Manufacturing Starts On iPhone Nano?

Let the rumor mill start rolling again. Digitimes is reporting on a rumor that Apple will be shipping a new iPhone in September. Quoting a report from the Taiwanese Commercial Times newspaper, it claims that "the new iPhone from Apple will begin shipping in September with prices ranging from US$249-299". The report circulates around an apparent contract with Taiwanese company Wintek to make the screen for the new phone. The same report also claims that test manufacturing has already begun at the Taiwanese company, with small quantities of the phone already coming off the production lines.

Unfortunately, the Digitimes report does not contain a link to the original report, and they don't mention the source of this rumor, so we wouldn't recommend that you start queuing up quite yet. Frankly, we'd be very, very surprised of this rumor pans out; although Apple would seem to be considering a low-end version of the iPhone (especially given their work in this patent application on a way to dial numbers from a touch wheel), we wouldn't expect to see it that quickly. The source of this rumor may be the next generation iPods that Apple is supposedly working on; the rumor is that Wintek has been awarded the contract for that new device.