also be developing a lower price/lower spec iPhone model, Yarrow writes.

The $214 billion cellphone industry is bracing for a hit to its supply of components as top phone makers get set to report quarterly earnings next week. “We believe the shortages will start to bite in the third quarter, when we’ll get a clearer picture of who is most affected,” said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.

On average analysts expect global cellphone sales volumes to have grown 10.8 percent in January-March, according to 18 analysts in a Reuters poll. The phone market has recovered from a slump in 2009, but growth is expected to have peaked in the first half of 2010, with a slowdown to 9 percent forecast for 2011, the Reuters poll showed.

Apple’s iPad will continue to dominate the surging media tablet market for years, with Google playing catch-up, Gartner said. The research firm said it expects 70 million media tablets to be sold this year and 108 million in 2012, compared with 17.6 million in 2010. Apple’s share of the market will gradually decline to 47 percent in 2015 from 69 percent this year, while Google’s share will rise to 39 percent from 20 percent now.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will allow best-selling author Walter Isaacson, who chronicled the lives of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, to publish his biography — entitled “iSteve: The Book of Jobs”, in early 2012. Jobs, who has battled a rare form of pancreatic cancer and undertook a liver transplant in 2009, granted exclusive interviews to the biographer over the course of three years.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who accuse Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for Facebook, must accept a cash and stock settlement with Facebook that had been valued at $65 million, a U.S. appeals court ruled. The twins argued the deal was unfair because Facebook hid information from them during talks.

Facebook is evaluating the Internet market in China, but has not signed a business deal with any companies there, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. There had been media reports that the social networking giant and Internet company Baidu had formed a partnership.

source: reuters