When will iPhone 5 come and what will it be like?

Apple is really good at managing the portfolio of all segments of customers. Consider the latest baby from the stable of Apple. Most marketers would have called the phone as "iPhone 5" and probably this strategy would have sold more of the product. But Apple is cleverer than that!

If they had called their new product as "iPhone 5",  their signal to the market would have been that here is the next generation phone. What is wrong with that ? Everything; if you are an existing iPhone 4 user because you bought it just an year ago and are still under the 2-year warranty. You would not like being made so obsolete so soon by the brand you trusted.

The naming of the new phone as "iPhone 4S" clearly suggests they do not want the market to see it as a new generation phone but as a "tweaked upgrade". Its target audiences are primarily 70 million iPhone users who bought it before "iPhone 4" was launched - and of course 1 Billion Non-smartphone users and  of course smartphone users of other brands and platforms - Blackberry, Android and Nokia. When so many segments are still open, why would anyone make existing customers cross?

What will be the right timing for the iPhone 5 - the "next generation" - to come? I think it will be in the latter half of 2012. The iPhone 4 was released in the summer of 2010 and I suspect the people will begin coming out of warranty that time. What will iPhone 5 be like? It has to meet the following challenges : it has to be significantly better for iPhone 3G and 3GS users. It has to attract non-smartphone users to want to upgrade to it or the free 3GS instead of an Android phone. It has to be better then Android and Blackberry.