A leaked Japanese document posted on the French website Nowhereelse.fr indicates pre-orders for the forthcoming iPhone 5S will begin June 20 and will be available by July. The document appears to be the sort of "cheat sheet" cellular store employees receive when a new Apple product launches.
On the one hand this makes sense, as pre-orders would begin a week after Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference where Apple could announce the new phone. On the other hand, Apple CEO Tim Cook said new products would be coming this fall during the recent conference call with investors following the release of Apple's March quarter earnings. Of course, there's no way of knowing, and we'll just have to wait to see what happens.
I'm guessing Apple itself doesn't know. It all depends on how quickly the factories can get it together to start producing defect-free devices in high volume. Earlier reports had said technology for the phone's rumored fingerprint sensor has been problematic and difficult to perfect. Whatever the case, we know that Apple won't come out with it until the quality is up to their standards.
You can read more about the above-mentioned leaked document on AppleInsider.
And speaking about the challenges that manufacturers face in building large quantities of defect-free devices, a market analyst with contacts in Asia is saying manufacturers are finding it difficult to get adequate yield rates of the Retina display for the forthcoming iPad mini. Too many of the displays coming off the production line are defective. Because of this, he's predicting we won't see the new iPad mini until October.