Apple to showcase new iPhone next week

Technology giant Apple Inc. has announced that it would unveil a new model of its best-selling smartphone iPhone in a ceremony next week. On Tuesday, the company invited media to the unveiling ceremony of a new iPhone 4, which is scheduled to be held on October 4 at itsheadquarters in Cupertino, California, Reuters reported. Apple's new CEO, Tim Cook, is expected to present the device during his first significant speech since his superseding the company's iconic founder Steve Jobs, who resigned last month. Mark McKechnie, analyst for the California-based US investment banking firm ThinkEquity LLC, said that although the current iPhone 4 is a good product, it could use some improvements, noting, "We talked about it having a bigger screen, a dual core processor, and probably integrates pretty well with the iCloud." "The new (iPhone) 4 will tackle the prepaid market and the (iPhone) 5 will have the A5 chip that's in the iPad and be faster, thinner and possibly with a bigger screen," said Colin Gillis, analyst with the global inter-dealer broker BGC Partners, Inc. Unconfirmed reports likewise say that the next generation iPhone sports a completely new hardware, including upgraded processors, bigger touch screen, better antenna, and an 8-megapixel camera. The company sold 16 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2011.