Apple hopes to sell 24 million iPhone 4Gs by year end

The company charged with building the next-generation iPhone 4G says Apple has ordered a total of 24 million units for this year alone.

According to Taiwanese IT newspaper Digitimes, hardware partner Foxconn is contracted to deliver 4.5 million new iPhones to cover initial demand when it launches next month, with the remaining 19.5 million to be spread across the rest of the year.

And Digitimes analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had other iPhone 4G spoilers too. Kuo says the phone's LCD touchscreen will be supplied by Chimei Innolux, Taiwan's largest LCD manufacturer, and will be an FFS (frame field switching) panel similar to that seen on the iPad, offering wider viewing angles.

While the figure of 24 million may seem optimistic on face value, the fact that more networks than ever are carrying the iPhone, along with the current model being only a minor step-up from the previous generation, means that demand for the handset is particularly high. In addition, Apple may simply be playing it safe after the ongoing iPad stock shortages caused by higher-than-expected demand.

And that may well be the clever course of action if Kuo's claims are accurate. The analyst says the iPhone 4G's display will have a class-leading resolution 960 x 640, a four-fold increase on the current model, and will also be 33 per cent thinner, which should leave more room for a larger battery.

As for the processor running the show, Kuo says it will be a single-core ARM Cortex A8, while 512MB of RAM twice as much as the current iPhone and the iPad should provide plenty of scope for all that multitasking promised by iPhone OS 4.0.

The next-generation iPhone is expected to be revealed during Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, which runs for five days starting on June 7. This year's event is almost exclusively focused on Apple's mobile products, with the new iPhone set to share the limelight with the iPad tablet, which features the same operating system as the iPhone.