iPhone mini, free Mobile Me incoming: Apple’s favourite journalist strikes again!

The iPhone mini and the prospect of free Mobile Me are the latest Apple rumours to get firmed up by a report from Apple’s favourite journalist, Yukari Iwatani Kane. Kane has previously appeared to be a conduit for controlled leaks from Cupertino so the arrival of the iPhone mini rumours in the pages of the Wall Street Journal is worthy of comment.

The report says Apple is “working on the first of a new line of less-expensive iPhones” and goes on to say the new device will be about 50% smaller than the current iPhone. The best detail though? The new smaller iPhone is allegedly code-named N97 (the iPhone 4 was code-named N89). We’re sure Nokia and Microsoft will just love that…

If Nokia isn’t niggled by the similarity of the supposed iPhone mini codename to an aging Nokia product, it’ll certainly be galled if the iPhone Mini follows the business strategy laid out in the Wall Street Journal report.

Iwatani Kane says the iPhone mini will arrive at half the price of the full-fat iPhone 4 and iPhone 5. That will mean that carriers would be able to soak up most of the retail price in subsidies making the iPhone mini a truly mass market device and falling smack bang in the middle of the territory the new Nokia/Microsoft nexus wants to put its Windows Phone 7 devices in.

The other big claim in Ms Iwatani Kane’s report? Free MobileMe, long rumoured, is finally about to arrive. The updated version of the service will come with a new locker for photos, music and videos. There’s not guarantee that it’ll arrive but Iwatani Kane says it will according to “people familiar with the situation”. We’d put a few chips down on a bet that it will be coming and that the massive data centre Apple has been getting on stream in the past six months will finally be put to good use.

Apple rumours are running wild right now as they always do when the press pack senses new devices are on the horizon but when the Wall Street Journal prints them there’s often more meat to it.

Iwatani Kane is careful to note that not only Apple PR but Steve Jobs himself (via email) declined to comment. However, we would not be surprised if their was more than a little Cupertino collusion going on here. What do you think? Are we going to see iPad 2, an iPhone 5 and the iPhone mini this year?

Out TBC | £TBC | WSJ

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