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Although the company has never stated anything more specific than 'June', reports quote network operator AT&T naming 11 June - the first day of this year's Worldwide Developers Conference - for the iPhone's debut. AT&T recently merged with Apple's wireless launch partner Cingular, which adopted the AT&T name for all of its activities.

Although the company expects great things of the iPhone, it has been a drain on Apple's resources. It was blamed

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for a four month delay to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard after Apple diverted engineering resources from its operating system to its mobile handset division.

This apparent portability of skills would indicate that problems with the iPhone are software related, which would appear to have been confirmed by iSuppli investigations. Analyst Jagdish Rebello is quoted by MSN's Money Central service saying that 'we're hearing it's mostly an issue with the complexity of the device and that all the component suppliers are making their deliveries on time.'

Apple sent an email earlier this month to potential customers who had expressed an interest in the iPhone.

'Talk to you soon,' said the email. 'Thanks for signing up. You'll be the first to hear the latest about iPhone - coming this June. That gives you just enough time to think of ways to break the news to your current phone.'