Rumor: Apple's 4.8-inch iPhone 6 won't launch till June 2014 due to screen yield issues

Apple plans to introduce an iPhone with a 4.8-inch display and additional processing cores to help stem market share losses to rivals like Samsung but has been unable to accelerate the launch of the product into the 2013 calendar year due to challenges in producing enough of the larger displays, one investment research firm said Wednesday.

Editor's Note: It has been brought to our attention that certain specific claims of the Jefferies report are somewhat suspect, specifically regarding a March media event. AppleInsider has reached out to analyst Peter Misek, who maintains a high level of confidence regarding his hardware predictions. As with any research-based report, the information within should be taken with a grain of salt.

In a report issued to clients on Wednesday, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said Apple's product roadmap had called for a 4.8-inch iPhone to launch sometime during the 2014 calendar year but added that the company recently made an unsuccessful attempt to bump up its launch into the back half of 2013 amid increased competition and lost market share to rival Samsung. 

We believe a summer CY14 launch was originally planned, but Apple tried to accelerate it to stem its market share losses. The earliest Apple could have launched a 4.8” phone would have been this fall (with a target of Oct); however, our checks indicate that Apple’s suppliers are running into difficulties trying to scale the screen size from 4” to 4.8”.

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Bring On The iPhone 6! First Look From The Apple Fantasy Prototype League

Now that the first signs of an actual iPhone 6 model testing iOS 7 emanating from the IP footprint of Apple‘s Cupertino campus have been identified in app usage logs, it’s time to open the next season of the product design equivalent of Fantasy Football. Contestants pick features from existing Apple products as well as from their overheated imaginations in the attempt to beat the iPhone maker at its own game. 

As I wrote last season, there is an interesting, dream-like symbiosis that happens around these prototypes. A kind of parallel alternate reality, aching to be true. The first player to field an entry is Italian designer Federico Ciccarese of Ciccarese Design. 

He takes his inspiration from the current Nano line, but the real innovation is his suggestion of a merging of iOS and Mac OS X in the next version of Apple’s mobile software. Conceptually, that is almost certainly where things are headed, but my guess is that it will more likely be OS X that morphs into iOS instead of the other way around as shown here.

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