Closing in on the 3G iPhone

Ever since Steve Jobs told the British press last September that they could "expect a 3G iPhone late next year," the question has been not "if" but "when" exactly.

Speculation grew in October when Broadcom began delivering samples of what it called a "3G Phone on a Chip" (link) and again in November when AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson promised that we'd "have it next year" at whatever price Jobs decides to set.

Now, with less than three months before Apple's (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference (June 9-13), we're getting a flurry of leaks and rumors offering fresh details about the 3G iPhone and zeroing in on a late-May to June release.

• Last Friday, Digg founder Kevin Rose, who has a mixed record on iPhone predictions, told the audience for his Diggnation podcast that the 3G iPhone would have live video-conferencing capabilities. (YouTube link)
• On Tuesday, Gartner Group analyst Ken Delaney told iPod Observer that slower than expected sales in Europe for the EDGE-based iPhone had increased pressure on Apple to release a 3G model, and that according to his Asian sources Apple had ordered "a second round of 10 million iPhones based on the 3G network."
• On Wednesday, Digg's Rose followed up on his Friday podcast with a Twitter post in which he reports that a high level vice president with a big company that works with Apple told him that the new iPhone "will ship in June w/3G and GPS."
• Reflecting the newly reported 3G iPhone build plans, BMO Capital Markets' Keith Bachman on Thursday raised his bearish 2008 estimate of 8.5 million iPhones to 9.9 million, just a hair under Apple's own target of 10 million. Even his new estimate, he now says, may prove conservative.

Jobs' keynote address at the WWDC that second week in June would seem a logical moment to reveal the new phone, of course. But that's what many observers thought last year, when they predicted that Jobs would release the original iPhone at the end of his speech. Instead, Apple began selling the phone a few weeks later, on June 29.

The most detailed speculation we've read to date about the likely specs of the new iPhone is still Seth Weinraub's "best guesses," posted in mid-February in his Apple, Ink column at Computerworld.