Apple iPhone Nano Coming This Christmas

The hype over the iPhone 3G has just barely started to ebb, and people are already clamoring over reports that Apple will be releasing an iPhone Nano just in time for the Christmas shopping season.

"I can't believe it," says Jordan Thomas, an Apple enthusiasts I spoke with at the Apple Store in Ala Moana, Honolulu, Hawaii. "It makes perfect business sense. The current iPhone models are attractive, but are still priced far beyond the budgets of many of Apple's core consumers. An iPhone Nano will give them core features at a cheaper price, much as the iPod Nano does for the iPod product line."

Traditionally, Apple holds an annual iPod news conference every September to let the media and its consumers know what is in the pipes for its popular iPod MP3 players. This September, some people are predicting an updated version of the iPod Touch with more features and prices that reflect the overall iPod line, which is hinted at in Apple's financial sales report comments (source).

However, even that news is eclipsed by news of the iPhone Nano. The Daily Mail was the first to break the news over the weekend, with the Daily Mail's source saying that the iPhone is too expensive for many consumers, but that a cheaper iPhone with the "candy bar shape of iPod nano music players" will be released by Apple just in time for the Christmas season (source).

But it isn't just one report with news of the Apple iPhone Nano. No, everyone is buzzing about it despite Apple itself still being tight-lipped. "All I can say is, I'm waiting for Christmas before I buy a replacement for my Blackberry smartphone," said James Allen, a customer at the Apple Store in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The iPhone Nano could be launched simultaneously with the new version if the iPod Nano.At the end of last week, iPod industry website iLounge published photos of what the new iPhone Nano would look like, shockingly predicting that "the fourth-generation iPod nano will look lik a Microsoft Zune"-a reference to Microsoft's weak entry into the MP3 market (source). The photos of the new, 4G iPod Nano show a longer, more elongated mp3 player that returns the iPod Nano to its former shape before the current square iPod Nano design. The report also says that "the new nano will adopt a form factor that shifts away from the almost square dimensions of the 2007 third-generation nano back towards the general shape of the first- and second-generation models."

No word has yet been released on exactly what shape or form the new Apple iPhone Nano will look like. There have been numerous guesses, but the actual design of the new iPhone Nano, which is presumed to continue to run on the AT&T cell network, will only be known once the actual product release date is rolled out.