iPhone 5S reportedly being prepared for trial production

The iPhone 5 is barely out of the gate and already rumours have emerged of an iPhone 5S.

As usual, the word is coming from DigiTimes, which is reporting that a Chinese publication, the Commercial Times, has claimed Apple is preparing a trial production of the iPhone 5S for December.

The report claims Apple has ‘accelerated the certification processes’ for the iPhone 5S due to ‘low yield rates in the production of the iPhone 5’.

It also alleges the iPhone 5S could see volume production in Q1 2013, but this sounds a little ambitious to us and we can’t imagine Apple undermining the iPhone 5 only a couple of months after its launch.

It also doesn’t sit with Apple’s release schedule. Previously iPhone models emerged around the middle of the year, but the iPhone 4S bucked the trend, instead hitting the market in the later half of 2011, the iPhone 5 has repeated this pattern with an October 2012 launch.

An iPhone 5S will likely hit in October 2013, but whether it will be an incremental update or something more substantial remains to be seen.

We think Apple will need to take the time out to develop a stand-out iPhone model with the next iteration as critics and shareholders are starting to question the company's slow upgrade process.