Apple is known to be very secretive about its unannounced products, and this trend isn’t about to change. According to Bank of America however, Apple’s next generation iPhone will be released sometime between now and summer of this year. The new iPhone is not to be confused with the recent announcement of the iPhone 2.0 firmware but is in fact, a brand new iPhone supporting 3G.

Highly anticipated, users have been asking for a 3G iPhone even before the release of the original was announced. According to Apple and AT&T however, 3G networks were not ready and AT&T has been rushing to upgrade its cellular network to 3G in the last year. Using technology based on EDGE, current iPhone users can access the Internet wherever they go, but suffer from slow speeds. 3G iPhones will potentially offer users up to 2mbit/sec. transfer rates.

In a report released by Bank of America analyst Scott Craig, Apple will have an major increase in iPhone product sometime in June.

"Our latest channel checks point to a significant production build of a 3G iPhone beginning in the month of June after an initial small build in May," said Craig.

This coincides with a previous announcement made by AT&T last year, indicating that its networks will be ready for a 3G iPhone release in 2008.

Despite mentioning a small build in May, Craig said that Apple’s production is by no means a small amount. Expected production levels are 3 million 3G iPhones starting in May followed by more than 8 million sometime in the 3rd quarter of the year.

iPhone sales have been extremely successful for Apple, having sold more than 4 million units to date, with an expectation to hit 10 million by year’s end. The phone has been so successful in fact, that Microsoft’s mobile development team is starting to poke around in the iPhone SDK. The software giant mentioned that the team is looking into ways where it can take advantage of Apple’s intuitive phone and growing user base.