Odds of new iPhone 4G at WWDC are unpredictable

Now that Apple is going out of its way to avoid introducing its new hardware products at major third party conferences like Macworld Expo, will the company now dodge its own WWDC conference when it comes to introducing the new iPhone 4G in June? One upon a time, Apple’s timing patterns for new product rollouts were easily decipherable, even as the products themselves were often in question; we didn’t know what Apple would introduce each, but we knew those introductions would come during Steve Jobs’ keynote address at either the summer or winter Macworld conference – or occasionally some other conference like Apple Expo Paris. But with Apple having walked away from nearly every third party trade show it used to associate itself with, the timing of the announcements are now largely unpredictable even as the company’s maturing product lines give us more of a clue than ever about the generalities of what’s coming, if not the specifics.

For instance, there was little doubt that Apple would be rolling out a tablet computer in the early weeks of this year. But because the company skipped the obvious high profile rollout opportunity known as Macworld 2010 in favor of holding its own press conference across the street, no one knew for sure what the iPad would debut until Apple sent out invitations marked January 27th. So while the common expectation is that Apple will in fact use the Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC this year to rollout out the iPhone 4G, that actually involves three assumptions which can’t quite safely be made. One is that the new iPhone will be introduced at the developers conference, which is far from a given. The second is that Steve Jobs will himself be giving the keynote at WWDC, as these days it’s just as likely that someone like Phil Schiller will handle such a speech. And the third and perhaps most oft-overlooked assumption is that the device will actually be called “iPhone 4G” – don’t be shocked if the new iPhone carries a different nomenclature than what we’ve come to expect. After all, no one saw the “iPhone 3GS” name coming either.