Apple iPhone 5: Sharp's Screen Shipments More Evidence of September Release Date

By Josh Long

On the heels of reports that Apple will announce the iPhone 5 next month comes news that Sharp. Corp. will start shipping screens destined for the new smartphone.

"Shipments will start in August," Sharp president Takashi Okuda was quoted by Reuters as saying during a press briefing in Tokyo.

Sources told Reuters that the new panels will be four inches corner to corner, 30 percent larger than the current iPhones. The new iPhone screens also will be thinner than their previous versions thanks to the use of so-called in-cell panels, the news agency reported, explaining that the touch-screen layer found in current iPhones will be eliminated.  

Okuda made the comment following unconfirmed reports this week that Apple will debut the sixth-generation iPhone on Sept. 12.

Shaw Wu, a financial analyst with Sterne Agee, said Apple won’t see an impact to its bottom line from the new device until later on.

"Despite the sooner than expected timing, we continue to pick up from our supplier checks that volume production on the 6th generation iPhone will most likely occur in late September," Wu wrote in a report Thursday. "What this means is that suppliers will see revenue in the September quarter while AAPL won’t likely see it until the December quarter when it can ship to carriers and distributors. At this point, we remain comfortable with our iPhone forecasts looking for 23 million and 45 million units, respectively, in the September and December quarters."