Apple has been shocking me for the past few months. First was the quick announcement and release of the iPad 2. Now it’s the approach of the inevitable announcement of the iPhone 5.

I feel some strange obligation to let all the Apple fans who are looking forward to their next fix know that they are probably going to have to wait a little longer. Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), an event held in June, generally brings talk about the new iPhone with it.

But this year, Apple says they are only going to talk about the new updates for the iPhone OS (iOS) and the Mac OS X. My prediction is when Apple has a conference in September announcing the next generation of iPods, we will also hear about the next generation of the iPhone.There are a few reasons as to why they are most likely not going to announce the iPhone 5 this summer.

The fact that Sony has admitted to creating the next camera lens for the iPhone, and considering the state that Japan is in at the moment, it must be difficult for them to continue with the mass production of the lenses that will be needed. My other reason is that Apple has nowhere to go with the next generation of iPod Touch. If you think about it, this past generation’s Touch does everything that the iPhone can do, minus the phone.

If they were to announce another iPod Touch that has another boost in hardware, that’s not going to be exciting. I’m not saying that we are not going to see another iPod Touch, because I feel that we are. But where last year one of the highlights of the September conference was the extremely thin and powerful iPod Touch, this year we will see the iPhone 5.Maybe Apple actually cares about all the new Verizon customers that they just received, and to lower the blow that some are sure to feel with the release of the iPhone 5, they pushed back the launch to a later date.

But considering the technology world, I could be utterly wrong about this. Apple could just want to keep the iPhone 5 a secret by saying there will be no talk of it in June, then all they talk about at WWDC is the iPhone 5. Or maybe they will announce it at the June conference, but have a full blowout and release in September. All we can really do is speculate at what Apple is going to do. But it seems like this year they are going to change up their normal game plan.