two iPhones in September?

Apple might surprise consumers this year by releasing not one but two iPhones, an analyst for Deutsche Bank Equity Research says.

Chris Whitmore predicted that at the same time Apple releases a fifth-generation iPhone, probably in September, the company will also show off a speedier version of the existing iPhone 4 that consumers will be able to buy for $350 without a contract. The lower-cost phone, he said, would feature a prepaid calling plan in which consumers could pay monthly for a limited number of talk minutes.

Apple's iPhones are generally among the more expensive smartphones available. But a souped-up iPhone 4, Whitmore believes, could help Apple compete with less-expensive phones from other companies.

Whitmore said that sales of lower-cost, "mid-range" smartphones are expected to grow three times as fast as sales of premium models, such as the current iPhone. By 2014, shipments of mid-range smartphones could surpass those of premium ones, Whitmore said.

"We believe the time is right for Apple to focus on driving penetration into the mid-range smartphone market and drastically expand its addressable market," he said, noting that Nokia Corp. and Research in Motion Ltd., which sell lower-cost handsets, are both struggling.

n the U.S., most cellphones are subsidized by carriers with contracts that allow them to recoup the cost of the phone in monthly payments. But as the above chart shows, there are large swaths of the world -- especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where iPhone penetration is low -- where customers prefer to pay the full cost of the phone upfront.

Note that analysts for some time have been calling for Apple to release a lower cost, pre-paid iPhone, and that Whitmore does not cite any sources or claim any inside knowledge for his two-iPhone theory.

In a separate note issued Sunday, Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty, back from a week of meetings in Taiwan, reports that she expects iPhone and iPad production to "begin ramping up aggressively" from August through the end of the year.

If production for what Huberty sees as one new iPhone doesn't start until in mid to late August, the launch might not come until late September. In her unit sales spreadsheet, copied below, she's shifted 2 million iPhones from calendar Q3 to calendar Q4 (Apple's fiscal Q4 and Q1 2012). If the launch comes in early September, she says, she'll shift them back.