The iPhone 5: Steve Jobs’ Curtain Call

The iPhone 5 rumours have already begun, and they come just days after Apple has sold 4 million units of the iPhone 4S in one weekend. The demand for Apple products are at an all-time high, and many experts believe the iPhone 4S will be the fastest selling electronic of all time. Still, some analysts think there's room to improve.

So how exactly would Apple be able to exceed it's own record-breaking sales of the iPhone 4S? The answer, of course, is with the next-generation iPhone. It's with this next-gen iPhone, the one many have already dubbed iPhone 5, that Apple is expected to produce an instant cult classic.

The next-generation iPhone, according to CNET, is the last project that Steve Job was intimately involved with from concept to final design. They cited research conducted by Rodman and Renshaw, an investment bank and research group, whose analyst Ashok Kumar also added that the product will establish the high water mark for iPhone volumes.

Kumar writes that the iPhone 5 will feature a complete redesign, stating that the body of the unit will be slimmer and the screen will increase in size. For anyone familiar with rumors surrounding Apple products, this sort of speculation is typical of their long-awaited much-hyped products. The iPhone 5 is also rumoured to include 4G LTE technology, which is slightly faster than the WiMax-based 4G broadband available on current iPhones.

Apple is expected to continue working with Samsung on future phones, which may include the iPhone 5, despite the recent legal woes between the two companies. Samsung has been a particularly important player in the manufacturing process of all iPhones to date. The South Korean-based company currently produces 26% of the iPhone's parts including flash memory, DRAM and even its new applications processor, the highly touted dual-core A5 processor that's also used in the iPad 2.

Recent legal battles between Samsung and Apple began after Apple filed an injunction against the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, alleging that the similarity of the tablet was too close to Apple's iPad.

A German court upheld the injunction, effectively banning the sale of the Galaxy Tab in any country in the European Union except for the Netherlands. An Australian court has also banned Samsung from selling the Galaxy Tab until the patent lawsuit is resolved. Samsung fired back by suing Apple in Australia and Japan in an attempt to halt sales of the iPhone 4S, though their attempts to block iPhone sales have been less successfull.

It's uncertain how exactly the tangled relationship between Apple and Samsung will pan out. While they have shared interest in producing and distributing mobile technology, they also remain each other's greatest rivals in the industry. Only time will tell if Samsung continues to play a significant role in the manufacturing of the iPhone, but, if Kumar is right about the complete redesign in iPhone 5, there is a possibility that the internal hardware of the iPhone could be changing as well.

The iPhone 5 is expected to debut sometime near the Apple's Developer's Conference, which is rumoured to be in early June 2012. The announcement is expected to be made at the Moscone Center in San Francisco where Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone.

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