iPhone 5 Retina Display shipments starting in August, says Sharp

Sharp will begin shipments of Apple’s iPhone 5 Retina Display panels this month, according to the company’s president Takashi Okuda.

Speaking at a briefing in Tokyo, Okuda said, ‘Shipments will start in August.’ But declined to comment any further when questioned.

Latest online speculation claims that Apple will hold the iPhone 5 launch event on September 5, with a release date shortly after. If true, this could mean that Apple’s sixth-generation iPhone could hit stores as early as October.

The new handset, which will likely be called ‘The New iPhone,’ is said to feature a re-designed chassis, larger display – potentially upwards of 4-inches –, a new A6 processor, which could be a quad-core setup, and, of course, iOS 6.

‘Earlier reports suggested that Apple was working on a smaller iPad with a 7.85-inch screen, compared with the current 9.7-inch screen, reports The Telegraph. ‘The mini iPad will sell for less than the £320 iPad 2 and will challenge the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Google Nexus 7 for the market in smaller tablets.’

We’re not so sure about the last aspect, however, given that the vast majority of Apple’s applications would not scale up or done to a 7-inch display on account of the company forcing developers to either develop for iPhone or iPad. This is also the reason, according to some, why Apple did not release the SDK for its Apple TV at WWDC.