Hello? Is That the iPhone?

For as long as there has been Apple, there have been rumors. And ever since Apple took over the iPod market, there have been rumors that they would- any minute now- take the cell phone industry by storm. It seems like the time may have come.

Of course, this is not the first time Apple will have cellular phone related craziness surrounding it. For those with short memories, we already had an “iPhone” last year. It was made by Motorola, could synchronize with iTunes and was heralded as the one phone to rule them all. Until everyone saw the feature-set. It had just enough features to be a marketing department’s dream (with iTunes!) but was crippled and uncool enough that it could never really be anything more than an also-ran.

There is speculation- as there always is- that Apple deliberately held back on that device because they were knew they weren’t going to get it just right, or because they didn’t like the deal with Motorola, or because Cingular was launching their own competing music service, or many of the above.

That’s the thing with speculation.

Well, now we have some unconfirmed, third-hand reports that suggest that the Chinese company Foxconn- that recently got in to trouble over iPod sweatshop claims- has been given the contract to build the iPhone. Keep in mind that the name “iPhone” is a product of the media’s brain (of which this site is a member), not an official product name. Also, keep in mind that even though this story is making its way through those series of tubes that we call the Internet, it is decidedly third-hand.

This is where it came from: a Chinese language publication called Commercial Times wrote that Foxconn Electronics, the largest contract manufacturer of iPods, will manufacture and ship 12 million phones for Apple. For one thing, that is a humongous number of devices. For another, I can’t read Chinese.

So we turn to the Internet for answers. From Commercial Times, the story was picked up by DigiTimes, which is a daily IT news site that keeps an eye on Asian tech news. Good for them, because apparently they do speak Chinese and were able to report on the story. From there, it made its way to other sites around the ‘net. According to DigiTimes- and it’s not clear if they are quoting Commercial Times or found out for themselves- Foxconn is not commenting on the story.

Of course, all of this could mean nothing at all, but it does keep for interesting reading and speculating until MacWorld rolls around in January next year.

P.S. Of course, the Internet- those tubes I mentioned above- is a magnificent thing for random, meaningless research. In the course of looking up information for this article, I discovered that Foxconn was also called Hon Hai, that they built the PS2, PS3 and XBox360, and that their CEO just bought a castle in Czech Republic. If only I could look up useful stuff with the same dedication…